Historical advice for my novel?

I'm writing a novel set in Sub-Roman Britain. Would anyone here knowledgeable in Saxon or Romano-British culture be willing to help?

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(OP)
>Would anyone here knowledgeable in Saxon or Romano-British culture be willing to help?

British, roman and anglo-saxon culture were basically all the time. The standard narrative about britons being taken over by romans and adopting their culture, and then a foreign culture invading or settling and rising up is basically a misconception based on historical myths and legends. It was all the same people from britain to germania

so basically with your story, you could tell it a bit differently to the status quo historical narrative by having roman-british culture being rooted in the neolithic rather then just the colony of a foreign invader, the anglo-saxons as kinsmen of british clans/tribes enlisted to defend briton after the collapse of rome, as they were roman military themselves

There are very few sources for sub-roman Britain. If you want a rough picture try the Confessio or On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain

That's complete fucking bullshit.

We know a lot, but most of the knowledge is academic rather than public knowledge.

Also complete fucking bullshit. Celts were a very recent culture, and Romans had a massive impact like a whale deepthroating an ant.

Read primary sources.
Read Wikipedia articles
Look at artifacts from the period.

But above all, learn when to bypass these things to keep your novel entertaining. Your first concern is selling a page-turner. Your second concern is anal historical accuracy. If the plebs like your book, they can get all academic about that shit on their own.

It took me a while to learn this.

t. hobbyist novelist

read warlord chronicles

It better have a strong female protagonist in it. Pherhaps a gay couple as well. As well as a black merchant from Mali . It will be the most progressive historical book to date

I do all three, but sometimes an expert is needed.

Lol no. They should call him "Crom didn't do his research well."

He's right

The material culture of Britain in the early Middle Ages was indistinguishable

It has complex female characters, and one guy is gay but would die if anyone knew.
No black people though.

No it wasn't you dumb cunt.
It was extremely different.

Prove it

Clothes had celtic patterns.
We've found many objects in Celtic Styles.
The Celtic religion persisted.
Roman cities fell into ruin as people started living in roundhouses again.
Celtic Kings ruled rather than a Roman emperor.

To name very few examples.

Provide source or fuck off

Life

Go ask Francis Pryor

From what I can tell the main split comes down to east/west split in the UK. The west had a more celtic feel while East was heavily influenced by the continent from at least the time of Caesar.

Digs suggest the saxon.raids were bollocks, massive continuity between roman and post roman land use and no evidence of mass raids and settlement apart from irish raiders.

My pet theory is that Gildas was pissed at the efforts of the church to bring Britains church back in line.

It needs to be remembered the historical sources are basically 4chaners writing for the king or church, there's no objectivity or non-bias in them.

Stop spreading lies please.
The saxons did invade. They didn't kill everyone, not that anyone has claimed that. A lot of people died, end of. ("The rivers ran red"-Gildas != "The saxons killed the 1.5 million inhabitants.")
There were mass raids by Saxons and the Irish and Irish Scotti.

Peaceful Jutes had set up in 380 with a Roman green-light but they were only a small tribe. Cerdic absorbed them into his own Kingdom along with the other tribes along the Thames.

Also your pet theory is an uneducated guess and not very valuable.
We should assume Gildas did not lie about major events since he had no incentive to do so.
His vitriol against Pagans also bring valuable information. We know that all of Wales thought like Gildas as he was writing down what everyone else thought for posterity, as he states at the very start of the book.

Here is a good primary source... as far as primary sources go anyway.

ia902305.us.archive.org/30/items/theanglosaxonchr00657gut/angsx10.txt

When will the novel be set? What century or rough start year?

Gildas called his king's grandfather a cunt and said the Church and Pope were a bunch of ninnies.
So no.

Starts in 480 and ends in 530.
I've already been reading up on the ASC but thanks for the link, it has extra info my other version didn't.
The Saxons are pretty reliable too, the only shit I've seen them pull is claiming descent from Woden/Odin.

"filled with legendary tales
of Trojan antiquity,"

I think we should cut Nennius and Geoffrey of Monmouth some slack. If you get rid of spurious and phantom kings you get the date of the Trojan War happening around 600 BC, which actually makes more sense to me than 1100 BC.

I wouldn't call it shit, that's THEIR identity. It's like us Americans all claiming to be patriots and the descendants of religious rebels and native Americans.

Very untrue for the most part, but it gives us as a nation something to be proud of. Perhaps have the Celts of your novel claim descent from one of their gods/goddesses. Gives ethnic identity at a time when race was something deeper than just skin.

Okay, so 480 is the start date.

Look at the years 435, 443, 449, and 465 for some great background. Of course the inbetween years but those years can all give a very strong background for the environment of your characters.

The fifty years your novel takes place over are big years of conversion of the peoples of the British Isles. Many kings, princes, dukes, barons, and common folk all turned to Christianity in those years.

It was a popular religion for political, philosophical, and even economic reasons. Not everyone was converted by swordpoint. Cerdric and Cynric were two big figures during your novel's time. In the year 495 they did some big things against the Welsh. Their government was in turmoil for some time, and conflict attracts warriors and those who sell to them. Might be a cool draw for your main character(s). Considering they'd be fifteen years old when the campaign begins.

What's always important in history. If you picture it for a second, it doesn't make sense. Already, this is dumb:

Gildas: "Hmmm... wonder what lies I'll write down next..."

Couple it with this.

Gildas: "Saxons killed loads of Britons!"
6th century Briton: "No dude, they didn't."
Gildas: "You're right, I'm lying."
6CB: "Have fun with your gay-ass book GILD-ASS HAHAHHA"

Nearly no one turned to Christianity. I can name only one branch and it was Cunedda Wledig.
Aergol Lawhir as well admittedly.

Three quarters of the Celtic "Saints" are actually Pagans.

Checked, also here is some more helpful links:

behindthename.com/glossary/view/germanic_names

pase.ac.uk/index.html

Oh yeah, I'm half-way through writing this novel by the way. 50K in. King Arthur has already fought Cerdic once, now he's dealing with Caw's rebellion (Sixth Battle of Nennius).
The main antagonist is Aelle, who led his people away from Saxony because of constant flooding that made it impossible to grow crops. They were starving.
Cerdic is a deuteragonist who dies after the book ends, in 534.

I'm focusing on a specific kingdom and it's downfall, as well as the start of a mass conversion to christianity with Saint Patrick (I chose the later dates attributed to him, where he died in 503 AD or so) and his predecessor Palladius.

>Nearly no one turned to Christianity

Bollocks, the Scots were greatly turned to Christianity in the 5th century. So much so, that their missionaries in the 7th century worked with Latin and local missionaries to convert the incoming Norse and Germanic pagans immigrating to the British Isles. Æthelberht of Kent converted when, 610 A.D.? The last pagan king died that same century, so it went fast

Thanks. Got to be careful with translations of names though.
I've seen people mix up Ricole of Essex and Ricoel of Essex, two different people.

The Scots of Dal Riata, led by Fergus THE PAGAN?

If you mean the Picts, there was an attempt but they immediately tried to make Jesus a Sun God so the Celtic Church said "fuck you apostles" and didn't try to reconvert them until St Patrick.

200 years is not fast. Compare now and 1816.

Checked, and that makes Aelle not much of an "evil" antagonist. Good use of the starvation though, that drove people all over the world... still does today.

Your novel starts after the Hun's fall from power. That does not mean they left the world untouched. Something some Germanic nobles and common folk did was skull bind their children like the Huns did.

Maybe attribute some appearances to that. It would be a nice historic touch that most do not know or have in their books.

Well done on being halfway too, keep it up

It is fast in hindsight, humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years but have only been farming for what, 10,000 years?

That's only a fraction of our species' history, and to think that only 200 of those 10,000 was all it took for a largely pagan island to become Christian one is fast. Hindsight I guess is making it easy to say that.

Because you're right to say compare now and 1816. Vastly different world indeed, and I can't wait to see what will change by 2056.

What is skull-binding?

And yeah, from what I've read the whole migration was mainly the weather going mad. Apparently Britain was a constant storm before the AD years and then calmed down. Other parts of the world weren't so lucky.

Why did you say "Checked" mean? And what is skull-binding? Thanks for the tip though. I'm also including thr little known fact Saxons dyed their hair wild colours like blue, green, red and orange.

Thanks for the encouragement.

When you get double numbers, like your previous post number ends in 22, it is a tradition here on Veeky Forums to say "checked" or "witnessed". Just been done since I've been here.

Skull-binding is the process of taking an infants skull and using cloth or wood pieces to gradually shape the skull to an artifical shape. It sets in with age, and it leaves the person with an oddly shaped head.

Funny enough, it does little to change the person's mental ability so long as it is done correctly and not too drastically. The Huns did it to their entire population, so they looked completely alien to the Romans, Germanics, and Celtic peoples of Central and Western Europe.

Some Germanic populations took to the practice because, well... if it worked for the Huns it could work for us too.

That's interesting that they dyed their hair. Was this a practice picked up from other tribes or peoples? Or was this something they uniquely did?

The problem is the Christianity happened very fast. Faster than two hundred years, try about 50.

A few kings' families (I can only name two, possibly also Vortigern's grandsons) were christians by 500 AD. Most of Ireland wasn't, and the Picts became it quite soon after.
The drastic turn to Christianity seems largely to have been brought on by Aethelbert. Penda was the last Saxon Pagan, but the Britons, now enslaved or integrated into Saxon society, appear to have stayed pagan a while. They may even have become German Pagans.
It's also vital to remember there were no false Gods to anyone except Jews at this point (who denied Christ was the SOG etc...)
Aethelbert likely still belived in a Thunor, a Woden, etc...

It's also telling Saxons kept being named after Germanic Gods well into the Christian period around when Ragnar Lođbrok's sons attacked Britain.
Harold Godwinson had Germanic tattoos, a pretty pagan thing to do in 1000 AD.

Hard to say. Romans dyed their hair white and blonde (one king put real gold powder in his hair). Celts dyed their hair white and blue. Greek prostitutes dyed ther hair blonde.
Visigoths seem to have preferred Green. Saxons seem to have usually dyed their hair red. Blue hair dye seems to have been quite regal: Kings had it, and Adam, Eve and God were represented with blue hair. (I may be wrong here, but IIRC so were statues of the Germanic Gods from the pigments found on germanic megaliths. Blue hair.)

Interesting thing with the head-binding, thanks for the illustration. Will definitely include it!

Checked, and that's a great point about the false god ideal. I didn't even think of that, thanks user.

Couldn't imagine going back in time and looking Charlemagne in the face with blue highlights. I'd want to laugh thinking of modern goth kids or the Asians who frequented my local cafe

Heh, yeah. We're talking mid-range of those colours. Using woad as a dye was pretty hard, it involved boiling it in a huge vat of piss.

Checked.

Also, as I said, the Picts didn't really get what was going on. They had a Sun God called Easu. So when Christians came and started saying:
"Do you have a moment to call about Iesu?"
They misunserstood. They established their own trinity with Beli, Jesus the Sun God and another God (may have been Sulis or Epona, I forget).
The Christians did not like that and declared them apostles.
Slightly offended, the Picts just figured they'd stick with their weird mix of Celtic Polytheism and Christianity.

Gross, but it sure does have a nice effect on materials. I'd be a dye merchant... not producer kek

>should have posted this with my post instead of the woad

Saint Patrick rectified the error circa 500 AD. Drust III seems to have started his reign as a vehement Pagan and ended it as the first Celtic Church supporting Pictish king in 515 AD or so.
Why is a mystery. Perhaps his father was a christian, but as Pictish succession is matrilineal (the only example ever of such succession in the history of the universe), most fathers seem to be unknown.

I'm making maps of the cities and also of main ethnicities (who is descended from silurians, first wave and second wave celts by the time the novel starts). I could do one for religions if anyone is interested.

Just like how today China and Germany are culturally the same. I mean everyone goes to school tries to get a job gets married and has a family and watches tv and has a pet and tries to get a car.

No difference at all.

>Gotta have the blue hair

One often gets myths like this.

"this King's character was greatly changed through grief brought about by the death of his loving wife. One day, while out hunting a deer, his prey took shelter in St. Petroc's cell. So impressed was the King by the saint's power that he and his body guard immediately converted to Christianity"

I'm interpreting that and including it in my story as "the death of his wife slowly made him turn to Christianity.
Obviously the story of the deer and Petroc is mythical. From that I conclude he did meet Petroc (in more normal circumstances) and it's he who baptised Constantine.

here's a neat fact about the anglo-saxons:

often when rushing into battle, they'd shout : Ic sceal min pintel stracian.
to this day, the meaning of this phrase remains unknown.

I'd be interested in both of those, yes.

This is exaggerated, don't you think? The foods they eat, the number of children each aims for (ignoring certain laws), the roles of genders, what music they listen to, and so on

Good point user. Sometimes it is events that move the kings and nobles. I can think of Vladimir the Great doing this in Kiev.

I can think of another legend where a king was so moved by a Christian father's love for Christ and his son that he eventually converted. This was years after though, and he still ended up sacrificing the man's son to the pagan gods... but that kind of got swept under the rug after his conversion. His name escapes me though

Ic sceal min pintel stracian

I shall mine [...]

Pronounced:
Eye-tch shall m-eye-n p-eye-ntel straw-chian.

>to this day, the meaning of this phrase remains unknown
>feverishly working to decipher it

My knowledge of German tells me "Ic" means "I"

"Sceal" is "troop or [war]band"

"Min" is "mine or of my"

"pintel" escapes me, but it is related to the Latin "virilitas" which means "manhood and masculinity"

And "stracian" means... "to stroke"

...

Either you're a legendary troll who got me to translate the phrase "I, soldier, stroke my manhood" or I just discovered that the Saxons were proud to shout about their cocks to the enemy.

Either way, bravo user.

How could Agamemnon be the king of Greece in 600bc if Mycenaea was destroyed was destroyed in the 1100s bc

sceal is the first person singular of sculan (shall), which is why stracian is in the infinitive.

Oh.

I shall mine penis stroke.

Very funny. Horningsunu wealbasu.

>I shall stroke my manhood

oh boy

My old english dictionary says the word penis was also often penis back then.

Pintel appears to be some deviation of pintle?

Maybe he didn't exist.

Trojan war != Illiad.

It depends, I would assume, whether the speaker is using a more latinate vocabulary.

How do I keep in touch with you?l

Makes sense. Even modern English has a germanic, latin, french or welsh root synonym for a lot of words.

But the city and it's power was a real thing. There's evidence that Troy was caught in the middle of several wars between the Hittites and the Mycenaeans several times before Troy's ultimate destruction

email should suffice, [email protected]

My advice OP is to get a PhD in History, Archaeology, or the Classics.
Otherwise get the fuck out.
You and every other autist fucking up the public conception of the past because you either weren't smart enough or didn't try hard enough to be a real historian.
Fuck your novel if you won't put the work in for yourself to actually learn about the period you are writing on from REAL RELIABLE SOURCES. THE SCHOLARLY PUBLICATION AND PRINARY SOURCE DOCUMENTS KIND.
Don't fucking come to some retarded anime board sub-forum populated 90% by fuckwitts who pretend to know shit about history because they read wikipedia.

Anglo-Saxons were roman military and roman mercenaries, their armour and their weapons were roman, they were aristocratic military families. Germanic people were essentially a rebellious and fiercely independent roman warrior caste with an ecological, communist, anti-materialist culture (at least in ideal and less and less so as time moved on) who elected to live in nature in clan-based communes, think savage hippies who worshipped hercules, the war gods and the sacred forest.

If you wanted to claim prestige in post-roman britian you would say your family is descended from german nobility. Their kinsman were already in britain when they were enlisted. Germanic people had been in Britain alongside celts for quite some time.


permanent settlements in britain date all the way back to the neolithic. Indo-european cultures in europe are now considered to have been present since the neolithic.

The bronze age is when the germanic, celtic and italic cultures started to emerge. Hallstatt, Urnfield and La Tene seem to be the origins of all of these cultures.

The material culture of the Nordic Bronze age is very similar to the material culture of the Greek Bronze age. Basically, western, central, southern and northern europe was made up of one huge indo-european culture at this point, consisting of different tribes belonging to different language groups, but nevertheless all interconnected on a grand scale. As society became more advanced the massive forests of germania were the barrier that separated the Nordic people from southern europeans and made them drift apart, while the people living in the forests themselves had to maintain a very minimalist, pastoralist clan-based lifestyle.

This user seems to be mad. Ignore him OP.

There was lots of buttseks.

They were wild Germans, they were as much Roman Auxiliaries as they were part of the Light Brigade and Luftwaffe SS.

Yeah, thanks. He proved his own point.

That image is hilarious, where is it from?

define wild