Anglo-Saxons and Vikings

They basically just had an early, smaller version of a Viking long ship.

Interesting not long after they settled in England they stop using them and by the time of the Viking raids they didn't even have a navy to fight them off.

Why did the anglosaxons devolve?

Its always amusing to me the fact that our weekdays were a celebrated to the norse gods ergo Friday Freya and Thursday for thor, others being less known gods. This Germanic influence which traveled to Britain and stayed there.

Didn't Alfred the great create a navy for England to fight off vikings

saxons were converted by charlemegne/HRE not by celtic britons
the saxons of british isles were converted through missionary mission while the germanic saxons (geographically speaking) were converted through sword

Wednesday is Woden's day

yes but the vikings with their long ships over manouvered those ships
plus the saxons had no projectile weapons except volley of arrows/fire arrows but still it didn't affect the viking incursions
>if they had had greek fire you know what would've happened

"maneuvered"

Because they focused more on building permanent settlements based around agriculture as opposed to the nomadic lifestyle of the early migration era Germans.

The Anglo Saxons also didn't breed horses, that's why they were btfo by the Normans.

>and/plus lancers

At the battle of Hastings the Norman cavalry was decimated by the Anglo-Saxon shield wall and it was only because they retreated that one of the Anglo-Saxon lords broke up his part of the shield wall to charge after the routed Normans. However the Normans realised what had happened and swiftly turned about and cut the Anglo-Saxons to pieces once the shield wall fell apart. It was almost Anglo-Saxon victory against Norman cavalry.

I always learned that the Norman retreat was a feign, with the precise purpose of luring the housecarls out of their shield wall.
So that it wasn't a sudden realisation turning fortunes around, but rather that all went according to William's keikaku.

No it was typical French tactics of run away. Inb4 Normans wuz Englizh

why are you english so stupid and try to make it that you win every time, its embarrasing, you lost

Everything the Anglosaxons wrote in Old English is from from the post-Christian conversion period, namely Bede, Beowulf and the Anglo Saxon Chronicles. They were certainly aware of the figures of Wotan and Thor and speak of the min deliberately archaic ways such as in Beowulf which is set in Scandinavia and replicate the alliterative verse of older poetic techniques.

Except I never said the Anglo-Saxons won. I said it was close to debunk user's claim that it was cavalry tactics that gained an easy victory for the Normans

Did early Anglo-Saxon settlers believe in Asgard and Valhalla?

Normans were the descendents of Danish Vikings.

I honestly can't tell the difference between Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Goths, Slavs, etc., especially in the early ages. You guys are just comparing minor details, but arr rook same in the end.

No, a dog born in a stable isnt a horse. They were Georgian.

I heard that Alfred designed the ships himself, but he made them too large such that they were out manoeuvred by the Viking ships and that they got stuck in the mud at low tide

No one knows really, there's nothing written before that aforementioned time. We have the distinct word 'Wotan' meaning the knowledge of the 'pagan' folklore was a part of their culture and may well have been held in an ontalogically dualistic belief system but there's no surviving texts of their pre-Christian mythology like you find with the Icelandic Snorri's 'Poetic' and 'Prose Eddas' which are a description of the myths of the Germanic people from whom the Saxon's originally came. It's a shame there are no remaining Saxon texts on their beliefs, would be great if some were discovered buried somewhere.

Is there nothing in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle or the writings of Bede about Anglo-Saxon beliefs? Perhaps Gildas wrote about it?

Georgian? Wat?

...

>the saxons of british isles were converted through missionary mission
By Celtic Irishmen, of all people.

Anglo-Saxon ships were quite magnificent like Viking longships

Beowulf is certainly a pre-christian story, it wasn't written until the christian period but it has the cadence of an oral poem, not a literary one.

St Augustine of Canterbury who was born in Italy converted Anglo-Saxons. The Brit St. Patrick converted the Irish

>Bede
He was a christian fanatic, so no.
>Anglo-Saxon chronicle
Medieval chronicles are not narratives, they're typically one or two sentence summaries of the major events of a year.
>Gildas
He was a christian fanatic AND a Welshman, so double no.

>St Augustine of Canterbury who was born in Italy converted Anglo-Saxons
No, he converted them to Catholicism. The Irish had already converted them to Celtic christianity.

I'm going to need a source for that claim
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_Christianity

Horses were quite important to Anglo-Saxons

It's where their most distant ancestors came from.

They were almost the same but the anglo-saxons were christian while the norse were majority pagan.

If this is the case why didn't they use cavalry at the battle of Hastings or any other major Anglo Saxon battle.

There are few references to Anglo-Saxons actually using horses in battle. It's likely they rode to the battle site and had mounted scouts and earls, however cavalry was not useful to them as the shield wall was better

On the matter of Anglo-Saxon religion the remains are mostly found in family trees of the nobility. One often find that the tree ends with a man named Gaut which is one of Odins many names. This may suggest that the pre-christian Saxons were worshipers of Odin rather than Freyr.

While horses were important in the main culture this suggests that they were in subclass that had a lesser connection too the horse opposed to the Vendel culture where it played a very central role in society.

They had horses mate, they just didn't use them in battle.

Like Rohan in the book they rise to battle and dismount. Or at least that's what C. W Hollister argued. I am not convinced all men of tbe fryd had them but the fact remains they did have a fair number of horses for sat nobles.

Besides they hadn't caught on like they had with the Normans and they weren't really needed as a lancer unit

>We have the distinct word 'Wotan'
Anglo-Saxons spoke Modern German? Woah

>Bretons
>French

It was a steppe tactics practiced by the Aryans and the Turko-Mongols. If your ancestors had steppe blood they would have done the same.

They worshiped both, Woden was the god of the dead just like Odin, Freyr is the god of fertility.

>Like Rohan in the book they rise to battle and dismount.
The Rohir fought on horseback and are based on the Goths, you're thinking of the Romano-British who rode into battle and then dismounted to fight.

Rohan are based on the Anglo-Saxons.
Tolkien was English and had a hard on for old English stuff ( he taught old English at university)
However LOTR is a fantasy book so Rohan are 100% the same as the Anglo-Saxons

The Rohirrim are 100% Anglo-Saxons with Anglo-Saxon names, culture and society. Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon studies and explicitly based the Rohirrim off Anglo-Saxons

Rohirric is literally Old English

*not
Meant to put they're not a 100% copy of Anglo-Saxons
For instance Rohan being mostly cavalry men

>Rohan are based on the Anglo-Saxons.
No, read Tolkien's notes.
No, they have Rhovannic names that are "translated" with Old English because Rhovannic is an "archaic" form of Westron, the language "translated" as English in the books.

>As Westron is rendered in the novels with English, Rohan language is always translated through Old English. This is because Tolkien tried to reproduce for English readers its archaic flavour in relationship to the Common Speech. Westron is an amalgamated language which, although deriving from Adûnaic, was formed from the languages of the Middle Men, much like the English language with many influences from Celtic and Norman.[8]
>However, the relationships between the two pairs of languages is not identical: Old English is the direct ancestor of modern English, but Rohan was not the direct ancestor of Westron, since the latter derives from Adûnaic.
tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Rohan_language

The English form of the name is "Woden", whence "wednesday", but it's the same god as German Wotan and Norse Odin.

Not sure if it was you. But someone claimed that the Rohirrim are based of goths and not Anglo-Saxons when the link is pretty clear between Anglo-Saxons and Rohan

They ARE based on Goths, this is in Tolkien's writings on them. Yes they use Old English names, this is for the same reason the Dwarfs use Norse names, its meant to evoke to an English reader the sense of "foreign yet familiar" and "archaic" that a speaker of Westron would feel on hearing a Rohirric or Dwarfish name, since these languages are related in Tolkien's setting.

Also Dwarf runes look identical to Anglo-Saxon runes

ITT: people who confuse Tolkien's linguistic ideas with his creative ideas.

Just because he gave certain people certain languages, does NOT mean these people are based on the peoples that used these languages.

>They ARE based on Goths, this is in Tolkien's writings on them
Source?

Again this is only true in the "translation" Tolkien produced. The "real" runic alphabet of the Dwarfs is not the same at all.

>translates it into Anglo-Saxon runes which need to be translated into Old English which need to be translated into English
Was it autism?

In the early middle ages (i.e 7th-9th century) they had a lot of contact with eachother and they could definitely understand eachother. Some historians believe that the helmets found in Vendel and Valsgärde were made by the same smith as the ones at Sutton Hoo, and Beowulf, a tale taking place in Sweden, was remembered and told in England for hundreds of years, and that's where it was first recorded. There are mentions of a Swedish version of Beowulf, but it was lost when the Royal Palace and its archives burned down in Stockholm in 1697 (sad)

>J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Peoples of Middle-earth, "The Appendix on Languages", p. 53

Yes, almost certainly. The man invented a bunch of languages and THEN wrote a fantasy novel so he would have a setting for his languages, this is turbo-autism.

Is there any evidence suggesting of Anglo-Saxon belief in afterlife? I know they did burials in barrow mounds, but is there any recorded incident of boat burials?

Yes, many. Most famous one is the Sutton Hoo burial, where pic related comes from.

Theoden is based of off Theodoric, the King of Italy and leader of the Ostrogoths in the late 5th/early 6th century who died on top of his horse in battle.

It looks like you got that from a secondary source and as I don't have the book could you post the link to the secondary source please?

What about belief in afterlife?

What about it?

See

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>wiki
Show me where TOLKIEN said this.

I read through but there's no reference to goths

I know, that's why I linked you the book that does talk about this.

Although I should add it's not page 53 but page 270 where the discussion on the gothic basis of Rohir culture is found.

Absolutely ZERO reason to assume this.

>Theoden is based of off Trump, President of the USA who had blond hair

Zero reason beyond Tolkien's own word on the matter? I mean even setting aside the "coincidence" of the name and manner of death being so alike.
>There are also repeated references by Tolkien to a historic account of the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields by Jordanes. Both battles take place between civilizations of the "East" and "West", and like Jordanes, Tolkien describes his battle as one of legendary fame that lasted for several generations. Another apparent similarity is the death of king Theodoric I on the Catalaunian Fields and that of Théoden on the Pelennor. Jordanes reports that Theodoric was thrown off by his horse and trampled to death by his own men who charged forward. Théoden also rallies his men shortly before he falls and is crushed by his horse. And like Theodoric, Théoden is carried from the battlefield with his knights weeping and singing for him while the battle still goes on
Also see the "Unfinished Tales".

Letter 211:
"The Rohirrim were not 'mediaeval', in our sense. The styles of the Bayeux Tapestry (made in England) fit them well enough"

Huh. I always thought Tolkien referred to the other Theodoric, who deposed Odoacer

That was a link to the website

I asked if there is evidence relating to Anglo-Saxon belief in the afterlife

Yes, very good. You asked me for that, remember? It was where I copy-pasted the name of the book that contains the information you wanted, after I checked my own copy of that book to make sure it contained said information.

They buried their dead.

Why would you think that? Theoden didn't depose anyone.

>I know, that's why I linked you the book that does talk about this.
You said that in response to me saying the website has no reference to goths

Good answer, took me a while to get it. Is it similar to Norse belief in afterlife with Asgard and Valhalla?

Holy fuckign shit you are dense. I gave you the book that contains the information, you asked where I copied the book name from, I gave you that. I never once said the place I copied the name from contained the information you wanted, which is why I didn't just link you there in the first place.

They buried their dead with grave goods in a manner almost identical to the Norse, they probably had some kind of reason for doing so, and a reasonable inference is that that they shared memes about the nature of the afterlife.

The christianised Anglo-saxons did not even know about their scandinavian origins.

They did not know about Odin, Thor, Loki or Baldr, these had passed into legend, epic poems like Beowulf had been completely forgotten, they were not given attention until the 19th century when romantic nationalism was all the rage at the time. The educated elite, that is the monks of course knew about the supposed link about Scandinavians and christianised Germans but they did not consider it as something important , doubly so because the the heathen "Danes" were burning, looting and occupying Saxon christian settlements,monasteries and cities, but also because the two languages had become to too different to be mutually intelligible. By the time of Richard I, the "Saxon" origin of england was also largely forgotten, the only remnant of Saxon england was anglo-saxon law, that would be very influential in the 18th and 19th centuries but this was also supplanted by enlightenment theories of property and constitutional rights.

>as I don't have the book
Instead of being autistic why not find a direct quote

Apparently alot of Pagan beliefs faded into English folklore. Is there a strong link between folklore and actual Anglo-Saxon religion?

You want me to type out the pages from my copy? No. If you don't have a copy then I suggest you withhold judgement until you can confirm it for yourself.

They were christianised in the 6th century and Beowulf was recording by Saxon monks in the 8th century, so it probably wasn't completely forgotten