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História da Língua Inglesa

The Anglo-Saxons

Brown University

According to the Venerable Bede, the first significant body of Germanic settlers in England had been hired as mercenaries by the British Prince Vortigern during fifth-century struggles for power among British Celts that broke out when Roman colonial troops were withdrawn. After a falling-out with their employer, these Germanic warriors seized British territory in the south of England for themselves and brought their families over the English Channel to settle it. Archaeological evidence also reveals a gradual infiltration of Germanic peoples into England along the rivers of east central England, then a low-lying bayou country that would have been impossible to police.

Bede tells us that the Germanic settlers came from Anglian and Saxon regions of continental Europe, within the modern territories of Holland, Southern Denmark, and Western Germany. The settlers brought with them, in their heads, an extensive body of lore encoded in alliterative verse, including versified laws as well as historical and legendary narratives. Some of the settlers could use a runic alphabet to carve brief messages, mostly on wooden sticks, but writing was not used for Old English historical or literary material until the conversion to Christianity, when manuscript technology entered from Rome and Ireland.

Old English literature includes a number of works based on native Germanic legend, including the remarkable Beowulf, a complete epic peopled by half-Christian Germanic warriors. The interweaving of Christian elements with native Germanic materials in this work is so thoughtful and intricate that the two cultural strands are very difficult to unravel. Other epic poems in native style use imported Christian narratives. Two of the best, by a poet named Cynewulf, have heroic female protagonists. As in Celtic saga, representation of gender roles in Old English narrative may seem quite strange to a modern reader. In Beowulf, for example, Queen Wealhtheow uses her own treasure to pursue a political agenda independent of her husbands and to some extent in conflict with it. It is clear from Germanic law and legend that wives retained possession of their own property and could count on their blood kin, especially their brothers, for protection against abuse. Their roles were strikingly different from that of wives in the Greco-Roman patriarchal system, which gave the husband absolute power over the wife and forbade her relatives to interfere in any way (read The Ancient City by Fustel de Coulanges if you are interested in the origins of European patriarchy) . Modern readers of Beowulf may also be surprised to find that the feelings of monsters are represented in some detail and that use of deadly force against them is supported by painstaking legal argument.

After Latin learning came in with Christianity, the Anglo-Saxons produced academic and scientific works of remarkable quality for this period of European history, but the small intellectual establishment was quite fragile and often had to restart practically from scratch after Viking invasions that devastated monastic libraries. The most successful Viking invasions established a Scandinavian territory in northern England, and we find Norwegian kings like Eric Bloodaxe ruling in English cities like York. The Scandinavians eventually blended in, making important contributions to the English language (for example, nouns like skirt and pronouns like they, them).

The power of the Anglo-Saxons was finally broken in 1066 AD by the Normans, who might almost be regarded as Vikings, since they came originally from Denmark, though after settling on the French coast they had adopted French customs and a dialect of the French language. The Norman invasion of King William I (a.k.a. the Conqueror) established a strong beachhead in Southern England. Sporadic resistance elsewhere was eventually crushed through advanced military technology involving moats and stone castles (Anglo-Saxon castles or halls were made of wood).

After this period, Anglo-Saxon elements of English culture survive primarily in the working class, while French and Latin elements predominate in aristocratic circles. The animals tended by working-class herders, for example, tended to have Germanic names (cow, lamb, pig), while the finished products served up on the aristocratic table had names derived from French (beef, mutton, pork). Important elements of Anglo-Saxon law were incorporated into English law, however.

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