Angles

The Angles (c. 98-880) are the Anglo in Anglo-Saxon, the a in Wasp and the Eng in English. They were one of the Germani peoples who took over parts of Britain as the western Roman Empire fell apart in the 400s.

Their language became the Anglian dialect of Old English, which in turn became the English of northern England and the northern US.

Their main gods – Woden, Thor and Tiw – became days of the week in English: Wednesday, Thursday and Tuesday. Friday and Easter in English are named for two of their goddesses.

In 98, the Roman historian Tacitus became the first to write about them. He said they were pretty much like most other Germani except that they worshipped Nerthus, Mother Earth. They worshipped her on an island in the Ocean. Her holy cart was washed by slaves – who were then drowned.

The Angles back then lived “behind their ramparts of rivers and woods” – in a part of Germany just south of Denmark, in a place still called Angeln. It is not far from where “Beowulf”, their most famous story, takes place.

In 410, Rome pulled its legions out of Britain to defend the empire closer to home.

In the 400s and 500s the Angles, along with Saxons, Jutes, and probably some Franks and Frisians too, took over eastern Britain. Angles settled in the north, Saxons and Jutes in the south.

Romanized Celts, the people who were already living in Britain, either fled west or fell under what they called “Saxon” rule. There was fighting and the burning of some towns.

The old Roman towns became shells. Anglian life centred not on towns but tons – as in “Kingston”. They were important houses that owned huge pieces of land given by a king and worked mostly by slaves. Many monasteries, when they began to appear in the 600s, followed the same pattern and were called minsters – as in “Westminster”. By the 700s came the wich, as in “Norwich”. They were trading settlements.

A silver penny of King Offa, who ruled Mercia and much else in the late 700s

By 600, there were seven main Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Three were Anglian: Mercia, in the middle of Britain, East Anglia to the east and Northumbria to the north. The main Saxon kingdom was Wessex, in the south. There was also Essex, Sussex and Kent in the south-east.

In the 600s, Christianity returned to eastern Britain – from the north from Ireland and from the south from Rome. Missionaries had begun arriving in the late 500s. With them came reading and writing (the Roman alphabet) and Western culture. The Church brought some of the old Roman towns back to life.

Alcuin in a picture drawn in the 800s.

In the 700s the Angles produced one of the greatest minds of western Europe of the time – Alcuin (735?-804), who helped lead Charlemagne’s rebirth of learning. The form of lower-case letters goes back to him.

In the 800s the Danes (Vikings) destroyed all three Anglian kingdoms.

In about 880, in the Treaty of Wedmore with the Danes, the word “English” appears in English for the first time to mean not the Angles but the Angles and Saxons together as one people – the English.

– Abagond, 2015, 2018.

See also:

• Welcome to White History Month 2015
• Proto-Indo-Europeans
  • Guide to Germanics
    • Germani
      • England
        • The four Englands of America
• Britain
• Christianity
• Roman Empire
• English
  • Roman alphabet
  • English alphabet