these small villages and they are already speaking a variety of Germanic dialects these are the angal and the Saxons and the frican and the jutes uh I love saying these names by the way I don't know why and and as soon as theyget there their their languages are already cross-pollinating with the native Celtic and pretty soon the
reputedly sails up the Seine and extorts a huge ransom from King Charles the Bald." He's also associated with repeated attacks on Anglo-Saxon England, embodying the archetypal Viking chieftain, charismatic, brutal, and focused on wealth, fame, and honor in battle. So that, those are the ideals of the Vikings. Charisma, brutality- ... and focusing on wealth, fame, and honor, especially honor in battle.
is like a huge growth area. You look an Ebay there's all these things that are worth hundreds of pounds is I sought this item here which looks like a hand grenade or a pepper grinder. Anglo-Saxon approach I think it's cultural but I also think it's changing and I think that whereas before the word "nerd", you'd never say, "Well, I'm a nerd." That's sort
You know, there are a million Jewish comics and African-American comics and women comics and gay comics. There's not a whole lot of heterosexual, white, Anglo-Saxon , Protestant male comics. And if you're funny looking -- unless they're funny looking -- or they're had some horrible experience. So if you're a heterosexual, white, Anglo-Saxon , Protestant male with a full bank account and wears a 42 regular, you're probably not a laugh riot.
And we wanted to sort of mark that acquisition by doing something really on a large scale about the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The exhibition has 180 objects in it.
And that is next to here and in the exhibition next to the Letter of World which is the earliest original letter that survives from Anglo-Saxon England. And this letter is written in Latin. So we have earlier letters, but this one survives on the original piece of parchment it was first written on.
And then gradually, you get the build-up of much larger armies that are overwintering and staying for several years campaigning. The West Saxon kingdom was the last, if you like, the last kingdom standing after the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had been-- the dynasties had been taken out by Scandinavian armies. And Alfred is well remembered in history as the West Saxon king who is really responsible for stopping
through the kingdom, not all of them, but key churches including the church at Winchester, the Old Minster at Winchester, which is, if you like, the West Saxon capital. And this book is, in fact, a charter.
But at the front of it, you have this portrait of King Edgar donating the charter-- you can see it in his hand there-- So in Anglo-Saxon England, it's mostly cattle skin, but increasingly, also the use of sheep or goat skin as well.
This is chronological data about a landscape. These are Anglo-Saxon . So this OD covers about 9000 years.
All this vacancy we're struggling with can of course be an opportunity. This is Saxony-Anhalt, once part of communist East Germany. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, people left the state in droves,
operations abroad. A hydro processing plant, the major employer in the area, also closed. Zeitz is representative of Saxony-Anhalt as a whole. After 1990, the area lost nearly a quarter of its population. People moved to economically stronger regions, such
They wouldn't have said the R in words unless it was at the beginning before a vowel. Whereas from the Saxons , we do get that feature. We get R pronounced everywhere it is in the spelling.
We see this coming up in politics, where people downplay how confident people are, how competent they are at doing their jobs. When the Saxons arrived, they basically pushed those speakers
Aethelwulf. And it's attested by Aethelwulf and then the bishops of Winchester and Sherburn and then all of the noblemen of the West Saxons . So the West Saxons have endorsed it. And then it's taken after that to a church council, and you can see there that the bishops of the whole country
At the same time, I mean, there is the infrastructure that is needed for the booming economy, for the booming market of the digital economy. I think in the Anglo-Saxon curriculum, it's maybe easier to have this.
So most of what we know about archeology has been discovered as a result of serendipity, chance discovery. In this particular case of an Anglo Saxon cemetery, this is a cemetery from the fifth to the seventh century with lots of bling in it, all sorts of stuff. And it was discovered by a man walking a dog.
With jobs at risk and people's sense of identity being questioned, Germany is providing 4.8 billion in funding for Saxony-Anhalt. While the EU is contributing an additional 364 million.
might bring about a new philosophy, or a new nation. Robert Swale was a proud Englishman and a prouder Saxon , tracing his lineage all the way back to the hardy invaders of the island's southern shore in the 5th century. Though it was perhaps true that the farther back one went in Swale's family tree, the more that genealogy became less a science and more an art,
Let me just give you a bit of background then, before we think about that. This map is a map of England showing the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and the Danish districts. So this was before 1066.
It's around 900 AD, basically, we're looking at here. And we can see that we've got the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, if we focus on England. We've got those in this area here, including Kent.
at Google. So I'd like to welcome Simon Keynes, Claire Breay, and Jo Story who are going to be talking about the exhibition at the British Library that's still on called Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms-- Art, Word, and War. And just a show of hands, how many people have been to see the exhibition?
Thank you very much, Vanessa. Well, the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms Exhibition at the British Library is the largest exhibition that there's ever been, covering the whole period of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, from the departure of the Romans right up to the Norman conquest of 1066 and beyond.
We have codex ,, it's a giant Bible made at the beginning of the eighth century and taken from Northumbria to Italy. It is one of the greatest treasures of Anglo-Saxon England. And it has never been back to England in 1300 years, until the day it was delivered for installation
Right. You're going to start with-- It seems that I'm going to start with the Hlothhere Charter, which you've just seen. This is the earliest surviving original of an Anglo-Saxon charter. There are about 1,000 of them that survived from the period 670 to 1066.
The West Saxon kingdom was the last, if you like, the last kingdom standing after the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had been-- the dynasties had been taken out by Scandinavian armies. And Alfred is well remembered in history as the West Saxon king who is really responsible for stopping that Viking onslaught and maintaining the power of Wessex and starting to rebuild the power of Wessex.
than the much more restrained, deferential East Asian press. I think if you come from an Anglo-Saxon background, you take the Indian media over an East Asian media any day of the week. That, however, is not to say that there are not very substantial issues.
the artists and the intellectuals and vice versa there was a sense of solidarity in those years that Walt Whitman would have being an American which would mean essentially what uh White Anglo-Saxon character what americanness had
steeped in the Bible and um archaic language so really really resonant but very very old language that goes back to Anglo-Saxon uh most of it uh but it was fascinating to get a little bit a glimpse into into the world of the Freemasons because they're trying to make an active effort to uh come out and
Next, how much you get out and participate face-to-face with people in a social way. Earl Jones is a Montrealer who scammed the Anglo-Saxon upper crust community with his baby face and his participation
hi everybody thank you um I'm Ed Saxon um I am a film producer those are some of the films I was part of producing up
of a kingdom of the English. We're no longer the kingdom of the West Saxons . Things have moved forward in the early 10th century, and this is a product of this new kingdom.
fit his feet as neatly as if they'd been made just for him. This was true. He was a Saxon man of iron, this was true, and it was true that he knew no pain. Something was happening to Erasmus Charnock's wife Caroline.
of the Romans right up to the Norman conquest of 1066 and beyond. And it looks at the history and the literature and the art of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, examining the original evidence that survives and bringing together some of the greatest treasures.
The exhibition has 180 objects in it. 80 of those come from the library's own outstanding collection of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. You can see one of the most famous here, the "Lindisfarne Gospels," made around 700.
And right at the end of the exhibition, we have "Domesday "Book, the most famous book, I think, in English history. And of course, this isn't an Anglo-Saxon manuscript either. It was written up in 1086, and it's on loan to us from the National Archives.
monk from Italy who produced a rule known as the Benedictine rule. Edgar and his followers decide that this needs to be implemented in Anglo-Saxon England in a more systematic way than had been done before.
But at the front of it, you have this portrait of King Edgar donating the charter-- you can see it in his hand there-- And there just aren't that many manuscripts surviving at all from Anglo-Saxon English, so you're choosing from a smaller
So I'm white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, male, identify straight, a manager, so on and so forth.
Is was there a direct import from Scandinavian sagas and legends and even older Anglo-Saxon legends.
And it's a crucial turning point. We are moving away from the Mercian Supremacy to the emergence of the West Saxons and their special relationship with the Archbishops of Canterbury we've just been hearing about.
But at the front of it, you have this portrait of King Edgar donating the charter-- you can see it in his hand there-- and that's very much a part of the way that the Anglo-Saxons saw it themselves.
of so many things. It includes this manuscript, which isn't actually an Anglo-Saxon manuscript, dates from the beginning of the 12th century. And it's called the "Textus Roffensis," "Book of Rochester." And it is the earliest manuscript
And it's famous as a product of Norman control and efficiency, but actually, "Domesday Book" tells us so much that we can't see from any other source about the landscape and the organization and the wealth of late Anglo-Saxon England. So it's absolutely fantastic, unique evidence for that period.
in the early eighth century to produce a book that was, to all intents and purposes, a perfect Italian book. And it demonstrated how well the English had absorbed the lessons of the missionaries who had brought Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England from Rome round about 600.
You can tell that from the different ink. So again, we see what charters themselves can deliver at all stages of Anglo-Saxon England in substantiating what we otherwise learn from the books in general.
But at the front of it, you have this portrait of King Edgar donating the charter-- you can see it in his hand there-- was being donated. And one of the extraordinary things about so many of these Anglo-Saxon charters is that we can reconstruct very often these absolute parcels
But at the front of it, you have this portrait of King Edgar donating the charter-- you can see it in his hand there-- in 1974, so it's a very long-lived legacy of the late Anglo-Saxon period.
But at the front of it, you have this portrait of King Edgar donating the charter-- you can see it in his hand there-- come onto in a moment, but the themes of connectedness and contacts between the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms
phi for the Greek letter phi, or in American Anglo-Saxon pronunciation we call it Phy-lab-- which is an open-space concept where