 The downfall began for Anglo-Saxons with the invasion of Vikings in the 8th and 9th century. In the Viking raids many Anglo-Saxons were massacred, their churches were destroyed, animals and precious objects stolen. Also they lost their land. |
The new Viking area was called Danelaw. By the end of 9th century all Anglo-Saxon land except Wessex were invaded by the Vikings. The king Alfred had won them in the battle. Gradually his descendants began to take back the lands from the Vikings. King Alfred was also the one who told to make a book about the Anglo-Saxons. It was called the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The end to the Anglo-Saxons came with the battle of Hastings in 1066, when Duke William of Normandy (future William I Conqueror) defeated the Anglo-Saxons. This was also the beginning of the Norman era.
Anglo-Saxons: Who were they?
The Romans invaded Britain in AD43. After that, for 400 years southern Britain was part of the Roman world. The last Roman soldiers left Britain in AD 410, and then new people came in ships across the North Sea. Historians call them Anglo-Saxons. The new settlers were a mixture of people from north Germany, Denmark and northern Holland. Most were Saxons, Angles and Jutes. There were some Franks and Frisians too. If we use the modern names for the countries they came from, the Saxons, Franks and Frisians were German-Dutch, the Angles were southern Danish, and Jutes were northern Danish
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Beowulf is considered to be the longest and greatest poem extant in Old English. It has recently been made famous by the Beowulf movie, Beowulf game, Beowulf 3d, and the Beowulf trailer. Totalling 3,182 lines, Beowulf was written sometime between 720 - 796 a.d. It has been preserved in the Cotton Vitellius A XV manuscript, in the British Museum, which was written about the year 1000. There is no specific literary source for the Beowulf epic. Many of its characters and digressions belong to the Germanic tradition preserved through the oral traditions of the minstrels. We know nothing, however, of Beowulf's author. |
Beowulf is an Old English heroic epic poem of anonymous authorship. This work of Anglo-Saxon literature dates to between the 8th and the 11th century, the only surviving manuscript dating to circa 1010. At 3183 lines, it is notable for its length. It has risen to national epic status in England. In the poem, Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, battles three antagonists: Grendel, who is attacking the Danish mead hall called Heorot and its inhabitants; Grendel's mother; and, later in life after returning to Geatland (modern southern Sweden) and becoming a king, an unnamed dragon. He is mortally wounded in the final battle, and after his death he is buried in a barrow in Geatland by his retainers.
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