The Elizabethan Invention of Anglo-Saxon England

Rebecca Brackmann’s deeply researched, thoughtful and informative book asks readers to consider the ‘invention’ of ‘Anglo-Saxon England’ as a term meant to identify a specific place, namely the territory bordered by Scotland in the north and Wales in the west, during a specific historical time, namely the period from the Germanic migrations into the southern parts of Britain in the mid-fifth century to the Norman Conquest. Brackmann opens with the reminder that, during most of this era, the entity we now call ‘England’ had been made up of separate kingdoms, often at war with one another. Although it became unified in some measure in the tenth century under Aethelstan, king of Wessex, its territories still were not completely under the sway of the English king, Harold Godwinson, at the time of the Norman invasion, since the northern region (where in the ninth century the Vikings had established themselves) continued to look to Denmark as much as to southern Britain for its cultural and linguistic ties. By the end of Elizabeth I’s reign, however, it was possible to speak not just of the land but of its history as having unity as Saxon, or Anglo-Saxon, or, importantly, as ‘English’

Ancient history · Anglo saxon · Archaeology · Art · CONQUEST · Face (sociological concept · Kingdom · Linguistics · Ninth · Old English · Period (music · Politics · Reign · Classics · History · Law · Medieval Literature and History · Philosophy