Anglo-Saxons

In 43 AD Britain was invaded by the Romans and for 400 years southern Britain was a part of the Roman world. When they left, in AD 410, the Anglo-Saxons came across the North Sea in small boats and invaded Britain. They were a combination of people from north Germany, Denmark and northern Holland. Most of them was Angles, Saxons and Jutes, but also some Franks and Frisians. In modern terms, the Saxons, Franks and Frisians were German-Dutch, the angles were south Danish and the Jutes were northern Danish, so they came from the Baltic coast and Denmark.  The Anglo-Saxons didn’t want to live in the old Roman towns, they preferred smaller villages. But some warrior chiefs were smart enough to use the walled cities as perfect fortresses. London for example was never totally abandoned because of that. A lot of the regular Romans buildings though, became ruins, because they didn’t have the abilities to restore and maintain them. Instead some Saxons build wooden houses, either inside the walls of Roman towns or in cleared areas of the forest. The settlement outside Londinium, which is London in Latin, became a major port, precisely like the way it was in the roman times, where ships from all over Europe came to buy and sell all kinds of commodity.  The Anglo-Saxon settlers was separated in groups, who they lived with, They had one common leader or war-chief each. ‘Cyning’ is the Anglo-Saxon for king, and is the strongest leader. Each king had their own kingdom and small army to rule and lead. To find out which king was the strongest king, they had many conflicts and wars. But that was just how they liked it. The Saxons lived to fight, even against their own family and friends. The armies of the kings were only the size of a few hundred men. They used spears, axes, swords and bows and arrows as their weapons and they used helmets and wooden shields.  In the 7th century there were five significant Anglo-Saxon kingdoms; Nort humbria, Mercia, Wessex, Kent and East Anglia. Once in a while, the strongest king would declare himself to be ‘bretwalda’ – the ruler of all Britain. [|Go to videos at the top right corner and watch the movie (especially the first one)] [|Try the fun activities at the bottom of the page] media type="custom" key="6920489" media type="custom" key="6920499"