Where to put your Saxons?

[Arturus Uriconium]

I think the Irish, or I should say Hibernian, question is overlooked a lot with the Anglo-Saxon interest taking centre stage somewhat. I wonder, and some scholars have argued, that, just as the Saxons were used in the east, certain Hibernian groups were used in the west; such as the Desi and Laigin. If, as it is thought, the Lleyn Peninsular is named after the Laigin from what is now Leinster, you're not going to do that if they're the enemy, and you still find 'Gwyddel' place names in the area.

I wondered if Bailrigg was named after Hiberno-Vikings? I went a searching on Google, but couldn't find anything.

[Arturus Uriconium]

Having said that, I do agree with your ideas about what area the brothers were supposed to guard. Gildas' ideas about British defence seem overly engaged with explaining the 'why's' of the Saxon Coming, anyway. There's no evidence of any 'Pictish Wars' besides his sermon and lament, so they may have been the 'cooked-up' reason to explain why Vortigern and the British Council needed to get Germanic troops anyway. That these had been present in Britain since Julius Caesar brought the first would of course have been unknown to Gildas. And that many Roman soldiers from different parts of Germany had been present in the Late Roman forts of Britain would have maybe suprised Gildas too.

By Gildas' time all reports of any problems with Scotti and Picts could have been merged with stories from various parts of Britannia. They may both have been a problem in the north, circumventing the walls to raid south of it. It could have been Angles who were used here. The Saxons (or whatever they were as Saxon was a generic term) could have been guarding against Saxon pirates, although there's no report of them at the time. Who else do you need to defend yourself against on the southeast coast? Amoricans? Or were they worried about the Franks? Or did Gildas get something right when he said they were there to defend against a Roman threat, either real or imagined?

Maybe we're forgetting that all these peoples - Angles, Saxons, Scotti, Picts, and Britons of course - were seafaring pirates and if the threat was from the sea, who better to use than other excellent mariner warriors. Maybe they weren't landbound in general, but a replacement (or reinforcement) for the Classis Britannicae? (back to the old Saxon Shore question there - was it named after the Saxons who defended it or from them?) If the threat is external, then they're needed on the coasts. If the threat is internal - civitas against civitas or province against province - then they need to be inland as well as at river boundaries. If the problem is both...

Of course we mustn't forget the other part of the H&H story, and that's sending Hengis' two sons, Octa and Ebusa, north to attack the Picts and lay waist to Orkney? Truth? Another myth? Probably just Bede making the Saxons out to be the next Romans of Britannia and doing what they did. But if Pictish pirates did manage to attack Londinium, or even further north, then what better revenge than to attack the Pictish 'powerbase'?

And we don't need a war to need help, just bloody annoying, constant raids. But it all comes back to the question: if they were defending the southeast - Kent and the Thames estuary - who were they defending it from?

[euryalus]

Bailrigg could well have been a Hiberno-Viking name introduced into Lancashire during a later phase of Irish colonisation - though it could be argued that this process had been going on since the withdrawal of the Roman army in the early 5th century. There are, however, earlier links with Ireland at nearby Heysham, with its Dark Age chapel dedicated to St Patrick.

[Arturus Uriconium]

There's plenty of Irish influence, and names, on the western seaboard for that to have been the case.

[Gluteus Maximus]

Arising from the generally-agreed point about Vortigern, Hengist and Horsa being associated with Kent, it seems pertinent to emphasise my other point about 50 per cent of the place names in Kent being Celtic, or having Celtic elements. This would seem to reinforce the Hengist and Horsa legend in that, if they came to Kent by invitation rather than as conquerors, there would have been a greater degree of Romano-British continuity in that part of Britannia than might otherwise have been the case.

According to Stephen Oppenheimer (The Origins of the British) Anglo - Saxon influx into Britain was very small. The genetic makeup of the pre - 1950's British population shows that the Anglo-saxon/Jutish contribution accounts for only 3% of the total. When one considers that this represents the whole of the Anglo Saxon influx, from the fifth century to some point in the seventh when the migration stopped, then the actual numbers of Saxon foederatii in the time under discussion must have been very tiny indeed.

As Euryalus states on an earlier post, the Saxon nobility in some way mixed with the British, and the kingdom of Kent became a mixed British/saxon entity. It is also interesting that Kent retained its British name (Cantii - Kent).

Given place name and genetic evidence, it is clear that the Brits did not abandon 'England' after all - they stayed put. As oppenheimer states, what we call Celtic and what the Romans called Celtic were not the same. Tacitus describes lowland Brits as resembling Germans, and speaking a different language to the people of the west, who are described as looking very different (Black hair, short and mediterranean looking). Caesar also makes the same observations.

The current theory all this throws up is that eastern part of the area we now call England may have been Germanic speaking far earlier, indeed - even from pre-Roman times. Linguistic studies have shown that the degree of separation of English from other western Germanic languages indicates a separation of some 3'500 years, NOT the 1600 years one would assume from the conventional viewpoint. The pre-Saxon 'Celtic' place names here are significantly different from Welsh-sounding place names further west (River Avon, for example), and may be remnants of an earlier Germanic tongue distantly related to Saxon, rather than a Celtic substratum. The continuity of place names in an area said to have been swamped by Saxons also lends weight to this theory.This could explain why the British (I hesitate to call them Celts for reasons stated above) appeared so cosy with the Saxons - at least at first, and why the saxons appear to have submerged the indigenous culture so thoroughly, with so few numbers.

The British who put up resistance to the Saxons further west at Badon and Dyrham probably were Celts in the modern meaning of the word, but the current thinking by a lot of prominent names now seems to hint that the Lowland Britons in the area drawn from the Isle of Wight northeast to the Humber were actually Germanic all along.

This could explain all the infighting amongst the British in pre-Roman times, a situation which once more raised its head once the blanket of Roman stability had been withdrawn. What Gildas describes is a return to business as usual, rather than a new and sudden phenomenon.

[fasta]

Sorry we are going off topic:

Ah! Dear Prof.Oppenheimer's research is under attack by some at the moment.I think most of his data is valid as it goes but his samples were small. The largest study still on going "Peoples of the British Isles" (which the results better be out this year :evil: )its likely to support his data if not theory of the "Gemanic" strain in the East.But its too early to say yet.

3% still seems low to me, if its true what happened to their numbers?

But the myth of the "Anglo-Saxon" invasion must be on it's last legs by now? When the Roman's left.....did we?Didn't we all we consider ourselves Roman in the post invasion period no matter what tribe we may of come from? Didn't the 'Saxon' elite want to be seen as the inheritors of Rome? The idea of a united island has been the ambition since the tribes were united under Rome and has continued throughout the ages one way or another. Its in fact Rome we have to thank ,strangely enough for stopping us from chopping each others heads off for fun or for the gods :lol: But it took a bloody (in some parts)and long invasion to do it.

What of the Britons?Well we gained a new identity under Rome(which had its good and bad points),lost it,gained another briefly as Britons/Walas etc,lost it to a Germanic influenced culture,gained another most of us still have in one way or another,we adopted to new fashions and gained new masters.We didn't go anywhere :lol:

Life can be funny like that

[Arturus Uriconium]

Since we're off topic...

I didn't want to mention the Oppenheimer theory, but since it has been I'll join in. Whilst genetics is still not flawless by any means and his findings are being challenged they still throw up some interesting questions. He has been joined by a small number who argue the case on linguistic grounds. The gist of these theories goes something like this:

*A great portion of eastern and southern Britain spoke a proto-English/Scanda-proto-English language having come from the Germanic and Scandinavian speaking areas of Europe (and that which now lies under the North Sea) after the Ice Age. Some, in the south, spoke the Germanic of the Belgae ect.

*By the Late Iron Age/Romano-British period a great portion were dominated or rule by Brythonic speaking elite with Brythonic enclaves.

*They were then dominated by the Anglo-Saxons who spoke a similar, but not the same, language.

*Anglo-Saxon was the dominant written language until the Normans arrived.

*As AS was suppressed by the Normans, the lower class proto-English was allowed to finally rise. (Possibly explaining the reason why in 200 years we went from Old Enlgish (AS) to Middle English and managed to loose 90% of Anglo-Saxon words).

*Is this why there are so few Brythonic words and placenames in what is now England; because so few were ever used or there?

*Is this why the east were far more accepting of Anglo-Saxon, or and even Roman, rule, because they preferred it to Brythonic?

These theories are all pretty new and need many more years of study and debate, but anyone interested should also read The History of Britain Revealed: The Shocking Truth About the English Language. It's an irreverent book (and somewhat nasty to fellow academians) with a terrible title and cover, written by an Applied Epistimologist. It's a book you'll either love or hate, as testified to by the reviews at Amazon.co.uk. I thoroughly enjoyed it... but I'm sure I wouldn't have if I were a professor of Anglo-Saxon studies! I also may not have done if I had a greater knowledge of the evolution of the English language.

There's also a website dedicated to proto-English by a Dutch guy who's very open to criticism and debate. That's at...

http://www.proto-english.org/

[Gluteus Maximus]

There's also a website dedicated to proto-English by a Dutch guy who's very open to criticism and debate. That's at...

http://www.proto-english.org/

Fantastic - I always thought that the conventional wisdom was a Victorian assumption, but it turns out to be Stuart political propaganda! Why have historians stuck with this view for so long? Why is it that Tacitus and Caesar's descriptions of tall, blonde haired Belgae, have been utterly disregarded for so long?

[fasta]

"We live in interesting times"

But back to the subject.Where did those who may of founded or planted the seed of a new elite come from.Germanic troops already based here?If so where?Can we us placenames to help locate them?

[Arturus Uriconium]

First of all, maybe I titled this thread wrongly? Perhaps it should have been: Where to put your Jutes? or even, Where to put your Jutes and Angles? Is it a coincidence that the Jutes settles in Kent and Hampshire around the Solent and that's where the southern Saxon Shore forts are? And that the Angles settle where the northern shore forts are. Does where they settled point to where they were stationed? Again it comes down to who the threat was from? Externally it could be Saxons and Franks across the Channel, as well as Roman aligned nations if Vortigern was a usurper and possible threat... including Amorica. This seems more likely the Scotti and Picts, as far as using Germanics is concerned. If there was trouble up north with the Picts then you assume Angles around the Wall... but it's never a good thing to assume, is it?

[fasta]

That's an interesting theory as to their placement.Following that thinking could it of been re-enforced by migration into the same areas from, the lowlands of Denmark and Northern Germany over a number of decades?

I'm trying to think of named Germanic forces (in the later period)from the Humber upwards on the East coast which could match with an possible Angle connection but nothing comes to mind so far. Does anyone know of named units that could fit?

One of the problems with the East coast is that we have lost so much of it to the sea.How many finds could of been lost with it?

[euryalus]

The myth of an "Anglo-Saxon" conquest was promulgated and popularised during the Victorian period, because the Victorians admired the Germans, who were seen as clean, up-right, industrious and Protestant (like Prince Albert). When I was at university, however, Celtic continuity was all the rage, in part at least, because the Germans were somewhat less than popular among many of our teachers (my history professor, for example, had been badly burned in his tank in the Western Desert). It was therefore argued that the Anglo-Saxons were a political elite, who had made themselves masters of Britannia (a theory that seems to be supported by modern DNA research).

There was no doubt, however, that they had penetrated Britain from the east, and in this context the place name experts claimed to have detected a string of Anglian names along Akeman Street, whereas the Thames Valley was dotted with Saxon names and the south-eastern corner of England had part-Celtic and part-Jutish names. If we can assume at least some truth in this theory, it could be argued that we should place the first West Saxon incomers in the Upper Thames Valley, from where they expanded south-west towards Romano-British strongholds such as Glevum and Corinium, which they conquered in 577.

[Arturus Uriconium]

Yes, the Saxons do seem to be the late comers. This is what makes me think that if the first Germanic federates (or whatever) were used to protect Britannia from an external threat, it could well (ironically) have been the Saxons and possibly Franks - or even other Angles and Jutes - and there must have been a fair number of federates to have an uprising on the scale that's reported... if, indeed, the famouse gemitus Britannorum to Flavius Aëtius wasn't grossly exaggerated! Unless, as I've said before, the threat in Vortigern's mind was an Imperial one from Gaul, which, again ironically, could have been from Flavius Aëtius? If the perceived threat was from the Aurelianus family in Amorica, then they were in the wrong place. Although, I suppose, they could have patrolled further west.

[Arturus Uriconium]

What's interesting about the Angles and Jutes is that we don't hear about them in contemporary sources until the mid-sixth century. It's the Saxons we hear about, although this is most likely because they were all heaped together under that name.

As for Germanic legions in the north, I can't tell, but who knows who Constantine III took with him? The only Saxons I can find serving were with Magnus Maximus in the Balkans and those listed as in the Notitia as serving in Phoenicia.

What is most interesting is that archaeological evidence which, as far as I can see from reexamining my research, shows the first finds between the Thames and Humber as well as the upper Thames Valley, with the second phase in the southeast coast. This means we're back to that problem of why you need them in the Thames Valley if the threat is external? Unless, this was purely land given to them for services and not a military placement. The finds in Lincolnshire of the fourth century do seem to be of Germanic military belt buckles, and possibly of mixed Angle and Saxon origin, but there's far from certainty on this. There's also 'Saxon' style pottery, but that doesn't mean there were Saxons there, but other Germanic peoples. There has also been the find of a kiln producing Romano-Saxon pottery in Hertfordshire. The cremation urns, first thought to be 4th century, have now been redated to the 5th, which fits our time frame, and the first is now dated to 420s in East Anglia. Then there are inhumations found either side of the Thames from the same dates, from Milton Regis in Kent to Dorchester on Thames and these contain styles of Angle, Saxon, Frank, Alemans and East German finds. Everything but Jutish, but it may be hard to tell.

I found this very interesting quote in the book Dark Age Naval Power by John Haywood:

"It has been suggested that Stilicho orginised the Litus Saxonicum defences into the form in which they are described in the Notitia Digitatum. If so, it is interesting to note that the Comes Litoris Saxonici had no naval force under his command. In fact the Notitia lists only one naval unit on the Channel coast, the Classis Sambrica at the locus Qaurtensis sive Hornesis (either Etaples or Capu Hornu), under the command of the Dux Belgicae Secundae, which must have maintained an essential link with Britain. The only other naval unit in the area was the Classis Anderetiariorum, clearly originally from the Saxon Shore fort at Pevensey (Anderida) but now stationed at Paris under the Magister Peditum per Gallius. The impression is that, though the Romans could raise a fleet for special purposes, such as Stilicho's expedition, they had effectively lost control of the seas to the Saxons and other pirates by the end of the fourth century."

...either that or they'd given up trying to protect their difficult and usurper raising province!

It's thought, through experimental archaeology and rebuilding ships of the time that, generally speaking, most weren't up for crossing the North Sea and any crossing would have to be via the Channel, after moving down the coast. This is where the Saxons may have had the advantage and been technologically advanced. The Romans feared them for their mobility and swiftness of attack and retreat. Is this why you need to station the foederati along the Thames and even as far as Dorchester; to block any path to Corinium, ect?

But Anglo-Saxon finds for this period north of York don't seem to exist, or haven't been found. But since the eastcoast has disappeared at a rapid rate into the North Sea, we may never know. If this is an indication that they weren't there at this time, however... so much for a Pictish threat, certainly on the east coast.