Anglo-Saxon Era
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Anglo-Saxon Era’
Scandinavian tradition says that the daughter of King Harold was consort to one the great rulers of Kievan Rus’.
After Vladimir I adopted Christianity in the 10th century, the rulers of what would become Russia became prime candidates for dynastic marriage into the great royal houses of Europe. An example of particular interest to the English is the Princess Gytha, daughter of King Harold Godwinson, who married Vladimir’s great-grandson, Vladimir II Monomakh.
Out of a restless alliance between two 6th century kingdoms came a civilisation that defined Englishness.
Northumbria was a kingdom in northeast England, from the seventh century to the ninth. More than any other of the seven kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England, Northumbria shaped the political, social and religious identity of a united Kingdom of the English in the 10th century.
Scandinavian warrior Leif Ericson was sent to bring Christianity to Greenland, but accidentally discovered North America instead.
A Viking settlement dated to around AD 1000 was uncovered in 1960 on the northernmost tip of Newfoundland, with more sites in the region tentatively identified in 2012. Suddenly, a tale from the Norse sagas, routinely dismissed as myth, looked very different.
King Canute enacted a memorable demonstration of the limits of government power.
This famous story is regarded as a fable by many but it is a very early one, being already established only a century or so after the time of King Canute (Cnut), who reigned from 1016 to 1035. It is important to be clear that Canute was not trying to prove he could ‘turn back the tides’. He was trying to prove that he couldn’t.
Irish monk St Columba is credited with being among the first witnesses to the ‘Loch Ness monster’.
Columba brought twelve monks to Iona in 563, and set about converting the pagans of Scotland. Two years into his mission, his labours took him and the monk Lugne Mocumin, whom he had cured of a persistent nosebleed, to the River Ness at the eastern end of the famous Loch.
England’s first and greatest historian explains why history is so important.
St Bede begins his famous ‘History’, written in AD 731, with an open letter to the King of Northumbria, Ceolwulf, explaining that history, rightly told, teaches us to refuse the evil, and choose the good. King Ceolwulf later resigned his throne to become a monk, and a saint.