From the fifth century AD, and for around a hundred years thereafter, bands of Germanic settlers left their villages in Fresia and Jutland and headed

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2022-01-20 13:30:08

From the fifth century AD, and for around a hundred years thereafter, bands of Germanic settlers left their villages in Fresia and Jutland and headed to the coast. Once there, they pushed their clinker boats into the cold waters of the North Sea and made for Britain.

These bands made landfall all over the place, from Southampton to Scarborough. They would have had little sense of the wondrous civilisation they were founding: Inter Milan would one day play in Southampton (2016, 2-1); Britney Spears would one day perform in Scarborough (2018, with Pitbull opening).

Before they seeded such a civilisation, these Germanic settlers (they'll come to be known as the Anglo-Saxons) would first have to deal with the indigenous Britons - around a million people, who looked like the Gauls/Celts of mainland Europe, and who had seen the Romans arrive (55BC) and then flee (c.400AD).

The Anglo-Saxons did indeed deal with the Britons. Within a few hundred years of their arrival, the Anglo-Saxon minority had utterly dismantled the cultural and political structures of the indigenous Brittonic majority.