CONTINENTAL LINKS

Although Britain was no longer ruled from Rome, links with the Mediterranean world were still maintained. Fifth- to 7th-century finds from Tintagel Castle in Cornwall include oil jars from north Africa, glassware from southern Spain and Bordeaux in France, and wine jars and pottery from Greece and Asia Minor.

On the eastern side of the country, the fabulously rich ship burial at Sutton Hoo (perhaps of King Rædwald of East Anglia, who died in about 625) also includes artefacts from southern Europe. But the greatest treasures of the burial – sword, shield, jewellery and the probably English-made helmet – show the artistic influence of southern Sweden, homeland of Rædwald’s dynasty. With them were coins of the Franks, a Germanic people who had taken over Gaul.

Christianisation brought renewed links – particularly in architecture, religion and art – with southern Europe too, and also Christian Ireland. But strongest of all was the Scandinavian connection forged from the 9th century by Danish settlers. Under King Cnut (r.1016–35) England became an integrated part of a Scandinavian empire.

LANGUAGES AND ALPHABETS

Bede, writing in the 720s, recorded that Britain could be broken down into four nations and five languages: English; British (the ancestor of Welsh, Cornish and Breton); Irish; Pictish; and Latin, the universal language of religion and learned inter-communication.

Two centuries later, the languages of the Scandinavian settlers would be added to this list.

Written communication was further complicated by the use of several different alphabets. The conventional Latin alphabet, as used today, then had several additional Anglo-Saxon letters, related to Germanic runes – whose characters were formed of diagonal and vertical strokes. These represented sounds that were common in Old English, but not found in Latin – like ‘th’ and ‘w’.

Runes were particularly well suited for scribing onto wood or stone. Similarly, the Irish ‘ogham’ script, using only short, straight lines, appears on monuments in Irish-settled Cornwall and Devon, and further east at Silchester Roman Town, Hampshire.

COMMUNICATION

Anglo-Saxon English and Danish speakers were probably mutually intelligible with difficulty, but neither could understand or be understood by speakers of British or Irish.

Yet language barriers were not impenetrable. Bede describes the Northumbrian King Oswald (r.634–42), previously an exile in Ireland, interpreting the Irish preaching of Aidan on Lindisfarne, Northumberland, for his English-speaking followers.

Such relationships between linguistically divided regions were not uncommon. Travel between them – for war, commercial reasons or pilgrimage – was often by ship. The Anglo-Saxons, Irish and world-ranging Scandinavians were all seafaring peoples.

SHIPS AND ROADS

The Sutton Hoo burial ship – which had been a genuine seagoing vessel, albeit an unusually large one – provides rare evidence of a contemporary ship in England. Nearly 27 metres long, it had room for 40 oarsmen and probably also a mast.

Long-distance land travel may have used Roman roads, whose current names – like the Fosse Way, Ermine Street or Watling Street – are of Anglo-Saxon origin. But archaeology shows that parts of some major Roman roads were grassed over for long periods, or even used for burials.

Roads could be dangerous. It was probably to avoid passing marauders that early settlements in Lincolnshire were set well back from Ermine Street. Warning of such raiders might be announced by a beacon – another word of Anglo-Saxon origin.