Welcome to the Anglo-Saxon page! This page is dedicated to Anglo-Saxon culture, language and literature. I am currently working on a dissertation on Anglo-Saxon poetry in relation to the Danish theologian N. F. S. Grundtvig, and my own contribution to the world of the Anglo-Saxons on the internet will mainly be essays on that relation.

Working on my dissertation, I have been using the internet as a resource on Anglo-Saxon matters, and I have found a multitude of excellent sites. All the illustrations on this page - including the background - I have found on different Anglo-Saxon websites. I intend to add my favourites among these Anglo-Saxon pages to this page as hyperlinks with a small personal 'review.'
 

• Cathy Balls Old English pages. These pages are very good. Cathy Ball knows a lot about everything Anglo-Saxon. Check out her language course Hwæt, where you can learn to actually speak Anglo-Saxon, not just read it.
• The Labyrinth.  Medieval text collections, translations, history, extensive literature lists and more. An excellent site, especially if you are looking for reliable text editions on the internet.
• The Anglo-Saxon Homepage. Includes a list of orderable books on Anglo-Saxon matters.
• Modern English to Old English Vocabulary.

• Regia Anglorum. Many very good pages on different aspects of Anglo-Saxon working and living. If you would like to know what the Anglo-Saxons were really like, this is the place to go. How did the monks live in the monastery? What was a day like for a fisherman? What is a scop? You can find the answers here.
• Anglo-Saxon food. A collection of Anglo-Saxon recipes. I haven't tried any of them out myself, so I can't evaluate them. But they look OK.

• A brief history of England. Rough Guides' guide to English history. Short, but clear.
• Britannias British history timeline. A timeline in the left column and a brief, illustrated history book in the right. Very good for the overview.

• N. F. S. Grundtvig and Anglo-Saxon poetry. A short introduction by me. Coming soon. If you understand Danish go here.
• Merete's English Grundtvig Page. 'The first and greatest of Beowulf scholars, as everyone knows, was N. F. S. Grundtvig.' (Kemp Malone, 1941) Sadly, I must disagree with Mr. Malone: Everyone doesn't know, but a few good people - including myself - are still working on spreading the word. Apart from being a skilled Anglo-Saxon scholar, Grundtvig (1783-1872) was also a very productive theologian with an opinion on just about everything. He is a popular figure in Denmark, so why shouldn't you like him as well? Check out my page. If you understand Danish go here instead.

Texts in Anglo-Saxon (nearly all are located at The Labyrinth Library )

• Aldhelm
• The Battle of Maldon
• Beowulf
• Cædmons Hymn
• Credo
• The Exeter Book
• Fæder ure (Our Father)
• Judith
• The Junius Manuscript
• The Rune Poem
• The Vercelli Book

• Beowulf
• The Junius Manuscript

• Merete's Page. My personal home page at GeoCities
• Grundtvig on the Net.  My pages at CyberCity. See introduction above

The Anglo-Saxons is the common denominator for the various people who migrated from Denmark and Northern Germany to Britain about AD 450. There were already some people there, who had been living there since the stone age (Those were the ones who built Stonehenge.) Different warlords conquered pieces of the land, so by the 7th century England was divided into several Germanic kingdoms, as you can see on the map. The Anglo-Saxon rule ended with the Danish King Swein (Svend) and his son Canute's (Knud) conquering of most of England in 1014. After the Norman invasion in 1066 the Anglo-Saxon tradition slowly died out.

Their Religion. The Anglo-Saxons practised a polytheistic Nordic religion. In 596 pope Gregory sent the monk Augustine to England. He set up a diocese in Kent, (Canterbury) and sent out missionaries from there to make the pagan Anglo-Saxon into faithful Christians. But the Anglo-Saxons were also subject to the Celtic mission sent out from Northumbria, where the Irish church had set up a diocese. (The Venerable Bede was a Northumbrian monk.) The Celtic church was not as centralised as the Roman church. At the synod of Whitby in 664 the two churches made an agreement: The Northumbrian church went to Rome, and the English Church became one. The meeting of Celtic and Roman Christianity with the rich Nordic tradition of the Anglo-Saxons resulted in a very special form of Christianity. The Anglo-Saxons were fond of battle imagery and heroic epics, which they weaved into the new Christian myths and Bible stories. This Nordic/Christian tradition has given birth to many poems such as The Junius Manuscript and The Phoenix.
 

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