The Saxon Invasion

[nellie]

In more recent years the idea of the Saxon invasion has been questioned by a few people. What do people think to this?

A few things to consider to get the conversation going.
The archaeological evidence could imply that the so-called Saxon shore forts were not used as defensive structures. How does this effect the Saxon invasion theory?

Oppenheimer's work could (I know this sort of thing is controversial but it does seem relevant to mention) show evidence that there was no racial-cleansing of the celtic inhabitants of Britian, even in the traditionally Saxon areas. Is the body of research to small to warrant attention as yet??

I'm aware that there are some theories that some of the tribes from the east of Britain may already have been speaking a Germanic language. IF so, what relevance do folks think this may have had on the (possibly later, possibly not) perception of there being a saxon invasion?

And lastly, and rather importantly, what impact does the probability (or not) of a full scale Saxon invasion have on your development of a Brythonic spirituality/practise?

[Heron]

I don't think there is any doubt that the saxons, and other Germanic tribes 'invaded'. But I don't think anyone any longer subscribes to the view that they simply drove all the Brythonic inhabitants West or wiped them out. I think there would have been a process of cultural assimilation. This is undeniable given that the population of what is now England, Wales and Southern Scotland spoke a Brythonic language when the Romans left, almost certainly alongside Latin which would have remained the language of administration for a while at least, but over the succeeding few hundred years changed to speaking various Germanic dialects except in Wales, Cornwall and perhaps a few enclaves in the North-West for a while. The question is, how did this happen and how did the people concerned in the process of change think about themselves?

There would certainly have been battles between warriors, but even here, these might have been a small elite rather than representative of the common people who probably kept their heads down and went with the prevailing flow. Even these warriors might not have been quite so wedded to ideas of Celtic-v-Germanic opposition as, at least later, there were certainly alliances across these apparent cultural divides. And not all the Germanic would necessarily get on with each other, and they were all subject to later Viking harassment.

An interesting question would have been how the gods of these different language groups would have mixed. But, of course, the Brythons had at least officially, become christians under the Romans, and, again at least officially, remained so. Personally I would say that my own Brythonic predilictions cannot fail to take account of the Germanic gods who have held sway at least over part of the British lands, but insofar as they live in the culture of their practitioners they seem as different as the language and yet, at the same time, as similar as some of the visual art and material culture also was.

It would be nice to know about the local gods and spirits, and we might seek remnants of them in folk and faerie lore. Or we can find them for ourselves in the haunted groves and resonant places of this land.

[nellie]

So you think that it is unlikely that some of the tribes of the time were already speaking a Germanic language?

I have just finished reading Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits by Emma Wilby in which she argues for the witch-craze being set within a cultural framework (on a peasant level) that was still largely animistic and shamanistic pre-christian in origin alongside the official christian faith of the time. This got me to wondering what culture many of the folk beliefs in magic originated from if (and even if not!) Emma Wilby's argument is correct. Without having delved into the subject in any depth there seems not to be a difference in experiences in areas that had a strong Saxon incluence to those that did not. There was some difference generally between the Scottish experiences according to Wilby in that they claimed more often to have seen the devil whereas the English, and presumable Welsh, were more likely to claim animal spirit visitations. I'm going of subject here somewhat, but was trying to explain where my thought stemmed from.
Could the tribes in the east and south east already have been moving towards Germanic ways even before the 'saxon invasion'? I could be wrong here, but I think it was Barry Cunliffe once wrote that the south and eastern tribes probably always had strong ties to the continent rather that inland? I think Francis Pryor also suggests that a divide may had existed long before the celtic/saxon line in history between those people that later became Saxons and those that did not? Again I can't check my info here because all those books went back to the library ages ago in a time before I kept notes

[Heron]

Apr 4, 2012 6:46:52 GMT -1 nellie said:

So you think that it is unlikely that some of the tribes of the time were already speaking a Germanic language?

It's not at all unlikely that there were some early settlers preceding the main influx which itself was probably not a single event but something that happened over time. Preceding that, Roman Britain was itself probably quite cosmopolitan with most of the troops and officials coming from various parts of the Empire. Latin would have been the language of administration with any number of other languages spoken as well. I'm not sure how much of this survived the withdrawal of the troops , but it's certainly in theory possible for language enclaves to have existed in local areas.

Taking it further back, there is also the point you mention that some of the 'celts' originated in what are now thought of as Germanic speaking areas. This raises questions of who the 'celts' were, but usually today they are regarded as only reliably being thought of as a group speaking one of a distinct group of languages.

[Heron]

On the separate question of who the celts were, it is usually thought that those speaking the distinct languages now identified as Celtic came from the Iberian Peninsula, but it has also been a view in the past that some of the 'celtic' inhabitants of Britain originated in Northern Europe. The problem of the loose application of the term Keltoi by the Greeks and Romans is well illustrated by a story by Parthenios (who was Greek tutor to the young Virgil). The story is that Herakles was wandering through the land of the Keltoi with some stolen cattle and came to the house of Bretannos who had a daughter whose name was Keltinē who fell in love with Herakles so she hid the cattle until he would sleep with her. She had a son as a result who was called 'Keltos' and from him the Celts got their name so the people are called keltoi.

John Koch relates this story in a discussion of Kim McCone's 'On Celts Calling Themselves Celts' and comments that the tale shows "that the ancients had the mental agility to conceive that the celts had already been celts before they were first called celts"!

So perhaps we should not deny ourselves a bit of flexibility in this regard.