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‘The Anglo-Saxons at War 800-1066,’ by Paul Hill

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As early as the late seventh century King Ine of Wessex (688-726) was moved to categorize numbers of armed men: ‘We call up to seven men thieves; from seven to thirty-five a band; above that it is an army.’

Anyone interested in the Viking Age is perforce going to be interested in the people we call the Anglo-Saxons. I recall that they intrigued me strangely when I discovered them in an encyclopedia at a very young age, before (as far as I can remember) I even knew about Vikings. The two cultures are sisters after all; many of the Anglo-Saxon tribes were Scandinavian in origin and only a few generations and geographic relocation separated them.

Paul Hill, author of The Anglo-Saxons at War 800-1066, is an accomplished historian and historical popularizer. He has produced here an excellent work targeted at those of us (like historical reenactors) who are interested in looking past generalizations and common assumptions to discover what we are able to know for sure (or can surmise) about warfare in the period. The trick is to separate known fact from guesses, and it seemed to me this book did a pretty good job of that.

The book includes an Introduction (a Survey of the Evidence); and chapters on Warfare, Violence and Society; Military Organization; Strategy and Tactics; Fortifications and Earthworks; Campaigns, Battles and Sieges; and Weapons, Armour and Accessories.

Now and then there are statements that contradict things I’m in the habit of telling people at reenactment events – he isn’t sure that the saex knife was reserved for the use of free men (spears, on the other hand, were, he says). And he doesn’t think the “wings” on a “boar spear” are actually intended to prevent a body from slipping down the shaft. He thinks they’re for parrying, and he probably knows more about it than I do.

General readers looking for a history of warfare in the period should probably find a different book. Certain events and campaigns are described in considerable detail, but they’re examined out of historical sequence. This is a book for enthusiasts interested in the period. Historical reenactors in particular will appreciate it.

Fiction, Reading

Blogging through LOTR: Anglo-Saxon echoes

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Anglo-Saxons

‘Halflings! But they are only a little people in old songs and children’s tales out of the North. Do we walk in legends or on the green earth in the daylight?’

‘A man may do both,’ said Aragorn. ‘For not we but those who come after will make the legends of our time. The green earth, say you? That is a mighty matter of legend, though you tread it under the light of day!’

I’ve been looking for Norse elements in The Two Towers. Of all the LOTR books, I think this one is richest in Scandinavian echoes – or at least Anglo-Saxon, which is as close as makes almost no difference, when you’re thinking of the Age of Beowulf (who lived in what is now Sweden, after all). Because the Rohirrim are plainly modeled on the Anglo-Saxons (though I suspect a tribe of horsemen would have developed the kite-shaped shield by this point, as the Normans did when they took to fighting on horseback).

There’s the boat-burial of Boromir, similar to the classic (mythical) Viking burial. Although most people think of ship burials at sea as a Viking custom, it’s actually undocumented in history or archaeology. Where it comes from is a passage in Beowulf (fully legendary), and the funeral of Baldur in Norse mythology (fully mythical). But it works well for the kind of high fantasy we’re involved with here. Continue reading Blogging through LOTR: Anglo-Saxon echoes →