The Angles were one of the main Germanic peoples who settled in Great Britain in the post-Roman period.[2] They founded several kingdoms of the Heptarchy in Anglo-Saxon England. Their name, which probably derives from the Angeln peninsula, is the root of the name England ("Engla land"[3] or "Ængla land"[citation needed]), as well as ultimately the word English for its people and language. According to Tacitus, writing around 100 AD, a people known as Angles (Anglii) lived beyond (apparently northeast of) the Lombards and Semnones, who lived near the River Elbe.[4]
Etymology
The name of the Angles may have been first recorded in Latinised form, as Anglii, in the Germania of Tacitus. It is thought to derive from the name of the area they originally inhabited, the Angeln peninsula, which is on the Baltic Sea coast of Schleswig-Holstein.
Two related theories have been advanced, which attempt to give the name a Germanic etymology:
It originated from the Germanic root for "narrow" (compare German and Dutch eng = "narrow"), meaning "the Narrow [Water]", i.e., the Schleiestuary; the root would be *h₂enǵʰ, "tight".
The name derives from "hook" (as in angling for fish), in reference to the shape of the peninsula where they lived; Indo-European linguist Julius Pokorny derives it from Proto-Indo-European*h₂enk-, "bend" (see ankle).[5] Alternatively, the Angles may have been called such because they were a fishing people or were originally descended from such.[6]
According to Gesta Danorum, Dan and Angul were made rulers by the consent of their people because of their bravery. The Danes and Angles are respectively named from them.
Greco-Roman historiography
Tacitus
Angeln in northern Schleswig-Holstein.Possible locations of the Angles and Jutes before their migration to Britain
The earliest surviving mention of the Angles is in chapter 40 of Tacitus's Germania written around AD 98. Tacitus describes the "Anglii" as one of the more remote Suebic tribes compared to the Semnones and Langobardi, who lived near the Elbe and were better known to the Romans. He grouped the Angles with several other tribes in that region, the Reudigni, Aviones, Varini, Eudoses, Suarines, and Nuithones.[4][7] According to Tacitus, they were all living behind ramparts of rivers and woods, and therefore inaccessible to attack.[4][7]
He gives no precise indication of their geographical situation but states that, together with the six other tribes, they worshipped Nerthus, or Mother Earth, whose sanctuary was located on "an island in the Ocean".[8] The Eudoses are generally considered to be the Jutes and these names have been associated with localities in Jutland or on the Baltic coast. The coast contains sufficient estuaries, inlets, rivers, islands, swamps, and marshes to have been inaccessible to those not familiar with the terrain, such as the Romans, who considered it unknown and inaccessible.
The majority of scholars believe that the Anglii lived on the coasts of the Baltic Sea, probably in the southern part of the Jutland peninsula. This view is based partly on Old English and Danish traditions regarding persons and events of the fourth century, and partly because striking affinities to the cult of Nerthus as described by Tacitus are to be found in pre-Christian Scandinavian religion.[8]
Ptolemy
Surviving versions of the work of Ptolemy, who wrote around AD 150, in his Geography (2.10), describes the Angles in a confusing manner. In one passage, the Sueboi Angeilloi (or Suevi Angili), are described as living inland between the northern Rhine and central Elbe, but apparently not touching either river, with the Suebic Langobardi on the Rhine to their west, and the Suebic Semnones on the Elbe stretching to their east, forming a band of Suebic peoples. This is unexpected. Owing to the uncertainty of this passage, much speculation exists regarding the original home of the Anglii. However, as pointed out by Gudmund Schütte, the neighbouring Langobards appear in two places, and the ones near the Rhine appears to be there by mistake.[9][10] Schütte, in his analysis, believes that the Angles are placed correctly relative to the Langobardi to their west, but that these have been positioned in the wrong place. The Langobardi also appear in the expected position on the lower Elbe, and the Angles would be expected to their northwest, based upon Tacitus.[11]
Another theory is that all or part of the Angles dwelt or moved among other coastal people, perhaps confederated up to the basin of the Saale (in the neighbourhood of the ancient canton of Engilin) on the Unstrut valleys below the Kyffhäuserkreis, from which region the Lex Anglorum et Werinorum hoc est Thuringorum is believed by many to have come.[8][12] The ethnic names of Frisians and Warines are also attested in these Saxon districts.[citation needed]
Procopius
An especially early reference to the Angli in Britain is the 6th-century Byzantine historian Procopius who however expressed doubts about the stories he had heard about events in the west, which he apparently heard through Frankish diplomats. He never mentions the Saxons, but he states that an island called Brittia (which he believed to be distinct from Britain itself), was settled by three nations: the Angili, Frissones, and Brittones, each ruled by its own king. Each nation was so prolific that it sent large numbers of individuals every year to the Franks, who "allow them to settle in the part of their land which appears to be more deserted, and by this means they say they are winning over the island. Thus it actually happened that not long ago the king of the Franks, in sending some of his intimates on an embassy to the Emperor Justinian in Byzantium, sent with them some of the Angili, thus seeking to establish his claim that this island was ruled by him."[13] Procopius claimed that the Angles had recently sent a large army of 400 ships to Europe, from Brittia to the Rhine, to enforce a marriage agreement with the Warini who he lived north of the Franks at that time.
Bede (died 735) stated that the Anglii, before coming to Great Britain, dwelt in a land called Angulus, "which lies between the province of the Jutes and the Saxons, and remains unpopulated to this day." Similar evidence is given by the 9th-century Historia Brittonum. King Alfred the Great and the chronicler Æthelweard identified this place with Angeln, in the province of Schleswig (though it may then have been of greater extent), and this identification agrees with the indications given by Bede.[8]
In the Norwegian seafarer Ohthere of Hålogaland's account of a two-day voyage from the Oslo fjord to Schleswig, he reported the lands on his starboard bow, and Alfred appended the note "on these islands dwelt the Engle before they came hither".[n 1] Confirmation is afforded by English and Danish traditions relating to two kings named Wermund and Offa of Angel, from whom the Mercian royal family claimed descent and whose exploits are connected with Angeln, Schleswig, and Rendsburg.[8][12]
Danish tradition has preserved record of two governors of Schleswig, father and son, in their service, Frowinus (Freawine) and Wigo (Wig), from whom the royal family of Wessex claimed descent.[citation needed] During the fifth century, the Anglii invaded Great Britain, after which time their name does not recur on the continent except in the title of the legal code issued to the Thuringians: Lex Angliorum et Werinorum hoc est Thuringorum.[8][12]
The Angles are the subject of a legend about Pope Gregory I, who happened to see a group of Angle children from Deira for sale as slaves in the Roman market. As the story was told by Bede, Gregory was struck by the unusual appearance of the slaves and asked about their background. When told they were called Anglii (Angles), he replied with a Latin pun that translates well into English: "Bene, nam et angelicam habent faciem, et tales angelorum in caelis decet esse coheredes" (It is well, for they have an angelic face, and such people ought to be co-heirs of the angels in heaven). Supposedly, this encounter inspired the pope to launch a mission to bring Christianity to their countrymen.[16][17]
Archaeology
The province of Schleswig has proved rich in prehistoric antiquities that date apparently from the fourth and fifth centuries. A large cremation cemetery has been found at Borgstedt, between Rendsburg and Eckernförde, and it has yielded many urns and brooches closely resembling those found in pagan graves in England. Of still greater importance are the great deposits at Thorsberg moor (in Angeln) and Nydam, which contained large quantities of arms, ornaments, articles of clothing, agricultural implements, etc., and in Nydam, even ships. By the help of these discoveries, Angle culture in the age preceding the invasion of Britannia can be pieced together.[8]
According to sources such as the History of Bede, after the invasion of Britannia, the Angles split up and founded the kingdoms of Northumbria, East Anglia, and Mercia. H. R. Loyn has observed in this context that "a sea voyage is perilous to tribal institutions",[18] and the apparently tribe-based kingdoms were formed in England. Early times had two northern kingdoms (Bernicia and Deira) and two midland ones (Middle Anglia and Mercia), which had by the seventh century resolved themselves into two Angle kingdoms, viz., Northumbria and Mercia.
Northumbria held suzerainty amidst the Germanic presence in the British Isles in the 7th century, but was eclipsed by the rise of Mercia in the 8th century. Both kingdoms fell in the great assaults of the Danish Viking armies in the 9th century. Their royal houses were effectively destroyed in the fighting, and their Angle populations came under the Danelaw. Further south, the Saxon kings of Wessex withstood the Danish assaults. Then in the late 9th and early 10th centuries, the kings of Wessex defeated the Danes and liberated the Angles from the Danelaw.
They united their house in marriage with the surviving Angle royalty, and were accepted by the Angles as their kings. This marked the passing of the old Anglo-Saxon world and the dawn of the "English" as a new people. The regions of East Anglia and Northumbria are still known by their original titles. Northumbria once stretched as far north as what is now southeast Scotland, including Edinburgh, and as far south as the Humber estuary and even the river Witham.
The rest of that people stayed at the centre of the Angle homeland in the northeastern portion of the modern German Bundesland of Schleswig-Holstein, on the Jutland Peninsula. There, a small peninsular area is still called Angeln today and is formed as a triangle drawn roughly from modern Flensburg on the Flensburger Fjord to the City of Schleswig and then to Maasholm, on the Schlei inlet.
Notes
^See the translation by Sweet,[14] noted by Loyn[15]
Sweet, Henry (1883). King Alfred's Orosius. Oxford: E. Pickard Hall & J. H. Stacy for N. Trübner & Co. for the Early English Text Society.
Loyn, Henry Royston (1991). A Social and Economic History of England: Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest (2nd ed.). London: Longman Group. ISBN978-0582072978.
