6. Oe Heptarchy.

In strictly political and secular terms the seventh century probably witnessed the consolidation of Anglo-Saxon authority over their newly won territory, best symbolized by what we now know as the Heptarchy or rule of the seven kingdoms [Hogg 1066]. These were the kingdoms:

1. Northumbria (Southern Scotland and England north of the Humber)

2. Mercia (West Midlands)

3. East Anglia

4. Essex

5. Sussex

6. Kent

7. Wessex (central Southern England)[barber].

At first, Kent was probably of major importance. It was to Kent that the first Roman Christian missionaries came, notably St. Augustine in 597 [Hogg 1066].

In the 7^th c. the Northumbria was very powerful, and was a great center of learning [Barber]. The monasteries of Northumbria produced beautiful manuscripts of the Bible, providing the contexts for the writing of historical and intellectual texts [sehr Lehrer].

In the 8^th c. this leadership passed to Mercia [barber].

In the 9^th c. = Wessex, centred at Winchester; and it was the kings of Wessex who finally unified the country : (in the late 9^th c., the kings of Wessex, notably King Alfred, saved the South and West of England from the Danes, and in the 10th c. Alfred’s successors reconquered the North and the East. During the period of the 9th and early 10th centuries, Wessex became the seat of A-S intellectual, literary, and political life. King Alfred (who ruled from 871 to 899), brought together many of the previously disparate groups into a single confederation. He also brought together scholars to begin a project of educational reform. He commissioned the translation of key works of Latin learning into OE [Sehr Lehrer]. King Alfred was a glorious warrior, he signed a truce with the Danes, Scandinavian Vikings.

The Viking Invasions

By the end of the 8^th c., England was the most prosperous country in Europe. The separation of the island from some of the continental wars allowed an unprecedented level of intellectual growth as well as economic development. But in 793, the Vikings, from Scandinavia, sacked and burned the monastery of Lindisfarne, beginning a century of destruction and cultural collapse.

The Vikings were possessed of superior technology and military organization, and their warbands ravaged England (and much of Europe). At first the attacks were small-scale, leading to the destruction of individual monasteries, but in 850, large Danish fleet began to arrive in England, and the Vikings began to conquer as well as pillage. Eventually almost all of northern and eastern England was under their control.

Alfred, the king of Wessex, was able to rally his kingdom and defeat the Vikings. This led to a treaty between the Viking king Guthrum and Alfred, The Treaty of Wedmore (878). The treaty merely defined the line, running roughly from Chester to London, to the east of which the foreigners were henceforth to remain. This territory was to be subject to Danish law and is hence known as the Danelaw. In addition the Danes agreed to accept Christianity, and Guthrum was baptized. The formation of the Danelaw in the east of England (so called because people living their were following Danish rather than English laws), did much to bring about the integration of Scandinavian language with OE.

This area - the Danelaw - must have been occupied by many Danish speakers living alongside English speakers. The marks of the Danelaw are easily observable today, most obviously in the pattern of place-names ending in -by, the Danish word for ' settlement'. But reminders of the Danelaw survive elsewhere in the language. In order to understand the situation it is necessary to remember that the Danes and the Anglo-Saxons were both Germanic peoples with the same Germanic traditions (see here the approving references to Danes in Beowulf) and that their languages, stemming from a common source not many centuries before, must have been to some extent mutually comprehensible, albeit with some difficulty. Furthermore, in national terms there was no relation of conqueror to vanquished, (although in one area Danes might be dominant rulers, in another Anglo-Saxons would be) and thus the groups met more or less as equals and certainly with much in common. In these circumstances Danish and English communities could not remain entirely separate and always hostile (although they were undoubtedly both often). It is not surprising, therefore, that Scandinavian linguistic features entered the English language quite extensively, even, in time, giving such basic words as they and are. This borrowing of function words is not a feature of the later borrowings from French, and is a significant indicator of the closeness of linguistic form between Scandinavian and English at the time.

When, in 1042, an English king regained the throne, namely Edward the Confessor, he turned out to be a harbinger of French influence rather than a restorer of the English tongue. A king perhaps wiser in the ways of heaven than the ways of earth (unlike Gnut, who seems to have been equally wise in both), and, what is more to the point, one who had spent a long period in exile, Edward cultivated close relations with the dukes of Normandy and even, in 1050, appointed a Frenchman as bishop of London. When Edward died in January 1066 he had managed, with the help of the rival claimants, to muddy the succession to the throne sufficiently to ensure that both Harold and William of Normandy could lay reasonable claim to the throne, and neither was reluctant to do so. The conclusion of that rivalry is well-known [hogg 1066].

OE Dialects

Linguistically the concept of the Heptarchy is extremely important for it is from that concept that we obtain the traditional Old English dialect names:

The surviving texts form the OE period are in 4 main dialects:

• West saxon

• Kentish

• Mercia

Anglian

• Northumbria

The unification of England under the west saxon kings led to the recognition of the West saxon dialect as a literary standard. The bulk of our records are in the West-Saxon. It was spoken and written in the southwestern part of the country. This was the dialect of King Alfred, of the seat of government, of the church. The most important wholly non-translated prose is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. .Most manuscripts of OE literature are in the W-S dialect. For all intents and purposes, when we read “Old English” in modern editions, we are reading texts in the W-S dialect.

One interesting fact is that, although West Saxon became the literary standard of a unified England in the late Anglo-Saxon period, it is not the direct ancestor of modern standard English, which is mainly derived from an Anglian dialect.