The Venerable Bede

Within the walls of the imposing Norman Cathedral of Durham lies the simple tomb of a Christian monk who has earned the title as "Father of English History."

Born at Tyne, in County Durham, he was taken as a child of seven to the monastery of Wearmouth. Bede was a monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth. He mastered Latin, Greek and Hebrew and had a good knowledge of the classical scholars and early church fathers. He is well known as an author and scholar himself, and his most famous work is “The Ecclesiastical History of the English People” which gained him his title. He knew patristic literature and many classical writers.

Bede was moreover a skilled linguist and translator, and his work with the Latin and Greek writings of the early Church Fathers contributed significantly to English Christianity, making the writings much more accessible to his fellow Anglo-Saxons. In his own time, Bede was as well known for his biblical commentaries, as well as other theological works. Almost everything that is known of Bede's life is contained in the last chapter of his writing “A history of the church in England”.

Bede died on Thursday, 26 May 735 (Ascension Day) and was buried at Jarrow.

The Vikings

The term Viking is customarily used to refer to the Scandinavian explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates who raided, traded, explored and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th century.

These people used their famed longships to travel as far east as Constantinople and the Volga River in Russia, and as far west as Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland, and as far south as Al-Andalus. This period of Viking expansion – known as the Viking Age – forms a major part of the medieval history of Scandinavia, Great Britain, Ireland and the rest of Europe in general.

Popular conceptions of the Vikings often differ from the complex picture that emerges from archaeology and written sources. A romanticised picture of Vikings as Germanic noble savages began to take root in the 18th century, and this developed and became widely propagated during the 19th-century Viking revival. The received views of the Vikings as violent brutes or intrepid adventurers owe much to the modern Viking myth which had taken shape by the early 20th century. Current popular representations are typically highly clichéd, presenting the Vikings as familiar caricatures.

Alfred the Great

Alfred the Great was King of Wessex from 871 to 899.

Alfred is noted for his defence of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of southern England against the Vikings, becoming the only English monarch still to be accorded the epithet "the Great". Alfred was the first King of the West Saxons to style himself "King of the Anglo-Saxons". Details of his life are described in a work by the 10th century Welsh scholar and bishop Asser. Alfred was a learned man who encouraged education and improved his kingdom's legal system and military structure. He is regarded as a saint by some Catholics, but has never been officially canonized. The Anglican Communion venerates him as a Christian hero, with a feast day of 26 October,[3] and he may often be found depicted in stained glass in Church of England parish churches.

The pre-Norman period

The period following the demise of Roman rule was a time of battling warlords, both Celtic and Anglo-Saxon and shifting allegiances between Celts and Anglo-Saxons. Arthur was probably one such warlord. It was not until the mid 7th Century that the Anglo-Saxons had overall dominance of Albion. Anglo-Saxon became the common language, spreading from areas where Latin had been stronger than the indigenous language. It is suggested that much of the land would have been bilingual for some time. The Anglo-Saxons ruled but seemingly did not mix. They suppressed the British culture in Albion but did not destroy it.

This period also saw the re-spread of Christianity firstly in Celtic but then in Roman forms throughout Britain, Albion included. In England Lindisfarne demonstrated a Celtic-Norse culture, and although the British Celtic Church eventually came into line with Rome after the Synod of Whitby it is probably that many people continued to follow a more Celtic expression of the Christian faith.

Despite the huge effect the ruling Anglo-Saxons had on the Britons language their genetic inheritance is slight compared to the next wave of arrivals.