For a lighter take on this whole business, I can recommend Unruly -
The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens by David Mitchell. It's a rather self-indulgent monologue at times (like, dude, it's a book, not a panel show), but also a pretty comprehensive-yet-short-and-funny look at how all that Kingdom stuff got started.
Agreed on both points - I did enjoy it, but boy if you are not used to David Mitchell's humour, or are not a native English speaker, or for various other reasons ... this book could be hard going.
It got better, but the first few chapters were like being trapped in a pub with David and him bending your ear on history for several hours.
This is honestly why I got it (I listened to it as an audiobook which was narrated by Mitchell himself). I'm not really that "into" the history of the British monarchy, but if it's told to me by Mark from Peep Show I could get on board with it.
FYI this is by the relatively famous British comedian David Mitchell, not the relatively famous British author David Mitchell (who wrote Cloud Atlas and a number of other successful novels). Every time I see a book by author Mitchell I get confused for a minute and think it's by comedian Mitchell.
Worth remembering that the Venerable Bede was writing The Ecclesiastical History of the English People two centuries before Athelstan, so clearly there was some notion of unity as early as that.
Basically the whole article can be distilled into the single paragraph:
> He was officially crowned in September 925AD. The following year, in 926AD, he married off his sister to the Viking king of Northumbria, which lay to the north of his kingdom's border. A year later, the Viking ruler died, and Æthelstan took over Northumbria.
In consolidating the previously separate kingdoms of Wessex, Mercia and Northumbria, Æthelstan became the first king of all England.
And the whole rationale for writing this article is here:
>If nothing else, Æthelstan's story overturns the centuries-long notion that England was originally a homogeneous culture, says Woodman. It's a misconception that still resurfaces today, but the truth was very different.
Which the article doesn't make very persuasively in my opinion, but whatevs. Also, apparently some historians are ceding the term "Anglo-Saxon" to the far right, along with the English flag? The whole approach is like a self-referential parody of itself.
"There's been a big debate about the very use of the word Anglo-Saxon, so much so that people in our field of scholarship are not using the word [...] because of the connotations that Anglo-Saxon now has with the far right"
Soon we won't be able to use the word "right" to indicate direction. It'll be left and not-left.
The point made is a perfectly sensible one if you include a bit more context:
> Amid all the battles and conquest, however, Æthelstan brought a cosmopolitan flair to his new kingdom. Today there is a tendency – particularly among the far right – to depict early England as being cut off from the rest of Europe, and homogeneous in its cultural makeup. In truth, the newly formed kingdom of England was an outward-looking society.
> "There's been a big debate about the very use of the word Anglo-Saxon, so much so that people in our field of scholarship are not using the word anymore, and are going towards Early Medieval instead because of the connotations that Anglo-Saxon now has with the far right," says Woodman. "When [the term Anglo-Saxon] is invoked by the far right, they're thinking of it as very one-dimensional – people from one background in England in the 10th Century."
> In fact, that's a big misconception of what the period was like. "It was actually a very diverse place in early 10th Century. I always think about Æthelstan's Royal Assemblies, and there were people there from lots of different kingdoms within England, Britain more widely, from Europe. They were speaking a multiplicity of languages, Old Welsh, Old Norse, Old English, Latin. I just feel [the term Anglo-Saxon] is used without thinking, and without factual detail about the early 10th Century."
> Downham agrees. "There was a lot of cultural variety in the area we call England today. There wasn't this English monolith that started in 500AD."
Afaict, a good part of racism comes from the fact that human brain automatically labels people different from you as enemy. I assume this was a very useful strategy for millenia, if you saw a person not belonging to your tribe/nation that probably meant armed conflict a decent chunk of the time.
This applies to any kind of difference: clothing, culture, neurodivergence etc. I live in a country with zero racism against black people (all the racism is reserved for immigrants which only differ by culture, not color) yet you can tell black people are still a bit left-out in many social settings.
Due to black population being very low, people rarely ever see a black person here. When they see one, for the brain it's an unknown/unfamiliar, and that means potential danger at the subconscious / first impression level. To put it simply, people get weirded out. Ofc, once you get to know them that goes away.
(This is not to condone conscious racism: goyim, plantation workers and all.)
From what I've been told by friends working within several Universities, the only people that avoid "anglo saxon" are fanatics of another kind. Its all very childish.
I posit that the article was written to promote a book:
It is time this monarch was better remembered, argues David Woodman, professor of history at Robinson College, University of Cambridge in the UK, and author of a new biography of Æthelstan.
I have a hobby interest in pre-1066 England to the extent of studying the language so I can read literature in the original, and I do find it a very irritating feature of scholarship written in Britain that the narrative is so often guided by modern political concerns.
I didn't realize it was a narrative that England at that time had a homogenous culture given:
1. This was only a few centuries after Roman occupation ended. As we know Roman influence on culture lingers but not evenly so I imagine even in the 10th century, you would find some people and areas where there was no Roman influence or culture at all and others far more recognizable as Roman influenced;
2. Great Britain was obviously divided by Hadrian's Wall culturally. There were various Celtic culture in Great Britain and Ireland prior to Roman occupation. Some of these are extinct now. Remnants of others have survived (ev Gaelic in Ireland). Celtic was subsumed by Roman culture in England to a large degree but not at all in Scotland; and
3. Viking invasions. You have to remember that Viking influence extended all the way to France with Rollo becoming the ruler of Normandy a century before. Raids extended to Paris. And of course you had the Viking ruler in Northumbria.
So I always assumed that the idea of a homoogenous English "culture" was a product of the unification of England politically.
I think if you confine the argument to England itself, it's fairly easy to defend that England has been settled by various Germanic tribes which, other than in Cornwall, have supplanted the pre-existing Celtic populations so totally that, around the time of Æthelstan, it was indeed homogenous. Of course, people at the time would consider the concept of lumping the various Germanic tribes and peoples into a "homogenous" identity rather strange, some of them being mortal enemies for centuries. But England in those days was undoubtedly homogenous compared to today. Not sure why that's a virtue in any way, but there it is.
Need to add, the idea of cultural homogeneity is entirely relative. Japan is or isn't homogeneous depending on who and when you ask, and I'm not even counting the Ainu or other not-of-Japanese-race.
All the way to southern Italy and then some. Luna was in northern Italy but the story is too funny no not quote:
The Viking force arrived at the town of Luna, whose walls were too heavily
defended for an outright assault. The force devised a plan to trick the
town’s bishop into converting Hastein to Christianity. Once converted,
Hastein faked his death with the final wish to be buried in the town's
church. Upon learning that the town was not Rome, the Viking force raided the
surrounding countryside before ultimately sailing back to Frankia.
That does seem to miss the fact that by then there was not a 'Viking king of Northumbria'. The Danelaw did not fully extend in to Northumbria.
My recall of history is that Northumbria had more or less split back in to Deira and Bernicia. With the Vikings having control south of the Tees, but north of the Tyne it was still an Kingdom of the Angles. Albeit possibly a client Kingdom, that seems a bit uncertain.
The show The Last Kingdom on Netflix is easily in my top 10 top shows. It covers this era. Probably not totally historically accurate but deeply entertaining anyway.
The books are great. They aren’t “history” but set the mood/tone and iirc they usually have recommendations for actual history books in the authors notes.
Not totally correct but totally awesome, as is Vikings early seasons. The author of the books distant relative is the main character, though only by name really as he wasn't alive yet during the time of those kings.
The strength of feeling some English lovers of history have for the Anglo-Saxon kings slightly mystifies me. Athelstan created a unified English kingdom. Briefly, till he died and it un-unified. England was fully conquered by a Danish king later (Cnut). A couple of the kings, Aethelred the Unready and Edward the Confessor, were such colossal wet blankets that you get the impression of a people just crying out to be conquered. I can see why so much of the popular conception of English history basically starts with the Norman Conquest.
Generally Aethelstan gets pretty good coverage on TRIH and the episodes on that era are some of my favorites. Also, the VIP membership tier is called "Athelstan" if I remember correctly.
Æthelstan was a fairly common name among the anglo-saxons at the time. The "Æthel-" prefix, really - meaning "noble" - was common among both boys and girls.
I am unaware of the culture around non-binary people at the time and can't comment as to the popularity of their preferred naming conventions.
To the prefix, it survives widely in Germanic languages to this day in newer forms.
In Norwegian for example, "edel" and "adel" means noble - the former used for objects (a gemstone is an "edelstein" - noble stone; a noble gas is an "edelgass") while the latter refers to the nobility. You'll find one or both or variations in every (I think; certainly most) Germanic language.
We still have names derived from Æthel as well, e.g Ethel, Albert, Adele, Adolf, and others.
I’m not sure how people make such confident pronouncements about the 10th century (a great many things will have happened that long ago without any surviving historical record), but there is some evidence of negative attitudes towards gender-nonconforming people at the time that are depressingly similar to those you’ll find on certain internet fora today: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A6ddel_and_b%C3%A6dling
That’s a lot of extreme words for my simple comment. Lots of projection in your reply, such senseless and “triggered” commentary is actually the sort of thing a therapist could help you with.
The Saxon and Norse kings didn’t use numbers, and the numbers that the post-Norman invasion kings used only started with them (so Edward “Longshanks” was Edward I, despite several Saxon kings Edward).
But if the next king of the UK decides to use the name “Aethelstan”, he wouldn’t be a II. (However, they are supposed to count Scottish kings now, so he could be “Macbeth II”.)
For a lighter take on this whole business, I can recommend Unruly - The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens by David Mitchell. It's a rather self-indulgent monologue at times (like, dude, it's a book, not a panel show), but also a pretty comprehensive-yet-short-and-funny look at how all that Kingdom stuff got started.
Agreed on both points - I did enjoy it, but boy if you are not used to David Mitchell's humour, or are not a native English speaker, or for various other reasons ... this book could be hard going.
It got better, but the first few chapters were like being trapped in a pub with David and him bending your ear on history for several hours.
> being trapped in a pub with David and him bending your ear on history for several hours
Don't threaten me with a good time! Ordered.
This is honestly why I got it (I listened to it as an audiobook which was narrated by Mitchell himself). I'm not really that "into" the history of the British monarchy, but if it's told to me by Mark from Peep Show I could get on board with it.
Peep Show was such a good show. Absolutely loved it.
Mitchell & Webb show was also good
Such a pungent smell!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoqlYGuZGVM
If you haven’t seen his Soapbox, it’s a show of him ranting. Do recommend.
I could pretty much hear his voice reading it tbh...
I didn’t mind the humour but got lost in all the Edward’s and Henry’s.
It did reinforce my skeptical opinion on the monarchy.
To be fair the book ends (by choice) at the precise point where the monarchy starts to evolve into something more like what we have today.
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FYI this is by the relatively famous British comedian David Mitchell, not the relatively famous British author David Mitchell (who wrote Cloud Atlas and a number of other successful novels). Every time I see a book by author Mitchell I get confused for a minute and think it's by comedian Mitchell.
I enjoyed this book (1066 and All That): https://www.amazon.com/1066-All-That-Memorable-Classics/dp/0...
Worth remembering that the Venerable Bede was writing The Ecclesiastical History of the English People two centuries before Athelstan, so clearly there was some notion of unity as early as that.
Basically the whole article can be distilled into the single paragraph:
> He was officially crowned in September 925AD. The following year, in 926AD, he married off his sister to the Viking king of Northumbria, which lay to the north of his kingdom's border. A year later, the Viking ruler died, and Æthelstan took over Northumbria.
In consolidating the previously separate kingdoms of Wessex, Mercia and Northumbria, Æthelstan became the first king of all England.
And the whole rationale for writing this article is here:
>If nothing else, Æthelstan's story overturns the centuries-long notion that England was originally a homogeneous culture, says Woodman. It's a misconception that still resurfaces today, but the truth was very different.
Which the article doesn't make very persuasively in my opinion, but whatevs. Also, apparently some historians are ceding the term "Anglo-Saxon" to the far right, along with the English flag? The whole approach is like a self-referential parody of itself.
"England was originally a homogeneous culture"
When was that relative to the colonisation by Angles, Saxons, Jutes then Vikings and Normans?
Edit: It always amuses me that Arthur, the great national hero, was fighting against the Angles/Saxons.
Edit2: I'm Scottish so I'm biased ;-)
The Angles and Saxons and Jutes had a similar culture before they colonised England.
I’m not an Anglophile, but even the most cursory glance at the history of England disputes that notion, unless “homogenous” is code for “not brown”.
Oh you know it is.
The far right is racist by definition (and choice).
For those wondering, here's the excerpt:
"There's been a big debate about the very use of the word Anglo-Saxon, so much so that people in our field of scholarship are not using the word [...] because of the connotations that Anglo-Saxon now has with the far right"
Soon we won't be able to use the word "right" to indicate direction. It'll be left and not-left.
The point made is a perfectly sensible one if you include a bit more context:
> Amid all the battles and conquest, however, Æthelstan brought a cosmopolitan flair to his new kingdom. Today there is a tendency – particularly among the far right – to depict early England as being cut off from the rest of Europe, and homogeneous in its cultural makeup. In truth, the newly formed kingdom of England was an outward-looking society.
> "There's been a big debate about the very use of the word Anglo-Saxon, so much so that people in our field of scholarship are not using the word anymore, and are going towards Early Medieval instead because of the connotations that Anglo-Saxon now has with the far right," says Woodman. "When [the term Anglo-Saxon] is invoked by the far right, they're thinking of it as very one-dimensional – people from one background in England in the 10th Century."
> In fact, that's a big misconception of what the period was like. "It was actually a very diverse place in early 10th Century. I always think about Æthelstan's Royal Assemblies, and there were people there from lots of different kingdoms within England, Britain more widely, from Europe. They were speaking a multiplicity of languages, Old Welsh, Old Norse, Old English, Latin. I just feel [the term Anglo-Saxon] is used without thinking, and without factual detail about the early 10th Century."
> Downham agrees. "There was a lot of cultural variety in the area we call England today. There wasn't this English monolith that started in 500AD."
Same as it ever was... The first Homo sapiens found Homo neanderthalis in Europe, and said, "Ooh, nice art! Wanna fuck?".
There never was an age of a "pure race", however you try to define it.
We're a mutt species, inbreeding frequently, all descendants of Australopithecus, hooking up with second and third cousins.
It's incest all the way down.
No doubt even back then there were homos on both sides of the equation clutching their pearls and wailing about racial purity.
(While not being so principled that they would put any effort into avoiding the benefits offered by such blending.)
Afaict, a good part of racism comes from the fact that human brain automatically labels people different from you as enemy. I assume this was a very useful strategy for millenia, if you saw a person not belonging to your tribe/nation that probably meant armed conflict a decent chunk of the time.
This applies to any kind of difference: clothing, culture, neurodivergence etc. I live in a country with zero racism against black people (all the racism is reserved for immigrants which only differ by culture, not color) yet you can tell black people are still a bit left-out in many social settings.
Due to black population being very low, people rarely ever see a black person here. When they see one, for the brain it's an unknown/unfamiliar, and that means potential danger at the subconscious / first impression level. To put it simply, people get weirded out. Ofc, once you get to know them that goes away.
(This is not to condone conscious racism: goyim, plantation workers and all.)
From what I've been told by friends working within several Universities, the only people that avoid "anglo saxon" are fanatics of another kind. Its all very childish.
I posit that the article was written to promote a book:
It is time this monarch was better remembered, argues David Woodman, professor of history at Robinson College, University of Cambridge in the UK, and author of a new biography of Æthelstan.
I have a hobby interest in pre-1066 England to the extent of studying the language so I can read literature in the original, and I do find it a very irritating feature of scholarship written in Britain that the narrative is so often guided by modern political concerns.
I didn't realize it was a narrative that England at that time had a homogenous culture given:
1. This was only a few centuries after Roman occupation ended. As we know Roman influence on culture lingers but not evenly so I imagine even in the 10th century, you would find some people and areas where there was no Roman influence or culture at all and others far more recognizable as Roman influenced;
2. Great Britain was obviously divided by Hadrian's Wall culturally. There were various Celtic culture in Great Britain and Ireland prior to Roman occupation. Some of these are extinct now. Remnants of others have survived (ev Gaelic in Ireland). Celtic was subsumed by Roman culture in England to a large degree but not at all in Scotland; and
3. Viking invasions. You have to remember that Viking influence extended all the way to France with Rollo becoming the ruler of Normandy a century before. Raids extended to Paris. And of course you had the Viking ruler in Northumbria.
So I always assumed that the idea of a homoogenous English "culture" was a product of the unification of England politically.
I think if you confine the argument to England itself, it's fairly easy to defend that England has been settled by various Germanic tribes which, other than in Cornwall, have supplanted the pre-existing Celtic populations so totally that, around the time of Æthelstan, it was indeed homogenous. Of course, people at the time would consider the concept of lumping the various Germanic tribes and peoples into a "homogenous" identity rather strange, some of them being mortal enemies for centuries. But England in those days was undoubtedly homogenous compared to today. Not sure why that's a virtue in any way, but there it is.
Need to add, the idea of cultural homogeneity is entirely relative. Japan is or isn't homogeneous depending on who and when you ask, and I'm not even counting the Ainu or other not-of-Japanese-race.
> Viking influence extended all the way to France
All the way to southern Italy and then some. Luna was in northern Italy but the story is too funny no not quote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_conquest_of_southern_It...That does seem to miss the fact that by then there was not a 'Viking king of Northumbria'. The Danelaw did not fully extend in to Northumbria.
My recall of history is that Northumbria had more or less split back in to Deira and Bernicia. With the Vikings having control south of the Tees, but north of the Tyne it was still an Kingdom of the Angles. Albeit possibly a client Kingdom, that seems a bit uncertain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northumbria#Northumbria_and_No...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernicia#Rump_of_Northumbria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rulers_of_Bamburgh
So that portion only really became part of a unified England per-se after the Norman conquest, and the "Harrying of the North."
Certainly the English spoken in Northumberland to this day, is apparently heavily influenced by the Old Anglic language.
The show The Last Kingdom on Netflix is easily in my top 10 top shows. It covers this era. Probably not totally historically accurate but deeply entertaining anyway.
The books are great. They aren’t “history” but set the mood/tone and iirc they usually have recommendations for actual history books in the authors notes.
Not totally correct but totally awesome, as is Vikings early seasons. The author of the books distant relative is the main character, though only by name really as he wasn't alive yet during the time of those kings.
The strength of feeling some English lovers of history have for the Anglo-Saxon kings slightly mystifies me. Athelstan created a unified English kingdom. Briefly, till he died and it un-unified. England was fully conquered by a Danish king later (Cnut). A couple of the kings, Aethelred the Unready and Edward the Confessor, were such colossal wet blankets that you get the impression of a people just crying out to be conquered. I can see why so much of the popular conception of English history basically starts with the Norman Conquest.
He hasn't been misplaced! He got first place in - er - The Rest is History English Kings Rankings!
Generally Aethelstan gets pretty good coverage on TRIH and the episodes on that era are some of my favorites. Also, the VIP membership tier is called "Athelstan" if I remember correctly.
Their series earlier this year, covering Alfred the Great through to William the Conqueror, was one of their best, I think (and I'm a fan).
Isn't that the monk who got kidnapped by vikings in Vikings?
Not the same person. That one was much less kingly.
but this one is in "The Last Kingdom"
Yes!
Æthelstan was a fairly common name among the anglo-saxons at the time. The "Æthel-" prefix, really - meaning "noble" - was common among both boys and girls.
I am unaware of the culture around non-binary people at the time and can't comment as to the popularity of their preferred naming conventions.
To the prefix, it survives widely in Germanic languages to this day in newer forms.
In Norwegian for example, "edel" and "adel" means noble - the former used for objects (a gemstone is an "edelstein" - noble stone; a noble gas is an "edelgass") while the latter refers to the nobility. You'll find one or both or variations in every (I think; certainly most) Germanic language.
We still have names derived from Æthel as well, e.g Ethel, Albert, Adele, Adolf, and others.
What does your second paragraph have to do with this discussion?
Let’s be real and put fantasy aside for a second, there was no “culture” for this.
I’m not sure how people make such confident pronouncements about the 10th century (a great many things will have happened that long ago without any surviving historical record), but there is some evidence of negative attitudes towards gender-nonconforming people at the time that are depressingly similar to those you’ll find on certain internet fora today: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A6ddel_and_b%C3%A6dling
Oh my, you're easily triggered into parading your ignorance and intolerance. You should see a therapist about all that.
That’s a lot of extreme words for my simple comment. Lots of projection in your reply, such senseless and “triggered” commentary is actually the sort of thing a therapist could help you with.
Check between the couch cushions?
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Was his dad Edward Longshanks (the villain in Braveheart)?
No, King Edward I was 300 years later.
Ah. I thought the timing was off, but the article didn't say Edward I, just "Edward."
I get confused by this stuff. I guess Edward wasn't a big king, then, but it sounds like he was a butt-kicker, nonetheless.
The Saxon and Norse kings didn’t use numbers, and the numbers that the post-Norman invasion kings used only started with them (so Edward “Longshanks” was Edward I, despite several Saxon kings Edward).
But if the next king of the UK decides to use the name “Aethelstan”, he wouldn’t be a II. (However, they are supposed to count Scottish kings now, so he could be “Macbeth II”.)
Macbeth II of Scotland, but also Macbeth I of England...