Who did the Anglo-Saxons think they were?
archaeology.co.uk
archaeology.co.uk
Nice to know that the football chant of “Ingerland” is historically correct though.
"The Kings have gone by the Kingdom remains"
Amazing how long these things can persist.
Just south of Cambridge is the intersection between Icknield Way¹ and Ermine Street², and you hardly seem to be able to stick a trowel in the ground without finding a coin hoard in these parts. You can still walk large parts of it on footpaths and bridleways. Not as pretty as Wales, but nice nonetheless.
Even in "modern" times, it can take quite a while to get from say Plymouth to Inverness. I remember my mum (Devonian) recalling how long that trip took back in the '60s. Then she got posted to the islands on the north left and getting back home really took some time - the ferries can be a bit sporadic when the weather gets grotty 8)
Try not to look at the map of Europe as a driver of a vehicle capable of >100mph. Imagine there are very few roads, except what the Romans left behind. There are not many people and a lot of trees. Police is a concept that is yet to be invented although the Shire Reeves (Sheriff) is an early model. Most people's horizons probably don't stretch much more than 10 miles for their entire life. Witches are real and doctors were scarce and scary - they hadn't even invented the leech at this time.
That said, some folk did travel quite a long way. Bede famously recalls a story of a pope who remarks on some slaves in a market in Rome: "... they are surely Angels ...". He was talking about some Angles who were taken from these isles who he found rather good looking.
If you really want to get a flavour of just how complicated things are genetically here, let alone in the rest of Europe, try Stephen Oppenheimer's "The origins of the British" (1-84119 894 3)
So I live in the Hudson Valley, upstate NY. I noticed some local place names that were surprisingly Midwestern: Mount Illinois, Ohioville, etc. Weird, I thought, I wonder how that came to be.
Turns out it was groups of settlers traveling from slightly further east -- it's only about 200 miles to Boston, the furthest-away those settlers could be starting from, on land -- hoping to colonize the fertile lands of the newly opened Northwest Territories after the Revolution who just gave up and settled here.
Now, the Northwest Territories were another 500-1000 miles west of where I'm at, and where I'm at was colonized in the 17th century, so there was no mistaking one for the other. What must of happened was, one tenth to one fifth of the way in to their journey, these settlers got their wagons stuck in the swamps here, looked around at the rocky, unplowable mountains around them, and said "fuck it, we'll settle here", before naming their town "Ohioville" so when they wrote back to Boston they could pretend they reached their destination.
I wonder how often this sort of thing happened. I imagine it was pretty common, knowing how difficult travel was back then.
Maybe you still do; maybe you have realized there's something else you want more. Maybe you can give up your goal without effort; maybe you spend the rest of your life rationalizing or regretting your decision to give up when you did. Maybe your attempt cost you something that makes having or not having what you wanted irrelevant, and the rest of your life is just ashes, muddling on.
It shows an empire based around the rim of the North Sea and you can immediately see why when you compare the times to reach anywhere over land compared to the see.
"The waters of the Channel are notoriously treacherous, which could have posed problems for the smaller boats" - https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/52808043
Fast shallow draught boats, well navigated can whizz over by oar and or sail in a few hours or a day or two at worst. Top Gear sent some pretty dodgy aquavans over in one program. Even I've sailed a 28 footer over to France.
Compare that to trying to walk say from Yeovil to Exeter in the SW of England. It's about 40-50 miles. Nowadays you drive via the A303/A30 or A303/A358/M5 and it takes an hour or so. Back then you have the Blackdown hills to get over and a lot of muddy tracks. I think you'd hope to get to Crewkerne or Ilminster on day one. Then Honiton on day two and then Exeter on day three. That's on foot. On horseback you could probably do it in one day and with a mule or cart probably two days. All of those towns existed back then and earlier.
The Armada was something else - huge galleons outmaneuvered by our smaller boats - once the formation was broken it was a bit horrid for them. The Spaniards had a professional admiral who knew his stuff but a wanker of a noble put in charge who made some daft decisions. Also they were supposed to meet up with a land force in Flanders to transport over to England and that did not go well. The weather did favour the English as well. Once the formation was broken they tried to go around the British Isles anti-clockwise to try and get back to Spain, which as you say means seeing some of the nastiest weather and conditions we have to offer. Quite a few spaniards who managed to make it ashore in one piece settled here and there and improved the local genetic diversity 8) QE1 refused to pay our navy, despite they had saved the nation. Back then the navy was quite heavily privatised - Sir F Drake was known as a pirate in the Caribbean or a good English patriot depending on your point of view.
As always, truth is not absolute but if you stop at the blandishments from that Geoff bloke off of Monmouth or that Walter Scott geezer, let alone whatever bollocks us English come up with, then it's downhill all the way to ... erm the present day.
Look at Boris Johnson, a mix of Turkish, french and old England
I dare you to define what Turkish, French and old England actually means. For starters: where/when does French stop and German start and vice versa? "Turkish" is just as complicated.
The mongrel nature of Britain is common for all multi border countries... and many are even Germany or Spain.
I think we should really define countries by language, mountain and seas rather than blood, and frankly even those are shaky and changing.
Maybe the best definition of a country is the largest geographical gradient that could sustain influence from a gigantic power centre without succumbing to another (for me, Paris, for the brits, London)?
Edit: downvotes suggest there’s some disagreement. I don’t think what I said is controversial or wrong, so I’d like to know the motivation
As the saying goes in the old days some people could have a signs outside a shop "No dogs, no Irishmen and no blacks allowed". Was that really true for some parts of Britain or is it just tales?
Since we're talking weird discriminatory signs though there is a sign in a bar called the Clachaig Inn which says "No Hawkers or Campbells". This goes back to the Glencoe Massacre in 1692 where members of Clan Campbell slaughtered the Glencoe McDonalds overnight, and which some people still hold a grudge about today. I hope it's just a historical curiosity though, I don't imagine they really forbid service to anyone with the surname Campbell.
edit: come to think of it I now remember another HN'er (arethuza) talking about discrimination against Catholics in Scotland being more of a thing in recent history than I had realised. I can't remember the time period in question or whether they said it was better nowadays (again, I hope it is).
I don't understand, is Boris Johnson good or bad?
"They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however barbarous."
https://www.historyfiles.co.uk/FeaturesBritain/Medieval_Text...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A1l_Riata
NB I have stood on Dunadd with my foot in the Footprint of Fealty where kings were crowned:
I've found another blog-post with more photos about the Celtic crosses from Maramures [3], and in the comments in there someone also linked to similar crosses being found in Northern Greece/Macedonia, close to Thessaloniki [4]. Very interesting stuff.
[1] https://www.bzi.ro/morosenii-au-origini-celtice-artefactul-c...
[2] https://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/news-and-events/news/201...
[3] https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/abandoned-bogomils-grave...
[4] https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/abandoned-bogomils-grave...
Celtic crosses are a Christian thing and Christianity only got started after the Romans had subjugated large parts of Europe, so any "Celtic" crosses in Romania are guaranteed to be unrelated to a possible pre-Roman presence of Celtic tribes. (And it's not like putting a cross in a circle is a terribly original idea, so they probably came up with it independently from the Celtic Christians in Ireland.)
They controlled the eastern portion of Scotland while the Irish-related Gaels controlled the western portion. As the Anglo-Saxons came in, followed by the Vikings, there was a lot of mixing resulting in modern Scottish populations.
https://www.amazon.com/Word-Exchange-Anglo-Saxon-Poems-Trans...
Is a great set of translations (with the original on the facing page). Powerful stuff calling out across the centuries.
Two online translations of The Seafarer, as examples:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angles#/media/File:Anglo-Saxon...
and it's part of the article on Angels:
It‘s complicated, but „Anglo-Saxon“ can be used as it has been.
.. but then I realized that me not being in a country or position to need to care about being accused of insensitive language is a big privilege many users on HN might not share.
This often creates amusing misunderstandings when French speakers drop that word in an English conversation without realizing that it sounds not only weirder but also loaded with extra baggage in that context.
But in France older people still call Indians 'Hindus' despite having the largest Muslim population in the world and other religious groups.
Anglo-Saxon refers to a people that ruled England when they invaded Britain in the Middle Ages, and dominated politically up to the present. The Irish, Welsh, etc in Britain, the many immigrants there and in the US and Australia, would probably find it an outdated term.
WASP is one we use in the US for something similar, referring to cultural and academic institutions and such, but I feel like it's fallen out of favor.
Although the average Frenchman could always stand to learn more about the anglosphere, the usage of the word anglo-saxon in French isn't borne out of ignorance of cultural nuance, but is often invoked and defined in contrast to French or French-inspired values. As such, the term is still popular because it's still highly relevant: whenever there's some kerfuffle about secularism or some other salient clash of values, the anglosphere tends to present the same predictable range of responses whether they are Anglo-Canadians or Irish, POC or WASP, immigrant or Baskerville.
Naturally, people from the anglosphere don't enjoy being conceptually lumped together by outsiders (leading to the misunderstandings mentioned earlier) but in this case it's not just casual prejudice on the part of the French (even though it no doubt plays a role) but a recurrent difference in values that has real consequences. In my view, it is as real a concept as "the West" is for example.
That's too strong a claim. It probably was more true in 1960 than in 2020, given how much has changed. For example, the prudeness was a common stereotype of both Americans and Brits, but it's changed much since those days. The generations are so different from one another, it's quite a shock to many. And let's not get started with cities versus towns. In cities, things are so international they (cities) often have similar attitudes with one another across national boundaries.
Subjectively, having lived in the UK, I often felt there was more in common between the British and the French than either with Americans. Friendships, attitudes to strangers, and romantic relationships. Religiosity is more common in the US.
I'm not talking politics here - what's an example of this commonality of Anglo-Saxon culture or kurfuffle that clashes with French culture? Political correctness? Religiosity ?
I think you are actually on to something. Our conversation forced me to critically evaluate things I hadn't really thought of before. It's quite possible we might be among the last generations for whom the word will still be relevant since the current youngest crop of people are already quite heavily influenced by American culture. And to some extent much of the meaning of the word tends to be about what Americans specifically do since they are so completely dominant in the anglosphere. It's true that the UK has quite a bit in common with France.
To be clear, I wasn't implying that every anglosphere person does the same thing all the time. More like a common thread that comes up in certain situations where French culture doesn't coincide. The word is paradoxically dependent on France having failed to create a competing francosphere. There are many regions where French is the main language, but there isn't really such a thing as the Commonwealth. Quebec evolved without much mutual contact for centuries. Francophone countries in Africa have many ties but mostly do their own thing. Belgians and Swiss don't care. There is also an identification of modern consumerism and "late stage capitalism" (a loaded term, but I don't know what else to use) as originating in the anglosphere and being spread by it, which is semi-correct, I suppose. (for instance, McDonald's compared to French traditions regarding food)
There is thus the notion of an overwhelming cultural force bursting out the door, which is not just an abstract concern since the international urban culture is heavily based on the American one. It's not uncommon for younger generations to know and care more about American politics than their own, as evidenced last summer with BLM movements across the world using the exact same tropes even though there are important local differences and histories on how racism manifests in each country (and especially in France compared to the US)
If I can take a pause and suggest, too, that every country has its scapegoats and when I hear people in France say things like, oh, the violence in the banlieue is due to American influence (I heard this not in regards to BLM today but actually 20 years ago), I have to raise one eyebrow. I think the American influence thing has truth to it but in France the political conversation on both right and left seems to exaggerate it for drama, I think you'll agree. It behaves like France is not an agent of its own will.
Anyway, a salient difference that you highlighted between the societies is the cohesive idea of France and the cohesive idea of England or the cohesive idea of the United States. At least forgive me if I'm reading a bit in between the lines. In France, the core principles as you alluded to, of laïcité, to take one example, is core to the identity of France, sure. So of course, if a country like the U.S. which was explicitly founded BY religous people fleeing England, that cannot / will not be understood. The melting pot idea is a tough one to discuss not least because it's extremely complicated (and in today's climate it's dangerous to talk about), but when you're in the EU with open borders, you're a country that founded the idea of the EU, one expectation is the free movement of people (a principle adopted since at least the 80's). So even if the United States never existed, it would still be a challenge to negotiate conceptually for people in France tied to older ways of viewing the world.
You mentioned that the urban centers are American. I was thinking about this. I don't know if it's true or if it's false, but I live an American megacity, surrounded by upscale Chinese, and I (not so much on purpose but by habit) eat Asian meals probably 50+% of my meals (including sometimes cooking it), I live in a building designed for Chinese investors and their aesthetic tastes even, and from a consumer perspective most of what I wear and buy isn't an American style, but I'm generic here. What's an American urban center? London is similar, and honestly even Paris has large aspects where it feels like any of these other places. I'm not so sure it's specifically American or ever was. A lot of people think New York, specifically Manhattan, is very European, which may shock you. I've heard the same of how many American cities are changing.
Are you referring or did you see the NYT article attacking France's secularism as racism in disguise? I honestly don't see that viewpoint as the majority in the U.S., if it's any consolation!
The 90's banlieue described in La Haine is long gone, and I agree that blaming the Americans for that sort of thing is pretty silly. It's better to critically examine each area of American influence on a case by case basis. For instance, what could be termed modern SJW concepts have definitely been spread in France by American influence, even if ironically these have a theoretical foundation in left-leaning mid-20th francophone philosophy with writers like Frantz Fanon or Foucault.
The concept of France not having its own will is essentially the result of a backwards-facing culture. France has been deeply shocked by the loss of their earlier status, and newer generations don't give a shit about all that except when conservative youths allude to a mythical past. Hence there is a current malaise about French culture dying out that would be difficult to properly explain.
>The melting pot idea is a tough one to discuss not least because it's extremely complicated (and in today's climate it's dangerous to talk about), but when you're in the EU with open borders, you're a country that founded the idea of the EU, one expectation is the free movement of people (a principle adopted since at least the 80's). So even if the United States never existed, it would still be a challenge to negotiate conceptually for people in France tied to older ways of viewing the world.
The French view tends to be interpreted as fundamentally racist by the anglosphere. I would argue, on the contrary, that it actually proposes a model of thought that attempts to limit racism in the long run (attempt being the keyword here, heh). To be clear, I do not mean to imply that there is no racism in French society as that would be completely delusional, just that its proposed ideals are in my view a healthier way of interfacing with those problems.
In reality, there is no contradiction between the EU's open borders and the French ideal, since the point is to have every citizen consider themselves as French independently of their other characteristics. Comparatively, the anglosphere model tends to strengthen and highlight the differences between people with hyphenated identities. The concept of race is thus primed to remain a divider in perpetuity unless the model shifts over time. When Noah told France to thank Africa for providing it with players, the reaction was quite negative since rejecting the inherent Frenchness of a non-white person is precisely the type of racism that causes the most grief in France and butts up with the main ideological principles there. Noah later added that he was just inviting the players to recognize their Africanness instead of rejecting their Frenchness, but that only reiterated his misunderstanding of why his remarks were tone-deaf in a French context.
>I live an American megacity, surrounded by upscale Chinese, and I (not so much on purpose but by habit) eat Asian meals probably 50+% of my meals (including sometimes cooking it), I live in a building designed for Chinese investors and their aesthetic tastes even, and from a consumer perspective most of what I wear and buy isn't an American style, but I'm generic here. What's an American urban center? London is similar, and honestly even Paris has large aspects where it feels like any of these other places. I'm not so sure it's specifically American or ever was. A lot of people think New York, specifically Manhattan, is very European, which may shock you. I've heard the same of how many American cities are changing.
The broader point is that the lifestyle consisting in consuming various products within the bounds of megacities is a quite specific cultural practice that is taking over. In a sense, whether you are eating Chinese or Bantu food or living in a brutalist or art deco building is a bit of a red herring compared to the main facts of life in a megacity. When people refer to New York's Europeanness, they are directly contrasting it with the notion of the impersonal sprawl and implying a certain authenticity and granularity among its neighborhoods that goes beyond simple variations in consumption patterns. Authenticity is a pretentious term, but I believe it describes the situation fairly accurately. It's better to interpret it as meaning a more personal interface with the surroundings, and one that is less directly linked to anglophone free-market optimization. Even in Paris, you can taste the difference between La Défense and some of the more old-school neighborhoods, but that is changing fast.
To summarize, it's the interchangeability of all those cities that French people fear, because they can compare it to life in Provence and whatnot. They are also wary of the ideology that comes with it, namely the sort of thought patterns and aesthetic choices that dominate Instagram feeds and imply a lack of cultural biodiversity. I am aware that this point of view sounds explicitly elitist, but I am paradoxically trying to communicate a view of life that is more communal and more accepting of other ways of thought.
>Are you referring or did you see the NYT article attacking France's secularism as racism in disguise?
I'm not sure which one you are referring to, but a while back they had an interview with Macron that I found really stunning in its arrogance. It's not that I am unwilling to consider opposing viewpoints, but that any person already passably familiar with the topic could tell they were not presenting the arguments made by Macron and the broader French society in good faith. I would say these views don't represent all Americans but they do represent the neoliberal coastal elite as I understand it. One of whose traits tends to be the belief that their own ideology is not an ideology but just a rational and scientific approach.
Gorgeous game, lots of educational tidbits, highly recommended if you're looking for a little bit of escapism during the pandemic. :)
If you think that it is useful in this way you may be interested what was excluded. See https://acoup.blog/2020/11/20/miscellanea-my-thoughts-on-ass...
> To say that the game sanitizes this history is a profound understatement.
(...)
> In short, your raiding doesn’t so much as inconvenience the civilian population.
(...)
> You are a viking (one thing they do right: viking is a job description, meaning ‘raider,’ not an ethnic identity) who does not kill non-combatants. This is akin to the famous joke about the pirates who don’t steal anything.
> We should be clear about what is happening in England in c. 875 when the game takes place. After almost a century of repeated Norse and Danish viking raids on the English coast (which, to be clear, were not merely raids for physical goods; they were slave raids as trading in slaves (‘thralls’) was an important part of the Scandinavian economy), the arrival of what the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle calls the ‘Great Heathen Army’ (in 865) turned that into a war of conquest. The Norse and Danes overran the English kingdoms (save Wessex) and settled in the area, subjugating the population, taking the best farmland from its former owners and generally wrecking the place in the process. Our sources are very clear that this was not a particularly pleasant process for the existing population and the surviving English kingdom of Wessex responded to it with a series of reforms that radically militarized the kingdom.
He pointed out that Valhalla the game left a lot out, and probably isn’t very historically accurate when it comes to Viking conduct.
In Britain this was not really accomplished because Roman presence was newer and relatively thin on the ground. Brittonic languages persisted, but there definitely was a strong cultural assimilation, and the upper classes were very focused on Latin speaking. Even at the time the West Germanic tribes invaded en masse the people there probably thought of themselves as equally British and Roman.
It seems to me that the "Welsh" ("others" in Germanic) and "British" identity were formed more as a product of the Saxon invasion, long after the Western Roman empire had left.
The language changed over decades as the upper classes became Romanised (and in the same way Normanised a thousand years later), with Latin/French becoming the courtly language and Gaelic/Saxon the commoner's language. Until finally English emerges as a bastardised combination of all of them.
Whereas in the Danelaw the invaders changed the language and culture in a single generation wherever they took over. Though it's interesting that on the Isle of Man the Viking raiders only killed the men, and settled down on the island with the Manx women, resulting in a Gaelic-speaking Danish culture. There are places in Scotland where this happened too. It's a different combination from the Danelaw, where the settlers brought their own women and the English were displaced completely.
"Britain" is a Romanised corruption of the pre-Roman Gaelic name for the island, "Prydwen". The British identity was already well established before the Romans. They became the "Romano-British" under Roman rule, still speaking Gaelic, and then the Welsh as they were displaced by the incoming Saxons (and still speaking Gaelic!). The Welsh identity is definitely a product of the Saxon invasion, as you say, including the massive still-smouldering resentment of the Saxons (they refer to England as "Lloegyr" which I was told by a Welsh historian means "lost lands" but that doesn't seem to be accurate).
The Brittonic speakers later became the Welsh, Cornish, and (as emigres to the continent) the Breton.
Very different branches of the Celtic language tree. Not mutually intelligible. Brittonic has more in common with (extinct) Gaulish ("P celtic")
Also the Romans established a landholding system in Gaul that took its agricultural lands under Roman control, so in a sense they definitely had impact on the local population. The rich farmland of Gaul was one of the key reasons for the conquest in the first place.
Though service in the Roman military by Gauls themselves meant they could in turn have rights to access the land as Romans. A further method of Romanization though.
I've lived in Dublin, the Isle of Man, and Cardiff - really interesting hearing the language and the differences. I even tried learning Manx Gaelic, but didn't get very far.
Both also seem to have crazy orthography, too, hard for an English speaker to figure out
Manx and Irish Gaelic is just-about mutually understandable, though with difficulty. It's like a Londoner trying to understand a Glaswegian.
I gave up trying to learn Gaelic after learning that there are no words for "yes" or "no". To agree with someone you have to construct a positive sentence agreeing with them (e.g. "sure and so it is"). This suddenly made so many Irish-English colloquialisms make sense :)
Gaulish was alive and well during the 5th c. Latin really stuck with the Merovingians.
* https://www.academia.edu/28555947/ON_THE_GAULISH_INFLUENCE_O...
There's certainly a case to be made for some dialects of Breton having a Gaulish substrate (after all Gallo-Romance languages all have it and that mutation occurred around the time Bretons migrated into Gaul).
I find this stuff fascinating :-)
And by “back then” we mean prior to about 1920
Years ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_... did similar thing in Iraq.
(there are many other examples, I am not going to list all of them)
Well, anglo saxon england wasn't a big fan of slavery, in fact the christian world in general wasn't and the church did a lot to combat it. And it was the vikings raiding anglo saxon england, not the other way around. So while you can always find historians to say, that all cultures are the same because of of various unconvincing whatboutery reasons, I think from our current understanding, between those two peoples at that moment in time, one side really was worse behaved.
You can find some interesting facts on this subject here: https://octavia.net/slavery-in-anglo-saxon-england/
Or rather, after their brutal occupation and displacement of the Romano-Britons they came to emulate the Franks (the most successful post-Roman polity in Europe) in the structure of their economy. Think Serfs rather than Slaves.
Slaves in the Roman system could be freed and become Roman citizens. In fact it was rather common after a generation or two. Peasants were peasants forever. Not saying one is more just than the other, but Christian influence in Europe certainly hadn't made for a more just system. Just a more theologically based one (God chose your King and Lord)
The Britons (later, "Welsh") themselves were already primarily Christian, due to Roman occupation. They saw the Saxon invasion as a catastrophe not just because of the cultural displacement, but because it was pagan. (cf. Gildas "De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae")
There's an episode in the Last Kingdom and in Vikings when we see the great pyres lit to communicate a raid was occurring. There's quite a few on the coast of North Eastern England where I grew up still present to this day.
Admittedly I some what doubt they're original .
They've been left should Norway get any ideas again.
This influence is a tribute to the power of war and plunder and the renewed interest in the time period is probably in part related to the current zeitgeist in which chauvinism and the rattling of swords is once more on the agenda. Given the immense firepower at our disposal currently we should perhaps better try and counter with stories about the benefits of peace, too.
I do empathize with your feelings. I think they are natural of course. I do however wonder if there ever really was a time when chauvinism and sabre-rattling were not on the agenda? Maybe not to the same degree, perhaps. I do think the "better angels of our nature" trend will continue over the very long term. There are always rough periods.
Ultimately, I agree fully with your prescription. Those of us who love peace should promote peace. I think we can do so while acknowledging and exploring the dark sides of history. You know, the learn from our mistakes adage and all that.
What often appeals about WWII is one side was clearly good, and one side clearly not, that moral clarity is often lacking today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ruin
Someone here points out that there are a lot of significant ruins in The Lord of the Rings:
https://feudalendeavor.pressbooks.com/chapter/meldingofanglo...
Much of what's described in this article is represented in the series.
Is that question well written? I'm not English native but it kind of sounds wrong. Shouldn't it be:
-What did the Anglo-Saxons think they were?
-Who thought the Anglo-Saxons they were?
-...?
This doesn’t sound correct to me as a native speaker.
They mean this sentence is unintelligible.
And your second one doesn't parse to me.
Another way of phrasing the headline would be "What kind of people did the Anglo-Saxons think they were?"
The question is well written, although it could also be phrased as "How did the Anglo-Saxons see themselves as a people?". That phrasing, however, lacks the poetry and idiomatic reference (see sibling comment) of the original.
> -Who thought the Anglo-Saxons they were?
These two questions are syntactically identical; one just uses the question word for non-people while the other uses the question word for people.
In both cases, subject-auxiliary inversion is required, and in both cases, think is not an auxiliary verb and therefore requires do-support. So your what-question is correct and your who-question is wrong.
What is the difference you see?
I'm an IT bod but I reckon I could give you a reading list that would warm a historian's heart. Let's start with "The King in the North" by Max Adams.
Modern writers (ie not Geoff of Monmouth, Sir W Scott, int al) generally spend quite a while putting out their stall with quite a lot of reasoning, rather than "just so" style commentary. If they don't then I bin the book.
I'm not a history nerd, but his Norman Conquest book [2] almost turned me. It's more fun than most novels.
For a non-academic approach, written by a academic, I wouldn't look anywhere else. And while you're waiting, read Norman Conquest. It's brilliant.
[0] https://twitter.com/longshanks1307 [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52025940-the-anglo-saxon... [2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13065400-the-norman-conq...
Please, use the library, not games or popular entertainment (documentaries, your avearage YouTube history video, etc).
One is the genetic heritage, i.e. DNA. If you or your ancestors lived in some place, you may suppose that you might have inherited some of the genes of the ancient people who lived there one thousand years earlier or four thousand years earlier.
It is true that most people who claim to be descendants of some ancient people believe that their relationship with the ancients is such a blood kinship.
You are right that such a belief is mostly false, so many Greeks might share little genetic material with the Ancient Greeks and someone who considers himself/herself, e.g. Polish or Romanian, might happen to have more genetic heritage from some very different people, e.g. from Tatars or Germans.
On the other hand, there is the cultural heritage, i.e. the maternal language and a myriad of customs transmitted from parents to children.
If you consider yourself to belong to some nationality, you might not know that 10 generations earlier your ancestors were considered to belong to another nationality, possibly even to one that you now strongly dislike for some reason.
Nevertheless, some of your ancestors have chosen at some point in time to be integrated into the nationality that you believe now as yours, for various reasons, e.g. marriage, immigration, being a prisoner of war and so on.
From that point of time, all your ancestors transmitted to their descendants the language and customs of your current nationality, which is the result of their willing or unwilling choice.
In my opinion it is correct to claim to be descendant of some people who lived thousands of years ago, when you speak a language derived from their language and you also practice various of their customs, even when (which is likely to be the most frequent case) you share little or no DNA with them.
So it is right for the Modern Greeks to consider themselves descendants of the Ancient Greeks, or for the Romanians, who speak a language derived from Latin, and who, for example, have always cooked and eaten "placinta" with cheese made in the same way as the "placenta" described by Cato the Elder almost 2200 years ago, to consider themselves descendants of the Ancient Romans.
Of course, any such shared cultural heritage with some ancient people should not be used as a basis for claims on a supposed material heritage, like in the case of Israel and other countries where there are territorial claims based on land ownership of supposed relatives from, e.g., 3000 years ago.