How England misplaced its first king
bbc.com
bbc.com
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.
It did reinforce my skeptical opinion on the monarchy.
Don't threaten me with a good time! Ordered.
Mitchell & Webb show was also good
> 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.
>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.
> 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."
There never was an age of a "pure race", however you try to define it.
(While not being so principled that they would put any effort into avoiding the benefits offered by such blending.)
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.)
It's incest all the way down.
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.
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 ;-)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 get confused by this stuff. I guess Edward wasn't a big king, then, but it sounds like he was a butt-kicker, nonetheless.
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”.)