Cognitive Labs

An amateur archaeologist/treasure hunter in England has unearthed a massive 7th century hoard of gold objects, dating to the country's Anglo Saxon period and lying in situ in the kingdom of Mercia, one of the 7 Anglo Saxon wards (from which is obtained the word warden). Mercia in Old English means 'boundary folk' and may refer to those sandwiched between Wales and the main body of Angle and Saxon invaders. You may recall last year's find in Germany, also by someone walking around with a metal detector. The objects include shoulder-fittings for cloaks (as one might see on the Bayeaux tapestry) and gold inlays for swords and shields.

What was the English of the period like? Let's see. Below is the first 20 lines of the Finnsburgh fragment (dated to between 300-700 C.E.) an oral poem...

...nas byrnað?"
Hnæf hleoþrode ða, heaþogeong cyning:
"Ne ðis ne dagað eastan, ne her draca ne fleogeð,
ne her ðisse healle hornas ne byrnað.
5
Ac her forþ berað; fugelas singað,
gylleð græghama, guðwudu hlynneð,
scyld scefte oncwyð. Nu scyneð þes mona
waðol under wolcnum. Nu arisað weadæda
ðe ðisne folces nið fremman willað.
10
Ac onwacnigeað nu, wigend mine,
habbað eowre linda, hicgeaþ on ellen,
winnað on orde, wesað onmode!"
ða aras mænig goldhladen ðegn, gyrde hine his swurde.
ða to dura eodon drihtlice cempan,
15
Sigeferð and Eaha, hyra sword getugon,
and æt oþrum durum Ordlaf and Guþlaf,
and Hengest sylf hwearf him on laste.
ða gyt Garulf Guðere styrde
ðæt he swa freolic feorh forman siþe

in modern English:



from the text

full poem fragment here

The known piece is only about 50 lines long and does not specify which tribes or peoples are involved in a battle, but apparently Hnæf, the person referred to in "Then spoke the young and warlike king", elsewhere known as a Danish prince (in a reference in Beowulf), is attacked at a place called Finnsburuh "Finn's stronghold." According to the context in Beowulf, this is apparently the hall of his brother-in-law Finn, ruler of the Frisians, located on the coast of the present-day Netherlands - where he has come to spend the winter. Hnæf observes that what he sees outside "is not the dawn in the East, nor is it the flight of a dragon, nor are the gables burning". What he sees is the torches of approaching attackers. Hnæf and his sixty retainers hold the doors for five days, without any falling. Then a wounded warrior turns away to talk to his chief (it is not clear on which side) and the fragment ends...the cause of the fight nor the outcome are known.

J.R.R. Tolkien, one of the foremost Anglo-Saxon scholars of his era, wrote a critical review of this fragment and related documents known as Finn and Hengest. With eventually up to 1500 items expected to be recovered, scholars are hoping that this archaeological discovery will revolutionize the understanding of early Medieval English nobility and burial practices and also illuminate the practices of related groups in Northern Europe and Scandinavia.

Labels: angles, Beowulf, finn, finnsburgh, hnaef, mercia, saxons

Wondering if branding is going to gain in popularity at the expense of tattooing due to the film Angels and Demons...

Labels: angles, demons, hanks

Lindisfarne Priory Stone, 794 C.E.

"From the fury of the Northmen, O lord, deliver us!," was the chant said to have been repeated endlessly in Dark Age churches and monasteries from northern Spain to France, west to Ireland (where the Vikings founded Dublin), Greenland, Iceland, and Vinland (Canada); the whole of the British Isles except the isolated southwestern tip, the Isle of Man, whence come the tailless manx cats, which are manx-allele positive, and north to Orkney, the Faroes and Shetland.

Around the Baltic periphery of Germany and Poland they came, and down the rivers of Ukraine and Russia to the Black Sea and Constantinople, where, unable to scale the massive walls and too impatient for sieges, some Vikings took up eating Spam and became mercenaries.

DNA analysis may have solved the puzzle, at least in the UK. Taking cheek-swab samples of hundreds of men around the British Isles and the northern islands, geneticists at University of London wanted to find out the echoes of how much "Viking" is left in the population today through the footprint of the Y chromosome.

In so doing, they hoped to learn more about two earlier population groups, the so-called 'Britons' or Celts and the Angles and Saxons, tribes which started invading Angle-land (German) as early as 300 C.E., best remembered in the old English tale of Beowulf, a time of magic swords, rings, dragons, and monsters.

Were they just raiding parties, or did they settle in these areas? The king of France, tired of their incessant pillaging and vandalism, made an accommodation with Rollo, a Viking war leader, by giving him a large hereditary fief, Normandy. In return, Rollo was supposed to settle down, support the king, and most importantly, defend the coast against other Vikings. Vikings later settled in southern Italy/Sicily, Russia-playing a role in the founding of the state, and around Constantinople.

The gene analysis was supported by the BBC and presented in a BBC Learning Series, the 'Blood of the Vikings.' It is no longer posted but may appear again. The accompanying scientific publication info is here. Additional research has just been completed.

The results were quite interesting.

The Vikings that invaded the British Isles were primarily from two points of origin, Denmark and Norway, who exhibited some genetic differences. It turns out that the early population of Britain has partial affinity with the pre-bronze age Gallic peoples that inhabited a broad swath of land from Asia Minor across Europe to France and Spain, in particular the Basques.

For a time prior to 6,000 B.C.E., the English channel was a misty meadow or tidal valley, forming a land bridge with the continent. This native Briton population is echoed in the genetics of southwest Britain and central Ireland, which resisted the Angles, Saxons, Vikings, and Normans, and is still (21st century) not fully assimilated with the other parts of the British Isles, according to geneticists.


left: Genetic footprint of UK populations in the 21st century
right: The approximate extent of Old Norse and related languages in the early 10th century around the North Sea. The red area is the distribution of the dialect Old West Norse, the orange area is the spread of the dialect Old East Norse and the green area is the extent of the other Germanic languages with which Old Norse still retained some mutual intelligibility

While there is a visible genetic difference between these remote, early peoples who were isolated by geography, and the Angles and Saxons who occur throughout the remainder of England; there was an insignificant genetic difference between the Anglo-Saxons and the Danish Vikings, mainly because these tribal groups all originated in the same area, northern coastal Europe.

In fact, accounts and the archaeology of the Saxon invasions tell us that their raids were somewhat like the Viking raids 400 years later. Groups of warriors arrived by sea in boats festooned with shields. In response, the Romans created a military office to defend against these raiders, the Count of the Saxon Shore (Comes Litoris Saxonorum), who built a chain of stone fortifications along the coast to defend against the raiders and safeguard in-kind taxes.


Walls of Garrianonum fort

At least one pretender to the imperial throne, Carausius, held this office prior to seizing power and creating a Britanno-Gallic empire, so we may conclude that it was an important administrative post with ample resources. The last legions sailed away from Britain in 410 C.E. to take part in a campaign on the continent, never to return, leaving the Romanized Briton population to deal with the seafaring Saxons and Angles.

Interestingly, genetic differences occur fairly dramatically in the North Sea isles held by Britain, the north of Scotland, and parts of the coast of Western England and Ireland, where the genetic footprint of the Norwegians is evident, with some 40-60% of the population showing affinity to that of Norway in the northern islands, and pockets elsewhere.

In the U.S., you would have to go to North Dakota to see anywhere near a similar level of Norwegian ancestry, which is around 30% of the population, 17% in Minnesota and 14% in South Dakota.

Labels: angles, chromosome, dna, faroes, genetics, manx, y