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The Angles and the Saxons

By Peter Pabisch

Modern academia questions if the history of Germanic immigration into Britannia is portrayed as belligerent. It is rather believed that after the orderly leaving of the Romans from the year 410 onward, a graduate population shift took place over the next three to four hundred years with peaceful episodes and smaller warlike skirmishes and clashes. Thereby the western half of Britain initially remained more Celtic with Latin domination, yet under pressure from the Anglo-Saxons. This became the English language, and remained over time in its old form, known to us now as Old English. Yet the term English points to one of the major Germanic tribes, the Angles from Schleswig-Holstein. They settled on the eastern side of today’s England. They came from an area in the south of Denmark in what is today’s northernmost Germany called “Angeln.” The Saxons came from further south from the area around Hamburg, e. g. along the river Elbe, whereas the Jutes and Frisians arrived from the northwest of mainland Europe.

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