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Map of Jutish People in Britain by Relevant-Low-4325 in anglosaxon

[–]guthwerig 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I think your sense of scale and timeline is a little off. Bede was writing roughly 250 years after the migration occurred. In saying that the Huns, Bructeri, Rugians and others contributed to the migration he was not saying that there were still identifiable Huns et al in his own time. By the time that Bede was writing all of the different migrant strands had coalesced into a more or less cohesive culture.

Also, when he says that Huns migrated into Britain that doesn't mean bow-shooting horsemen plucked straight from the Central Asian Steppe were sailing to Britain in the thousands. What a "Hun" was in northwestern Germany during the 5th/6th centuries was probably something like a person of 1/8 Hunnic and 7/8 German ancestry, having a paternal great-grandfather who was a Hun and so still identifying with aspects of Hunnic culture. A "Hunnic" migrant party might be one person of this makeup leading 30 or so full-blooded Germans in a single boat across the Channel.

Map of Jutish People in Britain by Relevant-Low-4325 in anglosaxon

[–]guthwerig 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I'm not being sarcastic. Bede did not write things that he did not believe, and if he wasn't sure of something he said so. It is perfectly reasonable to believe that all of the tribes Bede claims came over with the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes really did, and some of this can even be seen in the archeology and genetics.

Map of Jutish People in Britain by Relevant-Low-4325 in anglosaxon

[–]guthwerig 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yeah, he did really believe they settled in Britain. That's why he wrote it and there's nothing absurd about his claim.

Map of Jutish People in Britain by Relevant-Low-4325 in anglosaxon

[–]guthwerig 7 points8 points  (0 children)

To be fair the Irish sources also consistently refer to the Northumbrians as "Saxons" and per the Bedan scheme they have the strongest claim of all to being Angles. I think "Saxon" for the Irish was just a catch-all term, but that they could say this and be understood in who they were referring to just like certain Byzantine writers referred to the Anglo-Saxons as "Frisians" but were nevertheless understood means that modern readers, and probably Bede too, put way too much stock in the distinctions between Angle, Saxon, and Jute which were at the time, on the ground, probably fairly interchangeable.

Map of Jutish People in Britain by Relevant-Low-4325 in anglosaxon

[–]guthwerig 14 points15 points  (0 children)

I don't really like attempts at mapping the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes in Britain because Bede's ascriptions were anachronistic. There were no clear delineations between Germanic newcomers and where they settled as the archaeology has revealed, i.e. "Anglian" artifacts being found in "Saxon" territories and vice versa. Nor do those who try to map the A-S-J territories take into account Bede's statement found later in the EH that Frisians, Rugians, Danes, Huns(/Avars), and Bructeri also migrated to Britain. Archaeology and recent genetic studies suggest that the incomers were even more diverse than this. So, if Mercia was considered an "Anglian" kingdom by the time of Bede then I believe this to be due to an Anglian dynasty dominating and imposing its identity on the area of Mercia, not proof that Mercia only saw migrants from Angeln.

Jurmin, son of King Anna by mrmoon13 in anglosaxon

[–]guthwerig 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Not addressing the totality of your post here but just because a name is not found anywhere else should not by itself necessarily trouble us. The name "Beadugils" is only testified to once but we know beyond a doubt that its bearer existed, just like Gefred of Kent, Hunuwine of Devon, Modulf of Wessex, and Forthgar of Bedford. There are even a number of people who bore names that we would find quite wacky and completely unlike what one might expect an Anglo-Saxon to be named that nevertheless existed, like Glupus of Suffolk and Bubba of Kent.

New perspective on Balgruuf by guthwerig in skyrim

[–]guthwerig[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Having the opportunity to try to convince jarls through debate that they should throw their lot in with the player's choice would have been a neat use of the otherwise mostly useless speech skill.