Who were the Angles and Saxons (‘Anglo-Saxons’)?

Artefacts found in Scotland are sometimes described as ‘Anglo-Saxon‘ or ‘Anglian‘, but what does that mean? 

Who Were the ‘Angles’ and ‘Saxons’?  

For thousands of years, different groups of people travelled to what we now call Britain and made these islands their home. By the early medieval period which began approximately 1,600 years ago (AD 400), the UK was populated by people descended from groups who’d already arrived and settled over thousands of years during the earlier Palaeolithic to Iron Age eras. 

Around 1,500 years ago, a number of new groups started to come to the UK from the European continent and settle here. These included the Angles and the Saxons. 

According to Scotland’s Periods and Ages project (ScAPA), the national terminology thesaurus used by Historic Environment Scotland and most other heritage institutions in Scotland: 

‘Anglian’ is defined as ‘a cultural term for groups of people from northern Germany who occupied large parts of eastern England after the Romans left. The Anglian kingdom of Northumbria included much of the eastern side of Scotland up to the Firth of Forth.’  

Their name is thought to derive from the name of the area they originally inhabited, the Angeln peninsula on the Baltic coast of Jutland. 

In the Scottish thesaurus, ‘Saxon’ is also defined as a cultural term ‘applied to the distinctive culture and artistic styles that evolved from the merging of native traditions with those of Germanic tribes who had migrated from northern Europe.’  

The name of the Saxons has traditionally been said to derive from a kind of knife called a seax in Old English, and sachs in Old High German.  

What Is the Term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ Used For?  

The term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ isn’t thought to have been widely used during the medieval period, but in more recent centuries it came to be commonly used to describe the period when all the kingdoms of what is now England – Angles and Saxons and everyone else – gradually came together. 

It’s still sometimes used by archaeologists, historians and the public to describe the period in England around the 7th to 11th centuries (AD 600s to 1000s), although the term ‘early medieval’ is now more commonly used by archaeologists to describe the period across the whole of the UK and in Scotland specifically.  

The term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ was used to describe a specific period of time or an artistic style – in a similar way we would use the terms ‘Tudor’, ‘Jacobean’ or ‘Victorian’ (pertaining to the Kings/Queens of the age) to describe a period or a decorative style.  

Today, most experts wouldn’t use ‘Anglo-Saxon’ as a term to describe people, groups of people or even this period in England.  

Were Angles or Saxons in Scotland?  

We do have evidence of Angles, which tells a story of conflict followed by people settling in the southeast of Scotland. 

The Annals of Tigernach and the Annals of Ulster both record that a site called Etin (thought to be Edinburgh) was under siege and fell to the Angles in AD 638 (around 1,300 years ago). There’s also a record of an earlier battle – between the Gaelic Kingdom of Dal Riata and Bernicia (roughly Northumbria and the Scottish Borders) in AD 603. Over this period, the Angles moved north into the Lothians and this region came under their rule, meaning they now governed large areas from North Yorkshire to the Firth of Forth. 

There’s also evidence of a number of Anglian settlements in southeast Scotland. 

Auldhame

The site of Auldhame in East Lothian, for example, has been excavated and shows both civilian settlement and the presence of an early monastery in the style of Anglian settlements to the south.

In addition, several ‘Anglo-Saxon’-style finds (see description below) such as a gold mount, glass ink pot and a pin were also uncovered. Furthermore, the name ‘ham’ has an Anglian root and there’s documentary evidence of links to two other Anglian settlements in England at Lindisfarne and Northumbria. 

Sprouston

Another settlement which hasn’t been excavated but is generally accepted as being Anglian is at Sprouston in the Scottish Borders. According to Ian M Smith’s article in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, the site features cropmarks showing the remains of large rectangular timber halls which are similar to the excavated Anglian site at Yeavering in Northumberland about 40 miles away.  

In addition, there’s a cemetery of over 380 graves with an approximate east to west orientation typical of an early Christian cemetery of 7th to 8th century date (AD 600 to 800). This style of cemetery has lots of parallels further south in known and excavated Anglian burials in what is now England.

While there were other Christians in Scotland before/at the same time as the Angles, there isn’t the same style of burial and settlement evidence all over Scotland. The fact that the cemetery is Christian alone doesn’t make it Anglian, but the large numbers of graves, the layout and association with a probable timber hall altogether suggest that it is. 

Furthermore, the name ‘Sprouston’ is an ‘early english’ name, the language primarily used by the Angles, with ‘sprow’ being a person’s name and ‘ton’ meaning farm.   

Stone Crosses and Sculptures 

Several surviving carved stone crosses and sculptures also indicate that Angles settled in this area. The Ruthwell Cross in Dumfriesshire, for example, depicts Anglian style decoration (based on animals and birds with interlaced decorative patterns) and both Latin and ‘Anglo-Saxon’ or ‘Anglo-Frisian runes’.  

What about Saxons? 

Although some Saxons could’ve been living in the land we now call Scotland, we haven’t discovered any direct evidence or Saxon settlements as they mainly established themselves in southern England.   

Why Are Some Artefacts Found in Scotland Described as ‘Anglo-Saxon’?  

The Scottish Archaeological Research Framework (ScARF), which is coordinated by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, uses the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ to describe the style of art or craft which consists of intricate designs with zoo-morphic (based on animals and birds) and abstract interlace geometric patterns.  

This includes this mount from Dornoch in the Highlands and some objects with an Anglo-Saxon style of decoration from the Galloway Hoard, such as a disc brooch and rare pectoral cross.   

The Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Sculpture catalogue also describes a range of stone carved work between about 7th and 11th centuries AD found in what is now England and southern Scotland. The Anglo-Saxon style of art is continental in origin but developed in what is now England during the early medieval period.   

Why is There a Debate About the Term ‘Anglo-Saxon’? 

The term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ has been misappropriated at various points throughout history and parts of the general public have come to think of its meaning in different ways. It’s often been used in discourse about race and co-opted to mean ‘indigenous white English people‘.  

This is not accurate in any way.  

The Angles and Saxons were immigrants and just two of many groups of people who, over millennia, came to what is now the UK and made their home here. They were preceded by various groups in the Neolithic (the people who brought farming to Scotland) and the Bronze Age – and, just a few hundred years before, the Romans. Angles, Saxons and Jutes were followed in subsequent centuries by Vikings, Danes and the Normans with many more groups of people arriving over the following thousand years. 

Because the understanding of the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ has started to change in popular culture, many archaeologists have now chosen not to keep using it to describe this period.  

What Term Could Be Used Instead of ‘Anglo-Saxon’? 

The term ‘early medieval’ is better used to describe the UK during this period as this covers the ever-changing kingdoms and demography – from the Picts, the Gaels, the Kingdom of Dal Riata, the Angles, Saxons, Vikings, and eventually the establishment of the Scots and the English.  

If you’d like to keep reading, dive into the Dig It! articles on the Celts, Vikings and Picts.  

---

Header Image: Pectoral cross from the Galloway Hoard (Credit: National Museums Scotland, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)