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The Anglo-Saxons had a massive impact on the language and genetics of what we call England today, but when and why did these Germanic peoples settle in England?

Shortly after the Roman withdrawal from Britain in 410 AD, groups of Angles and Saxons from places such as ancient Germany and Denmark began flooding into ancient England, with Frisia, a region in parts of modern Germany and the Netherlands, thought to have been a key region the Anglo-Saxons came from. Ancient England at that point was a mixture of various peoples, including the Celtic Britons and the legacy of the Roman period.

The first thing to note is that the Anglo-Saxons were initially invited to defend the Britons against attacks from groups such as the Picts and the Scotti. Bede, an ancient English monk, wrote in the 8th century AD on the Ecclesiastical History of the English people that Anglo-Saxons were initially invited by Vortigern, a King of the Britons, to fight his enemies, and they were given land in the east of modern England. Bede writes that after initially coming over in three warships, word quickly spread of the fertile lands in Britain and more Angles and Saxons sailed over. They came from three powerful Germanic tribes, the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, according to Bede, and were led by two brothers, Hengist and Horsa.

After initially being invited to fight on behalf of the Britons, the Anglo-Saxons turned on their hosts, as the “number of foreigners began to increase to such an extent that they became a source of terror to the natives that had invited them in,” in the words of Bede. “Then suddenly, they made a temporary treaty with the Picts that they had already driven far away and began to turn their weapons against their allies,” Bede adds.

Others fled across the water to Armorica, or Britanny today, and their Celtic Brythonic language with them. That is why many people of Britanny today still speak one of the six remaining Celtic languages, called Breton.

Sources:

Heptarchy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heptarchy

Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-S...

BBC - Why did the Anglo-Saxons come to Britain? https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics...

Schiffels, S., Haak, W., Paajanen, P. et al. Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon genomes from East England reveal British migration history. Nat Commun 7, 10408 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10408

Bede - Ecclesiastical History of the English people (Oxford World’s Classics)

Britannica, Anglo-Saxon https://www.britannica.com/topic/Angl...

English language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English...
Settlers: Genetics, Geography and the Peopling of Britain - Oxford
University Museum of Natural History - http://www.oum.ox.ac.uk/settlers/

Oxford University Museum of Natural History - Genetic Ancestry and the People of the British Isles    • Genetic Ancestry and the People of th...  

University of Oxford - Who do you think you really are? A genetic map of the British Isles https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2015-03-19-...

University of Oxford - People of the British Isles - Population Genetics and Facial Genetics https://www.peopleofthebritishisles.org/ https://www.peopleofthebritishisles.o...

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