Review : Lost Realms (2)

Time to conclude my review of Thomas Williams' excellent Lost Realms. Last time I looked at how Williams says Britain neither collapsed into ruin nor flourished without Roman oppression as the Empire receded. Instead it did both, all over the place and at different times, in a thoroughly messy mixture. Treating Britain as a homogenous unit in this period gives meaningless answers. Some parts were, for a while, left in a period of the utmost destitution. Others, for a while, maintained an elite lifestyle. Some regions constructed new monumental buildings, albeit of timber rather than stone, while in others the abandoned villas were converted into crude farmsteads, the delicate frescos ruined by animals, the towns left dead. 

In this post I want to look at a bit more of the details of the culture that resulted, this curious mix of pagan and Christian, each of different varieties. I'll also look at whether the increasingly contentious notion of the Anglo-Saxon invasion can still be sustained or if it appears this needs significant revision.

4) Cultural evolution

Just how complex the change could be is only really visible when comparing kingdoms to each other. Some were islands of Roman Christianity persisting amongst pagan Celts and Saxons, while elsewhere, there were pockets of paganism which survived while surrounded by restored Christianity. And there isn't a straightforward correlation between which of these areas were trading with continental Europe and which were left isolated.

I've already mentioned the late-survival of pseudo-Roman regions, with their early adoption of Christianity, but the other side of the mirror is an equally romantic tragedy : the survival of paganism among the ever-encroaching and expanding Christendom. What makes the story especially complex is that these lifestyles were likely a mixture of the pre-Roman beliefs as well as imported Scandinavian and Germanic ideas. 

In Hwicce (Gloucestershire) for example, there were Anglo-Saxon foreigners present (but not invaders) re-using pre-Roman burial mounds. Exactly who those people were and who they identified themselves as remains a mystery, though Williams suspects they were closer to the native Britons than either the Romano-British or the Saxons. Crucially, he notes that racial memory is hardly a reliable source of information – societies tell themselves origin myths for all sorts of reasons, and who they claim to be can have very little to do with where they were actually from.

Lindsey (Lincolnshire) too experienced late paganism; like Hwicce this seems to have been Norse. They claimed Odin as an ancestral king, and "weapon dancer" figures* have been inscribed on helmets in a similar style to objects found in Sweden. These too may represent Odin/Woden, though Williams says that nothing can really be known of the kind of Woden worshipped here (which lasted until about the 7th century). Perhaps more surprising is that these beliefs persisted longest in, of all places, in Essex and especially Sussex. Evidence of this is largely archaeological, based on cremations and grave goods, which were (apparently) largely pagan practises, though more direct symbols are also seen (e.g. Thor's hammer being replaced by crosses).

* Along with various sources of poetry mentioning exotic figures like "Selyf Battle-Snake" and the Three Battle-Rulers of Britain, this is one of many things Williams introduces which I strongly feel someone should have told me about long before. This is one of the most transformative periods in our history and it's pretty darn shameful that we ignore it so.

Predictably, all this is complex and inhomogeneous. Beliefs were certainly varied and varying, and this is about as much as can be said with any certainty. In the case of grave goods I have to say I'm a bit surprised to see archaeologists treating this one as such a trusted diagnostic. It seems to me that the desire to bury treasured possessions with a loved one is a just very human thing to do : you wouldn't necessarily do it out of any sort of spiritual belief, not even due to established custom, but out of a deeper, more primal, simpler feeling of rightness.

Both Essex and Sussex show evidence of re-use of older structures. As with Hwicce, exactly who they were is complicated, especially given the unfortunate label of the "Saxon Shore". Whether this was meant originally as a Roman bulwark against invaders of a region already inhabited by Saxons (or at least culturally Saxon) is unknown. In the case of Sussex, like Tintagel in the west, there's evidence of prosperous trade with Europe and regions further afield. Pagan it might have been, but uncivilised it certainly wasn't. Even in the far north in the lands of the Picts (which I will have to pass over all too briefly), there's evidence of massive fortresses and expensive Roman imports.

5) Invasion

I mentioned in the review of The Anglo-Saxons that there were different ways in which the culture of Britain could change – which it most certainly did :

• The popular view, thanks largely to Bede, is that the Anglo-Saxons arrived and slaughtered the entire native population of England, replacing them in their entirety. 
• Marc Morris thinks this massacre-replacement might have happened but only in isolated local regions, with others experiencing an "elite transfer" in which the great and the good were swapped for foreigners but the great unwashed remained largely unaffected. 
• Francis Pryor, at the opposite extreme from Bede, thinks that there was little or no replacement of any kind, and that the overwhelming mechanism behind the visible changes was simply adoption of cultural ideas rather than movement of actual people.

Williams leans somewhat more towards Pryor than Morris. It's pretty undeniable that foreign invasions did happen, and invaders did on occasion enact savage atrocities. But the numbers, he says, were just not that large even over long periods of time. And diagnosing the presence of actual human foreigners from supposedly foreign artifacts is dubious in the extreme. Pryor expresses this sentiment forcefully and admirably, but I have to say that Williams goes one better :

There are few, for example, who would argue, that the ability to produce a competent croissant implies that the baker was born in France or even of French ancestry. Nor does a surfeit of croissant-producers in a particular town imply a wave of French migration. Even if the popularity of croissants had resulted in a dramatic decline in, say, scone production, none would seek to explain the phenomenon by postulating a genocidal French invasion that wiped out everyone with ancestral knowledge of English baking.

Not quite true ! Nigel Farage would definitely claim this. I'm not entirely joking either, because Williams makes it abundantly clear that Bede's explanation of his tale of ruin and genocide was based on sheer bigotry. Bede hated the local Britons with a passion. They appear in his works conspicuous by their absence, appearing only as totems of barbarism with their foolish hairstyles and miscalculation of Easter. Bede, says Williams, also omits cultural inhomogeneities known from the ground truth of archaeology, neglecting the influence of Gaul in southern Britain and Scandinavia to the north. He's an intelligent witness and his testimony can't be dismissed, but it shouldn't be taken as unarguable truth either. He got things right but also very wrong.

Williams does concede that there must have been some level of foreign migration into Britain in the post-Roman period. It almost certainly wasn't in the form of a genocidal purge from bloodthirsty invaders, though whether any more limited sort of "invasion" took place is unclear. As we've seen, the long-lasting cultural practises in some parts of the island mean that the locals were hardly wiped out. Indeed in Lindsey, the wide separation of the pagan burial sites from the local administrative centre leads Williams to suggest they may have retained a degree of control and authority in the post-Roman centuries. 

In Essex too, with its late-surviving paganism, foreigners and multiple cultural influences were nonetheless definitely present. In some regions, the foreigners may even have mimicked the local British practises to "fit in" with the establishment, completely reversing the usual view of the Britons adopting external influences. Sometimes, scones are better than croissants after all. 

What's less clear here is what exactly about the various cultural practises was appealing. The possible pervading world view that was developing is absolutely fascinating (see next post), but I find it an awful lot easier to empathise with the Roman lifestyle. To me that, perhaps inevitably, will always seem... more civilised, more rational, more comfortable. Why anyone would exchange all the things the Romans did for us (not least of which being a pan-national political system) for the more chaotic, anarchic, inhomogeneous local polities I find very hard to grasp. Like so many issues here, this is probably a multi-faceted topic, and Williams is wise to steer clear of it.

Conclusions

Did Britain collapse or prosper after the departure of the legions ? Was it subject to foreign invasion, brutal savagery, or did the locals come out on top ? Did Christianity quickly triumph or did paganism prevail for a time ? Were there Arthurian-like holdouts of civilisation or should we instead think of it as an age of a continuation of Roman lifestyles with only a few pockets of Celtic practices remaining in a few areas ?

The answer to all of these is yes : both, in different places and at different times. Britain in this period simply cannot be described as a single unit. Those little kingdoms, many of which are now forgotten completely, and some only barely remembered as a word, really mattered to the people of the day. Asking what happened to Britain at this time would be a bit like asking what happened to the whole of Asia. There's no one meaningful answer that can be given.

I want to end with a couple of points. First, this book is a really good bit of critical thinking. Williams tries his best to present the most plausible interpretations but never comes across as certain and always admits openly when things are unknowable. And he guides the reader through his reasoning process very clearly, making this a vital part of the story : asking the questions is as enjoyable as suggesting the answers. If occasionally tedious, by and large his literary analysis to infer where kingdoms where, what their history was, is generally excellent (in particular, wryly suggesting that one poem is simply not good enough to be false).

Finally, why did the kingdoms fail ? As usual, lots of reasons. Most were absorbed by their large neighbours, either by conquest or political choices, but generally with hostility. Others merged together and faded. The Pictish kingdom, uniquely, over-expanded to the point with cultural homogeneity became impossible to maintain.

What didn't work was an attempt to fight the future. Offa, says Williams, probably was the one responsible for the eponymous dyke after all (though I would have liked more about the vast scale of the resources needed for this). And, as Marc Morris suggested, there was likely a racial overtone to this. Williams himself gets a little hung up on the terms "dark ages" and "Anglo-Saxon", justifying their use in probably unnecessary detail... but this obsession with language over matters of substance is another topic. I want instead to close with a quote from Williams which I think brilliantly summarises the folly and fantasy of trying to fence out the world, but also, worryingly, emphasises how little important the physical effect of the project is for its political success.

Authoritarian rule, wherever it is found, typically depends on stoking a fear of others. Building walls is an easy way to divide insiders from outsiders, to project the anxieties of a community onto whatever lies beyond. In this way, wall-builders transform erstwhile neighbours into existential threats – the wolves that stalk the sheepfold, the monsters that haunt the hall. At the same time, the wall-builder presents himself as a bulwark against impending doom. Seen as a protector, he develops a powerful grip on the labour, the obedience, even the devotion, of his people. For any ruler who wishes to be seen in heroic terms, and who depends on unprecedented support for his projects, the political benefit of a such a large public work may be incalculable. Whether the threat is entirely invented or simply magnified out of all proportion, whether the wall 'works' or is ever used as advertised – indeed whether it is even finished at all – is largely beside the point.

The world of "Dark Age" Britain, which Williams adopts as a term to refer to how much we still don't know about the period, is sometimes not so unfamiliar after all. Likewise his comments that historians of the past have tended to underplay the very real collapse of past kingdoms and civilisations owing to our own protracted period of relative stability, also seems pertinent; that actually, however more nuanced the real history might have been, there were times which were simply calamitous in way that are difficult to grasp from the position of the unrivalled comforts of modernity. But just as the Dark Age warlord mentality has never fully receded, so I have to wonder if the opposing view wasn't there as well. The stories of Dark Age Britain are rife with success as well as failure. Perhaps, then, there was also some far-sighted individual, more compassionate and sincere than their later counterpart, who would have said with far nobler judgement : Mr Offa, tear down this dyke !