Bede (pages 74-82)
- The Situation of Britain and Ireland: Their Earliest Inhabitants
- Most British people were illiterate → Bede was able to access books and documents via monastery
- Britain → formerly called Albion, extends 800 miles northwards and 200 in breadth (promontories extends to 3,675 miles)
- Britain → rich in grain and timber; good pasturage for cattle and draft animals
- plenty of land and sea birds; rivers and springs full of fish
- shellfish full of pearls and dyes extracted from cockles (edible shellfish)
- both salt and hot springs, people bathe in separately according to age and sex
- rich veins of metals → copper, iron, lead, and silver
- abundant in black jet (coal)
- Britain → five languages and four nations (English, British, Scots, and Picts)
- all have their own languages but are united through study of Latin (common medium)
- original inhabitants were the Britons → crossed into Britain from Armorica
- Pictish seafarers asked for a grant of land to make a settlement → crossed into Britain and settled north of the island
- Scots migrated and through combination of force and treaty, obtained the settlements that the Picts received
- from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
- Vikings split up → one part in East Anglia (kingdom of Anglo-Saxon England in the East, including modern Norfolk and Suffolk) and one part in Northumbria (Northern kingdom of Anglo-Saxon England, including city of York)
- slaughtered many cattle and men, many were thanes (lords) in Kent, Sussex, etc.
- King Alfred commanded longships to be built against ash-ships
- Naval warfare occurred between the Danes and the English
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