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lands. .
How did Anglo-Saxons lived ?
Towns & villages they settled down.
-Most Saxon men were big and strong and they were
also very active everyday.
dress
brooches
Role of Women
• The wife of an earl or thane
supervised weaving and dyeing of
clothes, the slaughter of
livestock, the making of bread,
beekeeping, and the brewing of
mead (fermented honey).
• They would work alongside men
in the fields
• Women inherited and held
property.
• Married women retained control
over their property.
tunic
belt
shield
knife
Weapons
• The most feared Anglo-Saxon weapon was a battle
axe, but the most precious weapon was a sword. It
took hours of work by a smith to craft a sword. He
softened iron in a red-hot fire, twisted iron rods
together and hammered the sword into shape.
The Warrior Code
• The king had a small bodyguard of
brave warriors who would die to
defend him. The 'warrior-code' of
the Anglo-Saxons taught that a
warrior must fight and die for his
leader, if he had to.
• An Anglo-Saxon poem called The
Battle of Maldon tells the story of a
battle in Essex in 991, between
English and invading Vikings. The
English leader allowed the Vikings
to cross from their camp for a 'fair
fight'. The English lost, but the
poem still praises their heroism.
Sutton Hoo
• In the 7th century AD, a King – it
was surely no less – received a
magnificent burial at Sutton Hoo, in
East Anglia. A ship was hauled up
from the river, a burial chamber was
erected in the middle of it, and a
stupendous collection of
magnificent objects – gold and
silver brooches and dishes, the
sword of state, drinking horns and a
lyre – was set in the burial chamber.
• The helmet has become a
symbol of the Sutton Hoo
burial; yet it survived as a
mass of small pieces, and
was only reconstructed
after years of painstaking
work in the British
Museum Laboratory.
• Here we see a photo of the
excavations in 1939, with
the excavators uncovering
the chamber built at the
middle of the ship, and Mrs
Pretty, the landowner and
sponsor of the excavations,
sitting with her friends in
the background.
Glory
• Immortality only earned through heroic
actions
– The goal was to be remembered after death, in
songs and stories of his great deeds
Early Anglo-Saxons Beliefs
• In Roman Britain, many people
had been Christians. The early
Anglo-Saxons were pagans. Much
like theVikings of Scandinavia,
they believed in many gods. The
king of the Anglo-Saxon gods, for
example, was Woden - a German
version of the Scandinavian god
Odin. From his name comes our
day of the week Wednesday or
'Woden's day'. Other gods were
Thunor, god of thunder; Frige,
goddess of love; and Tiw, god of
war.