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The Chronicle is, however, a biased source, acting as a piece of "wartime propaganda" written on behalf of the Anglo-Saxon forces against their Viking opponents, and, in many cases, greatly exaggerates the size of the Viking fleets and armies, thereby making any Anglo-Saxon victories against them seem more heroic. [54]
Anglo-Saxon history thus begins during the period of sub-Roman Britain following the end of Roman control, and traces the establishment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the 5th and 6th centuries (conventionally identified as seven main kingdoms: Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex, and Wessex); their Christianisation during the 7th ...
The larger narrative, seen in the history of Anglo-Saxon England, is the continued mixing and integration of various disparate elements into one Anglo-Saxon people. [ citation needed ] The outcome of this mixing and integration was a continuous re-interpretation by the Anglo-Saxons of their society and worldview, which Heinreich Härke calls a ...
Viking expansion was the historical movement which led Norse explorers, traders and warriors, the latter known in modern scholarship as Vikings, to sail most of the North Atlantic, reaching south as far as North Africa and east as far as Russia, and through the Mediterranean as far as Constantinople and the Middle East, acting as looters, traders, colonists and mercenaries.
The Anglo-Saxon historian Æthelweard was very specific in his chronicle and said that "the fleets of the viking tyrant Ivar the Boneless landed in England from the north". [34] [35] The Vikings had been defeated by the West Saxon King Æthelwulf in 851, so rather than land in Wessex they decided to go further north to East Anglia.
Instead, for their understanding of Anglo-Saxon settlement historians have often relied upon Bede the English monk, a much later author and scholar (672/673–735), who in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, tried to compute dates for events in early Anglo-Saxon history.
The Kingdom of England emerged from the gradual unification of the early medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdoms known as the Heptarchy: East Anglia, Mercia, Northumbria, Kent, Essex, Sussex, and Wessex. The Viking invasions of the 9th century upset the balance of power between the English kingdoms, and native Anglo-Saxon life in general. The English ...
Bede's work was widely read among the literate in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and his dates were used by the monks who compiled the various Anglo-Saxon Chronicles from the late ninth century onwards. [7] Some sources say that the Saxon warriors were invited to come, to the area now known as England, to help keep out invaders from Scotland and ...