- The Angles and Saxons. For 400 years southern Britain was part of the Roman world. But when the last Roman soldiers left Britain in AD 410, new people were already coming across the North Sea from territories located in the continent in what is today Germany and Holland. The new settlers were a mixture of people: Saxons, Angles, Jutes. England gets its name from the Angles (Angle-land), while it is still called “Sasana” in Gaelic (and its inhabitants “Sassenachs”), after the Saxons.
Certain days of the week are named after early Saxon Gods:
Tiwesdæg (Tiw's-day - the day of the sky god Tiw,Tiu or Tig),
Wodnesdæg ( Woden's day - the day of the god Woden),
Ðunresdæg (Thor's Day - the day of the god Ðunor ),
Frigedæg (Freyja's day - the day of the goddess Freyja, wife to Woden),
The Anglo-Saxons ruled for about 500 years (a hundred years longer than the Romans). However, unlike the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons never 'went home'. The Anglo-Saxons divided England into kingdoms, each with its own royal family. The five main Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex, Kent and Anglia.
Great Anglo-Saxon kings included Offa of Mercia and Edwin of Northumbria (who founded Edinburgh or 'Edwin's burh', the current capital of Scotland). The most famous of all Anglo-Saxon kings is Alfred, the only king in British history to be called 'Great', while one who was really not a very good one was Ethelred the Unready (his name comes from an Old English word unraed, meaning "bad advice"). Finally a Dane called Cnut became king of England in 1016.
