Saxons vs. Vikings Quotes

“the Battle of the Book, which took place in the kingdom of Cairbre Drom Cliabh in north-west Ireland between 555 and 561, two clans went to war after St. Columba had illegally copied a version of the Psalms belonging to St. Finnian, most likely the only war to even begin over copyright infringement.”
― Ed West, Saxons vs. Vikings: Alfred the Great and England in the Dark Ages

“All in all, Norse paganism looks like what you get if you let teenage boys design a religion, focused on fighting, formication, and alcohol; whereas Christianity seemed to them like it was thought up by their mothers.”
― Ed West, Saxons vs. Vikings: Alfred the Great and England in the Dark Ages

“Instead the Latin-speaking British elite did what all defeated people do and headed for higher ground, or across the sea to Armorica, which became known as Brittany, or “Lesser Britain” (which is why Britain is “Great Britain”).”
― Ed West, Saxons vs. Vikings: Alfred the Great and England in the Dark Ages

“The Vikings and the Anglo-Saxons were closely related by ancestry and language, since the latter had themselves only left Denmark three hundred years previously. But while the Saxons had settled down and found God, the Vikings were aggressive, pagan, and suffering serious overcrowding at home”
― Ed West, Saxons vs. Vikings: Alfred the Great and England in the Dark Ages

“The Romans called the area Scadinavia, which may mean “dangerous island,” because the sea was dangerous, rather than the people. An N was later added in.”
― Ed West, Saxons vs. Vikings: Alfred the Great and England in the Dark Ages

“No one called them Vikings at the time; that word simply means raider44 and only became common when the Icelandic sagas of the eleventh century were popularized in Victorian times. To the Saxons they were called Danes, even if they were often Norwegian; both nationalities tended to rape and pillage, so it didn’t really make much difference which freezing hellhole they came from. More”
― Ed West, Saxons vs. Vikings: Alfred the Great and England in the Dark Ages

“They even had wars about monastic books, of all things; in one debacle, called the Battle of the Book, which took place in the kingdom of Cairbre Drom Cliabh in north-west Ireland between 555 and 561, two clans went to war after St. Columba had illegally copied a version of the Psalms belonging to St. Finnian, most likely the only war to even begin over copyright infrigment. The battle between the two groups led to “thousands” of deaths.”
― Ed West, Saxons vs. Vikings: Alfred the Great and England in the Dark Ages

“The Anglo-Saxons had eight words for spear, twelve for battle, and thirty-six for hero, but before the Romans introduced them they had no concept of table, pillow, or street. The oldest words in the English language, dating from this period, include “tits” and “fart,” which suggest a society that must have had its moments, but was hardly on the verge of the renaissance. The language also had no future tense, which points to a certain lack of ambition.”
― Ed West, Saxons vs. Vikings: Alfred the Great and England in the Dark Ages

“The Britons called the invaders the Saesneg, as the English are today called by their neighbors to the west (in Scottish Gaelic it is Sassenach and in Cornish Sowsnek). They in turn referred to the natives as Welsh, which has a variety of meanings but none of them particularly positive, either “slave,” “foreigner” or “dark stranger” (likewise the French-speaking Belgians are called Walloons and Wallachia in Romania has the same etymology, while Cornwall, Walsall, and Walthamstow in London probably all come from Wal). The Welsh, or Cymraeg, referred to the neighboring country as “Lloegyr,” literally “the lost lands.”
― Ed West, Saxons vs. Vikings: Alfred the Great and England in the Dark Ages

“England may have never come to exist were it not for this one man, and it is with good reason that Alfred is the only English king to be known as “the Great.”2 He fought off the Danes; he unified England (well, sort of); he helped found a common law for everyone; he built towns for the first time since the Romans left; he introduced a navy; and most of all, he encouraged education and the arts in a country just emerging from centuries of illiteracy. Having learned to read in adulthood, King Alfred personally translated Latin texts into English and was the only king to write anything before Henry VIII, and the only European ruler between the second and thirteenth centuries to write on the philosophy of kingship.”
― Ed West, Saxons vs. Vikings: Alfred the Great and England in the Dark Ages

“Owain of Strathclyde (the Welsh-speaking kingdom of western Scotland).”
― Ed West, Saxons vs. Vikings: Alfred the Great and England in the Dark Ages