Angeln
 |
This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. (March 2013) |
Angeln, also known as Anglia (German: Angeln, Danish: Angel, Latin: Anglia), is a small peninsula (within the larger Jutland peninsula) in Southern Schleswig in the northern Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, protruding into the Bay of Kiel. It is separated from the neighbouring peninsula of Schwansen (Danish: Svans or Svansø) by the Schlei inlet, and from the Danish island of Als by the Flensburger Förde ("Firth of Flensburg"). Whether ancient Angeln conformed to these borders is uncertain. It may have been somewhat larger; however, the ancient sources mainly concur that it included the territory of modern Angeln. Angeln has a significance far beyond its current small area and country terrain, in that it is believed to have been the original home of the Angles, Germanic immigrants to central and northern England, and East Anglia. This migration led to their new homeland being named after them, from which the name "England" derives. Both England and the English language, thus, ultimately derive their names from the Angles and Angeln.
Contents |
Name [edit]
The name of the Angles is thought to derive from the name of the area they inhabited, Angeln. The latter has been hypothesized to originate from the Germanic root for "narrow" (compare German eng = "narrow"), meaning "the Narrow [Water]", i.e. the Schlei estuary; the root would be angh, "tight". Another theory is that the name meant "hook", as in angling for fish; Julius Pokorny, a major Indo-European linguist, derives it from *ang-, "bend" (see ankle).
Angeln is situated on the large bight linking the Baltic coast to Jutland, which is mainly the Bay of Kiel (Kieler Bucht), but might be seen as Holsteiner Bucht.
The Angles were part of the Federation of the Ingaevones, with their mythical ancestor and god of fertility Yngvi, and both terms might well share the same root (inglish -> anglish), say as the origin of the federation. Pokorny points out the possible use of this etymological root in other ancient names, such as Hardanger and Angrivarii.
Early history [edit]
The region was home to the Germanic people, the Angles, who, together with Saxons and Jutes, left their home to migrate to Britain in the 5th-6th centuries. For the years 449-455, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, written c. 890, describes how King Vortigern (a British tribal king) invited the Angles to come and receive land in return for helping him defend against marauding Picts. Those successful Angles sent word back that good land was available and that the British were 'worthless'. (In fact, the racial contempt of the Angles towards the Britons was an invention[citation needed] of the monk Gildas, who is part founder of this origin myth[citation needed]. His object was to vilify the decadence of the British leadership)[citation needed]. A wholesale emigration of Angles and kindred German peoples followed.
The Chronicle, commissioned by King Alfred the Great, drew on earlier oral traditions and on the few written fragments available. The best of these, written around 730, was by the monk Bede whose history of English Christianity had the following brief account of the origin and distribution of the Angles:
- "...from the Angles, that is, the country which is called Anglia, and which is said, from that time, to remain desert to this day, between the provinces of the Jutes and the Saxons, are descended the East Angles, the Midland Angles, Mercians, all the race of the Northumbrians, that is, of those nations that dwell on the north side of the river Humber, and the other nations of the English." (Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, Book I, Chapter XV, 731 A.D.)
The phrase "north of the Humber" refers to the northern kingdom of Northumbria, which includes what is now north and north-eastern England and part of southern Scotland. Mercia was located in central England and broadly corresponds to what is now known as the English Midlands.
It had long been suspected from all the Germanic sources that this report is too simple, a suspicion confirmed by the archaeology; namely, the fibulae, or brooches, worn by the women. In essence, there are two kinds, the saucer brooch and the cruciform brooch. East coastal and northern Britain were settled by women wearing cruciform brooches, which came from coastal Scandinavia, all of Denmark, and Schleswig-Holstein all the way south to the lower Elbe and all the way east to the Oder, as well as a pocket in coastal Friesland, the embarkation point.
South central Britain was settled by women wearing the saucer brooch, which came from Lower Saxony, the south side of the lower Elbe, and pockets among the then Franks up the Rhine and along the coast to the mouth of the Seine. These are the areas of England that are labeled explicitly as Saxon: Sussex, Wessex, and Essex. The settlement of Kent is attributed to Jutes (from the north of the Angles).
This leads to a conclusion that the "Angles" described by Bede included all the people who populated modern Schleswig-Holstein and Western Pomerania south to the first big bend in the Elbe, and potentially members of any of the other language related groups that were recorded under different names grouped by late ethnologists as Ingaevones. A more complete presentation is given under Angles.
Later history [edit]
After the Angles departed from Anglia, by the 8th century the region was occupied by Danish Vikings. This is reflected in the large number of place names ending in -by (meaning -village) in the region today. In the Viking period, the chronicler Æthelweard reports that the most important town in Angeln was Hedeby.
Later Angeln's history is subsumed in that of the larger surrounding region, which came to be known as Southern Jutland or Schleswig (Danish: Slesvig). Until the 19th century, the area belonged primarily to Denmark. But, in terms of ethnic and linguistic heritage, a mixed German/Danish population evolved. Denmark lost Schleswig to Austria and Prussia in 1864 as a result of the second war of Schleswig. In 1920, following Germany's defeat in World War I, a plebiscite was held to determine which areas should return to Danish control. As a result of the plebiscite, much of Schleswig returned to Denmark, but Angeln remained in Germany. See Schleswig-Holstein Question for a detailed history.
See also [edit]
References [edit]
- Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, Book I, Bede, c. 731
- The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Translated and collated by Anne Savage, Dorset Press, 1983, ISBN 0-88029-061-7
- Malcom Falkus and John Gillingham, Historical Atlas of Britain, Crescent Books, 1987, ISBN 0-517-63382-5
