As the eagle standards of Rome sank ever southward we are told of the emergence of the Germanic Tribes. Caesar and Tacitus tell of their war-like nature and their social and spiritual culture; a people to be respected and feared, as Varus would learn to his cost.
The early medieval period, or 'Dark Ages' as some still refer to it, was pivotal in the formation of our country and people. Spanning some 600 years this age endured nearly twice that of the Roman occupation of this island. What started as a number of small tribal kingdoms would grow to become one nation under a single king.
As the Romans withdrew from Britannia, the North Sea Tribes and the people of the Baltic set forth on a journey westward to find a new land. The Jutes, Angles, Frisians and Saxons left their homelands behind and with their families and possessions, their culture and spiritual values, their social structure and law-codes, their creation myths and folk-tales, they found for themselves a new home; a place in which to put down roots and flourish, a place that would come to be known as England.
Invaders or settlers? Maybe both. Barbarians? No more than any other people of their time. They brought their cultural and trade networks with them. Stretching from the tin mines of Cornwall into Europe, through the Carolingian and Burgundian empires, the homelands of the Alamanni and Franks, to Rome and beyond; to Constantinople and across the Mediterranean to North Africa; bringing silver and gold, furs, fine linens and silks, weapons and wargear, knowledge and learning from the four corners of the known world. A golden age of princes and spectacular burials, the time of Sutton Hoo, Taplow and Prittlewell.
But they were only to be the first; in the centuries that followed they would be joined by the Danes and Norwegians, the people that we would come to know as the 'Vikings'; and at the very end the Normans, the 'Norsemen'. A new wave of invasions and settlement. They in turn brought their own laws and trade-ways, their religious beliefs and social structures; extending trade routes through the Baltic countries to Russia and down her vast rivers to Byzantium. The second great age of kings and the creation of a nation, the foundation of York and the inception of the Danelaw. The age of Alfred, Cnut and, finally, William ‘the bastard' of Normandy.
It is their history, the folk-tales and Sagas of the Germanic peoples that inspire so many of us today. They brought with them their myths and legends, tales of kings descended from gods, of tangled fates and boundless curses, of warriors and monsters, of heroes and dragons, of burial mounds and golden hoards. The age of Beowulf and the Völsunga Saga, of the Icelandic Eddaic lays and heroic poetry.
It is these peoples and events that have helped shape our nation, forming the very core of what we know to be English today. Then, as now, our land was founded upon the influences of many and varied peoples; and the larger settlements would have been just as cosmopolitan as our cities are today.
This is the essence of the early medieval period that we seek to recreate; it is their social and cultural structure we seek to emulate, by bringing the past to life and "Shedding Light on the Dark Ages".
It is this that Weorod was formed to achieve.
