HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

‘Britain’, as the venerable Bede began his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, ‘is an island of the ocean … [which] extends 800 miles to the north, and is 200 miles broad, save only where several promontories stretch out further and, counting these, the whole circuit of the coast line covers 4,875 miles’ (Brittania oceani insula … quae per milia passuum dccc in boream longa, latitudinis habet milia cc, exceptis dumtaxat prolixioribus diuersorum promontorium tractibus, quibus efficitur ut circuitus eius quadragies octies lxxv milia conpleat) (Bede, HE i.1, ed. Colgrave and Mynors 1969, 14–15). He continued with a warm description of Ireland: ‘broader than Britain, it is healthier and has a much milder climate’ (et latitudine sui status et salubritate ac serenitate aerum multum Brittaniae praestat). As Bede recognised, the physical situation of Britain and Ireland as islands to the north-west of mainland Europe has been a defining characteristic throughout their history: the encircling seas create at once a physical barrier and a sense of distance and identity, but also provide a conduit for communication and travel. While events within the islands of Britain and Ireland might at times seem comparatively self-contained in the pages of Bede and other early medieval writers, there were strong bonds which anchored the islands to their neighbours across the Channel and the North Sea, and which undermined any notion of complete cultural or political insularity.

Indeed, Britain and Ireland remained in close touch with other parts of Europe throughout the early Middle Ages. The Angles, Saxons and Jutes of England believed their ancestors had emigrated from northern continental Europe in the fifth and sixth centuries, and at least some of them had done so. Scandinavian raiders and settlers made a similar journey in the ninth and tenth centuries, transforming large areas across Britain and Ireland. These incomers are generally known as Vikings (or, probably more correctly, vikings: see Chapter 11, section (a), pp. 278–9). Especially before the arrival of the Vikings, churchmen and traders moved freely and frequently across the Irish Sea, creating a single cultural province which embraced both Britain and Ireland. The legacy of this interaction is most pronounced in shared traditions of script, art and literature.