Basically the whole article can be distilled into the single paragraph:
> He was officially crowned in September 925AD. The following year, in 926AD, he married off his sister to the Viking king of Northumbria, which lay to the north of his kingdom's border. A year later, the Viking ruler died, and Æthelstan took over Northumbria.
In consolidating the previously separate kingdoms of Wessex, Mercia and Northumbria, Æthelstan became the first king of all England.
And the whole rationale for writing this article is here:
>If nothing else, Æthelstan's story overturns the centuries-long notion that England was originally a homogeneous culture, says Woodman. It's a misconception that still resurfaces today, but the truth was very different.
Which the article doesn't make very persuasively in my opinion, but whatevs. Also, apparently some historians are ceding the term "Anglo-Saxon" to the far right, along with the English flag? The whole approach is like a self-referential parody of itself.
"There's been a big debate about the very use of the word Anglo-Saxon, so much so that people in our field of scholarship are not using the word [...] because of the connotations that Anglo-Saxon now has with the far right"
Soon we won't be able to use the word "right" to indicate direction. It'll be left and not-left.
The point made is a perfectly sensible one if you include a bit more context:
> Amid all the battles and conquest, however, Æthelstan brought a cosmopolitan flair to his new kingdom. Today there is a tendency – particularly among the far right – to depict early England as being cut off from the rest of Europe, and homogeneous in its cultural makeup. In truth, the newly formed kingdom of England was an outward-looking society.
> "There's been a big debate about the very use of the word Anglo-Saxon, so much so that people in our field of scholarship are not using the word anymore, and are going towards Early Medieval instead because of the connotations that Anglo-Saxon now has with the far right," says Woodman. "When [the term Anglo-Saxon] is invoked by the far right, they're thinking of it as very one-dimensional – people from one background in England in the 10th Century."
> In fact, that's a big misconception of what the period was like. "It was actually a very diverse place in early 10th Century. I always think about Æthelstan's Royal Assemblies, and there were people there from lots of different kingdoms within England, Britain more widely, from Europe. They were speaking a multiplicity of languages, Old Welsh, Old Norse, Old English, Latin. I just feel [the term Anglo-Saxon] is used without thinking, and without factual detail about the early 10th Century."
> Downham agrees. "There was a lot of cultural variety in the area we call England today. There wasn't this English monolith that started in 500AD."
Afaict, a good part of racism comes from the fact that human brain automatically labels people different from you as enemy. I assume this was a very useful strategy for millenia, if you saw a person not belonging to your tribe/nation that probably meant armed conflict a decent chunk of the time.
This applies to any kind of difference: clothing, culture, neurodivergence etc. I live in a country with zero racism against black people (all the racism is reserved for immigrants which only differ by culture, not color) yet you can tell black people are still a bit left-out in many social settings.
Due to black population being very low, people rarely ever see a black person here. When they see one, for the brain it's an unknown/unfamiliar, and that means potential danger at the subconscious / first impression level. To put it simply, people get weirded out. Ofc, once you get to know them that goes away.
(This is not to condone conscious racism: goyim, plantation workers and all.)
From what I've been told by friends working within several Universities, the only people that avoid "anglo saxon" are fanatics of another kind. Its all very childish.
I posit that the article was written to promote a book:
It is time this monarch was better remembered, argues David Woodman, professor of history at Robinson College, University of Cambridge in the UK, and author of a new biography of Æthelstan.
I didn't realize it was a narrative that England at that time had a homogenous culture given:
1. This was only a few centuries after Roman occupation ended. As we know Roman influence on culture lingers but not evenly so I imagine even in the 10th century, you would find some people and areas where there was no Roman influence or culture at all and others far more recognizable as Roman influenced;
2. Great Britain was obviously divided by Hadrian's Wall culturally. There were various Celtic culture in Great Britain and Ireland prior to Roman occupation. Some of these are extinct now. Remnants of others have survived (ev Gaelic in Ireland). Celtic was subsumed by Roman culture in England to a large degree but not at all in Scotland; and
3. Viking invasions. You have to remember that Viking influence extended all the way to France with Rollo becoming the ruler of Normandy a century before. Raids extended to Paris. And of course you had the Viking ruler in Northumbria.
So I always assumed that the idea of a homoogenous English "culture" was a product of the unification of England politically.
All the way to southern Italy and then some. Luna was in northern Italy but the story is too funny no not quote:
The Viking force arrived at the town of Luna, whose walls were too heavily
defended for an outright assault. The force devised a plan to trick the
town’s bishop into converting Hastein to Christianity. Once converted,
Hastein faked his death with the final wish to be buried in the town's
church. Upon learning that the town was not Rome, the Viking force raided the
surrounding countryside before ultimately sailing back to Frankia.
I think if you confine the argument to England itself, it's fairly easy to defend that England has been settled by various Germanic tribes which, other than in Cornwall, have supplanted the pre-existing Celtic populations so totally that, around the time of Æthelstan, it was indeed homogenous. Of course, people at the time would consider the concept of lumping the various Germanic tribes and peoples into a "homogenous" identity rather strange, some of them being mortal enemies for centuries. But England in those days was undoubtedly homogenous compared to today. Not sure why that's a virtue in any way, but there it is.
Need to add, the idea of cultural homogeneity is entirely relative. Japan is or isn't homogeneous depending on who and when you ask, and I'm not even counting the Ainu or other not-of-Japanese-race.
I have a hobby interest in pre-1066 England to the extent of studying the language so I can read literature in the original, and I do find it a very irritating feature of scholarship written in Britain that the narrative is so often guided by modern political concerns.
That does seem to miss the fact that by then there was not a 'Viking king of Northumbria'. The Danelaw did not fully extend in to Northumbria.
My recall of history is that Northumbria had more or less split back in to Deira and Bernicia. With the Vikings having control south of the Tees, but north of the Tyne it was still an Kingdom of the Angles. Albeit possibly a client Kingdom, that seems a bit uncertain.
The show The Last Kingdom on Netflix is easily in my top 10 top shows. It covers this era. Probably not totally historically accurate but deeply entertaining anyway.
The books are great. They aren’t “history” but set the mood/tone and iirc they usually have recommendations for actual history books in the authors notes.
Not totally correct but totally awesome, as is Vikings early seasons. The author of the books distant relative is the main character, though only by name really as he wasn't alive yet during the time of those kings.
> He was officially crowned in September 925AD. The following year, in 926AD, he married off his sister to the Viking king of Northumbria, which lay to the north of his kingdom's border. A year later, the Viking ruler died, and Æthelstan took over Northumbria.
In consolidating the previously separate kingdoms of Wessex, Mercia and Northumbria, Æthelstan became the first king of all England.