Anglo-Saxons beliefs

Anglo-Saxons beliefs

The early Anglo-Saxons were pagans. They believed in many gods, for example the king of the Anlgo-Saxon gods was Woden; other gods were Thunor,  god of thunder; Frige, goddess of love; and Tiw, god of war: the names of the  days of the week come    from gods’ names. Their gods and goddesses  ruled practically every aspect of  life and nature such as birth, life, death, harvest, love, fertility, earth, sky, weather and much more.

In the most primitive of times these deities were probably worshipped as natural phenomena, but over the centuries they took human form.

When the Anglo-Saxons died their bodies were either cremated or buried in a grave.

The bodies were buried with their  instruments that they used during life: the man’s graves include instruments wich suggest hunting and farming and  the women’s graves include tools used for sewing and weaving.

When the Romans left Britain, Christianity continued in other places where the Anglo-Saxons did not settle, such as Wales. The decline of the Anglo-Saxon began around 597 A.D. with the arrival of the Roman missionary St Augustine on the Isle of Thanet in Kent. The missionaries were sent out on the orders of Pope Gregory; in fact in 529 A.D. the Pope decided it was time that the Anglo-Saxons in southern Britain heard about Christianity. Over the next 100 years many Anglo-Saxons turned to Christianity. As the Anglo-Saxons were converted from pagan beliefs to Christian ones, they changed their way of life and became less warlike.

 Monasteries were centres of learning, where monks and nuns spent their time in prayer, study and worked in fields and workshops. Moreover, these places where the only schools in Anglo-Saxons England. 

Thor with a hammer

St Paul's Monastery at Jarrow.
The monastery at Jarrow in
Northumbria was a centre of the
Christian Church in Anglo-Saxon times

A pot used in an Anglo-Saxon burial.
The burned remains and bones of a dead person
 were put in the pot, which was then buried.