Five things you probably don’t know about the Anglo-Saxons

Video transcript

They came to Britain after the Romans, and they gave their name to England.

Here are some interesting things that might surprise you about the Anglo-Saxons.

1. The first Western scholar to understand the link between the tides and the moon was a monk named Bede, who lived in the early 8th Century.
2. An Anglo-Saxon queen of the Midlands directed armies that inflicted devastating defeats upon the Vikings when most others failed.
3. The Anglo-Saxons welcomed the greatest teacher of Latin and Greek of his day, an African scholar named Hadrian, who established a renowned school in Canterbury. 
4. The oldest surviving near-complete Latin bible was produced in what is today Northumberland in the early 8th Century. 
5. King Offa minted millions of pennies that were so stylistically pleasing and trusted, that the currency remained in circulation for 500 years.

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