The Writing and the Written monuments of OE

Formation of Germanic States in Britain

The Germanic tribes which conquered Britain, formed 7 kingdoms, which during four centuries struggled with one another for supremacy: Kent, Sussex, Essex, Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia, and Northumbria, which consisted of two regions: Bernicia and Deira. In this prolonged struggle it was sometimes Northumbria and sometimes Mercia, that would take the upper hand.

In 828 the struggle came to an end with the decisive victory of Wessex. Ecgberht, king of Wessex, subdued Mercia and Northumbria. Since then kings of Wessex became kings of England, and the capital of Wessex, Winchester (some 100 kilometers south-west of London) became the capital of England.

Down to the end of the 6^th century Anglo-Saxon Britain was almost entirely isolated from Europe, and particularly, from Rome. In 597 Pope Gregory I sent some missionaries to Britain to spread christianity among the Germanic conquerors. It was necessary for Rome. Christianity also penetrated into England from Ireland, which hadn’t been invaded by Germanic tribes. Irish monks had great influence in Northumbria under king Oswine (642-670). In the 7^th century Christianity spread all over England. The Latin language was at the time an international language of the church and of church science in Western Europe. As a result of new ties with Rome the Latin language was introduced in England as the language of church. This development had an important consequence for the English language: many Latin words penetrated into the English language, mainly those connected with religious and church notions (bishop, cleark, devil, master).

The written monuments of OE are divided into two main parts: monuments of runic writing and those of Latin writing. The runic alphabet was widely spread among Germanic peoples, especially in Scandinavia. The runic alphabet was a variety of the Latin alphabet used for writing on wood, stone or other hard materials. It was difficult to write on stone and wood the letters of the Latin alphabet so the letters were changed so that it was easier to carve them on hard materials. There are very few monuments of the runic writing nowadays. Only two of them are well-known: one is the Ruthwell Cross, a religious poem engraved on a tall stone cross near the village of Ruthwell in South-East Scotland. The other is the Runic Casket, made by whalebone, and found in France near the town of Clermont-Ferrant, now in the British museum in London. The Runic text is a poem about whalebone. Both these texts are probably of the 9^th century. Later when the Anglo-Saxons came in contact with the culture of the Romans the runic writing came to be more and more seldom used as the Latin writing was used instead. As the OE sound system differed materially from the Latin, the Latin alphabet proved insufficient to denote all OE sounds. To fill this gap Anglo-Saxon scribes borrowed some letters from the Runic alphabet. In other cases a Latin letter was used to denote several sounds. For example the letter 3 (a modified form of Latin g) denoted several sounds, and so did the letter c. From the Runic alphabet was taken the letter ƥ, it was taken to denote the sound [θ], which was also denoted by ð and a special rune for the sound [w].

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