Anglo-Saxon Myths: The Struggle for the Seven Kingdoms By Brice Stratford

 Anglo-Saxon Myths: The Struggle for the Seven Kingdoms

By Brice Stratford

Brice Stratford is an English-born director, actor (both voice acting and stage), and writer. He is also listed as a folklorist and a writer. I can't find much information on him, other than he founded the Owle Schraeme theater company in 2008 to explore and recreate historical theater practices in a modern context. One such example is the recreation of Drolls, which were illegal street performances conducted in England during a short period when the theater was banned, which would have been 1642 to 1660 when the Puritans ran England (Oliver Cromwell was such a buzzkill he banned Christmas.  Remember Kids, just say no to Puritanism.  Granted, Christmas back then was incredibly raucous but Puritanism bans all fun. {These are the people who thought church organs were too exciting, so he isn’t wrong. }). So I can't speak to any academic credentials.  Then again, I don't have any academic credentials for book reviewing, so I suppose that makes me and Mr. Stratford even. 

Anglo-Saxon Myths is his first written work and was published in 2022, along with another work New Forests Myths and Folklore. According to his Twitter account, Anglo-Saxon Myths is the first in a planned trilogy. Mr. Stratford was kind enough to clarify over Twitter, that the New Forests book isn’t part of that trilogy. Which will be 2 more books meant to be focused on Anglo-Saxon culture. So I admit I’m somewhat excited to see that.  Anglo-Saxon Myths was published by Batsford which is an independent publishing company that was founded in 1843. 

Anglo-Saxon Myths is heavily focused on British myths and stories. The Anglo-Saxons were the people who moved into/invaded Britain after the withdrawal of the Roman Empire and were the dominant people in the region that is now England until the Norman invasion. So if you're interested in the beliefs and stories of the continental Saxons of Germany this book might not entirely work for you. That said even if you're focused on the German Saxons, the British Saxons were related to them so there may be some insights that make this book of value (There isn’t a whole lot of information on the German Saxons directly, because they didn’t write anything down if I recall. {Correct, also they picked a fight with Charlemagne and Charlemagne went completely metal on them} Yeah, never pick a fight with a German or Nordic guy who gets renamed in Latin with Magnus appended to it.  Just don’t do it.). The book itself is divided into three parts, each part has its own title and theme uniting the stories within which makes for interesting reading as each tale flows almost organically into each other. 

The first part entitled Scop, an old English word for poet or bard, tells of the creation of the universe and the generations of the gods. Creation is presented as a generational act, with each generation building on what had come before. It's here that we see a lot of the common roots with other mythologies from northern Europe.  For example, there being more than one world united by a world tree or a set of beings above even the gods who speak of fate or to use the Anglo-Saxon word wyrds. The gods themselves are shown as generational in nature, as we're shown at least 3 generations of gods each performing a specific set of tasks and often dying violently to make room for the next generation (It’s almost like their gods reflect their society or something.). This section sets up the scene for the future ones, explaining how the world came to be, why people exist, and where all the monsters and dragons the various heroes are going to be fighting came from in the first place. 

The second part is entitled Wreccan, which was a Saxon word for exile. The men and women who were Wreccan would sometimes become nomadic warriors, not unlike the Knight Errands of medieval stories or the Japanese Ronin. A lot of the heroes in the story are young men who have voluntarily exiled themselves in search of adventure and glory. It's here that Mr. Stratford starts introducing us to various Anglo-Saxon concepts such as mod, comitatus, and peace weaving. I won't spoil the book by defining them here but I will say that Mr. Stratfords does a rather fine job of carefully setting up each term, and the role it plays in the stories and using them so that we can understand them. Most of the stories are short but interrelated which keeps the organic flow of story into story. 

It's the second section that also contains a set of stories I found very interesting, the family of Weyland Smith. Weyland Smith is an incredibly interesting mythical figure and an enduring one. Even in the modern day, he's appeared in works such as the Fables comic line for example. He's often compared to the Greek god Hephaestus due to being a crippled smith and craftsman famed for his ability to make gear beyond imaging. Mr. Stratford goes further than any storyteller I know of in telling us the story of his great-grandfather Waellende Wulf, his grandfather Wada, and his father Wade before finally telling us of Weyland. Each of these beings has an interesting tale to tell, nor are they strictly human or mortal because while Weyland isn't quite a god, he's more than a man (Which is another common thing in a lot of Germanic legends, as I recall.). 

We're taken through Weyland's education and how he learns the various arts that would make him immortally famous, the loss of his grandfather to dwarvish betrayal, and the most famous story of his imprisonment and escape. I do have to note that this version presents the least morally dubious Weyland I've run across. A number of versions of this story I've heard before presented a much darker take on the relationship between Weyland and Princess Beadohild (Oh No.). The story also tells us of Weyland's son by that same Princess but again I won't spoil it. This family set of stories does however make for a good central narrative to hold the section together and provide the theme. As well as reinforce the generational cycle that was introduced in the first part of the book. There is more in this section than just Weyland's family but they take up the lion's share and provide much of the narrative glue if you will. 

The last part of the book is called the Bretwalda and refers to the kings and heroes who slowly but surely built the idea of a unified English identity. Unlike the first section which is set in a mythical prehistory or the second section which is set in the illiterate period of the medieval era after the fall of Rome but before the Christianization of Britain; this third and last section is set in an increasingly literate and historical time as the pagan faith of the Anglo-Saxons is slowly but surely superseded by Christianity. What makes this different from a lot of other stories that carry the same theme is that Mr. Stratford presents a Saxon conceptualization of the Christian god, referring to him as the Allruler and the GloryFather for example (I am seeing some definite bleedthrough of the All-Father Odin/Woden.  It’s almost like Christianity is incredibly syncretic.). As an aside, those are really awesome titles and as a practicing Christian, I can really appreciate them. Mr. Stratford also presents the Anglo-Saxon gods, especially Woden as fully supportive of this wave of conversion to a new religion; why is left unspoken, but then the plans of Woden presented to us in this book are hard to guess for mortal men. As they are dictated not by our own standards or morality but by a vision that measures time in generations of generations and works towards ends not entirely within our grasp. I have to admit I've never run into this before and it's a dizzyingly unique take on this part of history. It is however fairly historical in presenting many people as worshiping the Christian God and worshiping the pagan gods at the same time (Well, yeah.  They were polytheists. And also, Christianity is incredibly syncretic.  The Old Gods become saints or angelic beings over time or intentionally; elements of folk religious practice meld into Christian holy days.  Christmas didn’t derive from Saturnalia or Yule.  It derived from Both which had a lot of parallel traditions like robbing rich people, masters of fools, and ritual cross-dressing.  Oh, and Santa Claus is basically Odin.  This is also why Cromwell banned Christmas.  It was too pagan for the Puritans. Same in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  Put up a Christmas tree there and your neighbors would lay hold of you, and deliver ye to the magistrate of the court in the shire in which ye dwell.). This was a thing that actually happened as people tried to split the difference between maintaining their old customs and embracing new identities and beliefs. 

As a result, we're left with the impression that the Christian GloryFather of the story is really just a new generation taking its place in the cycle of the universe. Not that it’s an entirely peaceful changeover, but the book doesn't gloss over the sheer amount of violence being done in this period. It does point out that much of the violence wasn't simply Christian vs Pagans but muddled by the goals and desires of the people performing the violence. For example, we have Pagan kings siding with Christians to expand their territory or kill rivals and Christian warriors battling for Pagan kings for glory and gold. Which weaves it rather well into the conception of the cosmos presented to us here in the story. It also gives a solid feeling of reality as in any conflict whether it be Anglo-Saxon Pagans fighting Christians, or Hungarian Christians battling Muslim Ottomans the simple fact is that the conflict is rarely as simple as everyone in one group on one side versus everyone in another group on the other. 

So what did I dislike about the book? Mr. Stratland doesn't give us much in the way of sources or in fact any in the book. So I'm left wondering where did he get his information? Is this a distilling of the historian Bede and Geoffrey of Monmouth or is he adding a bit to the brew himself? For most readers, that's not going to matter and honestly, I'm not going to criticize him too heavily for that myself. Mythologies are living, changing things. One only needs to look at Arthurian Mythology or how we reimagine Greek stories, like Hades and Persephone or the Trojan war. It's just me being a bit of a snob, I would like to know how much is coming from the storyteller and how much comes from older sources. 

Also in the third section, I find myself wondering how much is being bent in the service of modern values and morals. The values and morals are ones I agree with: tolerance for people of different beliefs and customs, being willing to live in peace with others, and accepting the idea of diversity in people (I should hope, he’s still friends with me.  The gay atheistic vaguely Jewy communist) but... Are they the values that the original Anglo-Saxons would have held and preached or are we projecting? This is important to me because I want to understand the people in question and I feel looking at their stories and seeing what they valued and what they believed in brings me closer to understanding them. On the flip side, this could just be complete insecurity on my part and this is part of the Anglo-Saxon mythology (It kinda makes sense.  Polytheists don’t get their bees in a bonnet over other religions as much as monotheists do.). I'm not an expert on Anglo-Saxon culture so I can’t really say. So this isn't going to affect my final grade on the book either way. 

What I did like was this book was incredibly easy to read and utterly spellbinding. It was also presented in an entertaining style and manner with a first-person narrator that made you feel like you were sitting before a fire listening to a bard sing of the beginning of the world. I really didn't want to put it down. I'll admit that I preferred the first and second sections to the third.  I think most other readers will too but hearing the Almighty given such great titles did tickle me and I'd be lying if I said that didn't ease my opinion.  I've mentioned repeatedly Mr. Stratford has a very flowing, organic style of connecting his tales and stories and does a good job of setting up concepts and characters in a way to make them easy to remember and grasp for readers. 

I'm giving Anglo-Saxon Myths: The Struggle for the Seven Kingdoms By Brice Stratford an A-. While it lacks citations and any list of sources which makes it somewhat lacking for someone wanting to seriously study Anglo-Saxon myth on an academic level. It has great presentation and style and gives you accessible, exciting-to-read stories that introduce you to several new concepts and a small window into how Anglo-Saxons over a thousand years ago may have thought and viewed the world around them. This is a good book for anyone who is interested in Anglo-Saxon myths but simply doesn't know where to start or someone who just enjoys a good set of stories. I would keep them out of the hands of younger readers though as some of the material is mature but not explicit in nature. 

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Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders