Hello everyone and welcome to the history of England, episode 10, English Reconquest.

Last time we got to the end of Alfred which brings us to the 10th century which is surely

one of the most forgotten periods of English history that I confess, I'm not sure how

you measure these things. But it's odd, because this is the time when England is finally

formed. And another thing, why is it that Edward the Elder, the King again to talk about

today, doesn't even warrant a number. He quite clearly should be Edward the First, so

whilst that all about then. I have sought answers, there are effectively none, though there

are plenty of theories around. But before we launch into all the monarchs

and all the death and destruction, blood and sweat and all that, why don't we just settle

back and think a bit about what's been going on in all the conquered lands, the region

that will become known as Dane Law. We have the same question as we had all those

centuries ago when the Angles, Saxons and Jutes came to visit. What was the depth

of the settlement of the Vikings? Are we talking about genocide, mass replacement of

the Anglo-Saxons? Or merely a change in culture from top down? And in fact, was there a new

culture of sort of Anglo-Skandinavian society? In trying to answer the question, we have

all the same tiresome old problems we had last time around. The types of data to be used

are very similar, place name evidence, burials, settlement archaeology, genetics. And the

type of limitations are exactly the same, such as culture doesn't define ethnicity, meaning

that an angle might well adopt the dress and habits of his or her Scandinavian bosses,

and yet remain of course an angle. And genetic analyses are pretty difficult to fit into

a chronology you might identify different DNA groups, but you don't know when they

happened. However, what becomes reasonably clear is the complexity of the mix and all

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