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Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language.

This is Episode 46, Cunowulf and the Kindred Kings.

In this episode, we're going to explore the concept of Anglo-Saxon kingship.

We'll examine the etymology of terms associated with kings and nobility.

And we'll explore the role of the king in Anglo-Saxon society.

We'll also look at a poet who lived during this period named Cunowulf.

And the thing that connects these various storylines is a common root word,

the original version of our modern word, kin.

But before we begin, let me remind you, as always, that the website for the podcast is history of Englishpodcast.com.

And thanks to those of you who donated to the podcast through the website,

those donations have permitted me to upgrade the server for the site.

So it should be a little faster and more reliable now, especially during peak traffic times.

And as always, you can reach me by email at Kevin at historyofenglishpodcast.com

and you can follow me on Twitter at EnglishHistPod.

So with that piece of business out of the way, let's turn to this episode.

This time, we're moving the story of Englishpod to the first half of the 9th century.

We'll begin this period with the crowning of Charlemagne as emperor in the year 800

and we'll conclude about 50 years later with the first permanent Viking settlements in Anglo-Saxon Britain.

So let's pick up where we left off last time.

We concluded the last episode with the initial Viking raids in Britain in the very late 700s.

Now these were shocking events and by the year 799, the Vikings were raiding the Frankish coast as well.

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