How was it like to live in the dark ages of Britain?

Answer 1

In Britain, the Early Middle Ages began with invasions of Germanic groups, the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and so on. They established the kingdoms of the Wessex, East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumbria, along with others. They fought among themselves and with the native British. In time, Vikings moved in also, establishing the Danelaw, just as the Anglo-Saxons were uniting into something like a real kingdom. More fighting expelled the Vikings, but they returned, and took over. The Anglo-Saxons regained control, and finally, the descendents of the Norse who settled in France, the Normans, invaded and got the whole thing.

So, politically, the history sounds like a series of fights with nothing else going on. But the truth is historians are storytellers and like to tell the stories that sound important, just like any other storytellers, and in order to sound important, there has to be a good plot. A lot of other things were going on in Britain, things that sound dull or have no plots, and a lot of it was very productive.

For example, King Alfred the Great fought a lot of battles, and there are exciting stories about that. But he also founded schools, with the intention that all free men who were able to learn do so. He wanted the education to be in English, so it could be practical. He had great books translated from Latin to English so the people could read them. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which had the history of the English, was probably started in his reign, and was written in English.

During the Early Middle Ages, most people farmed, lived in small houses, and had lives with a lot of hard work in them. Some people say they were dirty, but this is not true; they had public baths, even in larger villages, and those without them bathed in streams and rivers, because they believed that cleanliness was next to godliness. They were originally pagan, but they converted early to Christianity, and they were religious.

Answer 2

Terrible. It was a dirty stinky dangerous time . People lived without heat or with very little heat, homes were lit by tallow candles which gave off an oily smelly smoke, there were no lights beyond a fireplace or candles. The times were very dangerous. Knights often raided areas and killed people, there were wars, raids, and people were taken as slaves. Most of the population were serfs and lived in houses made of wattle ( sticks woven together with mud/straw/ dung over the top). They were very poor and had little. It was a feudal system which means that only the very wealthy lived reasonably well. Most people died before they were 30 years old of disease, childbirth, war, or accidents. This is not the storybook time that many think it is .