The Frisian Enigma

The Frisian Enigma

Gerald Ray Capon

DEDICATION

For my mother, who bought me my first adult history book for

my 9th

birthday. For my father, for dragging me around ruins, old

churches and cathedrals as a child. For all my large family, for

putting up with, and sometimes encouraging my ravings about

history. For my wife Mary Margaret, who tolerated my

sometimes irascible humour whilst writing and who did the

grammatical correction of the manuscript. In memory of my

friend Wouter Vancoppennolle.

CONTENTS

Introduction Page 1

Chapter I - Britain, a summer house for Europe Page 44

Chapter II - The wrong kind of Teutons Page 77

Chapter III - Britannia, Rome’s Afghanistan? Page 129

Chapter IV - The later Roman Empire in Britannia Page 175

Chapter V - The Frisian Enigma Page 209

Chapter VI - Dark Age commerce the French connection Page 232

Chapter VII - Byzantium, the Vikings and Islam Page 271

Chapter VII - Conclusion Page 287

Chapter IX - Epilogue, the dark shadow Page 316

1

THE FRISIAN ENIGMA

INTRODUCTION

This whole project started in the summer of 2009 with a tourist trip,

with my wife and dog, to an island called Rømø off the South West

coast of Jutland in Denmark; as you will see this led me indirectly to

start writing this book. This work, if true, will make most current

history text books about British history for the period from the Iron-

Age to the Viking invasions in need of correction. This may sound like a

bold statement, but here goes. I believe that there is irrefutable

evidence that our history of British antiquity and the Anglo-Saxon

invasions as it is written is incomplete at best and totally wrong at

worst. I’m starting this aged sixty and proving this has become a major

task for me for the next few years. Basically what I’m proposing is that,

in England, we aren’t Anglo-Saxons and for that matter we don’t speak

an Anglo-Saxon language. To support what I have written and to

confirm my arguments I have put together a bibliography; this you will

find at the end of each chapter. I have drawn the facts I have used

from many sources in different languages from both sides of the

English Channel: in English, French, Latin, German, Dutch and Frisian.

However, before starting I would like to list five authors whose books

have profoundly influenced my thinking about this period of British

history. Their collective works have pushed the accepted ideas of

British history for the period from the late Iron Age (circa 150 BC) until

the Viking raids and invasion (starting late 8th

century AD) to the brink

of the rubbish bin. This book will help to give these, already tottering,

current historical tenets for this period the last shove into long

deserved oblivion. The first author was the famous historical TV

presenter Michael Wood in his 1986 work the “Doomsday a Search for

The Frisian Enigma – Introduction

2

the Roots of England” which first brought to my attention the

possibility of continuum in land occupation from pre-Roman times to

well beyond the end of the Dark Ages. I bought the book remaindered

in a discount book shop in Chiswick High Road on a visit in 1988,

proving that some radical changes in ideas are often ignored. Stephen

Oppenheimer came to my attention with his book “Eden in the East”

which I first picked up at the airport on the way to the USA. From the

cover and reviews I fancied it as being a book to wile away the time

peacefully on the long flight. It seemed from the cover to me to be a

little like “The Chariots of the Gods”; I could not have been further

from the truth. His reasoned arguments for a drowned civilisation,

predating by thousands of years both the Mesopotamian and Egyptian

civilisations are very convincing. This conjectured modern society was

to be found on the now drowned continental shelf between the

modern day Indonesian islands, the book really had the ring of truth.

Further, his ground breaking work in using genetics to trace the

movements of peoples has opened a new vista on the way we look at

history. His book “The Origins of the British” applies the same methods

to the origins of the people in the British Isles, with astonishing results,

that really upset the apple cart. Dr. Francis Pryor is the next author

that has influenced me greatly. Two of his works “Britain BC” and

“Britain AD” are gigantic spanners thrown into the works of accepted

history from the Stone Age to the Norman Invasion. They have helped

me understand that invasions are rarely the replacement of one

people by another, and that in spite of them people at the bottom of

the pile stay the same, there is continuity in communities which can be

measured today genetically. Sir Barry Cunliffe’s “Iron Age Communities

in Britain” helped me to understand in depth the change from the

Stone Age through the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. I understood that

the spread of important technologies were sometimes accompanied

by migration of peoples to Britain; especially with the arrival of the

Belgae tribes in the late Iron Age from 125 BC. Finally, Michael E.

Jones book “The End of Roman Britain” makes it clear that the history

we were taught at school about this period is not really on the mark.

It’s a brilliant work that I read from cover to cover in a couple of days

almost without putting it down.


3

In the last few years there has been a lot of doubt creeping into the

veracity of existing British history for the period from the late Iron

Age, through the Roman occupation and to the end of the Anglo Saxon

invasions. In fact, current history in text books and as it is taught in

schools and universities on this subject and for this period is on the

brink of collapse. Young Turk historical authors such as Sir Barry

Cunliffe, Dr Francis Pryor, Michael E. Jones and Stephen Oppenheimer

all get tantalisingly close to invalidating the existing version of history

for the period of the Iron Age, antiquity and the Anglo-Saxon invasions

of the Eastern and Southern parts of modern day England. But for me,

in spite of the brilliance of their works they miss one salient point

which is the basis of this book. I propose that the Belgae tribes, that

migrated to or invaded England from 125 BC, were Germanic speakers

(or more correctly Teutonic speakers) and not Gaelic speakers. History

shows that Belgae tribes had already been in the Southern and Eastern

parts of Britain for seventy years or so before Caesar raided Britain in

55 and 54 BC. We will see that these Belgae tribes were descendants

of the Scandinavian migration 5-600 years previously from the

Scandinavian Peninsula and modern day Denmark. They weren’t Gaelic

speaking Celtic tribes of the Hallstatt/Tené cultures as almost all the

current history books indicate. In the bibliography at the end of this

chapter I will give some cartographic and written examples1 of the

assumption that the Belgae tribes were Gaelic speaking Celts; for me

this is the fundamental misconception of British history for this period.

If, as I conjecture and as I have tried my best to prove, the Belgae

tribes spoke Germanic languages it fundamentally changes everything

about English history. I do make it clear right from the beginning that I

am not a professor of history and I have no degree in history; my

master’s degree is actually in business studies from a French business

school. But I am an avid amateur historian; history has always for me

been a consuming passion. I have spent half my life in England and half

in France; being bi-lingual helped me enormously in my research work

for this book. But before all that heady stuff, let’s head back to Rømø

(pronounced Roomoo), I returned to the island twenty six years after

first visiting it. In my recollection it was a wondrous place and I wanted

to refresh and confirm that old memory, I found that it’s still a


4

spectacular and very special place. Rømø (see satellite picture on next

page) is one of the Northernmost in a chain of islands that sit between

what is called the Wadden (mud-flat) Sea and the North Sea. This

archipelago stretches along the coast from the West Netherlands

through North Western Germany and up to the Danish part of the

ancient province of Schleswig. They are called the Frisian Islands. Even

though I didn’t visit any other Frisian islands, Rømø is itself a

microcosm of all these islands. To get to the island you have to take a

12Km long causeway across the Wadden Sea to arrive on what is

basically a very big kidney shaped sand dune that measures roughly

15Km by 5Km. With the accumulation of sand mixed with enormous

quantities of crushed cockle and razor shells, it appears that the

massive 1-2Km wide drive-on beach on the North Sea side of the island

grows every year. The enormous amount of crushed shells mixed in

with the sand is a witness to the proliferation of marine life in the

Wadden Sea. The broken shells seem to help to bind the sand together

and their presence apparently helps consolidate the dune island. With

this quantity of crustaceans in the sea there are sea birds everywhere.

The Wadden Sea isn’t just rich in these few species; the shallow water

environment allows photosynthesis producing a massive proliferation

of all kind of sea plants. The microscopic algae found there in

profusion form the basis of a complete food chain on a massive scale.

This abundance of food makes the Wadden Sea a nursery for all the

commercially important North Sea fish such as: plaice, sole, herring

and sprats; they spend the first years of their life there. Most of the

Frisian Islands, like Rømø, are just big sand dunes which occurred from

sand being pushed ashore from the sea by wind and current. In Europe

this phenomena can be found at different places all along the Atlantic

coast from Portugal through Spain and France, through the English

Channel and up into the North Sea and even into the Baltic. These

Frisian Islands are the dunes that used to be the coast of the mainland.

The contents of the peat filled valleys behind them were flushed out

by a combination of: rising sea levels, storm surges at the time of

exceptional spring tides and exceptional estuarial flooding of the large

continental rivers that abound in this lowland area. The flooding


5

caused by a big storm and spring tides is referred to historically as

marine transgressions and they are a crucial part of history of the

peoples around the North Sea and the English Channel. We will

compare changes in sea levels and major marine transgressions (such

as the one that occurred in the mid 4th

century AD) to see which of the

two were the largest factor affecting history for the peoples and

period we will be studying.

But, you may well ask what have the Frisian Islands and Rømø to do

with British history? The Frisian Islands and above all the Frisian people


6

are I believe much more involved in the creation of the country of

England than is admitted today by British historians. I believe they

were part of the migration by Belgae tribes beginning in the late 2nd

century BC. When I visited Rømø, in the local store I heard people

speaking a language that was neither Danish nor German; it sounded

like English but the words were mostly very different. They were in

fact speaking one of the Frisian dialects. It troubled me that a language

which I’d never heard of before sounded so very much like English, my

own mother tongue. After all, in none of the history books I’ve read

are the Frisians mentioned as being a constituent part in the creation

of England, and even when they do appear they are very low in the

pecking order. I couldn’t work out why this language should sound

much more like English than modern German does; after all we are

Anglo-Saxons aren’t we?

We spent a week on Rømø in June getting sunburn, eating raw herring

and drinking the local Fuglsang beer; we had marvelled at the stunning

dunes and the beach. I didn’t know it then but I had only six months

left in my career; I left the corporate world on the 31st

of December

2009. I was now in pre-retirement aged 58. Going from being the MD

of a software company to doing absolutely nothing overnight came as

a bit of a shock. I decided to start studying history to fill my days; one

subject I was interested in was the mystery of the Saxon Shore forts. I

was given my first adult history book by my mother on my ninth

birthday in 1960, it was the start of an ever growing large collection,

and even today it still has pride of place on my bookshelves. In this

book, “Historic Britain”, there was an intriguing picture of Burgh

Castle, one of the largest extant Saxon Shore forts in England. What

was most interesting to me was that the fort apparently had only three

walls, the missing wall being where the port had been. This puzzled me

then, and it still does today. If these forts were built to protect the

coast against Saxon raiders, as we were taught, why is the side facing

the sea open? It really just didn’t make a lot of sense to me fifty one

years ago and it still doesn’t today. I thought that helping to elucidate

a little this mystery of the forts of the Saxon Shore would be the first

historical project that would involve a bit of travel and study. Waiting


7

for a touch of spring to visit the historical sites, 2009/10 having been

one of the worst winters in France in 25 years, I started my

investigations on-line and through reading books; I ordered many

historical works especially for this purpose.

It appears that none of the three Saxon shore forts in modern day

France have ever been found; the one listed on the modern day

Belgium coast at Oudenburg has been identified. These four forts,

three in modern day France, are listed in the 4/5th

century document

concerning among other military things Saxon Shore forts, the Honora

Dignatum. Having found in my research an old map of the Pas de

Calais with later Roman Empire Latin place names (see map on the

next page), I tried to match the place names on the old map with the

ones on modern maps; with I must say with some success. La Côte

d’Opale (left side of the map) on the British facing coast of Pas de

Calais, is well known for its dunes and the previously discussed process

of sanding up has been going on there for centuries.

Further south in modern day Picardy, Montreuil-sur-Mer has the

largest extant medieval castle in the area. This bastion was built to

guard the estuarial port of La Canke river, as the place name suggests.

This town is no longer sur-Mer, it is now actually over 15Km from the

sea, with sandy dunes filling much of the estuary on which the port

sat. So we are looking at a much changed coastline in comparison with

the medieval era and even more so with Roman times. This is true on

both sides of the English Channel.

So I thought it could be a good idea to be looking for the northernmost

two of the missing French Saxon Shore forts inland behind dunes,

rather than on the coast. Maybe Montreuil was one of those

unidentified French Saxon shore forts. It has been a citadel for

hundreds of years; it is a classic natural domineering defensive

position. As I said, I did have some success in my investigations in the

location of Roman place names on a modern map. By extrapolating the

roads between identified Roman towns, garrisons and way stations. I

found a place that used to be called Septumvium Romanum (Seven

Roman roads) in a tiny village called Zoteux.


8


9

It has a tiny church in cut stone partially buttressed up with brick

pillars; it looks the size of a small Roman temple from a Roman

garrison site (which is what the site was). On closer inspection it seems

possible that some of the stonework is of Roman origin, probably

recuperated. However, part of the church is possibly an in-situ Roman

wall, see picture below.

In all the villages around there are no cut white stone buildings of this

type. There are some medieval churches that are built using the easily

worked local sandstone, but nothing like this. Just opposite the church

in Zoteux the farmyard buildings are made of neat white cut stone


10

sitting on, a brick and flint base, not Roman construction of course but

I believe built with recuperated Roman stone. I observed no other cut

stone farm buildings anywhere else in the local area except in this

village. After visiting Zoteux Septumvium Romanum I took the D341

road to Boulogne-sur-Mer Bononia a distance of about 20kM, I could

have easily used the map a couple of pages back to get me there, this

small route départmentale follows the route traced by the old Roman

road over 90% of the way. It is straight as die with a sharp left bend, as

on the map, about 6-7km from Zoteux. Following this trip something

happened that really stopped me in my tracks. After all the time spent

referencing back and forth between French and Flemish archaeological

documents going back hundreds of years, I suddenly came across

something that had been really right in front of my eyes for a while.

Whilst matching up the modern map with the ancient one I couldn’t

help but notice, as you can see yourselves, that many place names

were as Dutch/Flemish sounding in late antiquity/early medieval

period as they are today. This sentiment of something being wrong

was reinforced by my memory of driving on the road from Zoteux to

Boulogne; I couldn’t help but notice that about 70% of the place

names were Flemish sounding. According to my history books this area

was meant to be like all of Britain, Gaelic speaking at the time of the

Roman occupation. But the biggest shock was the almost unchanged

place name, Tournhem sur la Hem (Turnhem on my Latin language

map). The town I come from in London, Chiswick, has an area called

Turnham Green or Tournhem Groen in Flemish, this was far too close a

match to be just a coincidence. According to my history books there’d

never been a Flemish invasion of Britain. And on further investigation I

found that Chiswick, the town I grew up in and where Turnham Green

is located, is a place name of pure Frisian/Dutch origin, Tsiis-wijk that

would be pronounced tchiise-wik meaning cheese town. And once

again according to what I was taught in school and what is in my

history books there’d never been a Frisian invasion of Britain either.

I am certain, not just from this one indication, but also as we shall see

from many others, that at the time of Julius Caesar’s raids of Britain in

55 and 54 BC that Gaelic was not spoken in Belgae Gaul, or for that


11

matter in Belgae Southern and Eastern England. And, it’s not just the

place names on my map that that give the game away. We know with

some certainty, from history, that the Belgae tribes had colonised

South and Eastern England from 125 BC. I will show that all the Belgae

tribes that settled in modern day England and those that had settled in

what is today Northern France, Belgium and Holland, spoke Teutonic

languages. If the Belgae tribes spoke Teutonic languages in their

continental homeland they must have brought these Teutonic

languages with them in their en-mass migration to modern day

England. This must’ve been a time of great turmoil as the main part of

the migration event took place very rapidly from 75 BC until about 50

BC, and then perhaps to a lesser degree from then until 43 AD. My

research shows that there is a document, from an irreproachable

source, that proves the Belgae were speakers of Teutonic languages.

Like the map and the place names that document has been there all

along, once again right under our noses. It is clearly written down for

all to see in a work from an irrefutable source that has been available

in Britain for hundreds of years. Julius Caesar in his Bello Gallicos

(Gallic Wars) makes himself very clear on the subject of the language

spoken in the area occupied by the Gallic Belgae tribes. We only need

look at the very first paragraph (which I quote below), of the first page

of this book. In a later part of the book he makes it very clear that the

he considers the Belgae are one and the same as the Germans even

though they are constantly fighting between themselves. Tacitus

comes to the same conclusion that the Belgae tribes were of Germanic

origin. The translation of Caesar’s text that I have used is by W. A.

McDevitte and W. S. Bohn. Out of great respect for Julius Caesar, the

deified and eternal optimus dictator, I have put his original concise text

in Latin first:

Liber I

[1] Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam

Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur. Hi omnes

lingua, institutis, legibus inter se differunt. Gallos ab Aquitanis Garumna flumen, a

Belgis Matrona et Sequana dividit. Horum omnium fortissimi sunt Belgae,

propterea quod a cultu atque humanitate provinciae longissime absunt,

minimeque ad eos mercatores saepe commeant atque ea quae ad effeminandos


12

animos pertinent important, proximique sunt Germanis, qui trans Rhenum

incolunt, quibuscum continenter bellum gerunt. Qua de causa Helvetii quoque

reliquos Gallos virtute praecedunt, quod fere cotidianis proeliis cum Germanis

contendunt, cum aut suis finibus eos prohibent aut ipsi in eorum finibus bellum

gerunt. Eorum una, pars, quam Gallos obtinere dictum est, initium capit a flumine

Rhodano, continetur Garumna flumine, Oceano, finibus Belgarum, attingit etiam

ab Sequanis et Helvetiis flumen Rhenum, vergit ad septentriones. Belgae ab

extremis Galliae finibus oriuntur, pertinent ad inferiorem partem fluminis Rheni,

spectant in septentrionem et orientem solem. Aquitania a Garumna flumine ad

Pyrenaeos montes et eam partem Oceani quae est ad Hispaniam pertinet;

spectat inter occasum solis et septentriones.

Chapter 1

All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the

Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called Celts, in

our Gauls, the third. All these differ from each other in language,

customs and laws. The river Garonne separates the Gauls from the

Aquitani; the Marne and the Seine separate them from the Belgae. Of

all these, the Belgae are the bravest, because they are furthest from

the civilization and refinement of [our] Province, and merchants least

frequently resort to them, and import those things which tend to

effeminate the mind; and they are the nearest to the Germans, who

dwell beyond the Rhine, with whom they are continually waging war;

for which reason the Helvetii also surpass the rest of the Gauls in

valour, as they contend with the Germans in almost daily battles, when

they either repel them from their own territories, or themselves wage

war on their frontiers. One part of these, which it has been said that

the Gauls occupy, takes its beginning at the river Rhone; it is bounded

by the river Garonne, the ocean, and the territories of the Belgae; it

borders, too, on the side of the Sequani and the Helvetii, upon the river

Rhine, and stretches toward the north. The Belgae rises from the

extreme frontier of Gaul, extend to the lower part of the river Rhine;

and look toward the north and the rising sun. Aquitania extends from

the river Garonne to the Pyrenaean mountains and to that part of the

ocean which is near Spain: it looks between the setting of the sun, and

the north star.


13

Historically speaking, the people that spoke a different language south

of the Garonne River were perhaps the Basques, but what languages

did the Belgae tribes speak? The extent of their territories as far as the

Rhine estuary is where Flemish/Dutch speaking peoples live today; the

language of the Belgae in view of the place names they have left was a

probably a form of proto-Flemish/Frisian/Dutch/Batavian, definitely a

group of dialects or even languages of the Germanic, or rather to be

less confusing, the Teutonic group. In reality, even to the middle of the

20th

century Flemish was still spoken in the country areas of Northern

France and in the coastal towns and villages as far south as Calais2. The

fact that the lingual frontier is given as being the Seine and the Marne

Rivers means that the Parisii who peopled the fledgling Paris, called

Lutetia by the Romans, could possibly have been Teutonic speakers as

well, and If they weren’t they were perhaps at least under Belgae

control. There was, after all, a tribe called the Parisii in Northern

Britain as well when Caesar raided the country.

Below is a map that I have cobbled together from a couple of sources

that show the identifiable origins of two of the Belgae tribes that

migrated to or invaded the South East of England in the 1st

century BC,

before Caesar’s raids.


14

We will see in a later chapter that the Atrebate tribe (blue line) was

from the area around modern day Arras and that the Catalauni (red

line) originated in the area around Chalon sur Marne. We can’t identify

in detail the origins of the other Belgae tribes that settled in modern

day England. As I indicated above for me greatest misconception in

modern English history for this period is that the Belgae tribes that

invaded/migrated to England were Gaelic speakers. And the truth is its

difficult, in view of Caesar’s text and other physical proof such as place

names, to understand why this myth continues to exist.

Outside of Belgium, the Netherlands, North Western Germany and

Southern Denmark there are very few people, amongst the 500 million

in the European Union, who know that there is still a spoken and

written language called Frisian. This language in its three main

dialectical forms is spoken by half a million people today. When you

investigate a little it’s unbelievably easy to find out that the closest

language to Old English isn’t Old Saxon, but its German cousin

language Old Frisian. In fact, in the classification of Indo European

language families English is in with Frisian and Scots in the Anglo-

Frisian sub-family of the West German group in the German languages

family. It is also obvious that if this is the case then Old English is

probably in a large part of Frisian origin. It really wouldn’t make sense

at all for Old Frisian to be descended from Old English. It therefore is

plainly obvious that a people that spoke, and speak today, a language

of Frisian origin in England must be to a greater or lesser extent of

Frisian descent. To try and understand this subject a little better we

will look at a University of London genetic study. The aim of this paper

was to measure the DNA makeup of English people to find their

origins. As far as I understand the report it seems to find clearly that

quite a high percentage of the genetic makeup of the English people in

small towns in middle England is of Frisian origin. And further, this is

much more so than is the case for the almost genetically invisible

Angle and Saxon origins, although the Jutes do show up a little.

Unbelievable as it may sound, this subject of the proof of Frisian

origins in all its different manifestations is hardly ever broached,

mentioned or taken into consideration in British historical documents.


15

In truth, in spite of a lot of evidence, the possibility of the Frisians

having a major role in the gestation and creation of England is finally

almost totally ignored. In contemporary historical works about the

origins of the English and their language the connection of Old English

to Old Frisian is hardly ever mentioned. Nelson on the bridge of the

Victory comes to mind, “I see no ships”. Yes Nelson we understand,

especially no graceful thirty three man clinker built ones paddled by

Frisians crossing the English Channel.

Time and time again references are made in antiquity to Britain being

peopled partially by Frisians (as well as Angles, Saxons, Jutes and

Celts). As the title of this book indicates the Frisians are for us either

unheard of or a real enigma. We will look in detail at just who the

Frisians were, where they settled and where they came from. We will

look at their coastal maritime lifestyle and how it affected their

outlook on the world. We will look at how their history is entwined

with British, Belgian, Dutch, Angle, Saxon, Jutish, Frankish and Danish

history. We will do our best in this obscure domain to piece together

Frisian history in some detail and this in spite of the lack of much

official historical written documentation. We will try and see what

made them tick. The maritime technology that allowed the Anglo-

Saxons to cross the English Channel in the 5th

century was available to

the Belgae tribes a lot more than 500 years earlier. Shipbuilding and

navigation were almost certainly mastered more completely by the

Frisians than their neighbours by dint of their very extensive island,

coastal and dune territory, parts of which could only be served by

boat.

To return to the thread, with our Teutonic speaking Belgae tribes only

having been in modern day England, in any numbers, for less than a

generation Britain then very quickly had another visitor; Julius Caesar

and his legions. They came with their auxiliary troops for an

impromptu visit in 55 BC and liked it so much that they came back in

even larger numbers for an encore in the summer of 54 BC. Julius

came, Julius saw but the vici was definitely incomplete; it was for the

Romans unfinished business for nearly another hundred years.


16

I have known the beautiful but bracing Côte d’Opale coastline since

over 40 years and I remember clearly many times laying on the sandy

beach in the seaside town of Wimereux and seeing the white cliffs of

Dover. They were so imposing, so clearly defined and distinct, that

they look like they’re just up the coast on the other side of a big bay.

This view of England is best seen after it has rained the day before,

which as anyone familiar with the area knows isn’t a rare occurrence

here. Julius Caesar stood somewhere very close to that spot and

gazed at the same cliffs, he was apparently very intrigued by this

mysterious island. So much so that he built a small armada to invade it.

At night you can clearly see the headlights of the cars on the roads in

England, the lights of Dover and Folkestone and the streetlights on the

road between them. In their sturdy little clinker built boats, paddling at

three knots or 6km/hour, it would have taken our Belgae tribes about

5-6 hours to cross to Britain on a calm sea. The shortest crossing is just

7Km North up the coast from Wimereux from Cap Gris Nez to Dover; a

distance shore to shore of under 30Km.

What was the situation in England at the time of the first two Roman

Julian raids in 55 and 54 BC? There are very strong reasons to believe

that that there were two distinct lingual communities in Britain, this

initially fuzzy divide had plenty of time to become more distinct in the

97 years before the Claudian Roman invasion in AD 43. The first of the

lingual communities was a Gaelic speaking one, occupying what is now

Ireland, Wales, the North and West of England, Cornwall and Scotland.

Secondly there was a Teutonic speaking community located by that

time in the South, South East and East of what is now England. These

newcomers were the tribal groups that Caesar and history referred to

as the Belgae. To confirm this, modern day Winchester, which was

originally the capital of the English branch of the Arras based French

Belgae tribe called the Atrebates, was known by the Romans as Venta

Belgae (Belgian market). If there really was this lingual divide then we

could expect trade and cultural connections after the departure of the

Romans to go in two directions. The Gaelic speakers in the West would

continue to trade and have cultural intercourse with the on-going

Gallic-Roman state in France and they would retain a higher level of


17

Roman civilisation than the Belgae Teutonic speakers. The peoples of

Belgae descent would continue to trade and have cultural

interchanges with their close Flemish, Frankish and Frisian cousins just

across the English Channel. This is the way that things seemed to have

happened in both cases after the end of the Roman occupation.

The initial reason given for Caesar’s first of two raids was to punish the

military connivance between Belgae tribes on the mainland and those

on the island. In his conquest of Gaul he’d defeated the Belgae on the

mainland almost as far as the Rhine delta. But the Belgae tribes on the

island of Britain, who were undefeated, were causing him

insurrectional problems. They were harbouring defeated leaders from

the continent, who were brooding, plotting and causing trouble for

Caesar from their exile. The raids on the Belgae tribes in modern day

England were thus punishment by the Romans for harbouring and

supporting these deposed leaders from the continental Belgae tribes.

These martial sanctions were undertaken at a very great cost in men

and material on both sides. It must at this point be remembered these

battles were practically a continuation of the Gallic wars in modern

day France a couple of years before. In both raids it appears that

almost all the troops aligned on the British side were members of local

insular Belgae tribes, the rest of the Gaelic speaking tribes of England

and Wales were very poorly represented. To put this into context, the

en-mass colonisation of England by the Belgae tribes had only been

going on at this time for only about twenty years. Ties between the

Belgae migrants and their fellow tribe members left behind on the

continent must still have been very close and not just emotively but

also in terms of distance they were physically very near. As we have

seen it was just a short hop across the English Channel. From my

research it appears that there was even a major upswing in Belgae

migration to England just before Caesars’ raids on Britain because over

the ever increasing depredation of their homelands by Caesar and his

legions. Even though Caesar was eventually successful militarily, both

of his raids nearly ended in disaster. In one case the loss of a good part

his fleet before his return; it was simply washed away by the English

Channel’s large tidal range that the Romans were not used to. The


18

Romans returned nearly 100 years later in 43 AD under Claudius; with

his war elephant(s). We will look at the Julian raids and the Claudian

invasion as well as the subsequent Roman expansion over most of the

island. From this we will try and see how the tribes in Britain evolved

under Roman occupation from late Iron-Age to the times of the Anglo-

Saxon invasions. We will look in detail at the last two centuries of the

Roman occupation of Britain to understand how it effects the

following period of the Dark Ages. We will look at why it required 3-4

legions to control a small island, even after 250 years of occupation.

Compare this with the provinces of North Africa, which were vastly

larger and were much more valuable to Rome than Britain, but

required only one legion to keep the peace. We will look at the lowly

position of Britain in the Roman firmament, in the later empire. It

appears that the province of Britannia became a dumping ground for

all sorts of people on the wrong side of the imperial administration.

The high number of insurrections in Britannia led by exiled would be

usurpers in the last 200 years of Roman occupation confirm this. We

will see that Roman towns in Britain were small and had palisades and

defensive walls built round them at a much earlier period than towns

in the rest of the Roman Empire; the largest Roman architectural

edifices constructed in Britain were military and not civil. The one

exception was the giant Basilica in the regional capital of Londinium, in

which the functions of administration, justice and above all tax

collecting (to feed four legions) were undertaken. I believe that we

are led completely the wrong way up the garden path about the

degree of romanisation of the province of Britannia by the flourishing

of Roman Villas all across Southern England in the 3rd

and 4th

century

AD. These Villas are one of the most important keys to understanding

later empire period in Britannia. We will see that in reality, with a very

few exceptions, the towns of Roman Britain throughout the Roman

occupation appear to have been more like military enclaves, almost

military bases, surrounded by comparatively small Vicii (garrison

towns). In Britannia there were none of the kind of major buildings

found in open undefended classical cities that existed in the early

imperial period of the Roman Empire. We will see that this kind of

undefended and un-walled urbs with their luxurious civil facilities


19

existed in other provinces neighbouring Britannia and not just at the

heart of the Empire. One explication for this difference initially could

be that the revolt by Boudicca, queen of the Icenii, must have burnt

painfully deep into the collective Roman memory. Boudicca with her

horde destroyed by fire and sword three of the four, relatively

undefended, fledgling Roman towns in Britannia with the loss of 70-

80,000 civilian Roman lives. After her revolt towns in the province of

Britannia were rarely built without earthwork defences, palisades or

walls. Even after three centuries of occupation there never seems to

be the level of Romanisation found in other provinces. We will see

that no native Britons achieved any high office in the empire, whereas

almost every other Roman province produced men of note from

Senators to Emperors. Was Britannia therefore under the Later

Empire, the Roman equivalent of Nazi Germany’s Eastern front? A

cold, nasty, uncomfortable and dangerous place where you got sent

when you were out of favour?

To understand better the development of what would become

England after the end of the Roman occupation we will look at the still

existing lingual differences in place in England between the South and

East of England and the West Country. Does this appellation mean it

was once considered another country? You only need to take the 25

minute drive from Birmingham to Worcester to realise how great this

lingual divide is. Surprisingly, in view of the city’s location ordinary

Worcester people have a very characteristic soft spoken West Country

accent when they speak. The nearby Birmingham accent sounds

nothing like that soft West Country drawl, with their speech being a

characteristic punchy rapid nasal twang. In the areas all over the South

West of Britain where this accent is still very common they use

somewhat different word sets to the rest of the South of England and

have quite a few different grammatical usages. These regional

differences could I believe dissimilate an older, long distant, division

between two different lingual groups in England, Wales and Cornwall.

In short, the West Country accent is to be found mostly in what were

non Belgae areas of Southern England. In this part of the country after

the departure of the Romans the people would have spoken a form of


20

Gaelic with some Latin mixed in. The vestiges of this language can be

traced today in modern Welsh and in the nearly extinct Cornish

language. In the areas of England where the Belgae tribes had settled

they would continue, after the departure of the Romans to speak their

various dialects of Teutonic origin. I will show that in the areas that are

covered by today’s West Country a diminished, though highly literate,

form or Roman civilisation continued for nearly 200 years after the

departure of the Romans in 407 AD. In the areas where the Belgae

tribes had settled and further North civilisation disappeared almost

completely after the departure of the Romans. It is not surprising in

view of the almost total civil collapse in their area in the early 5th

century that the percentage of Latin words in the languages (which

then went on to become Old English) of the Belgae tribes settled in

England is so very low. This can be compared with much higher

percentage of Latin words in the proto-Welsh language spoken after

the Romans left in what is today Wales, Cornwall and the modern day

West Country.

We have seen above that Belgae tribes had settled in the East and

South East of England from the late Iron Age starting slowly around

125 BC. I have proof that trade as well as cultural contacts continued

after the migration between the continent and the island. This

commerce between Belgae tribes existed from before the invasion. It

must have continued, to an extent that we can but ignore, during the

occupation. And once again I will prove trade took off again after the

Romans left. The wool trade between South East England and the

region in West Flanders, in which Ghent and Bruges became such

important towns, was surely not a new thing in the early middle ages,

and there is some proof of this. Ghent and Bruges can be shown from

documentary evidence to be starting to assume this role as early as

the 8-9th

centuries AD. The Belgae tribes from the late Iron Age

controlled the North and South Downs in the South East of England

which are perfect pasture land for sheep and they are extremely close

to modern day Flanders. We will look at what kind of trade goods were

being exchanged between Britain and the continent during the period

of the Dark Ages. We will examine in detail the commerce during the


21

period of Magna Frisia Greater Friesland, 600-734 AD; this was the

golden age for Merovingian Frankish/Frisian trade and is the best

documented period. We will look at the rise of the Carolingian dynasty

and the effect it had Frankish/Frisian/English trade. We will look at the

change in trading patterns which was partly due the effective closing

of the Mediterranean to Byzantium/Frankish commerce by the rise of

Islamic naval forces and Islamic pirates. We will finish with the effect

of the Viking raids and invasion on early medieval England and English

commerce as well. The Frankish/Frisian trading network in the period

of Magna Frisia was gigantic. It was almost as widespread, if not as

much in depth, as that of the later medieval Hanseatic League. We will

look at maritime Frisian history seeing that there is perhaps continuity

in commerce from the period Merovingian Frankish/Frisian Dark Age

trading network until the establishment of the 11th

century Hanseatic

trading network. To put this in its context, in the early medieval period

there were four Frisian towns that were members of the Hanseatic

League. During the period of the Hanseatic League there is a good

possibility that Frisians were for a long time the boat builders

supplying the favourite Frisian Cobs for a lot of the hanseatic traders.

There is some evidence that some of the Saxon Shore forts in England

could at one point, in the period between 600-734 AD have been used

as Frisian/Frankish almost proto-Hanseatic trading stations, or

counters. The locations of the Saxon Shore forts are all on or very close

to a port and as far as the period of Frisian/Frankish commerce is

concerned the timeline works out well.

We will see that throughout the Dark Ages this trade with the

Merovingian Franks through the Frisians was essential for Southern

and Eastern England and not just in the chaotic period of immediate

post Roman Britain. We will look at some of to these Saxon Shore forts

later being used in some cases as places of where churches were built

as the first centres of Christian worship in what had become a pagan

land.

We will examine in detail the extent of the Frankish/Frisian trading

network throughout England and North West Europe in the 6th

, 7th

and


22

early 8th

century AD. We start at the beginning by trying to understand

the nature of the reciprocal trade and other connections between the

small, nascent, mostly Anglo-Saxon led kingdoms in South and Eastern

England and the Merovingian Frankish kingdom across the English

Channel. The period of the hundred and fifty years following the

Roman departure in 407 AD is particularly interesting. We look at the

possibility that at one point in the Dark Ages the kings of some of

these small English kingdoms actually owed allegiance to the

Merovingian monarchs. In more direct terms, were parts of South and

East of England part of the Frankish kingdom in the early Dark Ages?

To give us an indication of the importance of this commerce in the

early 7th

century, we will examine in detail the contents of the royal

burial at Sutton Hoo (circa 625 AD). We will see that amongst the 37

gold items found there: there were 2 small gold ingots, 3 blank gold

coins, the remaining 34 gold coins came from Merovingian royal mints;

they were minted between 575 and 625 AD. In this hoard all the coins

were all made at various mints in the Wicus (VVicus in Pontio) area

along the other side of the English Channel just opposite South East

England. We will see that this same area had already supplied gold

coins to the Belgae tribes in Britain in the 1st

century BC, seven

hundred years before; that is in the period pre-dating the Roman

occupation.

The unique source of the gold coins, the beautiful East Mediterranean

silver bowls and other Byzantium goods found in the Sutton Hoo burial

site speaks volumes of the well-established and documented trade

connections of Merovingian Frankish Gaul and the Byzantium Empire

in the Eastern Mediterranean. In the Frankish kingdom just across the

Channel from England there were no Dark Ages. With the continuity

on the continent between the end of Roman occupation and the

Merovingian kings we have for that realm generously documented

historical continuity from the collapse of the Roman Empire through to

medieval times and even right up until today. We will see, however, in

Britain we rely mainly and very heavily on two historical sources for

the period of post Roman history from the beginning of the 5th

to the


23

middle of the 7th

century, Bede and Gildas. It has been suggested that

some of the contents of these histories seem to have been cribbed

from the Frankish history (Historia Francorum) written in the late 6th

century AD by Gregory of Tours. This history recounts how the Franks

came to the dominant position that they were in nearby Europe during

the British Dark Ages.

The continuity just across the Channel in Merovingian France wasn’t

just documentary. As is so well indicated by the finds at Sutton Hoo,

Merovingian kings continued to mint gold and other coins throughout

the period of the English Dark Ages. While in most of what was the

Roman province of Britannia (basically modern day England and

Wales) coinage, and in effect the monetary economy, disappeared for

nearly two hundred years following the end of the Roman occupation.

As we indicated, we will examine Merovingian Frankish/Frisian trade

routes and trading stations In England and across North West Europe

in the 6th

, 7th

and early 8th

centuries. To put it simply, as far as I can

ascertain, from the works of Professor Stéphane Lebecq the Frisians

took care of the maritime logistics and the Merovingian Franks with

their abundant and good quality, convertible, gold coinage took care of

the finance. The Franks, this strong regional power, definitely meddled

in the affairs of East Anglia and Kent during the 5th

, 6th

and even

perhaps the 7th

century AD.

We will see that the history of Merovingian France, which seems to be

so ignored by British historians, really is the key to a better

understanding of England during the Dark Ages. We will try and

understand the past jingoistic reasons why British historians have

ignored so completely Merovingian France during the Dark Age period

of British history. As we will see there is ample evidence of widespread

commerce between Southern and Eastern England and Merovingian

France. As we have seen and will prove, this trade happened through

the intermediary of Merovingian Frankish/Frisian traders, who in the

later Dark Ages even had their own local counters in many English

settlements. They provided a window to another world for high status

kings of Anglo-Saxon origins; with their gold coins and their multitude


24

of varied exotic luxury wares from all over the known world. It could

even be conjectured that it was this close contact both intellectually

and commercially with the resident Merovingian Frankish/Frisian

merchants that helped to drag the English kingdoms out of the Dark

Ages. In modern terms it would be comparable to having a two way

webcam connection between a hut in a remote native Amazonian

village and the Ritz hotel in Paris.

We will see that the kings of the first French, Merovingian, dynasty

were of Salien Frankish origin, a people that hailed from the region

bordering the Rhine estuary, next to the Frisians and much closer to

Britain than Saxony or Southern Jutland. The first Merovingian king

was Clodion le Chevelu; he reigned as king of Cambrai (30 Km south of

Lille) for twenty years between 428-448 AD. He was also probably

fighting for the Romans as his successor Mérovée did (reigned 448-

458); the Merovingian dynasty is named after this king. He teamed up

with the Roman general Aetius to fight Attila and his Huns. The next

Merovingian king, Childéric the 1st

(463-481 AD) reigned from his

capital in Tournai (a few kilometres South East of Lille) in modern day

Belgium. He equally fought alongside another Roman general Aegidius

to put a stop to the Aquitanian Visigoth expansion up to the Loire

River. Initially, before taking over an area corresponding pretty much

to modern day France, the Salien Frankish kingdom was a small affair

centred around the region in France now called Nord-Pas de Calais. At

that time a Teutonic language (the case until the mid-20th

century) was

almost certainly spoken by the people in the countryside governed by

the Merovingian kings. It is to be noted that their initial expansion by

the Salien Frank kings was into their neighbouring Belgae tribal areas,

their early capitals were in these newly conquered territories. These

two peoples were very close, physically and perhaps even linguistically.

The archaeological records show that during this period the fashions in

buckles and clasps for clothing in Kent, opposite this Frankish kingdom,

were of Merovingian origin or local Kentish copies of Merovingian

fashion objects. Early Merovingian coins have been found in Kent, East

Anglia and as far west as Crondall in Hampshire.


25

We will try and understand the makeup of the population in place in

Eastern and South Eastern England at the beginning and the end of the

Roman occupation and through to the Danish Viking invasions in the 8-

9th

centuries AD; we will see there was little change. We will look at

different evidence to support this from: place names, archaeology,

recent genetic studies, contemporary classical texts as well as Frankish

and European documents. We will try and understand the reasons in

this context for an invaded population to change its language. Does it

depend on the percentile content of the newly composed population

that are invaders or are there other factors? We will see that as far as

language, culture and cultural objects are concerned all is not what it

seems; in fact we will show in a novel manner that archaeological

cultural objects can be very confusing and even misleading. For

example, from a cultural and lingual point of view, the massive influx

of French words that make up 30% of the modern English language

didn’t occur, as is usually thought, with the Norman invasion. In fact it

happened when large parts of France were under British military

control two to three hundred years later during the hundred years

war. French vocabulary was introduced into the everyday speech in

England by soldiers returning to Britain after decades spent in the

French conquests, they came back speaking a medieval version of

Franglais. Perhaps the returning warrior had a Martine in tow, who

was already complaining about the weather and the food. In France

the surname Langlois or Langlais, which dates from this same time,

also show some soldiers didn’t come home and appear to have

preferred, as I have, la belle vie en France; In my Paris suburb I’m

referred to as “L’anglais”.

One of the major factors in the movement of peoples in the period

we’re studying was marine transgressions; these we will examine at

the end of chapter I. We will look at the effect of weather patterns on

marine transgressions. Some medieval evidence shows that perhaps

some of these historical catastrophic occurrences may have been

caused by over grazing the dunes and deforesting their hinterland

making them much more susceptible to these physical phenomena.

We will look at marine transgressions that occurred all along the


26

Belgian and Frisian coasts around 350 AD, which according to Frisian

history caused a lot of the people to emigrate from Friesland to

England and Flanders due to the flooding of their homeland. This

episode was obviously a major event which changed the map of

Northern Europe considerably; we will look at references in classical

texts on what is known as the Dunkirk II transgression. It appears that

degradation in climate and weather patterns around this time

increased the number of storms and the amount of precipitation while

reducing the average temperature. We will look at modern weather

and see that there are some very recent disturbing parallels with past

weather patterns.

We will look at the English language and it’s Germanic, or more

correctly Teutonic Scandinavian, origins and development as it

pertains to our period and later. We will look at the origins of the Indo-

European languages that still today dominate Europe, Persia (Iran),

India and the American continents. We will try to understand how

languages were structured: before nationally centralised grammar

rules, before recorded music in its myriad forms, before radio, before

talking cinema, before TV and before the internet. We will see before

these revolutions the great diversity of dialects, grammar and spelling

in what was supposedly a single spoken language. We will see that

large differences in peoples’ regional accents and even word set usage

have stayed in place over the last century in a country as physically

small as Britain; in spite of the lingual carpet bombing of modern

media. We will try and understand how great the divergence between

two languages/dialects, with a common root, need to become before

the respective speakers can no longer understand each other.

We will try and understand continuity in settlement. Having your

pastures for your Frisian cows permanently flooded by a massive

marine transgression is a pretty good reason to emigrate, especially

across the English Channel when you’ve heard from a Frisian merchant

that your second cousins in Roman occupied Britain are doing so well.

As we have seen once a people have become established somewhere

there are large elements of society that become sedentary. A large


27

portion of the population will stay where they are and not move far,

unless of course there are obligatory reasons. A good illustration of

cultural persistence is the fifty thousand year old aboriginal society

and culture in Australia. They talk today of the dream time as if it was

yesterday and yet their culture has been the same three times longer

than the return of man to the British Isles after the last ice age. These

antipodean aboriginal people still know very well the stories behind

“dream time” drawings on rocks even though some of these works of

art feature extinct animals which roamed the Australian Outback a

long time ago. The giant kangaroo that features in some of these ritual

drawings disappeared probably because of over-hunting by the men

that drew them more than thirty thousand years ago.

I remember very clearly the day I realised that if it was possible people

just plainly stayed put, it was like the conversion of Paul of Tarsus on

the road to Damascus. After reading an article in a newspaper, I

understood! It really was like the flash of light that Paul had

experienced. I looked up at my sales director Olivier, across from me in

the train, and exclaimed that I’d just learnt something that had

changed my understanding of history completely, that my life would

never be the same again. When I explained to him why, he thought I

was nuts. Although since then I’ve read other accounts of similar

occurrences, this has only reinforced the impact of what I read that

day on my revised appreciation of history. Additionally, what I had

learnt about the Australian aborigines had prepared me mentally and

philosophically for what I read in that newspaper article.

An obscure cave had been found in Northern Germany on a hillside in

the foothills of the Harz Mountains of Lower Saxony; it was almost

hidden until 1980 and only properly excavated from 1993. They found

in one of its five chambers, 3000 year old skeletons. They had skulls

that were preserved so well by calcification that they had intact DNA

that was in good enough condition to be recuperated and analysed. In

2008 the scientists working on these skulls decided to ask the local

population to give DNA samples to see if there were any direct

descendants in the area. In all, 270 local residents volunteered for the


28

mouth swab DNA test. With the DNA obtained from a mouth swab

they checked for similar genetic patterns on the Y chromosome. After

a lot of testing they found two men who had a very similar genetic

pattern to one of the cavemen, the DNA in question had a unique

genetic pattern. Two ordinary middle aged German men, Herr Uwe

Lange and Herr Manfred Huchthausen, who both lived nearby, were

direct descendants 120 generations later of one of the people found in

the cave. One of them, eerily, even remembers playing in the cave as a

boy.

As I said it was a flash of light, in the past most people stayed put for

many generations, a certain small percentage will wander and go and

live elsewhere, but the vast majority would have lived near where they

were born and grew up. Although there are some notable exceptions

as we will see later in the book, in the period of British history that

we’re interested a lot of the invasions involve the replacement of the

existing military structure and ruling elite by another, usually foreign

one. This as far as I can make out was the case for the Celtic, Roman,

Anglo/Saxon/Jutish and Norman invasions of Britain. There were

however substantial migrations of all types of people, not just soldiers

and leaders, with the Belgae, Frisian and finally Viking invasions. But

even then, most of the people at the bottom of the pile stay the same,

even if they now have the title of being a slave rather than a free

peasant. In Britain genetic studies have proven clearly that there have

been no major changes in the genetic makeup of the bulk of the

population of the British Isles since the resettlement of the Islands

after the retreat of the ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. In the

list given above it appears that only the Celtic and Belgae invaders

changed the language of their subject peoples. Their incipient

civilisations can above all be tracked historically in both cases by major

archaeologically proven cultural changes in the lands they occupied.

Genocide and complete replacement of an invaded population is

something of a rarity in reality, especially in the period that we’re

studying. But there are examples, as has been proven genetically, such

as the Viking settlement of the Orkneys. We will look at the different


29

kinds of invasions in history to see the different scenarios concerning

Invasion and eventual language change.

This new way of looking at peoples and their sedentary habits changes

the way that we look at invasions and the effect they have on the

composition of the population in the place being invaded. In the

history of the period that we will be looking at the invasion by the

Belgae tribes of Britain in the late Iron Age would not have been a

complete replacement of the population, more of a merging of two

peoples. In this invasion the language changed as far as we can

ascertain. This was not the case with the Anglo-Saxon invasion, the

proof being once again that Old English was much more akin to Old

Frisian than Old Saxon.

This, as Dr Francis Pryor has so well portrayed, shows us that in most

cases “John Smith” and his descendants at the bottom of the pile will

stay the same after an invasion. They will continue farming the same

fields. Even if John’s son changes his name to ”Jan Schmidt”. He could

also wear different clothes that follow the invaders’ fashions. He could

bind his baby’s head, as some vassal peoples of the Huns did, to make

them like the elongated bound heads of the invading Huns and their

children. He may well copy and wear the same design of broach to

fasten his cloak as the new lords do. He may even adopt the design of

the beakers they use for drinking their mead. But underneath it all he’s

still an unchanged member of the same people as his grandfather, it’s

just the rulers and fashions that have changed. We will see that if we

apply this kind of thinking to the Anglo-Saxon invasion then everything

changes about the origin of England and the genetic makeup and

origins of its people.

Against this new backdrop we have Michael Jones amongst many

others almost conclusively proving that there was no mass invasion of

England by the Anglo-Saxons. This is not just because there are so few

Anglo-Saxon settlements that have been found. Although, it must be

said that must be a pretty good indicator. It’s also because modern

lingual and genetic evidence are not very convincing about a mass

Anglo-Saxon invasion either. This is pretty much confirmed by Stephen


30

Oppenheimer’s book and other genetic analyses. Recent

archaeological evidence has shown mostly continuity in occupation in

Southern and Eastern England throughout the Anglo-Saxon invasion

period. There is as we said very little evidence of a lot of Anglo-Saxon

settlements, or for that matter any evidence of large scale disruption

to the existing post Roman population.

In Chapter II we will look at the texts concerning the Anglo-Saxon

invasions from different sources, especially older texts that predate

the possible Germanisation of British history by Parliament under the

18th

and 19th

century dynasty of German kings and queens (the Saxe-

Coburgs). It appears that powerful people in the British Parliament

thought the new dynasty would be better accepted if it was proven

that all of the English as well were of Anglo-Saxon origin like their new

king. This in spite of a freely available 17th

century work by the German

speaking scholar Francis Junius, from Zurich, which showed without a

shadow of a doubt that Old and modern English had their roots in Old

Frisian.

So to sum up, a trip to Rømø brought my attention to the Frisian

Islands. On investigating the subject I discovered the Frisians, their

language, their history and their unexpected connection to Britain. On

the trip up to the island we stayed overnight in Utrecht in Holland,

where we had a fine time visiting the beautiful old historical town

centre. Subsequently I discovered that this town was conquered by the

Frisians in the 6th

century and they established one of their several

major regional trade counters there. The town was held by them until

690 AD, by amongst others, the legendary King Radbod Redbad

(there’s a name) of Greater Friesland. He was a notable pagan and he

demolished the Frankish church in Utrecht defying thus the mighty

Christianised Franks under amongst others Clovis. At this time, the

period of Magna Frisia, the country stretched from modern day

Antwerp to the current frontier between Germany and Denmark and

as far inland as Utrecht. That they could defy and beat the mighty

Franks, their erstwhile trading partners, tells much of their military

power at this time.


31

History, as I was taught it at school and I have read in books, had

England being invaded by wave after wave of massed Anglo-Saxon and

Jutish forces, followed en masse by their families. We have them

slowly, over 200 years, sweeping across the country replacing the local

Gallic-Roman population almost completely. We will see that this is

plainly just not true, it could not have happened even from a basic

logistical point of view, as Michael Jones proves in “Unroman Britain”.

We have absolutely no archaeological or historical evidence of sailing

ships amongst the native peoples living around the North Sea until the

late 8th

century Viking clinker built sailing ships. Even the similar,

beautiful, clinker built boat that was used for the 7th

century Sutton

Hoo burial of an Anglo-Saxon king clearly wasn’t designed to take sail.

From research Michael Jones has estimated that Anglo-Saxons would

have travelled at a maximum 3 knots in their ships (which would’ve

been probably paddled rather than rowed). It would have thus taken

Anglo-Saxons between 3-6 months to get from North Western

Germany to England. The low speed is accounted for by the fact that

boats they used really appear to have been paddled; contemporary

carved illustrations on rocks confirm this. Taking into account the

additional fact that in the winter the North Sea was probably not

practicable a lot of the time, they could only make a maximum of one

return trip a year and probably more like once every two years.

Again as Michael Jones explains, these invaders couldn’t carry large

cargos or many non-paddling passengers in their 30-35 seat open

boats. It is almost certain that they didn’t strike out directly across the

sea, but for safety reasons would probably have followed the coast the

whole trip. During practically the whole period of the Anglo-Saxon

invasions they would’ve had to paddle for many long weeks along the

Frisian coast which was integral part of the kingdom of Greater

Friesland. This part of their voyage would make up the vast majority of

their trip in terms of the number of kilometres they travelled from

Saxony to England. It must be assumed that the Anglo-Saxon migrants

were on very good terms with the major maritime realm of Frisia who

were deeply in cahoots at this time with the mighty Franks. In this


32

context during the supposed period of Anglo-Saxon mass migration

they would have had to deal with people such as the later powerful

pagan King Redbad of Greater Friesland and his tough Frank bashing

buddies.

But history, as we know well, is written by the victors. The partial

destruction of the pagan Frisian kingdom by the Christian Franks in the

8th

century and the 13th

century absorption of the rump of Friesland by

the Dutch mean that very little remains to us today of Frisian history.

What physical material that is left in the way of charters, etc. haven’t

even been studied that much. It wasn’t in any British history book that

I found out that Frisia had been a major military and commercial

nation; or for that matter, that its power as Magna Frisia had peaked

at almost the most sombre period of the Dark Ages in England.

Today, the majority of Frisians are lucky to live in tolerant Holland

where their language is now actually promoted even amongst the

purely Dutch speakers. But sadly in the old Leeuwarden (Ljouwert in

Frisian) Fries Museum in the capital of the Dutch province of Friesland

there is absolutely nothing about Frisian history. Hopefully this will be

different with the brand new Fries Museum that is opening in Ljouwert

in 2013. As the European Union slowly dampens nationalist ardours

we begin to see the rediscovery and reinforcement of regional

cultures. Past European history in the last two to three centuries was

often manipulated to promote monolithic nation state identities,

especially in the early period of nascent European nationalism (late

XVIIIth

- early XIXth

centuries). National myths built on these revised

versions of history were strongly promoted to the detriment of the

existing regional understanding of history. The local historical evidence

and literature that related to history which didn’t fit in with the new

national myth was often physically eliminated. In short, the truth of

what actually happened in history in some European regions has often

been denied over the last two centuries. What actually happened has

often been wilfully suppressed and replaced with a national version.

The promotion by the EU of regional identities and non-national

secondary languages within member states can allow these historical


33

folk groupings to come to the fore once more, without as before

persecution or suppression. In this context the Dutch have set an

excellent example allowing Frisian not just to flourish but is promoting

the language with their “Praat mar Frysk” (prattle to me in Frisian)

campaign across the whole of Holland and not just in Frisian province.

For the Frisians, as well as peoples like the Catalans or the Basques,

being able to use freely, their own language once more is a relatively

new experience. In the past doing so would have meant being

discriminated against or worse; 40 years ago in Franco’s fascist Spain

speaking Catalan in public meant imprisonment. This change in

attitudes will hopefully lead to a more generalised cultural

reawakening and encourage more academic studies, for example, of

Frisian regional history.

We see that the reality of the Anglo-Saxon invasion appears therefore

to be completely different from that which we were taught at schools.

In contemporary or near contemporary texts from the period of the

invasion the boatloads of invading warriors never number above five,

and five boats is recorded only once. That’s about 150-165 warriors at

most in five ships. Most arrivals recorded in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle

(based somewhat on Gildas and Bede) are of just two or three ships;

that is 60-100 warriors. It sounds more like the arrival of a mercenary

force wilfully requested by leaders of the Gallo/Roman natives to help

them to defend themselves; which I believe is the truth.

The less well documented arrival of the Frisians is perhaps because

they had already been there for hundreds of years, since the arrival of

the Belgae tribes en masse in the early 1st

century BC. It appears that it

hadn’t been just that one off migration either, it continued in dribs and

drabs from then onwards; genetic evidence appears to prove this.

Even before the end of the Roman occupation of Britain in 407 AD,

contemporary classical texts talk of Frisians being hired for use as

auxiliaries in the province of Britannia. Their arrival was probably

greeted without trepidation by the existing Belgae population, who

almost surely spoke a language close enough to them to understand

each other’s speech without a translator. To underline this, Frisian


34

graves in the East of England were in continual uninterrupted use from

the 4th

to the 9th

century. Archaeologists and historians now agree

that apart from Roman coins and imported Roman artefacts, that

mostly disappear from archaeological sites in the period following the

end of the Roman occupation, that there was continuity in the

occupation of the land. The historical theories of the abandoning of

the coastal lands in the period of the Anglo-Saxon invasion have now

been discounted. In short there is continuity in agriculture and society;

there is no archaeological evidence of a mass migration either inwardly

of invaders or outwardly of refugees. There are no archaeological

markers of the destructive disruption caused by a massive invasion of

marauding warriors. To me it sounds less and less like an invasion. The

migrations after the Romans left were almost certainly peoples

(maybe mostly Frisians or proto Flemish) very closely related to the

Teutonic speaking Belgae tribes already ensconced in England since

about 500 years, they were not Anglo-Saxons. Descendants of these

people still make up a large part of the real English. The English today

are thus a mixture of: the two peoples that had settled in that part of

the island immediately following the retreat of the ice sheets, the

substantial Belgae influx in the Iron Age between the 2nd

and 1st

centuries BC and finally the Viking invasions in the 8th

and 9th

century.

In Belgae dominated areas of South and Eastern England they probably

spoke in the period immediately before, during and after the Roman

occupation a proto Anglo-Frisian language which then became Old

English. Very few Latin words appear to have passed from the period

of Roman occupation into Old English. Modifications were made to Old

English after the Dark Ages with mass Viking Danish invasion of the

North and East of England in the 8th

and 9th

centuries. The effect this

invasion had was an influx of Danish words into Old English as well as

the great simplification of the language with much less verb

declination and the quasi elimination of genre for objects in the

resulting amalgamated tongue. In fact modern English originates In a

form of “pidgin” English.

This means that there are a total of only four mass migration events to

the British Isles since the last ice age. All the other invasions: Celtic,


35

Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Norman have not included mass transfers of

populations; these groups have had little impact on the genetic make-

up of the English even if in one case there was language change. The

main genetic markers to be found in England are for the four migratory

groups mentioned above. With as we would assume, those of

Frisian/Belgae origin being found most in the middle and South of

England and those of Danish origin being found in the North and East

of England.

Further, these Belgae Teutonic speaking peoples living in the South,

South Eastern and Eastern England were I believe happy to throw off

the ever more heavy Roman yoke of conscription and heavy taxation;

be that imposition in coin or in kind. I believe they were pleased to go

back to running their own affairs with the help of their tribal friends

from just across the water; even if they did have difficulty defending

themselves. Relations between the descendants of the Belgae tribes in

South and East England and the people in the “West Country”

probably returned to the way they were before the Roman

occupation. There would be sporadic raiding by petty kings for cattle

and slaves along the line of the Foss Way and the perhaps the

occasional more important skirmish. Ireland in the same period would

be a very good example of this kind of scenario with its many petty

warring kingdoms. In the Gaelic speaking West of Britain I believe the

people were less happy to have no more Roman occupation. I believe

that there the Romans were missed. Trade and cultural contacts

continued for nearly a hundred years between the British

Gallo/Romans in the South West of England with the rump Gallo-

Roman Empire in Brittany, Normandy and the Loire. It is to be noted

that Brittany in France is called just that because of the large migration

Gallo-Roman Britons to the area at this period. We see that Romanised

civilisation continued to a degree in the South West of England much

longer, there was even a flowering of beautiful Latin poetry, engraved

on lead sheets, there in the century following the Roman departure.

Thus, if there was no mass Anglo-Saxon invasion and there was in

place this lingual divide roughly along the line of the Foss Way then


36

this would explain the history of the division of post Roman occupation

Britain. We see the island split in two and the conflicts between the

two halves; that would continue on and off for centuries to come. This

confrontation lasted until the final fall of Wales in the early middle

ages to a Norman/Frankish/English king.

The major problem seems to be that we have relied for too long on an

almost single version of the period of the Anglo-Saxon invasion, a

history written by Bede, an ecclesiastical. His work is really an

ecclesiastical history, pastoral matters are not very important, his

truncated version of history is based on folk knowledge and texts from

contemporary classical authors such as Gildas and the Frankish history

of the period written by Gregory of Tours. But as we will see in the

following chapters there are other texts and there are other clues that

tell another different story to that we are taught today.

Having worked with Flemish Belgians, who because of their physical

location often speak three or four languages, I have come to

understand how close our cultures are. A very good Belgian friend of

mine, Wouter Vancoppenolle, has explained to me a lot about West

Flemish history and culture. He is from beautiful Bruges, a town that

grew rich along with Ghent from the English wool trade in early

medieval times. I feel really at home in this part of Flanders, the local

people seem so much like the English just across the channel

physically, in attitudes and culture. The local beer, Brugse Zot, is very

good and similar in taste to English beer. After a few Brugse Zot beers

in Bruges one night I asked Wouter what was the origin of his mouthful

of a name, Vancoppenolle, “Simple” he said “in English you’d say of

the copse and knolls”. For me that says it all about oft ignored lingual

commonality of the two peoples. We need to add to this obvious

physical and cultural closeness, today’s confirmation of concrete

genetic connections.

I hope that you enjoy the following chapters; this is very definitely not

a standard history book. It is my personal effort to portray a new

version of British history during the classical and post classical periods

that just seems so obvious to me as well as others. Almost all history is


37

conjecture. Writing history involves making speculative assumptions

based on contemporary written matter, taking into account, when this

is lacking, archaeology, artistic and architectural remains and today

genetic analysis. A lot of the contents of this book are therefore just

that, speculative assumptions, but they are based on hard documented

evidence from many British and foreign sources as well as my own

fieldtrips.

I do apologise in advance for my style, it may appear that I jump

around and go off at tangents. The reason I do this is that I’m looking

for additional clues that may be found through parallels with the

modern world as well as those to be found in the increasingly available

knowledge base of world history. With the putting on line of literally

millions of historical documents from the past, with a little mastery of

foreign languages, it is possible to find unbelievable amounts of

relevant data for the subject that is of interest in a flash. Both present

day scenarios and the easily found reference works from the past have

helped me to make many a conjectural point on a specific subject.

History does repeat itself even if its plot is nearly always played out in

a slightly different manner. But because of this repetition, similar

scenarios from history will often provide a good basic template for the

parts of history that are missing from the record. Maybe this method,

which could at times, I agree, give fallacious results, is the reason that

I’ve come to some quite different interpretations about what really

happened in Britain during the historical period covered in this work.

My views, as expressed in this book, are often incompatible and fly in

the face of those of currently accepted historical orthodoxy; but

maybe, just maybe, some of them are right.

In French there is a phrase de voire une vâche dans une couloir, which

translates as “to see a cow in a corridor”; this means something that is

so blatantly obvious that you just can’t ignore it. I hope that after

reading this book that you may be a little bit closer to seeing, like me,

a very large Frisian cow in the corridor. In some ways every chapter is a

story to itself trying to reinforce a particular aspect of, or exterior

influences on British Dark Age history.


38

In the first chapter we will start by looking at the ice age cycles over

the last 500,000 years. This is very important in view of the

fundamental effect that they have had on the patterns of settlement

of man during the whole of that period in the British Isles.

Gerald Ray Capon, l’Haÿ-les-Roses, France – April 2015


39

Bibliography - Introduction

1. Three maps showing Belgae tribes to be of the Halstatt/La Tène

Celtic/Gaelic culture.

Map1 - Website – Folia Electronica Classica (Louvain-la-Neuve) janvier-juin

2006 – Université Catholique de Louvain - Vie religieuse en Gaule. - Héritage

celtique et courants méditerranéens – Author - Jean Loicq Professeur

honoraire de l’Université de Liège.

GRC – The below 2006 map from Louvain Catholic University shows clearly

that it is assumed that the Belgae tribes were of the Halstatt/La Tène

Celtic/Gaelic culture.

GRC – It is interesting that the Basque region is portrayed as being of the

same Halstatt/La Tène Celtic/Gaelic culture. We know that the Basque

language, that is still spoken modern day Spain and France, pre-dates the

arrival of Indo-European languages such as Gaelic in Europe.

Copyright 2006 - Jean Loicq Professeur honoraire de l’Université de Liège.

Fig. 2. - L'Europe celtique (civil. de La Tène) vers 60 av. J.-C.

- Celtic Europe (La Tène civilisat(ion) around 60 BC


40

Map 2 – The Penguin Atlas of Ancient history – Copyright Colin McEvedy

1967 – Penguin Books.

GRC – The below illustration extracted from the excellent “The Penguin Atlas

of Ancient History” shows that on this map concerning 74 BC from page 73

that the Belgae tribes were considered to be an integral part of the

Halstatt/La Tène Celtic/Gaelic culture.

Map2 - Copyright – Colin McEvedy 1967

Extract from map on page 73 of “The Penguin Atlas of Ancient History”

GRC – To make this clear below is an extract from the previous map from

Page 69 of the Atlas concerning 145 BC. This date was before the beginning

of the Belgae Invasion/migration event to England which began around 125

BC, although by 145 BC they were in their continental homelands. He gives

the movement of the Teutons from their Scandinavian cradle as just starting

at this time, whereas today it is accepted that the Teutonic migrations began

in 600-500 BC.


41

Map 3 – The Penguin Atlas of Ancient history – Copyright Colin McEvedy

1967 – Penguin Books.

GRC – Note that the vertical hatching on both this and the previous map are

the same and that on this map it is clear that the people represented by this

hatching are the La Tène Celts.

Map3 - Copyright – Colin McEvedy 1967

Extract from map on page 69 of

“The Penguin Atlas of Ancient History”

2. Flemish in France – Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

Research Centre of Multilingualism Extracts

Geographical and language background

Flemish is spoken in north-western France, in the area between Dunkerque,

Bourbourg, Saint-Omer and Bailleul. This area roughly covers the

arrondissement of Dunkerque (Nord-Pas-de-Calais Region). It is often

referred to as "Flandre maritime" (maritime Flanders) and people used to

speak of "Flandre flamingante" (Flemish Flanders) as opposed to "Flandre

Lilloise" or "Flandre wallingante" (Walloon Flanders). Outside this region,

other varieties of the same language are spoken in Belgium (in Flanders and

Brussels, as well as a few Communes in Wallonia) and the Netherlands, by 5.6

million and 12 million speakers, respectively. The language is also used in

some old Dutch colonies, including some Caribbean islands and Suriname.

The Dutch language is also the basis of Afrikaans, which is spoken in South

Africa and Namibia.


42

The region has a total population of 3,932,939, or 7.24% of the total

population of France, and 320 people live in maritime Flanders. The total

population of the Nord Département fell by approximately 5000 between

March 1982 and January 1986. Population density is around 317 people per

km 2 and a third of the population is under the age of 30, whilst 16% is over

the age of 60. Emigration is taking place, especially from towns whose

livelihood has been based on the mining, iron-and-steel and textiles

industries. According to our correspondent, Flemish has virtually disappeared

from urban areas.

According to Röhrig (1987), some 20% of people living in maritime Flanders

are of Flemish mother-tongue. However, only 5% of them use Flemish on a

daily basis. The enormous differences that can be observed between the

generations seem to point to the disappearance of the language. The

generation of grandparents divides into 36% French-speakers, 38% Flemish-

speakers and 26% using both languages, whereas the generation of parents

divides into 75% French-speakers, 25% Flemish-speakers and 25% using both

languages. The younger generation uses the languages in the proportions of

99% French, 1% Flemish and 8% both. A study conducted in 1981 also

pinpointed a decline in the use and knowledge of Flemish among young

people, in comparison with their parents. Only 5% of young people said that

they often used Flemish, in comparison with 54% of their parents; 23% of

young people used Flemish sometimes, in comparison with 22% of parents;

and finally, 72% of young people said they never used Flemish, in comparison

with 54% of parents. From the point of view of passive knowledge of the

language, only 11% of young people said they had a very good knowledge, in

comparison with 46% of their parents; 32% of young people said they had

some knowledge, in comparison with 23% of parents; and 57% said they had

no knowledge, in comparison with 31% of parents.

Family and social use of the language

The use of Flemish within the family has diminished to a tiny percentage

since the Second World War. Flemish is now really only used by a very small

number of families. This trend started in the period between the Wars since

when there has been a total upheaval as regards language use.

Courting couples speak to each other in French, which means that it is

reasonable to state that all households are endogamous, that is, French-

speaking. Moreover, although there was still a difference in the language

education of young women in the 1930s, with girls being taught more French

than boys, there is no longer any difference now.

Although 20% of priests speak French Flemish, mass is celebrated in Flemish

only very occasionally. The catechism exists in a bilingual version, with the

latest edition dating bach to 1936, but it has not been taught in Flemish since

the last War. There is no Flemish translation of the Bible.


43

As regards attitudes, the Flemish language is usually associated with

inferiority and is seen as old-fashioned. Most speakers think the language will

disappear completely in the next couple of generations. They see the

language as being of some, albeit small, use for the future, whereas people

who do not speak the language see it as being of little use. Despite the fact

that young people have some interest in learning Flemish as a foreign

language, they do not use it in their daily lives. People who still have a passive

knowledge of the language feel that it helps them to learn other Germanic

languages.

Interest in Dutch classes is growing among young French-speakers but the

number of young people who speak Dutch remains small.

3. CRO MAGNON - Aux origins de notre humanité - Marcel Otte

a. Editions PERRIN

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The Frisian Enigma

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