Anglo-Frisian migration (UKIN)
| History of the UKIN | ||
|---|---|---|
| Periods General Early Pre-History Bronze Age Iron Age Anglic migrations Norse migrations Joergenian dynasty House of Glaines Reformation | ||
| Nations Anguist Detmere Gudrof Isselmere Nieland | ||
Throughout their long history, the lands that now comprise the United Kingdom of Isselmere-Nieland have experienced several changes within the historical record. One of the most extensive shifts, and probably the most controversial for academics, was wrought by the emigration of Anglo-Frisian speakers from mainland Europe.
Contents
Sources
Very few historical records about the present-day United Kingdom of Isselmere-Nieland exist from the period before the Christianisation of its constituent nations from the eighth- to eleventh-centuries. Some larger histories of Europe contain brief stories of the Lethean Islands provided by ancient Greek and Roman merchants and travellers, as well as secondhand tales from a few rare native Lethean mercenaries who had found service within either the Roman legions or elsewhere. Most such snippets contain but a fragment of truth. The sparseness of written material, including inscriptions on monuments, has led to many false assumptions over the years regarding the settlement and development of the various Lethean nations that is only now being corrected by archaeological evidence.
The arrival of Anglo-Frisian-speaking peoples from mainland Europe is a case in point. As yet, it has not been definitively established why they had emigrated to the Lethean Islands, particularly when the British and Irish Isles were more hospitable environments for settlement, nor how the newcomers' language and culture became the dominant one throughout much of Lethe. Scientific study has, however, brought about a new consensus regarding the origins of the present-day nations of Isselmere-Nieland.
Migration and petty kingdoms
Christianisation and Anguistian response
The Three Germanic Kingdoms
With the Roman presence in Britannia gone by the end of the fourth-century AD, Romanised Britain (approximately present-day England and Wales) suffered depredation from Irish raiders in the West and from Germanic peoples in the East. Eventually, the latter groups, consisting of Angles, Saxons, Frisians, and Jutes driven from their homelands along the North Sea coastline by other Germanic tribes, invaded in force driving those Britons they failed to kill westward towards Wales and Cornwall and north to the Kingdom of Strathclyde.
In the process of consolidating their new lands, further groups were once again displaced and forced to seek their fortune elsewhere. Some of these groups ventured to Lethe in around the sixth-century accompanied by a Roman Christian priest, Silvester of Lucca, later known as Saint Silvester of Lucca. St Silvester reports in his History of Forgotten Lands that the native Letheans were no less barbaric than his companions/captors. The first group encountered, whom St Silvester called Picti based on the inhabitants similarities to their Scottish relations, purportedly believed that the Anglo-Frisians had come to trade and were quickly overwhelmed. Later tribes sought to use the Germanic invaders against their neighbours and similarly failed. Gradually, the Germanic peoples forced the Anguistians back to about the borders of what became Anguist and Nieland where they resolutely remained, occasionally sallying forth to wreak their revenge upon the invaders.
The process of retrenchment forced the Anguistians to regroup and reassess how they addressed the newcomers. Previously, each Anguistian king was owed fealty from a number of sub-kings, and he in turn might serve, however tenuously, a local high-king. With the loss of so much land and the constriction of the remaining populace to an area less than an eighth of what their predecessors held, the Anguistians were pressurised into finding novel solutions to responding to the Anglo-Frisian threat. In the end, they centralised authority. The same structure of high-king, kings, and sub-kings remained and kingship remained a personal rather than a strictly hereditary office, but authority had become direct. Anguistian notables caught treating with the Anglo-Frisians were dealt with brutally.
With co-operation came not only a strict hierarchy, but also the chance for glory and plunder. As the Anguistians drifted closer together, the Anglo-Frisians continued to squabble amongst themselves. Raids by the Anguistians finally forced the Germanic invaders to reply with their own more united kingdoms until there was an eventual stalemate between the large and comparatively well-organised Anguistian kingdom and the three Germanic kingdoms of Detmere, Isselmere, and Hoblingland.
The Detmerian kingdom was the first of the Anglo-Frisian kingdoms to arise in response to incursions from King Æderwald the Cunning of Wexsalia in southern Hoblingland, and steady pressure from the Anguistian king Urdath mab Mhaedoc, who retook what are now the provinces of Omechta and Upper Wingeria from the Anglo-Frisians. Friedwulf the Bald defeated his rivals at the Battle of Marsden Heath (14 April 842) to claim sole overlordship over Detmere before killing Æderwald at Hexford Row two weeks later.
The Kingdom of Isselmere emerged from the Battle for the Lethean Sea (24 October 863) when a fleet led by Hænulf of Isselmere, assisted by a large contingent from Anguist, vanquished a combined armada from Detmere and Hoblingland. Isselmerian independence was short-lived, however, as the Anguistian King Brudei defeated an Isselmerian host at the Battle of Solwent Moor (9 May 871) shortly after the death of Hænulf. Brudei's victory began a struggle for overlordship between Anguist, Detmere, and Isselmere, as well as Hoblingland on occasion, that often saw leaders contesting over the titular high-kingship of two, and, in four instances, three kingdoms (Anguist, Detmere, and Isselmere).
The Norse and Nieland
The Viking incursions of the ninth-century pressed the Anguistian and Anglo-Frisian tribal kingdoms into larger and more complex petty kingdoms. Initially, the Norse attacks were sporadic and unfocused. Over two centuries, however, the Viking leaders began colonising parts of Lethe, seizing lands to create their own kingdoms. The Hoblinglander petty kingdoms lost lands that became Wingeria, whilst their Isselmerian counterparts lost their southernmost lands in present-day Gudrof.
The Anguistians, however, were the hardest hit. Although, or maybe because, the Anguistians had been the pre-eminent force of the southern kingdoms, often driving the Hoblinglanders back to regain the high-kingship of the southern lands, they endured the worst of the Viking invasions. The Anguistian kingdom lost half of its territory to the Norse — present-day Nieland — and its dominance of the southern kingdoms. In the ensuing vaccuum, the Kingdom of Isselmere flourished.
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