Anglo Saxon Legacy

In the Anglo-Saxon time period, the people were tremendously brutal. They killed for fame, glory, and riches. The warriors would cut off a dead creature’s head just for proof and a trophy. The Anglo-Saxon people were ruthless, however that just how they had to be. Their life wasn’t, by any means, easy. Unlike today, they worked extremely hard for the littlest of things. The culture of the Anglo-Saxon people differed from ours in many ways such as brutality, Christian and Pagan beliefs, and their legacy.
Anglo-Saxon people were loathsome with their fighting. They went into a battle giving the fight of their lives. They knew that anything could happen, so therefore, if they were victorious, they would make it known and seen to anybody watching.

In Beowulf, the hero of the story shows the perfect example. Beowulf was in a mighty battle with Grendal’s Mother. He had just killed her when he saw Grendal’s dead body. Beowulf remembered he had lost his trophy due to Grendal’s Mother when she snuck into the Mead Hall so he “struck off / His [Grendal] head with a single swift blow” (Beo.543-544). Then swam up from the monsters liar and “carried that terrible trophy by the hair” (Beo.602) back to Hrothgar, the king of the Danes. Today that would be disgraceful, unusual, and would make the killer very infamous. Today, in a battle, we would kill the enemy and leave it be. No soldier would take a prize or trophy. In today’s culture, it is wrong and unforgivable to degrade a body.
The Anglo-Saxon people could have gotten their brutality from their religion as well as their hard life. Most Anglo-Saxon people were pagan at some point. However, as the Anglo-Saxon people settled down and became more civilized, their king converted to Christianity. This made a mix of pagan and Christian beliefs in their society. In Beowulf we can see this in many places. For example, when Grendal began to terrorize the Danes, some of their people “sacrificed to the old stone gods, / Made heathen vows, hoping for Hell’s / Support, the Devil’s guidance in driving / Their affliction off” (Beo.90-93). The Anglo-Saxon people turned back and forth between their pagan ways and Christianity when times got hard; they created a mix of both religions. This led to many different ideas and a divide among the people and among the nobility.
During the Anglo-Saxon time period, Literature was a rare thing.

Books and poems weren’t written down until years after the story was created, if at all. Therefore many things were forgotten and lost in their society and culture. That’s why the Anglo-Saxon people wanted tall towers built in their honor when they died. They wanted everyone to have a constant reminder of who they were and for their story or legacy to never die out when they died. In Beowulf, right before Beowulf dies he whispers to Wiglaf, “Have / The brave Greats build me a tomb, / When the funeral flames have burned me, and build it / Here, at the water’s edge, high / On this spit of land, so Sailors can see / This tower, and remember my name” (Beo.812-816). Beowulf wanted his legacy to live on way past his own life and the only way for that to happen was that a monument would be made in his honor. However today, we don’t do that. Our lives are remembered and are documented since we were born. If someone wanted to know who we were then all they would have to do is do some research on the internet. Therefore we bury our own, in the ground. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich, poor, famous, normal, old, or young, when a human dies we lay them in the ground back to where we came

from.
The differences in today’s culture and the Anglo-Saxon people’s culture is how brutal the fight, their mixed ideas of Christianity and pagan ways, and how their legacy lived on. The Anglo-Saxon people were different, but they had a different type of life. They had a whole different world to deal with and so do we today. Although their methods seem unorthodox to us, the Anglo-Saxon lived the best life possible for them. While Literature wasn’t wildly created, we can still learn how their society and culture works through the stories and poems that were saved through all of their decades.