Anglo-Saxon Chronicle - Importance

Importance

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is the single most important source for the history of England in Anglo-Saxon times. Without the Chronicle and Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (the Ecclesiastical History of the English People), it would be impossible to write the history of the English from the Romans to the Norman Conquest. It is clear that records and annals of some kind began to be kept in England at the time of the earliest spread of Christianity, but no such records survive in their original form. Instead they were incorporated in later works, and it is thought likely that the Chronicle contains many of these. The history it tells is not only that witnessed by its compilers, but also that recorded by earlier annalists, whose work is in many cases preserved nowhere else.

Its importance is not limited to the historical information it provides, however. It is just as important a source for the early development of English. The Peterborough Chronicle changes from the standard Old English literary language to early Middle English after 1131, providing some of the earliest Middle English text known.

The Chronicle is not without literary interest. Inserted at various points since the 10th century are Old English poems in celebration of royal figures and their achievements: "The Battle of Brunanburh" (937), on King Æthelstan's victory over the combined forces of Vikings, Scots and the Strathclyde Britons, and five shorter poems, "Capture of the Five Boroughs" (942), "The Coronation of King Edgar" (973), "The Death of King Edgar" (975), "The Death of Prince Alfred" (1036), and "The Death of King Edward the Confessor" (1065).