lizardbreath
Well-Known Member
- Nov 5, 2016
- 3,341
- 6,323
whats the difference between a viking and saxon?
The biggest diff is that the "Saxons" invaded what later came to be known as "England" during the period between the withdrawal of the Roman garrisons from Britain in 406AD and the later part of the 6th century. The Jutes were in fact "Danes" but were subsumed by the more numerous Saxons, led primarily by the West Saxons, who were just straight up continental Germans. The Frisians are known to have comprised a substantial fraction of the invading Germanic tribes due to DNA testing and linguistics - both showing a marked similarity between the populations of modern coastal England and the portions of the German and Dutch costal areas from which the Frisians came.
The conversion to Christianity that began to occur in the 5th and 6th century had largely erradicated the pagan pantheon in the Anglo Saxon kingdoms by the time the Viking invasions began in earnest. That conversion was possibly the single biggest diff between the two closely related "Nordic" populations.