Anglo-Saxons Today

Entertainment.

The thing about entertainment is, what one person likes, another person hates. I'm not going to tell you what kind of things you should be doing for entertainment, that is entirely up to you and rightly so. What this web page is about, is what the Early Anglo-Saxon English did for entertainment. Remember, the EASE didn't have electricity, no electronic games machines or computers, but guess what. No matter that their lives were always at subsistence level, if you were not nobility that is, yet they still found a few moments to have fun.

It is my own opinion, and yours may differ from mine, that none electric games (board games, etc.,) are better, and can help to develop peoples minds (and not just children), and if done occasionally on a community level, (fairs, etc.,) such activities can help bring communities together. The thing is that blackouts aren't as uncommon as we would like to think. With all this modern technology we still get them, especially where I live.

Games.

OK, so let your kiddywinkles mess around with their computers, and games machines like xbox 360's, nintendo DS's and the nintendo Wii's. I'm not saying they shouldn't, but limit there times on them. Then encourage them to do non electronic games. Try to make such activities a family event, when possible. My daughter isn't so bad. She goes on the electronic stuff when she wants, but when it's summer or winter she likes to be outside with her friends. So, what did the EASE do?

Well, not surprisingly, they had board games to, not chess or draughts, but certainly some types not to dissimilar to backgammon or the like. To see what I mean go to the following websites:

http://www.regia.org/misc/games.htm

http://www.regia.org/misc/pastimes.htm

As is also shown at these websites above, they may have done other things like story telling and guess who type games.


Music.

It is well known that music has played a large part in the life of many peoples since long before the Anglo-Saxons, so it's no surprise that the EASE had their own type of music. The following websites show you what they did:

http://www.regia.org/misc/music.htm

http://www.simonchadwick.net/asmus/harp.html

I always have liked the harp, the EASE created their own version but more close to a lyre. Our own version of modern folk music is perhaps not so far removed from the idea of what the EASE might have experienced in the stories that were told to music back then.


The point is though, no matter weather you want to enjoy the EASE pastimes or the modern ones, who's to say we would have done anything differently today had we not been invaded by the Normans?


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