SAXONS: FROM TRIBAL MIGRANTS TO FOUNDERS OF ENGLAND

By Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D. (Anthropology, UCLA)

“From the forests of Germania we crossed the seas. From the gods of thunder and sky we took our strength. From blood and oath we built our world.”

ORIGINS: CHILDREN OF THE NORTH WIND

The Saxons began as a confederation of Germanic tribes who lived in the mists and forests of what is now northern Germany and southern Denmark. The cold North Sea shaped them—hard, proud, and self-reliant. Their name came from the sax, a short sword that every man carried, symbol of his freedom and his oath.

Roman observers first described them as pirates, fierce and elusive. Their longboats darted across the Channel, plundering coastal villages and retreating before Roman garrisons could respond. Rome named the southeastern coast of Britain Litus Saxonicum—the Saxon Shore.

Around the council fires, their seers raised their hands toward the storm-torn sky.
“Woden rides the wind,” one elder whispered, feeling the electric charge of thunder. “He leads us to conquest.”

They called their sky-father Woden, a name echoing Enlil of Sumer—lord of the air, command, and war. His son Thunor, wielder of lightning, mirrored Ninurta, the Sumerian warrior-hero who smote the monsters of chaos, and in Greece, Zeus’s storm-hurling vigor. Their mother goddess Frigg, wise and life-bearing, aligned with Ninmah/Ninhursag, the great genetic mother of humanity, or to the Greeks, Demeter and Hera, both givers and protectors of life.

“Our gods came from the stars,” a priestess murmured into the night wind, “and they taught our fathers how to rule, how to reap, and how to wage war.”

MIGRATION AND CONQUEST

By the 4th century CE, Rome weakened under internal decay. Saxon chieftains—driven by hunger, ambition, and visions of new land—set sail across the North Sea. At first, they came as mercenaries, hired by desperate Romano-British kings to defend against Pictish raids.

But their eyes lingered on the fertile fields, the rivers, and the ruins of Roman villas. Soon the hired swords became conquerors.

In the smoke of the hall, a British lord pleaded, “Defend us, Wulfgar of the Saxons, and gold shall be yours.”
The Saxon leader laughed, “Your gold I’ll take—and your land besides. Woden wills it.”

They came in waves—the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes—and carved the island into seven kingdoms: Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria, East Anglia, Essex, Sussex, and Kent. The blending of tribes forged the Anglo-Saxon identity, a new people rooted in Germanic valor and Celtic resilience.

Each new kingdom reflected the Anunnaki struggle on a human scale—chieftains ruled by dominance, not partnership. Lords seized land; warriors swore oaths of blood; slaves worked the soil beneath the hall’s firelight.

Yet even amid domination, partnership flickered. In some valleys, Saxons and Britons intermarried, shared fields, and prayed to both Christ and Woden, side by side.

Saxon religion revolved around ancestral loyalty, sacrifice, and cosmic reciprocity. The gods demanded courage, truth, and vengeance. Temples were groves, rivers, or stones—not buildings. Each oath bound heaven to earth, echoing ancient Nibiran law.

Their pantheon paralleled older Sumerian archetypes, inherited through cultural memory across ages:

In spring, they celebrated Eostre, the dawn goddess—her hare and egg symbols later absorbed into Christian Easter. Beneath these rites hid the memory of Inanna/Ishtar, the ancient planetary goddess of fertility, death, and resurrection.

“She rises with the dawn,” sang a Saxon woman, scattering flowers into the mist. “Her blood renews the earth.”

These rituals preserved fragments of Nibiru’s cosmic pattern—the endless balance between destruction and renewal, domination and compassion.

CHRISTIANIZATION AND CULTURAL FUSION

By the late 6th century, new envoys arrived—men in dark robes bearing the cross. St. Augustine, sent by Pope Gregory, landed in Kent in 597 CE. He spoke of salvation through one god, not many.

King Æthelberht listened warily in his timber hall.
“Your Christ sounds strong,” he said. “But why should I forsake Woden, who gave my fathers victory?”
“Because your soul,” replied Augustine softly, “was born from a greater love—one that conquers without the sword.”

Slowly, the Saxons converted, yet never entirely. Pagan temples became churches, and feast days of Thunor and Eostre became Christian holidays. The cross replaced the runestone, but carvings still showed dragons and serpents beneath it—the ancient powers reinterpreted, not destroyed.

Partnership consciousness began to stir again through monastic compassion and the gentle wisdom of abbesses like Hilda of Whitby, who taught peace among warring kings. Yet domination persisted in the hierarchy of the Church, echoing Enlil’s stern rule cloaked in sanctity.

VIKING INVASIONS AND THE TEST OF UNITY

At the close of the 8th century, another northern storm rose—the Vikings. In 793 CE, Norse raiders struck Lindisfarne monastery, killing monks and shattering the peace of Christendom. The Saxons, now Christianized but still fierce, faced their ancestral cousins from across the sea.

King Alfred of Wessex, wise and weary, sought both sword and spirit to resist.
“If we fight with hate alone,” he told his men, “we become like them. Our strength lies in order, faith, and justice.”

Under Alfred’s leadership, Wessex held firm. The Battle of Edington (878 CE) turned the tide. Alfred forced the Viking leader Guthrum to accept baptism, merging domination and partnership into a fragile peace.

The Treaty of Wedmore divided the land into Wessex and Danelaw, yet their bloodlines soon blended. From Norse and Saxon came a renewed English identity—tempered by war, but capable of synthesis.

LEGACY AND FALL

Through centuries of war and wisdom, the Saxons forged the foundations of English law, language, and governance. Kings such as Alfred, Edward the Elder, and Athelstan united tribes into one kingdom.

But in 1066, destiny shifted. The Norman invasion crushed the Saxon line at Hastings. Harold fell beneath the arrows of William’s army, and with him ended the age of the Anglo-Saxons.

Still, their legacy endured—in their laws, their words, and their blood. Beneath the Norman castles and Latin prayers, the spirit of the old gods whispered through the English hills.

“We remember,” said an old seer as the Normans rode past. “The gods who made us do not die—they only wear new names.”

BRIDGE TO CHARLEMAGNE AND THE GERMANIC TRIBES

The Saxon saga did not end with Hastings. Across the Rhine, other Germanic tribes—Franks, Lombards, Bavarians—rose and merged beneath Charlemagne, the warlord who claimed to serve Christ but ruled with Enlil’s iron hand. His armies crushed the pagan Saxons of the continent, forcing baptism at swordpoint.

From these crucibles emerged medieval Europe—an empire built on the uneasy union of sword and scripture, domination and partnership. The next chapter traces how Charlemagne’s realm became the earthly instrument of the Anunnaki’s continuing struggle, as Rome’s imperial ghost fused with northern blood to create the Holy Roman Empire.