Trees played a particularly important part in the rural economy of Anglo-Saxon England, both for wood and timber and as a wood-pasture resource, with hunting gaining a growing cultural role. But they are also powerful icons in many pre-Christian religions, with a degree of tree symbolism found in Christian scripture too. This wide-ranging book explores both the ‘real’, historical and archaeological evidence of trees and woodland, and as they are depicted in Anglo-Saxon literature and legend. Place-name and charter references cast light upon the distribution of particular tree species (mapped here in detail for the first time) and also reflect upon regional character in a period that was fundamental for the evolution of the present landscape.
Della Hooke is Honorary Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Research in Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Birmingham.
Inhoudsopgave
Trees and groves in pre-Christian belief
Christianity and the sacred tree
Trees in literature
Trees, mythology and national consciousness: into the future
The nature and distribution of Anglo-Saxon woodland
The use of Anglo-Saxon woodland: place-names and charter evidence
Trees in the landscape
Trees of wood-pasture and ‘Ancient Countryside’
Trees of wet places in early medieval records: alder and willow
Trees of open/planned countryside
Other trees noted in charters and early place-names
Trees not readily apparent in the early medieval written record
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