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The Wanderer Anglo Saxon History, mythology, Folklore and religion: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Frank Docherty
Welcome to The Wanderer: The Anglo-Saxon Podcast, where the echoes of the past meet the voices of today. Journey through the myths, legends, and beliefs that shaped early medieval England as we explore folklore, religion, and history from an Anglo-Saxon perspective. From the wisdom of wyrd to the haunting beauty of Old English poetry, each episode delves into the rich tapestry of a world both mysterious and familiar. Step into the mead hall, listen to the tales of old, and wander through history with us.paypal.me/EnglishFightingArts
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- 3 days ago5 min
The Great Erasure
“THE ANGLO-SAXON ERA IS BEING CANCELLEDHave we finally lost our minds? It seems that in the ivory towers of our ‘elite’ universities, history is no longer about facts, evidence, or heritage. It’s about how much of our past we can erase to avoid hurting feelings.I’m talking about the systematic, bizarre, and frankly insulting campaign to scrub the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ from our curriculum. Yes, you heard that right. Over a thousand years of English foundation, the very bedrock of our language, law, and identity being rebranded, sanitised, and pushed into the memory hole because some academics think it sounds a bit too... ‘white.’Today, we’re looking at the institutional madness taking over Nottingham and Cambridge, and why they’re desperate to convince you that your own history is just a ‘myth.’"
- 2 weeks ago7 min
Nova England
Nova Anglia, or “New England,” is a medieval tradition about Anglo Saxon exiles who left England after the Norman Conquest and founded a new homeland in the east, placed near the Black Sea or in Crimea. The story survives in later historical references and modern retellings, but it is generally treated as an evidenced episode.The basic idea is that some displaced Anglo Saxon nobles and warriors, rather than accepting Norman rule, carried their identity, customs, and perhaps their loyalty to an English political order into foreign lands. In that sense, Nova Anglia functions as both a migration story and a memory of lost sovereignty: Englishmen building an “England” elsewhere after their own had been conquered.What makes the tale interesting is that it sits at the edge of history and legend. Some accounts describe the settlers as creating a community with English names and institutions, So the story is best understood as a medieval exile narrative with a possible historical core.It also fits a wider medieval pattern: defeated elites sometimes imagined or attempted new beginnings in distant places, especially where there was room to settle and a political vacuum to exploit. Nova Anglia therefore matters not only as a curiosity, but as a window into how the Anglo Saxons may have understood loss, identity, and survival after 1066.
- Apr 12, 20268 min
The Anglo Saxon Scop
Today, we’re walking into an Anglo-Saxon mead hall to meet the storytellers of early medieval England – the men whose voices carried heroes, monsters, and memories through the centuries.The scop is part historian, part musician, part memory-keeper. He’s expected to know lineages of kings, famous battles, past victories, and the deeds of long-dead warriors. In a largely non-literate society, that knowledge isn’t in books; it’s in his head, shaped into verses that people can remember.And importantly, he isn’t the only one telling tales. Away from the great halls, families share shorter stories around the hearth at home. In these cottages and farmhouses, storytelling is more communal: anyone might sing a song, repeat a local legend, or pass on a favourite tale to children half-asleep by the fire.
- Jan 31, 202612 min
The Anglo Saxons and UFOs
The Anglo Saxons lived beneath skies they did not trust. To them, the heavens were alive capable of movement, intention, and warning. Night skies were darker than anything we experience today, and people watched them closely, not for wonder alone, but for survival. What appeared above was believed to speak, and sometimes to threaten.Their records contain unsettling descriptions that resist easy explanation. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle speaks of “fiery dragons flying in the air,” of strange lights that moved across the sky, and of glowing shapes that appeared before moments of catastrophe. In 793, just before the Viking attack on Lindisfarne, witnesses reported terrifying aerial phenomena flames, lights, and shapes in the heavens events described not as symbols but as things seen. The timing disturbed them deeply. The sky, it seemed, was watching.Other accounts describe crosses of light hovering in the air, radiant shields appearing above battlefields, and luminous objects that drifted, burned, or vanished without sound. These were not stars. They moved. They lingered. They returned. Medieval writers struggled to name them, reaching for the closest language they had: dragons, angels, heavenly armies, signs from God. But the descriptions themselves feel observational like people trying to make sense of something genuinely unfamiliar.The Anglo Saxons did not separate the natural from the supernatural. A strange light was not merely a phenomenon; it was an intrusion. Something crossing from one realm into another. Their older Germanic beliefs had spoken of otherworldly beings moving between skies and earth, while Christian theology reframed these encounters as divine or demonic. Yet in both systems, the experience remained the same: something unknown appeared, moved with purpose, and then was gone.Modern readers sometimes wonder whether these accounts hint at misunderstood natural events meteors, auroras, rare electrical phenomena. But some details are awkward for those explanations: the repeated sightings, the apparent maneuvering, the sense of presence, the way observers reacted with fear rather than awe. The texts give the impression that these were not passive lights but active signs, watching rather than simply passing through.What is most unsettling is not what the Anglo Saxons believed these things were, but how calmly they recorded them. They did not ask if such things existed only what they meant. The sky was not empty, and it was not safe. Whatever these lights and shapes truly were, they left a deep impression on a people who believed they were living at the edge of unseen worlds.Seen through a modern lens, these accounts raise an uncomfortable possibility: that encounters with unexplained aerial phenomena did not begin in the twentieth century, but have followed humanity for centuries changing names, forms, and meanings as cultures changed, yet always appearing just beyond understanding.
- Dec 10, 202517 min
The Connection between Anglo Saxon Heathenism and Folk Horror
Anglo Saxon heathenism the polytheistic beliefs of the Anglo Saxons before Christianisation centred on a sacred, animistic relationship with nature, worship of gods such as Wōden, Thunaer and Frēo, and veneration of sacred groves and pillar-like objects like the Irminsul. Folk Horror draws heavily on that same soil the fear of the wild, the power of ancient gods (or at least the suggestion of them), the sense that the land itself might remember or punish, and that archaic rituals and pagan rites leave a shadow from the past. In other words Folk Horror often dramatises a world where the pre Christian beliefs and taboos of peoples like the Saxons are not safely buried with time but instead linger in the landscape, seeping into isolated villages or forgotten woodlands. That lingering past becomes a source of dread the “folk” are not just people, but memory, land-spirits, and uncanny religious forces that refuse to die.
- Sep 29, 202520 min
Two tales of Anglo Saxon mythical creatures
What Are “Anglo-Saxon Tales”?“Anglo-Saxon” refers to the people who settled in what is now England from roughly the 5th to the 11th centuries (the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes, etc.)Their tales are the stories, poems, myths, legends, riddles, and heroic narratives produced by or for those people mostly in Old English.Oral tradition was very important. Storytellers (often called scops) would recite or sing tales to an audience, sometimes accompanied by music (like lyres).Only a minority of people could read and write. When tales were written, it was usually by monks in monasteries. That means many stories survive today only because someone decided to write them down much later.
- Jul 9, 20258 min
Bonus Episode: The Little People
A Bonus Episode: This episode tells an original story about a brave girl and the mythical little People of the forests.In Anglo-Saxon England, the "little people" referred to supernatural beings like elves and dwarves, who were believed to inhabit the world alongside humans. These beings were not seen as inherently good or evil, but rather as forces to be respected and, sometimes, feared. Elves Anglo-Saxons believed in elves, known as "ælfe" in Old English, who were associated with both helpful and harmful actions. They were believed to be capable of causing illness (elf shot) and were also connected to names like Ælfred (Alfred), suggesting they could also bring good fortune. Dwarves Dwarves, or "dweorgas" in Old English, were believed to live in mountains and barrows (burial mounds). They were often depicted as skilled smiths who might assist humans if approached with respect and offerings. Other Beings Anglo-Saxon beliefs also included other supernatural beings, but elves and dwarves were the most prominent "little people" in their worldview. These beings were not simply figures of myth; they were part of the Anglo-Saxon understanding of the world and influenced their daily lives through rituals and charms designed to appease or ward them off.
- Jul 5, 20256 min
Anglo Saxon Religion and Witchcraft
From the 5th to the 11th centuries, Anglo‑Saxon England was shaped by a rich tapestry of religion and magic: early on, villagers and warriors honored a polytheistic pagan pantheon—Wōden, Thunor, Tīw, Frīge—worshipped in groves, springs, and timber sanctuaries, alongside a belief in spirits such as elves and dwarfs.Embedded in daily life were practices of magico‑medicinal healing and protective charms—meticulously recorded in manuscripts like Bald’s Leechbook and the Lacnunga, exemplified by the Nine Herbs Charm As Christianity spread from the 7th century onwards, pagan rites and witchcraft—terms rooted in Old English words like wicca and hæġtesse—were increasingly criminalised by church law codes and royal decrees Yet, despite official condemnation, folk magic persisted, practiced by “cunning folk” renowned for healing and charms, forging a syncretic culture at the crossroads of ancient pagan customs and emerging Christian norms
About The Wanderer Anglo Saxon History, mythology, Folklore and religion
Welcome to The Wanderer: The Anglo-Saxon Podcast, where the echoes of the past meet the voices of today. Journey through the myths, legends, and beliefs that shaped early medieval England as we explore folklore, religion, and history from an Anglo-Saxon perspective. From the wisdom of wyrd to the haunting beauty of Old English poetry, each episode delves into the rich tapestry of a world both mysterious and familiar. Step into the mead hall, listen to the tales of old, and wander through history with us.paypal.me/EnglishFightingArts
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