Unearthing Traces of the Lost Culture of the Anglo-Saxon Pagans through Place-Name Study

In 597CE, the Christian monk Augustine (early 500s–c.604/610) arrived on the shores of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Kent in England. Augustine (not to be confused with St Augustine of Hippo) was sent there on a mission by Pope Gregory I to convert Britain’s inhabitants to Christianity.

There, Augustine found a non-literate people, the Anglo-Saxons, descendants of Germanic tribes in north-west Europe who had first migrated to Britain approximately 150 years prior following the decline of Roman rule in the region. The Anglo-Saxons practised a form of paganism inherited from their Germanic ancestors; however, by then this practice was beginning to wane. A few decades before Augustine’s arrival, the king of Kent, Æthelberht I, had married a Christian princess named Bertha from the Frankish tribes of western Europe. Æthelberht was sympathetic towards her religion and permitted her to bring a Christian bishop called Liudhard to her new realm. The arrival of Augustine provided the impetus for Æthelberht himself to convert to Christianity, together with many of his people.

Kent was a wealthy and powerful kingdom, which commanded a great deal of influence over its neighbours. Soon, the new religion had spread to the nearby Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Sussex, Essex, Mercia, Wessex and East Anglia.

With the introduction of Christianity, monasteries began to be established across England as centres for scholarly learning. Pope Gregory, whilst overseeing Augustine’s mission, wrote to him in 601CE stating that ‘the temples of the idols in [Britain] should on no account be destroyed’, but instead dedicated to the service of the Christian god.¹ The monastic tradition catalysed the growth of literacy and led to the first writings in the language of the Anglo Saxons known as Old English. These initial texts have a culturally Christian flavour, with language that reflects and refers to Christian religious practices. For instance, among the surviving texts in the Kentish dialect of Old English is the Kentish Psalm, a translation of Psalm 51 from the Latin Vulgate edition of the Christian Bible, together with an associated commentary. Although Old English was, of course, spoken before the arrival of Christianity, the absence of a script (a writing system) means that scant linguistic evidence survives of the words used to describe pagan deities, beliefs and rituals.

Some traces live on, however, in the names of the days of the week, many of which commemorate pagan gods and goddesses. For instance, Wednesday (Old English Wodnesdæg) honours the god Woden, Thursday (Old English Þunresdæg) the god Thunor, and Tuesday (Old English Tiwesdæg) the god Tiw.² Tiw, Woden and Thunor have counterparts in Norse mythology, Tyr, Odin and Thor; this is because the Anglo-Saxon and Norse peoples inherited their religions from a common Germanic ancestor.

We also know from Gregory’s letter of the existence of pagan ‘temples of the idols’. Although these sites themselves have not survived (Stonehenge and Glastonbury Tor are prehistoric sites), in some cases, the names bestowed upon them recall their former religious function.

Two Old English place-name elements (words which were reused when naming a place) have a meaning of ‘shrine or temple’: hearg and wīg or wēoh. Hearg is likely to have been pronounced [hæ͜ɑrˠɣ] (in International Phonetic Alphabet notation). In Middle English (spoken from c.1100 to 1500), [æ͜ɑ] became [ɑ] (the vowel sound in Modern English ah) and [ɣ] became [w]. This produced a Middle English form harewe, which subsequently became harrow in Modern English.

Wīg underwent a similar process of sound change. In Old English, it would have been pronounced as [wiːɣ]. In Middle English, [iː] became [ai] (the vowel sound in bite) and [ɣ] became [j], producing Modern English wye (pronounced like ‘why’). Its alternative form wēoh, pronounced [weːox] ([x] is like the final sound in loch), likewise lost its final consonant, while Old English [eːo] became [eː], which later raised to [iː], the vowel sound in beet. In today’s pronunciation, Old English wēoh would sound identical to ‘we’.

Hearg survives in present-day English place-names such as Harrow-on-the-Hill, Peper Harrow and Harrowden. Wīg survives in Wye and Wyham, and wēoh in Weedon, among others.³

We find that hearg is often used in conjunction with a second place-name element meaning ‘hill’ or ‘high place’, as in Harrow-on-the-Hill and Harrowden (the second element of this is probably Old English dun, meaning ‘hill’). Geographically, hearg sites are normally located at prominent, elevated positions, far from any roads. Weoh sites, on the other hand, are less consistent in where they are situated, but are often located close to early roadways.

In the absence of archaeological or written evidence, the cases of hearg and weoh demonstrate how place-names can shed light on the lost culture of the Anglo-Saxon pagans. If a place-name element is repeatedly linked to a particular feature of the landscape, like hearg to hills, or weoh to early roads, then this enables us to formulate hypotheses regarding the meaning and historical significance of that element. Hearg sites, with their isolated, impressive locations, may have been ‘a special type of religious site…a communal place of worship for a specific group of people, a tribe or a folk group’, while the location of weoh sites, close to roads, perhaps signifies ‘a small wayside shrine, accessible to the traveller’⁴. Although we cannot say for certain that the Anglo-Saxon pagans worshipped communally on hilltops, or privately at small wayside shrines, the recurrence and correlation between the names and locations points to something enduring. We can also surmise that since these place names denote pagan shrines, with their associated importance to the community, these shrines may have occupied a memorable and important position at that locale, perhaps standing out in the landscape.

It is not known what happened to pagan places of worship, like the shrines at Harrow-on-the-Hill or Wye, following the adoption of Christianity. Some scholars speculate that members of the populace may have continued to worship at these sites even after Christianity became the dominant religion. It is also possible, although unproven, that some modern churches, like St Mary’s Church located on the crest of Harrow Hill, occupy the sites of old pagan shrines — converted in accordance with Pope Gregory’s instructions to Augustine: the temples of the idols preserved for Christian worship.