adapted from a design by George Bain based on the Book of Kells home Programme Bookings Shop The Wuffings .
Wuffing Education
 

Old English Gods Lost and Found

Gandalf in the Library of Minas Tirith by Patrick H.Wynne

with Dr Sam Newton

at Tranmer House, Sutton Hoo (map)
on Saturday 1st December, 2007

An exploration of the lost continent of pre-Christian Old English mythology as revealed by literature, language, and archaeology.

We begin with the question of what King Æthelbert of Kent in 597 may have meant when he replied to Augustine that “we may not yet forsake the wise way that we have held for a long time with all the English folk.”

We shall examine the evidence from literary, linguistic, and archaeological sources which can help us to rediscover something of the pre-Christian systems of Old English beliefs to which King Æthelbert referred.

Provisional Programme
  10.00 Coffee on arrival  
  10.15 Kings, Farmers, and Goddesses  
  11.15 Coffee  
  11.30 The War in Heaven  
  12.30 Lunch break  
  14:00 The Cult of Ing  
  15:00 Tea break  
  15:15 The Offspring of Woden  
  16:15 Close  

About Speaker Dr Sam Newton

Dr Sam Newton is an independent historian who has lectured widely around the country as well as contributing to many television and radio programmes. In 1993 he published his first book, The Origins of Beowulf and the pre-Viking Kingdom of East Anglia, now in its fourth print run. His second book, The Reckoning of King Rædwald, was published in 2003. He is also a Director of Wuffing Education at Sutton Hoo and regular Time Team historian.

Some suggestions for further reading
(useful but not essential)

Alexander, M., The Earliest English Poems (Penguin Classics 1966)
Branston, B., The Lost Gods of England (Thames & Hudson 1957, 1974)
Chadwick, H.M., The Origin of the English Nation (Cambridge 1907)
Chaney, W.A., The Cult of Kingship in Anglo-Saxon England (Manchester 1970)
Ellis Davidson, H., The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe (Routledge 1993)
Glob, P.V., The Bog People, tr. R.Bruce-Mitford
Lee, S., & E.Solopova, The Keys of Middle Earth – Discovering Medieval Literature through the Fiction of J.R.R.Tolkien (Palgrave Macmillan 2005)
North, R., Heathen Gods in Old English Literature (Cambridge 1997)
Wilson, R., The Lost Literature of Medieval England (Methuen 1952, 1970)

Bookings

Please phone or email to check the availability of places and then send the application form and a cheque for £38, payable to Wuffing Education to:

Wuffing Education,
4 Hilly Fields,
Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 4DX
(tel : 01394 386498)

Email cliff AT wuffingeducation.co.uk
(replace 'AT' by '@' in order to send email - we used 'AT' to avoid spam robots automatically sending us emails)
Website www.wuffingeducation.co.uk

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We have learnt of the fame of the Wuffing folk-lords of long ago, of how those wolf-kings held the ancestral land of East Anglia....
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