Anglo Saxon Values

Living in an Anglo-Saxon society was a tough time. They had to work much very hard for simple things or you had to be born into nobility, but they were not too different from us nowadays. The Anglo- Saxon society, similar to today’s society, can be defined by several key values such as bravery, honor, loyalty, and perseverance. These values are all shown very well in the epic poem Beowulf. Bravery can be found in the thanes and in Beowulf himself. A good show of bravery is when Beowulf faces and defeats Grendel, Grendel’s mother and the dragon. Honor was another value important to the Anglo-Saxon society. They showed their honor to their king and to each other. Loyalty was very important to the thanes. They placed loyalty to the king above everything else. You can see both loyalty and a lack of loyalty in Beowulf. Beowulf himself is very loyal. His loyalty is shown when

Bravery is something that just went along with living back then. They didn’t have cars or buses, they had oxcarts and legs. The winters were rough and they’d sleep entire families in a little thatched huts while the king would live in his timber made castle. Honor was another thing that they just did without really thinking about it. They would honor the church and the social norms. Poaching was not only theft but a sin and punishable by imprisonment, and abortion was considered homicide in the eyes of the church so people would honor these ideas and steer clear of these acts. Living in its self was a great act of perseverance. Illness and disease was everywhere, they could not escape famine, rotten flour, or malnutrition. Vitamin deficiencies caused large portions of cities to be blind, be paralyzed, or have bone malformations causing hunchbacks or handicaps. People were lucky if they lived past 30 and at age 50 you were an old man. It’s amazing they were able to persevere through so