I’ve read many different novels that tell this story and after a while I got tired of them and decided I’d had enough. Recently, however, I decided to read ‘Sword at Sunset’ by Rosemary Sutcliff, because she is a writer I admire. I’d never read this book, which is a somewhat different take on the legend. It’s grittier, more rooted in a possible history of what living and fighting in the British Isles might have been like in post Roman Britain.
In this book, as in others I’ve read the characters talk
about keeping the light alive for a while longer, believing that if the Saxon
invasions (who were actually, Angles, Saxons and Jutes), the Sea Wolves, are
allowed to continue, the dark will take over. These beliefs are based on
thinking that the time of the Romans in Britain was good. Certainly, they built
roads, cities, forts, and they carried with them their system of law.
However, the Romans were invaders, too, and they were not
universally liked, nor were they kind and gentle. Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni,
and her daughters certainly experienced the worst of the Romans, which led to
her uniting some of the native Britons in an uprising against the Romans around
60-61 AD. In the end she failed.
Even before the Romans, people from various places in what
is now Europe travelled to and settled in the British Isles.
The Saxons did eventually settle throughout much of England
and intermarried, forming such kingdoms as Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia,
Essex, Kent, Sussex and Wessex. One of their most famous kings was Alfred the
Great. Besides fighting the Danish invasions, he promoted literacy, and began
the compilation of the Anglo Saxon Chronicle. He also consolidated improvements
in the laws.
When the Normans, from France invaded England in 1066
(William the Conquerer), there was resistance again in various parts of the
island, which continued for several years. The Normans built castles, and William
gave land to his Norman supporters, subordinating England to a Norman
aristocracy.
The British Isles today contain people from many places of
the world, as does Canada. We’ve all had ancestors who were invaders or who
have lived in places that were invaded.
One of the things I like about ‘Sword at Sunset’ is that
near the end Artos (Sutcliff’s Arthur character) after a meeting to make a kind
of peace with some of the Saxons says (about the young son of one of his supporters
and the son of one of the Saxons), “They shared the same broth bowl and spent
the evening among the hounds by the fire, picking bramble thorns out of each
other’s feet. … the longer we can hold off the Saxons, the more we can slow
their advance … the more time there will be for other boys to pick thorns out
of each other’s feet and learn the words for hearth and hound and honey cake in
each other’s tongue …”
Time. If we can spend time with each other, recognize our
common humanity, maybe we will have chances to make peace.
