4 - Writing in the Insular world

Summary

Historical and historiographical context

The term ‘Insular’ can be taken to refer specifically to the history and culture of the Celtic, post Romano-British and Anglo-Saxon peoples of Britain and Ireland in the period between the retraction of the Roman Empire in the early fifth century and the advent of Viking raiders and settlers during the ninth. One of the major achievements of this era was the construction of a series of successor states in northern Europe, underpinned by the zeal for Christianity of the newly converted and a stability of administrative and social structure ensured by the effective collaboration of church and state. Essential to this process was the dissemination and reception of the Word of God, with its emphasis upon the law, social reform and teaching by example. A prerequisite of this was the reintroduction of literacy to those parts of post-Roman Britain that had lost the art (although some ecclesiastical centres such as Llandaff and Llantwit Major in Wales helped to perpetuate it), and its introduction into those Celtic and Germanic societies which had previously experienced only limited contact with writing, or had eschewed its use in favour of pre-existing oral processes for the preservation of collective memory. Such orality could be highly structured and schooled, preserving sophisticated literary, religious and legal knowledge, as in the case of the Celtic druidic classes. Celtic ogham and Germanic runes both represent proto-literate writing systems, inspired by contact with Roman scripts but used only for short commemorative or talismanic inscriptions.