Summary

Summary

This book has shown that the role of trees in Anglo-Saxon religious belief was of much greater significance than has previously been understood. Trees were not simply a backdrop to the worship of gods with more easily identifiable names and identities. The symbolism of trees was transferrable to such an extent that their various appearances in Anglo-Saxon religious culture make them a useful means of understanding how changes in religious belief took place over significant periods of time. This kind of approach to aspects of the Anglo-Saxon landscape has potential applications outside England and the early medieval period, and may be of comparative use in understanding how other ancient and contemporary cultures have perceived aspects of their environment. In this respect, my aim has been to offer a direct contribution to a deep historical understanding of human relationships with plant-life.

I began the opening chapter by discussing some of the broader contexts in which this book is positioned, one of which is the study of trees and plant-life in world polytheisms. One substantial gap in our knowledge is what the impact of four hundred years of Roman rule had on insular beliefs in Britain before the so-called adventus Saxonum. The ways in which elements of the landscape would have been understood before the beginnings of English culture is obscure, and more work needs to be done to dispense with the notion that people's beliefs were such that pre-Christian (and later Christian) ideas were imposed on them without reciprocal impact. This book has discussed beliefs in England both before and after the conversion, and has promoted certain ideas about how trees were perceived in pre-Christian belief. It would be profitable to compare these ideas with those elsewhere in Britain outside the ‘Germanic’ sphere, and to see what else they may reveal about religious traditions in sub-Roman Britain.

One of the more general trends that I have argued against is the presentation of the conversion as a passage from one belief system to another in binary terms. There were multiple paganisms and Christianities in England over the course of this six-hundred-year period, and the practices of those who professed these beliefs would have varied significantly over time. I have argued that the lack of confrontation between Christian and pre-Christian belief had a profound impact on the development of Anglo-Saxon Christianity.