British literature

The coming of the Anglo-Saxons: 449-C.1100

1. 
   
   The other languages of early Britain
   

Latin literature, mostly ecclesiastical, continued to be written in the centuries following the withdrawal of the Roman Empire at the beginning of the fifth-century, in­cluding Chronicles by Bede (672/3-735), Historia eccle- siastica gentis Anglorum, and Gildas (c. 500-570), De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae.

Various Celtic languages were spoken by many of British people at this time and among the most important writ­ten works that have survived are Y Gododdin i and the Mabinogion. From the 8th to the 15th centuries, Vikings and Norse settlers and their descendents colonised parts of what is now modern Scotland. Some Old Norse poetry survives relating to this period, including the Orkneyinga saga an historical narrative of the history of the Orkney Islands, from their capture by the Norwegian king in the ninth century onwards until about 1200.^[7]

2. 
   
   Old English literature: c. 658-1100
   

Main article: Old English literature Old English literature, or Anglo-Saxon literature, en­compasses the surviving literature written in Old English in Anglo-Saxon England, in the period after the settle­ment of the Saxons and other Germanic tribes in Eng­land (Jutes and the Angles) c. 450, after the withdrawal of the Romans, and “ending soon after the Norman Con­quest” in 1066; that is, c. 1100-50.^[8] These works in-

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