1066 – More Zonkyness

1066: The Family Squabble

Feb 232022

The date of 1066 is often presented to us as the end of Anglo-Saxon rule and the start of (Anglo-)Norman rule. Well that’s not wrong as such, but there is another way of looking at it. If you look at the kings both before and after The Conquest, there were more similarities than you would expect.

Harold Godwinson (the last crowned Anglo-Saxon king of England) was the son of Godwin who had been made the Earl of Wessex by Cnut the Great (a Dane) and Gytha Thorkelsdóttir a Danish noblewoman related by marriage to Cnut the Great. So he was more than a little Danish.

And if you look at his predecessor – Edward the Confessor, he himself was the daughter of Emma of Normandy who herself was descended from Danes with a French accent (i.e. the Normans). And Emma was a relative of the conqueror William.

So whilst it is quite right that 1066 was regarded as a significant date for the country with some very significant changes to law and language, in terms of the monarchs it wasn’t much of a change at all – they were pretty much all related to each other.

History Teaching

General, History, Media No Responses »

Jul 222007

One thing on the news recently that caught my eye was a complaint about how modern history at school concentrates in detail on a few periods in history but presents no grand overview of events throughout history. Well assuming this is true (the media does not always get things right) then it’s a shame there is no ‘grand overview’. However the pundits commenting on this and suggesting that a grand overview should be part of the course did immediately jump on the old rote memorisation of dates bandwagon.

There’s a large number of people who seem to think you don’t know history if you cannot reel off a huge list of dates of significant events. Mistaking a list of dates for ‘history’ is one of the dumbest mistakes anyone can make … to everyone other than the dedicated rote learner, a history lesson of long lists of dates is excruciatingly boring, doesn’t teach you anything interesting, and has very little to do with history. Those who campaign for children to spend hours memorising dates are doing nothing more than trying to re-introduce a style of teaching that gave a big advantage to those with good memories (and I happen to be one) and a huge disadvantage to those whose memory was less capable but perhaps could understand history more.

There is very little need for people to memorise lists of dates when there are so many reference works available. Does someone who thinks the battle of Hastings was in 1066 have a greater understanding of history than someone who thinks the battle of Hastings happened sometime in the 11th century but also knows it occurred just after the battle of Stamford Bridge ?