What were the roles of anglo saxon women?
This is a complex question to answer, Anglo-Saxon society has two phases and a totally different social structure to that of modern western society. As Anglo-Saxon refers to the Germanic migrants forming the what is now England I will focus my answer on English culture. The two phases are pre-Christian warband culture and post-conversion nation culture, the roles of all people changed with the change of religion but the general underlying structure remained intact all though enlarged from a “cyn” (kin, family, theod) model to a nation model. My interest is in the pre-Christian Cyn which is the basis for both models. Unlike today’s culture where roles can be easily identified by gender the Anglo-Saxons had a more rigid class system similar to the Indian cast system and it is within these social ranks that roles change which impact on the roles of gender. Starting at the bottom is the thrall or slave, this class of people were tied to their owner, usually an aetheling or dhegn although p
