<p>What Are “Anglo-Saxon Tales”?</p><p>“Anglo-Saxon” refers to the people who settled in what is now England from roughly the 5th to the 11th centuries (the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes, etc.)<br>Their tales are the stories, poems, myths, legends, riddles, and heroic narratives produced by or for those people mostly in Old English.</p><li><p>Oral tradition was very important. Storytellers (often called <em>scops</em>) would recite or sing tales to an audience, sometimes accompanied by music (like lyres).</p></li><li><p>Only a minority of people could read and write. When tales were written, it was usually by monks in monasteries. That means many stories survive today only because someone decided to write them down much later. </p></li>