Horsa

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Memorial plaque for Horsa, Walhalla near Regensburg

Horsa and his brother Hengest are legendary warrior lords who are said to have led the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons and established a kingdom on the island in the 5th century after the retreat of the Romans from Britain . Its historicity is (like that of its brother) very controversial.

Life and legend

Hengest and Horsa were supposedly the sons of an otherwise unknown Wihtgil. According to the later, non-contemporary tradition, they are said to have been brought to Britain as mercenaries by Vortigern around the year 447 to fight with their men against its enemies, the Picts . As pay they were given land at Ypwinesfleot in the south-east of the country, later the Kingdom of Kent . Later the brothers allegedly fell out with Vortigern and there was a battle at Agælesþrep ( Aylesford ) in 455 , in which Horsa was killed. Horsa is said to have been buried in the east of Kent and a monument erected in his memory.

Warrior twins are a common topic in folklore , and since the earliest information about Horsa's existence came from Bede , 300 years after the events, recent scholars have increasingly argued that both Horsa and Hengist have their alleged existence as one owe to mythological topos.

Viewed overall (mainly due to well-known topical reports in early medieval sources in which similar mythical founding stories can be found) it is more likely that Hengest and Horsa were mythical people of later tradition and not historically real personalities.

Lore history

The oldest record of the events comes from Gildas from the middle of the 6th century. However, Horsa's and Hengist's names are not mentioned there. Around 731 the generally quite reliable Beda Venerabilis wrote a more detailed account in the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum , but it is unclear how he got the information about Horsa and Hengest. During the time of the Anglo-Saxon invasion Bede stuck to Gildas, who (as I said) does not mention Horsa and Hengest anywhere. In the middle of the 9th century Nennius added further imaginative details in his Historia Brittonum , while the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle at the end of the 9th century describes the events around Horsa in a concise, factual form.

reception

Coat of arms of the city of Bünde

The East Westphalian city ​​of Bünde shows two knights shaking hands in its city arms. According to legend, it is about Hengist and Horsa, who made a covenant for the conquest of England in what is now the urban area. Today there is also the Hengistweg and the Horsastraße in Bünde .

The street name Horsatal in Wenningstedt-Braderup on the North Frisian island of Sylt also refers to Horsa. According to legend, in the year 449 the two fishing men or Jutes Horsa and Hengist set out with an army from the port of old Wennigstedt at that time for Britain.

The British cargo ship Airspeed AS 51 Horsa was named after him in 1940. The same has been true for the Horsa Nunatakker on Alexander I Island in Antarctica since 1985 .

A memorial plaque for him was placed in the Walhalla near Regensburg .

In the British comedy Ist ja crazy - Caesar loves Cleopatra (original title: Carry on Cleo ) from 1964, the friends Hengest (or Hengist) and Horsa are involuntary heroes who fight together against the Romans.

swell

literature

  • Susan Elizabeth Kelly: Hengest and Horsa. In: Michael Lapidge, John Blair, Simon Keynes, Donald Scragg (Eds.): The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England . Blackwell, Oxford et al. 2001, ISBN 0-631-22492-0 , p. 232.
  • Rene Pfeilschifter : Hengist, Horsa and Anglo-Saxon Britain. In: Mischa Meier (Ed.): They created Europe. Historical portraits from Constantine to Charlemagne. CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-55500-8 , pp. 111-123.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Susan Elizabeth Kelly: Hengest and Horsa. In: Michael Lapidge, John Blair, Simon Keynes, Donald Scragg (Eds.): The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England . Blackwell, Oxford et al. 2001, ISBN 0-631-22492-0 , p. 232.
  2. ↑ a b c Beda, HE 1,15
  3. ↑ a b Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , online in Project Gutenberg (English)
  4. ↑ a b Rene Pfeilschifter: Hengist, Horsa and Anglo-Saxon Britain. In: Mischa Meier (Ed.): They created Europe. Historical portraits from Constantine to Charlemagne. CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-55500-8 , pp. 112-113.
  5. ↑ See also Walter Pohl : Die Völkerwanderung . 2nd Edition. Stuttgart et al. 2005, pp. 90f.
  6. ↑ See also Barbara Yorke : Kent, Kings of. In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Volume 31. Oxford et al. 2004, pp. 314f.
  7. ↑ Gildas , De Excidio Britanniae, Chapter 23.
  8. ↑ Nennius : Historia Brittonum chap. 31,43,44
  9. ^ Frank Deppe: Street names on Sylt . Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt 2006, ISBN 3-8334-4516-5 , p. 72 .
predecessor Office successor
- King of Kent
455
together with Hengest 		Hengest
personal data
SURNAME Horsa
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hors
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Warrior lord
DATE OF BIRTH 5th century
DATE OF DEATH 455
Place of death Aylesford