Trees in Anglo-Saxon England - (Anglo-Saxon Studies) by Della Hooke (Paperback)

About the Book

A powerful exploration of trees in both the real and the imagined Anglo-Saxon landscape.

Book Synopsis

A powerful exploration of trees in both the real and the imagined Anglo-Saxon landscape.

Trees played a particularly important part in the rural economy of Anglo-Saxon England, both for wood and timber and as a wood-pasture resource, with hunting gaining a growing cultural role. But they are also powerful icons in many pre-Christian religions, with a degree of tree symbolism found in Christian scripture too. This wide-ranging book explores both the "real", historical and archaeological evidence of trees and woodland, and as they are depicted in Anglo-Saxon literature and legend. Place-name and charter references cast light upon the distribution of particular tree species (mapped here in detail for the first time) and also reflect upon regional character in a period that was fundamental for the evolution of the present landscape.

Della Hooke is Honorary Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Research in Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Birmingham.

Review Quotes

[A] deeply researched and engagingly written book.-- "THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW"

[A] well-written and thoughtfully constructed book.-- "MEDIEVAL ARCHAEOLOGY"

An enjoyable read and [...] a useful addition to our understanding of pre-Medieval landscapes.-- "SCOTTISH FORESTY"

An enormously detailed and authoritative study [which] has much to offer Anglo-Saxon scholarship. [...] An excellent volume.-- "LANDSCAPE HISTORY"

Clearly written, well-illustrated, and impressively broad-ranging in its methodology. The footnotes and bibliography make it an invaluable resource for further study.-- "PARERGON"

Della Hooke's book is the first large-scale treatment of its subject, and could hardly be surpassed in its patient and thorough accumulation of data. Lovers of trees and students of early England have equal reason to be grateful to her.--Ronald Hutton "TIME AND MIND"

To look at any tree after reading [the] book is to have a clearer grasp of what someone might have made of it (literally and metaphorically) a thousand years ago.-- "SALON"