On the vacuum of Sources of british history in the first half of the first millenium

I promised to talk about Arthur's first years as King and about the sword in the stone. But in my research I found a very interesting quote, and I wanted to share it here:

The 20th-century historian Frank Stenton wrote that "the continuous history of Northumbria, and indeed of England, begins with the reign of Æthelfrith", and that "he was the real founder of the historic Northumbrian kingdom, and he was remembered as the first great leader who had arisen among the northern Angles."^[3]




Wikipedia, emphasize mine.

This means that there is no reliable history before 592, the first year of Æthelfrith's rule. This is not a hard and fast date, but it goes a long way towards explaining why people felt the need to fill that void. Looking at history, we can see where we are coming from, hence we might no better were we are supposed to go. We haven't delved too deep in the topic of sources yet, but it seems reasonable to assume the same relative scarcity then as today. Even contemporary accounts a usually copies from ealier texts, with all the caveats that this brings about.

My point being, in absence of historical evidence people in general and scholars especially created there own history. In doing so they gave themselves a heritage, the legitimized their position and found their place in the world.This was especially important for Kings and other rulers. They needed not only worldly authority, but also divine. Otherwise they'd just be the bullies that came out on top because they had the most support. And that made them vulnerable to other contenders. They paid researchers, scholars and others to provide them that legitimacy. It wasn't called that, of course, nor was the intention usually to commit outright fraud.

But with the scarcity of sources came freedom to make things up. This may have been done with the best of intentions, based on assumed historical evidence, but it also permitted the indiscriminate use of word of mouth, oral tradition and outright fairy tales.

The world was in a way a bigger and scarier place then, and there were huge white areas on the maps. Forests were so big and untamed that they posed real dangers to those travelling towards them. Strange sounds in the night, weather phenomenons like draughts or snow storms or sickness and omnipresent death (childbirth could kill you, so could an impacted molar!) were easy to attribute to supernatural forces. And that's understandable, because people knew less then (although I'd argue that they knew more than we commonly believe, more on that later), and in fact could know only less, considering the technical innovations and social upheavals that took place since then.

I explain that because I don't want us to look down on them as ssuperstitious savages, not on par with our cerebral capacities. That's simply not true, starting with the biology. If these people had not tried to find answers to their questions, we'd have nothing to build upon. And even those false historical accounts are better than nothing, because through their shape they still allow us to deduce the true happenings behind them to a certain degree, when else we would have nothing.