Are the Angles, and Jutes Vikings. In this map they seem to come from Denmark. Saxons from around the area of modern Netherlands.

What did England look like in the 11th century? I recently bought an Anglo Saxon sword guard from the 11th century. It was found in Suffolk 2003. Could it be Viking? Here is a picture:

 The anglo-saxons were only a minority on the british isles, they were later displaced by the normans, bretons and Franks who became the ruling minority. Britian remains mostly celtic racially.

Well, Reginmund, but then you have to explain why the Turks in Turkey don't speak Greek or the Slavs on the Balkans don't do speak Greek, why do the English don't speak French. I don't think it is as simple as that. There was no intact Roman civilisation in Britannia. If it would be so, we had to expect an Roman speaking Wales and Cornwall  today. But we havn't. Perhaps one cause is that the people in Britain at those times were neither Romans nor Celts. So they were lacking of an common integration figure after the Romans left the island. When the Saxons came they didn't wipe out all the Britains  as soon as possible. It lasts till the beginning or the middle of the 7th century untill they overruled the British kingdoms exept Wales and Cornwall. And it was as least only possible because there were several waves of Germnanic groups that moved to Britain over decades or centuries. There were definitely no mass invasion but no genocide as well.

sorry, my fault. I meant the Slavs on the Balkans and the Turks in Turkey. I we look first at the Balkans. I don't think the Balkans were less Romanized/Hellenized than Britannia. So the cultural level was there higher than those of the Slavs. They even went to Greece where then Greek was spoken only in little parts and the cities. A Re-Hellenisation stroke back later. So to say it was just only an invasion into a more primitive northern area doesn't seem correct.

The same we have in Asia minor. You say one could argue that they didn't see themselves inferior. Perhaps. But one can argue that way anyway. There are enough reason to argue that the Roman-Greek culture was higher than those of the Turks.

Suddenly there is coming a question to me. I don't know if anybody can answer it. I know that on the Balkans islands of Roman language were assimilated very late and even in Germany there were such islands of slavian language and one is still alive. Does anybody know if in England Brytonic was alive till the late medieval or later?

But now to your last question, Reginmund. How can we explain why Old English supplanted the British tongue if the Anglo-Saxons were but a small elite? I think it is very difficult to know how many saxones came to Britain. We don't know how many lived before the invasion in Germania. If we look on other gentes we see that there mostly didn't move more than 100.000. I do believe that it was a great group of saxones that came to Britannia and not only a small elite, but the cause for the supplanting was not a "genocide". It was the breakdown of the Romano-British elite and it's migration to Gaul that weakend the Britons identity and wiped out then the Romano-Briton world in Endland..

Old English is no more intelligible to a modern German speaker.

The Saxons were a Germanic tribe.They only ended up in England because they had been run out of there homeland, and the people (not the goverment) of Britan paid them to fight the Picks w/ money and land.When they were done fighting the invading Scots and stopped receiving payment they turned on the people and conquered them.