Travel as communication: a consideration of overland journeys in Anglo-Saxon England

Abstract

This paper considers the relationship between the act of travel and perceptions of landscape drawing upon case studies from Anglo-Saxon England. Two perspectives are offered. First, we address the issue of large-scale mental mapping of journeys and the degree to which moving from one place to another can be reconstructed using the landscape as a document. Second, we examine how local territories, regions and their boundary markers reveal a folkloric or ‘story-telling’ mythologizing of landscape as an early medieval practice, and the impact that this may have had on the experience of travel. We argue that a distinction can be drawn between what we term ‘direct’ and ‘associative’ experience of landscape and that local experience inspired emotive reactions to unfamiliar landscapes. We promote the necessity of an interdisciplinary approach and our case studies draw upon archaeological, written and toponymic evidence.