IT IS relatively easy to identify leading examples of how (unsurprisingly) the many successive generations and changing social configurations within the population of Anglo-Saxon England were both conscious of and cared about their place within a wider known world and its history. Such evidence can be traced back in time to origin traditions that must derive from the fifth and sixth centuries AD and the connected relationships claimed and nurtured with surviving or apparently lost populations in Scandinavia and on the Continent. Bede's learning was, of course, shaped fundamentally by Christian orthodoxy and an ecclesiastical focus, but his informed awareness of geography was not limited to the biblical, with the introduction of a reference to distant visitors – presumably traders – who had witnessed the midnight sun in the Arctic into his commentary on the Book of Kings. The violent and forceful Scandinavian raiding and colonization of the Viking Age, from the end of the eighth century onwards, created a demanding new context for such reflexive thought.

Not least in light of the terminological controversy within which the origins and production of this publication have become embedded, it is pertinent to note that the adoption of the title Angulsaxonum rex for King Alfred at the very beginning of Asser's De rebus gestis Ælfredi itself prominently embodies the adoption in the court of Wessex, as a political label, of a geo-ethnic term that had become current in learned and politically leading circles on the Continent around a century before, and thus in effect represents a significant stage in the repositioning of the West Saxon leadership relative both to England and to Europe. The production of an Old English translation of Orosius’ Historiae adversus paganos in the milieu of Alfred of Wessex's court, probably in or just before the last decade of the ninth century, provided a further opportunity for that political centre to record and display the connections it had over long distances within Europe, and its knowledge of areas virtually unknown to Orosius at the end of the fourth and in the early fifth centuries.

Paulus Orosius is thought to have been born in Iberia and is known to have travelled around the Mediterranean area, especially in North Africa, and to Palestine.

IT IS AN UNWELCOME FACT to have to face, that studies of pre-Christian religion amongst the Germanic-speaking peoples have recently shown little sign of progressing in a very coherent manner, and indeed in the course of the past quarter-century or so have been moving away from rather than towards any consensus even over the proper critical methodology to be brought to this topic. Specialization in the disciplines relevant to some particular source of evidence can lead to powerful convictions in favour of certain views, perhaps nowhere more clearly exemplified than in Anatoly Liberman's etymologically embedded reconstruction of a prehistoric Germanic religion dominated by the terror of chthonic spirit leaders and hordes (work of many years collected and revised in Liberman 2016). Different only in mode is the imposition of perceived analogies or even just casual assumptions upon material phenomena such as the burial of the dead with grave goods, or potential cases of graphic or numerical symbolism (e.g. Andrén 2014; review Hines 2015a; further, infra). It is quite possible for suggestions made through such diverse approaches to this aspect of the distant past to be historically correct – and perhaps they are even more likely to be partially correct – but they will still be essentially flawed if they are conclusions drawn for the wrong reasons. I stand resolutely by the contention that it is utterly fundamental to the study of religion that the phenomenon itself be adequately characterized at a general level to enable us to identify with defensible credibility where religion may be inherent in what are essentially very different material, linguistic or textual phenomena (Hines 1997; 2015b). Studies of ancient and historical religion are otherwise no more than a series of variously lucky or wild guesses which discredit both the object of study and the scholarly attempt to engage with it.

This critique is based upon a view that posits that religion is essentially immaterial, residing at its very heart in a common human sense of numinism: a field of cognition which in a truly Kantian sense ‘transcends’ the material and social substrates of the culture within which this consciousness exists and to which it must necessarily also relate; perhaps not (to develop the Kantian analogy further) as an a priori category of understanding but certainly as an autonomous element of the culture's ideology.

VERSLOOT With reference to the problem of interpreting what can only be scarce evidence, and ideas of the ‘deconstruction’ of historical narratives, the evidence we can put together seems to me largely to be adding details to a traditional scheme that has been around for some time. Has that scheme changed fundamentally, or has it just become more precise? We are still talking about migrations, essentially. I find this quite comforting. Johan (Nicolay) is filling out the concept of migration, but not saying it is not there.

IJSSENNAGGER-VAN DER PLUIJM I agree with that, but there's still more to it. The focus has changed; the perspective is now more anthropological. Some of the papers do try to go beyond the traditional scope. It is not about trying to throw away an old image, or even just filling it out, but a different perspective that enables us to see new things. Many of the papers were about a wider world than Radbod’s.

NIJDAM I would make two points. It is important not to forget that Boeles's idea of a fourth-century break, and the proposition that the same Frisians had not always inhabited the region, was revolutionary and unpopular in the early twentieth century. Around that time, the Frisian Movement also made use of Radbod as a figure; they would not want to see him deconstructed as a Frankish duke. Things changed in the post-World War II period. Jos Bazelmans wrote on this in the De Vrije Fries (2002), being surprised that this question of a long continuity of the Frisians back into the Roman Period is no longer perceived as important to Frisian identity. Moreover, new insights have been gained in recent times. Hans and Gilles's location of Radbod in North-Holland/Texel (de Langen and Mol) poses the question of what his power was over the rest of Frisia. Meanwhile, the reaction to Ian (Wood)'s public lecture does show the continuing desire for information on origins.

IJSSENNAGGER-VAN DER PLUIJM The public may not always be happy with the answer.

HINES We have to respect the desire to ask the question; and responding with respect will mean giving an answer that is as accurate as we can, but not necessarily the answer that is wished for.