Gyrwas

Gyrwas (also called Gyrwe) was the name of an early Anglo-Saxon people. They lived mainly on the western edge of  the grassy wetlands called the Fens in eastern England. They were divided into two tribal groups; the northern Gyrwas and the southern Gyrwas. This is how they were recorded in the Tribal Hidage.

The name Gyrwe means 'fen-dweller'.Peter Hunter Blair, Roman Britain and Early England; 55 B.C.–A.D. 871 (New York; London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1966), p. 183 The territory of the Gyrwas included Lindisfarne, Hatfield, Nottinghamshire, Northern Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, and as far south as Peterborough in Northamptonshire.Josiah Cox Russell, 'The Tribal Hidage', Traditio, Vol. 5 (1947), p. 205 The area around Jarrow was in their territory as well. The Fens supplied the Gyrwas with fish and gamebirds but they lived on the drier lands and islands nearby.

The Gyrwas had their own leaders as late as the first half of the 7th century.Hector Munro Chadwick, The Early Cultures of North-West Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 437 Bede records a Tondbert, priceps of the South Gyrwas.Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, trans. Leo Sherley Price, revsd. R. E. Latham (London; New York: Penguin, 1990), p. 236 He asked for the hand in marriage of Etheldreda, the daughter of King Anna of East Anglia.Liber Eliensis; a History of the Isle of Ely from the Seventh to Twelfth Century, ed. Janet Fairweather (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004), p. 17 Tondbert died shortly after the wedding and Ethelreda was then given in marriage to Ecgfrith of Northumbria. Underkings and leaders of tribes like the Gyrwas probably did not claim descent from ancient Germanic gods, as many kings of the heptarchy did. But they were of high enough status to marry Anglo-Saxon royalty.Frank Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 47

For a time the territory of the Gyrwas formed a buffer state between the Mercians and the East Anglians. The Gyrwas were later absorbed into Middle Anglia. 

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Category:Anglo-Saxons
Category:Petty kingdoms of England