Thread by @rfhirst

It is ever important when studying history to not impose onto the past modern perceptions regarding stages of life. For example, scholars regularly underline Alfred the Great's youth when discussing his accession to the throne at the age of 22, but this is very easily overstated.

Military training began for Anglo-Saxon aristocrats at the age of seven or eight. It could be conducted at home, but it seems more often a boy would leave his parents to go live with a group of peers while under the supervision of a tutor, usually a maternal uncle or grandfather.

There were certainly parallels between these boys and their modern equivalents such as both by their natures challenging one another to physical competitions like foot races, wrestling matches and on. However, where for modern boys this is merely play for Anglo-Saxons it was not.

Likewise, where boys of all eras seem to have an innate ability to look at a simple stick and see in it a mighty sword the duels which follow for modern boys are for play whereas for Anglo-Saxons they were structured with tutors drilling young warriors-in-training in proper form.

Here similarities end for Anglo-Saxon boys were also subjected to various kinds of hardships in order to prepare them for what they would encounter as adults while on campaign. These ranged from exposure to the elements, extreme heat and cold, to starvation and sleep deprivation.

That no hardship was borne in vain or injury senselessly suffered was constantly reinforced from a very early age through the reciting of heroic poetry which provided meaning to a boy's experience and revealed the end goal of his training as being transformed himself into a hero.

Stephen Pollington argued that boys as young as nine, though still in training, could sometimes be expected to join their kinfolk in battle as skirmishers, and under King Æthelstan's law (II Æthelstan) a boy younger than 12 could be punished for crimes, namely theft, as an adult.

It was more regularly around the age of 14 that a youth progressed from the first stage of training and was now expected to prove his worth. This usually entailed singlehandedly slaying a wild beast such as a wolf, a boar or, in the case of Hereward the Outlaw and others, a bear.

Once proven, youths were expected to take a full and active role in military life. St. Guthlac, for example, before he turned himself to the service of God had by the age of 15 waged war at the head of a band of fellow youths; slaughtering, pillaging and razing enemy settlements.

In this way young warriors carried on for the remainder of their lives so that, to circle back, by the age of 22 they were anything but inexperienced youths which is a descriptor that we in the modern world would quite readily ascribe to anyone should they at that age take power.

In providing a brief overview of a warrior's training I aim not so much to say this was how precisely Alfred was brought up, but more simply to show that 22 in Old England was not what 22 is today and one must never lose sight of this when trying to assess history as it happened.