Pagans in Britain

SIR – Before the Odinist Fellowship renews its demands for the return of two of its temples, now churches, from the Church of England (report, August 27), its members should make a proper study of the history of early Britain.

According to Bede, the first Angles arrived by invitation of the native Britons in 449AD. Most of the immigrants were men and DNA studies suggest that they were largely assimilated into the population by marriage with British women.

Christianity was brought to the British Isles in the first century AD by Aristobulus, a Cypriot convert from Judaism who was numbered among the original Apostles of the Seventy. The first British martyr, St Alban, died in 304.

In most cases the Anglo Saxon countries that made up what would become England were Christianised following the marriage of their king to a Christian princess from Britain or Gaul. In Northumbria it was the Odinist chief priest Coifi who took it upon himself to destroy his own temple following King Edwin’s conversion, having been swayed by the intellectual arguments that he heard in favour of Christianity.

Finally, the Church of England did not exist before the 1530s, so it is difficult to see how that body should be considered responsible for destroying Odinist temples in the fifth and sixth centuries. Dr Sarah A Pape

Longwitton, Northumberland