Anglo-Saxons there was a flowering of literature and language. Charters and law were also established. The term "Anglo-Saxon" is popularly used for the language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons in England and eastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century. In scholarly use, it is more commonly called Old English. The history of the Anglo-Saxons is the history of a cultural identity. It developed from divergent groups in association with the people's adoption of Christianity, and was integral to the establishment of various kingdoms. Threatened by extended Danish invasions and military occupation of eastern
Anglo-Saxon art between them left virtually nothing in England except for books and archaeological finds. Metalwork is almost the only form in which the earliest Anglo-Saxon art has survived, mostly in Germanic-style jewelry (including fittings for clothes and weapons) which was, before the Christianization of Anglo-Saxon England, commonly placed in burials. After the conversion, which took most of the 7th century, the fusion of Germanic Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Late Antique techniques and motifs, together with the requirement for books, created Hiberno-Saxon style, or Insular art, which is also seen in illuminated manuscripts and some carved stone and ivory, probably mostly drawing from