Before the Romans, the Celts occupied England. They were farmers, worshipped many gods, and practiced "animism," the belief that the gods resided in nature. In 55 B.C., Julius Caesar claimed England for Rome and over the centuries, Rome gave England an infrastructure: roads, bridges, aqueducts, baths, and coliseums. The Roman soldiers married Celtic women birthing a new race of people known as Brythons, which is where we get the name "Britain." King Arthur, originally named Arturius, meaning "bear," was on of these Romanized Celts.
In the 300's, St. Augustine came as a Christian missionary to England. His task was to convert pagans to the Christian faith, but the pagans would not give up their many religious festivals. Concessions were made on spring fertility festivals and winter solstice to coincide with Christian celebrations of Easter and Christmas.
Tribes in such northern places as modern-day Denmark, Sweden, Norway desired England's farmland and invaded in the 400's. By then, the Roman Empire had all but disintegrated, and the Romanized Celts, or Brythons, were on their own. It is said that King Arthur himself battled the Anglo-Saxons invading from present day Scandinavia. The Anglo-Saxons ran the Celts into Western England, eventually unifying England and ruling from the 400's A.D. to 1066. In the 600's A.D., a monk known as Bede wrote a narrative poem on a wooden cross in runes. The poem, "Dream of the Rood," (Rood means cross) was a propaganda tool depicting Christ as a superhero, leaping up to the cross to defeat death. In the poem, the cross speaks, a direct appeal to the pagan belief in animism. The cross in the poem is decked with precious jewels, which would have been important to pagans.
Go to the website below to see your name written in the runic alphabet.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/vikings/runesright.html