**Anglo-Saxons may have fought in northern Syrian wars, say experts**
"_These finds put the Anglo-Saxon princes and their followers centre-stage in one of the last great wars of late antiquity. It takes them out of insular England into the plains of Syria and Iraq in a world of conflict and competition between the Byzantines and the Sasanians and gave those Anglo-Saxons literally a taste for something much more global than they probably could have imagined._"
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@bibliolater Note that by the 8th century there was a Schola Anglorum (English quarter) in Rome because of all the travel back-and-forth, so the Anglo-Saxons were never all that insular — I suspect that stereotype came from 19th century Romanticism, trying to depict them as pure germanic warriors unsullied by Latinate decadence, or some similar racist nonsense.
@david_megginson Sorry for the belated reply and thank you for your comment. I think the author of the piece may be referring to the perception of insularity rather than the actuality of the English being insular.
@bibliolater Thanks for your reply. I don't know the current state of Old English/Anglo-Saxon research, but when I was doing my Ph.D. in the late 1980s, that perception didn't exist in academia; we were very aware of how interconnected early-medieval Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East were. I feel like the person quoted in the article was setting up a bit of a strawman to make the finding seem more impressive (or else the journalist was misrepresenting what they said).