Celtic & Anglo-Saxon Studies and Language & Linguistics

Celtic and Anglo-Saxon studies with language and linguistics at the University of Aberdeen brings together an exploration of the peoples, languages, and cultural legacies of the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon worlds with the scientific study of language itself. Celtic and Anglo-Saxon studies examines the lives, literatures, and historical experience of the Celtic peoples and the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian communities whose movements and settlements shaped the early medieval world, attending to their languages, manuscripts, material culture, and the traditions they left behind. Language and linguistics complements this by asking fundamental questions about language as a human capacity: how it is structured, how it is acquired, how it varies and changes, and what it reveals about human cognition and social life.

This four-year full-time programme includes a year abroad.

You will develop expertise in the languages and literature of the early medieval Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Scandinavian worlds alongside a rigorous grounding in linguistic theory and methodology. The combination is particularly intellectually coherent: Celtic and Anglo-Saxon studies gives the linguistics strand concrete historical material to work with, and linguistics gives you the analytical tools to understand how the languages of the early medieval period functioned and evolved. You will gain skills in critical thinking, analysis, and research that are transferable across the professions.

A typical entry tariff of 168 UCAS points reflects a moderately selective admissions standard. Graduates from this combination are well placed for careers in academia, archival and heritage work, libraries, teaching, journalism, cultural policy, and any field where expertise in language, history, and cultural analysis is valued. Many continue to postgraduate research in Celtic studies, Old English, historical linguistics, or related fields.