Celtic & Anglo-Saxon Studies

Celtic and Anglo-Saxon studies occupies a fascinating corner of the humanities, concerned with the languages, literatures, histories, and cultures of the peoples who inhabited the British Isles and northern Europe in the early medieval period and beyond. The Celtic-speaking peoples of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany, along with the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian cultures that reshaped Britain from the fifth century onwards, left behind extraordinary bodies of literature, material culture, and historical record that reward close attention and repay the effort of learning the languages needed to engage with them.

At the University of Aberdeen, this four-year full-time programme takes a genuinely interdisciplinary approach to these traditions, crossing the conventional boundaries of literature, history, and cultural studies to build a rounded understanding of the Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Scandinavian worlds and their legacies. You will engage with medieval texts in their original languages and in translation, study the historical contexts in which they were produced, and develop the critical and analytical skills needed to interpret them. The programme includes a year abroad, giving you the opportunity to deepen your engagement with the living Celtic languages and cultures or to pursue related study in a different academic environment.

The flexibility of the programme allows you to develop your own areas of specialism within a broad and intellectually stimulating field. You will build skills in close reading, historical analysis, linguistic study, and interdisciplinary thinking that are valued across many professional contexts.

Graduates go on to careers in education, heritage, museums and archives, journalism, publishing, broadcasting, the arts, and the civil service. The programme is also excellent preparation for postgraduate study in medieval studies, Celtic studies, Old English, history, or related fields for those who wish to continue in academia or research.