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Undergraduate Study

 

Are you fascinated by medieval history, literature and languages? You can explore a range of medieval cultures on the Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic course. You’ll also have the chance to do your own research using original source materials.
 

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Overview
Number 1 in the UK for History (The Complete University Guide 2025)

Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic at Cambridge

This course focuses on the history, material culture, languages and literature of the peoples of Britain, Ireland and the Scandinavian world in the earlier Middle Ages.

You'll discover medieval history while learning languages like Old Norse and medieval Welsh, Irish and Latin.

You’ll read literature in the original languages. This includes the:

  • Old English poem ‘Beowulf’
  • epic medieval Irish tale ‘Táin Bó Cúailnge’ (‘The Cattle Raid of Cooley’)
  • Old Norse Icelandic sagas

The course offers the opportunity to explore:

  • the Viking age
  • Norse and Celtic mythology
  • Anglo-Saxon culture and history
  • the history and culture of the Brittonic- and Gaelic-speaking peoples
  • interdisciplinary study, including topics like art history, religious studies and archaeology

Exactly which areas you study and to what depth is largely up to you.

Facilities

Our department is located in the Faculty of English building. You’ll have access to:

  • our impressive Cambridge University Library, one of the world’s oldest university libraries
  • the English Faculty Library
  • libraries located within our Colleges

Course costs

When you go to university, you’ll need to consider two main costs – your tuition fees and your living costs (sometimes referred to as maintenance costs).

Your living costs will include costs related to your studies that are not covered by your tuition fees. There are some general study costs that will apply for all students.

Find out more about general study costs.

There are no compulsory additional course costs for ASNC. If you have any queries about resources/materials, please contact the Department.

Careers and graduate options

This challenging degree will develop your powers of argument and sharpen your analysis. Some transferable skills you'll develop on the course include:

  • critical thinking and evaluation
  • communicating effectively and presenting clear arguments
  • organisation and time management
  • working creatively and effectively with others
  • research skills

The course equips you for a wide range of careers where intellectual and analytical skills are important.

Some of our graduates take advantage of the specialist opportunities open to them. They go on to:

  • research and teaching in schools and universities (following further study)
  • work in museums and libraries

Other graduates choose to go into careers including:

  • journalism
  • publishing
  • banking
  • law
  • the Civil Service
  • industry and business
  • software development
Course outline

Teaching

Teaching is provided through lectures, classes, seminars and small-group supervisions.

In your first and second year, you can expect to have between 10 and 15 hours of lectures and classes per week.

Assessment

You'll be assessed through written exams and coursework. All students write a dissertation of between 9,000 and 12,000 words in their third year.

You won't usually be able to resit any of your exams.

Years 1 and 2 (Part I)

Year 1

You study the various disciplines which form the core of the course.

There are no compulsory papers. You choose 6 historical, language and literature subjects, from a choice of 10. You will take an examination in 4 of them.

Historical subjects:

  • Anglo-Saxon history
  • Scandinavian history
  • Gaelic history (Scotland, Ireland and the Isle of Man)
  • Brittonic history (Wales, Brittany, Cornwall, the Pictish kingdoms and the North Britons)

Language and literature subjects:

  • Old English
  • Old Norse
  • medieval Welsh
  • medieval Irish
  • medieval Latin
  • palaeography (the study of manuscripts and handwriting)

Year 2

You can continue to study your chosen subjects and take an examination in all 6 of them.

Or, you can replace up to 3 of your first-year subjects with a dissertation and/or one or two papers from related undergraduate courses:

  • Divinity
  • English
  • Modern and Medieval Languages
  • Archaeology
  • History

Year 3 (Part II)

This is where you develop and use the skills you learned in your first and second year.

You will explore your chosen fields and apply your newly acquired knowledge in original and imaginative ways.

You study 4 subjects selected from a range of 17 papers including, for example:

  • Rethinking the Viking Age
  • ‘Beowulf’
  • Advanced Medieval Irish Language and Literature
  • Germanic Philology

You can replace one of these 4 papers with a paper from another related undergraduate course. The range of subjects currently includes:

  • medieval English literature
  • medieval French literature
  • historical linguistics
  • subject from the Faculty of Divinity

You can also replace one of your third year subjects with a paper that you didn’t take an exam in at the end of your second year.

You will also write a dissertation of between 9,000 and 12,000 words on a specific subject of your choice within the scope of the course.

For further information about this course and the papers you can take see the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic website.

Changing course

It’s really important to think carefully about which course you want to study before you apply. 

In rare cases, it may be possible to change course once you’ve joined the University. You will usually have to get agreement from your College and the relevant departments. It’s not guaranteed that your course change will be approved.

You might also have to:

  • take part in an interview
  • complete an admissions test
  • produce some written work
  • achieve a particular grade in your current studies
  • do some catch-up work
  • start your new course from the beginning 

For more information visit the Department website.

You can also apply to change to:

You can't apply to this course until you're at Cambridge. You would usually apply when you have completed 1 year or more of your original Cambridge course.

You should contact your College’s Admissions Office if you’re thinking of changing your course. They will be able to give you advice and explain how changing courses works.

Entry requirements
The listed entry requirements relate to entry in 2026 or deferred entry in 2027.

Minimum offer level

A level: A*AA

IB: 41-42 points, with 776 at Higher Level

Other qualifications: Check which other qualifications we accept

We don't ask for any specific subjects to apply to ASNC. We recommend these subjects for a strong application:

  • English (language or literature) 
  • History
  • Languages (ancient or modern)

College Entry Requirements

The following Colleges usually set offers at the minimum offer level. They may sometimes ask for higher grades or an A* in a particular subject:

  • Christ's
  • Clare
  • Corpus Christi
  • Downing
  • Emmanuel
  • Fitzwilliam
  • Girton
  • Gonville & Caius
  • Homerton
  • Hughes Hall
  • Jesus
  • King's
  • Magdalene
  • Murray Edwards
  • Newnham
  • Pembroke
  • Peterhouse
  • Queens'
  • Robinson
  • Sidney Sussex
  • St Catharine's
  • St Edmund's
  • St John's
  • Trinity
  • Trinity Hall
  • Wolfson

The following Colleges set extra conditions for most or all offers. For example, they may make a higher offer or specify an A* in a particular subject. However, some may occasionally set offers at the minimum level. For more information check the College websites:

Colleges set additional offer requirements for a range of reasons. If you'd like to find out more about why we do this, check the information about offers above the minimum requirement on the entry requirements page.

IB offers

Some Colleges usually make offers above the minimum offer level. Find out more on our qualifications page.

Admission assessment

There is no admission assessment for this course.

Submitted work

You will need to submit 2 pieces of written work.

What ASNC students have studied

Most ASNC students (who had studied A levels and started at Cambridge in 2018, 2019 and 2023) achieved at least A*AA. Almost all had studied at least one of the subjects recommended above.

Other subjects taken include:

  • Ancient History, Classical Civilisation, Economics, Further Mathematics, Geography, Politics, History of Art, Law, Music, Philosophy, Psychology, Religious Studies, sciences (Biology, Chemistry or Physics) or Sociology.
  • Mathematics

This information shows some of the common subjects our applicants have studied. Although these are common subject combinations, this doesn't mean they're favoured. 

When you're choosing your post-16 subjects, it's most important to check whether any subjects are required for your course. You can also check our guidance on choosing your high school subjects for more information.

All undergraduate admissions decisions are the responsibility of the Cambridge Colleges. Please contact the relevant College admissions office if you have any queries.

Next steps

Discover your department or faculty

Explore our Colleges

Visit us on open day

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Discover Uni data

Contextual information

Discover Uni allows you to compare information about individual courses at different higher education institutions.  This can be a useful method of considering your options and what course may suit you best.

However, please note that superficially similar courses often have very different structures and objectives, and that the teaching, support and learning environment that best suits you can only be determined by identifying your own interests, needs, expectations and goals, and comparing them with detailed institution- and course-specific information.

We recommend that you look thoroughly at the course and University information contained on these webpages and consider coming to visit us on an Open Day, rather than relying solely on statistical comparison.

You may find the following notes helpful when considering information presented by Discover Uni.

  1. Discover Uni relies on superficially similar courses being coded in the same way. Whilst this works on one level, it may lead to some anomalies. For example, Music courses and Music Technology courses can have exactly the same code despite being very different programmes with quite distinct educational and career outcomes.

    Any course which combines several disciplines (as many courses at Cambridge do) tends to be compared nationally with courses in just one of those disciplines, and in such cases the Discover Uni comparison may not be an accurate or fair reflection of the reality of either. For example, you may find that when considering a degree which embraces a range of disciplines such as biology, physics, chemistry and geology (for instance, Natural Sciences at Cambridge), the comparison provided is with courses at other institutions that primarily focus on just one (or a smaller combination) of those subjects.You may therefore find that not all elements of the Cambridge degree are represented in the Discover Uni data.

  2. Some contextual data linked from other surveys, such as the National Student Survey (NSS) or the Destination of Leavers in Higher Education (DLHE), may not be available or may be aggregated across several courses or several years due to small sample sizes.  When using the data to inform your course choice, it is important to ensure you understand how it has been processed prior to its presentation. Discover Uni offers some explanatory information about how the contextual data is collated, and how it may be used, which you can view here: https://discoveruni.gov.uk/about-our-data/.

  3. Discover Uni draws on national data to provide average salaries and employment/continuation data.  Whilst starting salaries can be a useful measure, they do not give any sense of career trajectory or take account of the voluntary/low paid work that many graduates undertake initially in order to gain valuable experience necessary/advantageous for later career progression. Discover Uni is currently piloting use of the Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) data to demonstrate possible career progression; it is important to note that this is experimental and its use may be modified as it embeds.

The above list is not exhaustive and there may be other important factors that are relevant to the choices that you are making, but we hope that this will be a useful starting point to help you delve deeper than the face value of the Discover Uni data.

Key information

Minimum offer level 
A level: A*AA
IB: 41-42 points, with 776 at Higher Level
UCAS code 
QQ59
Course length 
BA (Hons) 3 years, full-time
Start date 
October 2026
Study at 

All Colleges

Applicant numbers 
2024 cycle:
Applications per place: 2
Accepted: 27
Contact email 
office@asnc.cam.ac.uk
Contact telephone 
01223 335079