New England (medieval)

This article is about the medieval Black Sea colony. For the region in the northeastern United States, see New England.
"Nova Anglia" redirects here. For the colony of Great Britain, see Anglia Nova.

The New England (Latin: Nova Anglia) of Eastern Europe was a colony allegedly founded either in the 1070s or the 1090s by Anglo-Saxon refugees fleeing the Norman invasion of England. Its existence is attested in two sources, the French Chronicon Universale Anonymi Laudunensis (which ends in 1219) and the 14th-century Icelandic Játvarðar Saga. They tell the story of a journey from England to Constantinople through the Mediterranean Sea, where the English refugees fought off a siege by heathens and were rewarded by the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus. A group of them were given land to the north-east of the Black Sea, reconquering it and renaming their territory "New England".

The hypothesis of an Anglo-Saxon settlement on the Black Sea coast was put forward by Jonathan Shepard in the 1970s. No archaeological evidence of such a settlement has been discovered.

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