England was not Christianized in one fell swoop by the Augustinian mission set up in the kingdom of Kent or even in the subsequent years. The picture painted for us by Bede is of a gradual process that ebbed and flowed in intensity. These patterns of belief and conversion/relapse would come and go with generational change and warfare. For just shy of a century, Bede places the fall of the last pagan kingdom in England to 686, Christian and pagan kingdoms co-existed in a state of semi-permanent warfare, though such violence was just simply endemic to the time period.

So anything that isn't archaeology is going to come from this period or just after, and really Bede is our main source for the great deal of this material, there quite simply aren't really any other sources, and Bede is ambiguous and cloudy at the best of times. So what does Bede tells us? We need to keep in mind his own biases as a Christian intellectual who was not particularly sympathetic to his immediate pagan forebears.

Certain kings would convert or be brought up in the Christian faith but would relapse later in life, specifically in one case he blames King Radwald of East Anglia's wife for causing his lapse back into paganism (though he still maintained an altar to Christ alongside his pagan ones).

This implies, and Bede states outright in other cases, that there were centralized areas of worship in pagan Anglo-Saxon England, this is also born out by place names which contain names such as Wotan in them, or derived forms of it. We also know that horses held particular importance in these societies and were probably used in sacrifices. Levels of horse consumption were higher in the pre-conversion era and dropped off significantly, according to Robin Fleming and Kristopher Poole this was done in the face of Christian prohibitions against horse consumption.

Bede also offers us tantalizing clues in other writings of his such as celebrations around Christmas (Mother's Night) as well as November being named "Blot (sacrifice) month" which indicates some sort of significance ascribed to this time frame, and it would be unusual coinciding with harvest celebrations across the world. So the details of Anglo-Saxon paganism escape us, and I don't think its entirely appropriate to draw too many parallels to other Germanic societies such as the Norse (even if there is some utility to be found there) we are largely always going to be in the dark in regards to the finer points of their belief systems.

So what can archaeology tell us beyond a few stray artifacts? Burials are obviously quite important. Burial goods, or the lack therof, are extremely useful, if not for directly determining religious affiliation. The famous burial at Sutton Hoo is commonly held to be that of the above mentioned Radwald. It is really more of a funeral complex containing many graves and goods that put most furnished burials to shame, ships, sacrificed animals, lavish goods, and all are found. Interestingly two pieces of silverware, inscribed with the decidedly non-Saxon names of Saul and Paul are also found in among all of these lavish grave goods. While it doesn't, and cannot, really tell us about the precise beliefs of the people interred, the mix of Christian artifacts and the presumably pagan sacrificed animals (possibly people?) does show the same kind of co-existence in East Anglia that Bede described.

Did the Anglo-Saxons in the pagan period have their own versions of the Aesir/Vanir division? Ragnarok, Yggdrasil, Valkyries? We really can't know for sure. There are indications that there was some cross cultural stories that would be familiar to people who have read the sagas or other Germanic stories. Beowulf famously had a coat of mail forged by Weland the Smith who appears in Norse sources as well, and many depictions on Anglo-Saxon artifacts have been connected with one deity or another. The Franks casket has on it scenes that have also been interpreted as belong to the story of Weland the smith.

So what about the actual conversion process itself? I've hinted at Christian legislation against identified pagan practices, ie horse sacrifice and consumption, but what about the rest of it? For textual evidence Bede remains our only real source and he actually provides a relatively nuanced view. Many kingdoms slipped back and forth between the two systems based on the king and this seems to have been applied to the people he ruled over. He even describes one out and out case of what might be considered ethnic cleansing in the Wessex conquest of Wight against the last pagan kingdom in England, following this massacre the area was settled by Christians.

So in conclusion a great deal of the finer points of Anglo-Saxon paganism will remain obscure to us due to a lack of archaeological evidence and written sources. The only source that really informs our understanding to a significant degree is Bede and he gives us a pretty wide variety of information on the subject. Archaeology is extremely useful, but only gets us so far in interpreting belief systems based off of artifacts. There is also a general paucity in well preserved sites from this time frame.