Why are there so few records of the Dark Ages?

Up until the beginning of the 5th century, and for hundreds of years before that, Britain was a colony of Rome. Roman Britain was a civilized, peaceful cash cow that the occupying Romans milked systematically. They also left their mark on the place; contributing language (Latin), engineering (roads, drainage, fortified town walls, bridges, canals, Hadrian's wall), culture (books, music, education, imported food), religion (Roman deities at first, and later, Christianity).

There were two Legions based in Britain, and the men intermarried with native Britons, or brought wives and families from Rome, settled down and lived as colonials for the next few hundred years. When the Roman Legions were pulled from Britain and sent back to defend Rome from invading hordes, the bulk of the Roman colonial families stayed behind, clinging stoutly to their culture and heritage.

Throughout the Roman occupation, Wales and the territory north of Hadrian's Wall (which later was to become Scotland) was left untouched. The native tribes that had possession of Britain before the Romans arrived pulled back into these untouched areas during the colonization process. These, then, became the last pockets of Celtic culture, which were to stubbornly thrive right up until today.

For the century between the departure of the Roman legions and the explosive invasion of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes from the continent, Britain was a stewpot of dissension, lawlessness, famine, and strife. Although nominally still a Roman possession, Rome ignored the island. The Celts, the only other remaining cohesive culture, had a tradition of oral history -- therefore noone was making any written records of the period.

There was no central leadership to speak of. The Saxons came for the excellent farming land, and the Legions were no longer there to protect the island. The native Britons had a series of war leaders who tried valiantly to stem the steady flow of invading Saxons into Britain. There is evidence of two of those leaders: Vortigern, and Ambrosius. Vortigern was a complete failure. He actually gave land to the Saxons to try and appease them. The land he gave them acquired a name; The Saxon Shore (which was most of the south east coast of Britain). The Saxon Shore would plague future leaders, for the Saxons now had a freely accessible beach-head to land their galleys.

Somewhere around the time of Ambrosius' leadership, there is a war duke, Arturos (Latin for Arthur), who for a short while managed to dam the flow of Saxons into the country almost completely. But his victory was short lived, and the Saxons and their kin took over Britain and made it their own. Hence the language we call English (from Anglis) is actually developed from Anglo-Saxon dialects, and England (the land of the Angles) is the alternative name still used for Britain.

The Way of Life During The Dark Ages

Describing how people lived in this period is an act of educated speculation.

Because Rome had been the dominant force for so long, it is a fairly safe assumption that much of the Roman culture persisted well into the century. But invading armies and lack of leadership meant that no matter which culture dominated at the beginning of the century, the rest of the period is one of steady disintegration, to the point where there was no dominant culture -- indeed, apart from the Celts, most of the other races on the island (tribal Britons, Romano-British colonials, Saxons, freed slaves from the continent, a smattering of Bretons from Brittany) began to merge their cultures -- freely borrowing from each other in a simple effort to survive.