For the king and his ilk throughout the ages, personal adornments are one of the best ways to impress subjects and other leaders. These showy items were not ornamental jewellery in the strict sense, as they all had a practical function as part of what seems to have been the king's ceremonial regalia. The lack of wear and tear (including the fact that all the pieces are still mechanically sound) strongly suggests that these items, and by implication the leather and textiles which would also have made up the costume, were used only rarely. This would imply that only on important days or at special events would the king have been dressed in this garb.
Inside the leather purse that was once attached to the 'purse-lid' were thirty-seven small gold coins, three gold blanks and two small bars of gold. As mentioned earlier, all were Merovingian coins from Gaul. This group of coins had clearly been hand-picked for inclusion in the burial as each and every one had come from a different mint. A historian, Philip Grierson, came up with an ingenious explanation for their presence. According to classical mythology, it was necessary to pay the ferryman Charon a small coin (known as an obol) to take you safely across the river Styx to Hades, the land of the dead. For Grierson, the peculiar coin collection from Sutton Hoo had a very similar other-worldly purpose. The thirty-seven coins and the three blanks, making a total of forty, represented the payment to be given to the forty ghostly oarsmen who were to row him to his final destination. The two small bars were likewise to be given to the pilot and helmsman.
As if to remind us that we all have to pay the ferryman, among the great number of exotic, superbly crafted and hugely expensive objects that went into the burial chamber there was a small collection of more humble items. A rough iron lamp containing beeswax and a small clay bottle seem a little incongruous alongside all the ostentatious accoutrements of royalty, but there must have been a reason for their inclusion. Perhaps they had sentimental value to the king who, for all the pomp and circumstance that inevitably ruled much of his life, was on one level a man like any other.
Other less fortunate individuals were to find themselves buried here after the main story of Sutton Hoo, that of the mound burials, was over. The excavations were to reveal the presence of another cemetery on the site that made its way into the archaeological reports as a macabre appendix to the tale. The bodies were not the mass of skeletons and broken bones that are usually found – in fact, only fragments of bone survived. They were encased in sand which, it was soon realised, outlined the shape of the flesh. These were bodies replicated in sand. The postures in which the people had died were bizarre. Martin Carver describes the scene as the excavations of the 'sand bodies' took place:
One was kneeling, head to the floor of the grave; one stretched, out, hand above the head; another folded forward, another folded back, another sideways; and, strangest of all, one splayed out in a hurdling position, accompanied by a wooden object that seemed to belong to an ard or primitive type of plough. Every burial seemed to be different… most… indicated some special abuse of the individual.
Burial 24 had his head at right angles to the vertebral column, and teeth, hand and wrist had survived to give a tableau that was both ghastly and sad. Those who saw it all came to a similar conclusion and it was soon being referred to as 'the hanged man'.
It seemed that these grisly finds could be evidence for the heathen practice of human sacrifice. The eleventh-century churchman Adam of Bremen reported that the Vikings in Uppsala in Sweden hung bodies of both animals and men in trees as sacrifices to their pagan gods. Might not something similar have occurred at Sutton Hoo? A large pit was discovered and it was surrounded by a number of post-sockets. The archaeologists realised that they were looking at the traces of an ancient gallows. Radiocarbon dating exonerated the pagans: the victims belonged to the Christian era.
The graves had been hastily dug during the eighth to eleventh centuries, by which time the site had become an execution ground. The Christians who succeeded the pagan elite had no reverence for this burial ground, and reduced its once high status to that of a common place of execution. Sutton Hoo, sacred to the pagans, was unhallowed ground to the Church. Perhaps persistent pagans who refused to accept Christianity were done away with here, when folk memories of its now despised pagan background were still rife.
Chapter Sixteen
LAST RITES OF A PAGAN WORLD
No ship have I known so nobly dight with weapons of war and weeds of battle, with breastplate and blade…
Beowulf, from the Prelude (translated by Frances B. Grummere)
Of all the marvellous artefacts found in the burial of King Raedwald at Sutton Hoo, which help us in our attempt to enter this pagan world, the two most significant are the ship and the sword. The ship contained both the body of the king and all his most prized worldly possessions, while the sword is the very symbol of his kingship.
The King's Ship
We have seen in the story of Beowulf that the ship was the means by which the dead hero or king is transported to the other world. The ghostly traces of the Sutton Hoo ship that were left in the depths of the mound remind us that not only the king but his vessel have long gone to that shadowy realm. The ship not only served the king as his vehicle in death, but there is clear proof that it had also been used in life. Even though no timber from the ship survives, the archaeologists could tell from the pattern of the rivets that one or two parts of it had been repaired.
It was the king's own vessel, and Richard Darrah, an expert on Anglo-Saxon woodworking (who helped in the reconstruction of the village of West Stow), has aptly described it as the Air Force One of its day. It was Darrah who explained to me the importance of understanding the role of wood in Anglo-Saxon times. The building of ships was part of a wider woodworking tradition which it is important to understand first.
Wood, as a material, pervaded Anglo-Saxon life. It was used not only to build houses and ships but also to make fences to keep livestock from wandering off, bowls to eat from, and shafts for spears. Almost every element of life needed wood in some form or another. Stone, on the other hand, was not an important or frequently used material in early Anglo-Saxon times. Since wood, unlike stone, seldom survives for archaeologists to discover, the remains of their culture seem impoverished – not due to their own shortcomings but merely because of their chosen material. As we have seen, this has affected the way that the Anglo-Saxons have been perceived by creating the false impression that they were less able than other cultures.
One way to gain an insight into their woodworking traditions is by means of experimental archaeology. This involves trying to reproduce some of the objects that people have made in the past in order to understand their techniques and skills – an aim amply demonstrated by the West Stow reconstruction. Richard Darrah, as a skilled woodworker, obviously understands his material. When he studies some of the Anglo-Saxon wooden objects that have survived, he is able to tell, purely by the tool marks on the pieces, how the ancient carpenters achieved their results. He told me that, for him, it is as easy as reading a letter. He can tell the difference between the work of a competent and patient woodworker and a lazy or careless one.
He can also interpret aspects of the Sutton Hoo ship even though no timber from it has survived. The dimensions can be worked out by the rows of iron rivets that remained in place for 1,400 years. The gaps between the rows of rivets are approximately 30 cm (12 inches), which means the planks used must have been about 35 cm (14 inches) wide. A large tree (over 5 metres or 16 feet) would be needed in order to dress down such planks to the required degree of flatness. Large trees were extremely important economic assets and it seems certain that the wealthy and the powerful would have been in control of such timber reserves. Cutting down trees did not just need an axe (the Anglo-Saxons of this time did not have saws), it also needed the permission of whoever owned it.
Even after obtaining a sufficiently large tree, plank after plank would have had to be laid down and all of them would have had to be curved over t
heir length to make the actual shape of the ship. Building such a boat is, in Darrah's opinion, like doing a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. It is all the more skilful in that no paper plans of any sort would have been used by the Anglo-Saxon boat builders. The whole enterprise would have been impossible without great craftsmanship, organisation and experience. The Sutton Hoo ship was no ordinary vessel – it was almost certainly a royal vessel and as such would have been one of the best boats of its time. It is possible to calculate its length as just under 27 metres (90 feet); its width was 4.5 metres (14 feet). It would probably have been able to carry a hundred people.
Just as the house-building techniques of the Anglo-Saxons have been under-valued, so too have their ship-building skills. Edwin Gifford, a retired engineer, naval architect and expert on sailing technologies, and his wife Joyce have long been of this opinion. Despite the indisputable fact that the Anglo-Saxons arrived in Britain by boat, there has been a tenacious prejudice that they were not great seafarers like the Vikings of later times. This is a belief that the Giffords have found hard to uproot. They saw the Sutton Hoo ship as the means to demonstrate the nautical skills of the Anglo-Saxon period.
The practical capacities of the vessel had originally been considered by a naval officer, Lieutenant-Commander J. K. D. Hutchinson, who had been assigned by the Science Museum to lead a team to work alongside the archaeologists in the original excavations. Due to the outbreak of war in 1939, he had to abandon his research before it was complete and written up in its entirety. Unfortunately, he died in the war and much of his work was lost. As a consequence, no one with the necessary expertise was to study the Sutton Hoo ship for many decades to come.
It seemed that the Anglo-Saxon boat builders were to remain in the shadow of the Viking longships that were better known and better understood. It was thought that the Anglo-Saxons were incapable of sailing and that all their vessels were essentially rowing boats. To the trained eye of Edwin Gifford, there are certain differences between the fourth-century Nydam boat from southern Denmark and the Sutton Hoo ship of the early seventh century that can shed light on this debate. As a rowing vessel, the Nydam boat has a steering paddle which is not strongly mounted and stern frames that are not strengthened. The Sutton Hoo ship has heavy framing at the stern, which is necessary only for a sailing vessel. Its powerful mounted rudder would also have been superfluous on a rowing boat. The very shape of the Sutton Hoo ship also indicated to Gifford that it was a vessel that could be sailed as well as rowed. Its leaf-like shape is more generally associated with sailing vessels rather than a simple rowing galley, which typically has nearly parallel sides.
Despite all these strong arguments, there is no concrete material evidence to prove that the early Anglo-Saxons had sailing ships. Neither sails nor masts survive, yet there is no reason to think that the Anglo-Saxons did not sail even before the time when the Sutton Hoo boat was made. John Haywood, another expert on navigation in the Dark Ages, cites a number of Roman sources that mention Saxons and sails in the same breath. One such source is a letter written by Sidonius Apollinaris, a Roman aristocrat who lived in Gaul, and dating from around the year 473 in which he mentions the Saxons unfurling their sails as they set out on their voyage home.
Some of the Saxons and other Germanic tribes were considered highly dangerous pirates by the Romans. They raided in a similar fashion to their later cousins, the Vikings. Despite their long interaction with the Roman world, the Anglo-Saxons not only built their houses according to different principles but they also built their ships in a different style. Their tradition developed somewhere in the southern Baltic region among their own Germanic people and owed nothing to the Romans.
The Giffords decided to build a half-size replica of the boat to test its capabilities and to demonstrate that it had been designed by its makers as a sailing ship. The resulting vessel was named Sæ Wylfing, which translates as 'the sea wolf's she-cub'. The ship was rigged with a square sail of a Roman type that would have been familiar to the Anglo-Saxons. The ship has reached speeds of over 7 knots and in smooth water can achieve one and a half knots direct to windward. It has been shown to be more than capable of being navigated in shallow waters.
It is 12 metres (40 feet) long and so even though it is considerably smaller than the original Sutton Hoo boat it is perfectly at ease in rough weather. Some Finnish friends of the Giffords sailed her across the North Sea in three days without any problems. Gifford himself estimates that a journey from Sutton Hoo to the north of Sweden would have taken three weeks, allowing for some days waiting for good weather. The crew would have kept themselves insulated from cold by rubbing animal fat on their bodies.
Sutton Hoo treasure:
The 'sceptre' found in the burial mound, symbol of royal power.
Garnet and gold shoulder-clasp
The 'purse-lid', made of gold, garnets and millefiori glass.
The imprint of the Sutton Hoo ship in the sand, as found in the 1930s.
Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, Northumberland, England; a view across the water from a 1904 postcard.
Illumination from the Lindisfarne Gospels, page facing the Gospel of St. John.
Viking ship in a boat shed, Oslo, Norway, 1914.
Oseberg ship burial finds, Viking Ship Museum, Oslo 'Baroque' animal head post; wood-carving of a man's head on the Oseberg cart; monstrous animal wood-carving from a sleigh.
Runestone at Vedelspang, Sonderjylland, Norway.
The Gokstad Ship, Viking Ship Museum.
Viking burial sites with stones forming the shape of a ship at (top) Runsa and (left) Blomsholm, Sweden.
The author with the crew of a replica Viking ship in Gotland.
Picture stone, a memorial depicting scenes from this life and the afterlife, found under the floor of Ardre church, Gotland, Sweden; date 700–800 AD.
Sixth or seventh century bronze statuette of a Buddha (8.4cm high) from northern India, found in Helgö, Sweden.
The biggest Scandinavian example of an artefact known as a bracteate, suspended from the neck and worn on the chest as a magical amulet, Asum parish, Skane region of southern Sweden.
Arab astronomers using scientific instruments to measure angles.
The ancient mosque at Cordoba, now a Catholic cathedral.
Gifford took me out on the Solent and showed me just how efficient and elegant she was when sailing or being rowed (by his crew of suitably attired members of an Anglo-Saxon re-enactment society). He proudly refers to his ship as a thoroughbred and rightly so: its manoeuvrability, speed and reliability make it a great vessel to sail in – and so, by association, would the original Sutton Hoo ship have been. In the course of their various trials, the Giffords also discovered how to land properly in the surf. If everyone on board simply moves aft just before you land, then the boat will sail right up the beach and you arrive dry shod. This turned out to be very simple as was demonstrated when we landed. It dispels the cliché that such crews had to wade up to their chests in water before engaging in battle.
The replica enabled the Giffords to reach this conclusion about the Sutton Hoo ship and the similar vessels that must have existed at the same time:
They were not at an intermediate stage of development by shipwrights searching blindly in the Dark Ages, but were fully resolved designs, difficult to improve upon even with today's knowledge. This programme of building, sailing and testing of half-scale models has expanded our understanding of their performance and seaworthiness from an intuitive appreciation to a conviction based on measurement, which must substantially change the generally held views on Anglo-Saxon seafaring.
According to calculations by Edwin Gifford, the full-scale original could have travelled at speeds of between 10 and 12 knots. At such speeds, the king and his entourage could leave a place one day and be 150 miles away by the next. They, if not their crew, could arrive refreshed and ready for whatever task lay ahead, whether fighting or diplomacy. The same journey on horseback overland would n
ot only have taken far longer but it would also have been much more tiring. It is easy to agree with Richard Darrah's description of the ship as the Air Force One of its day.
The Giffords' replica has allowed reasonably accurate estimates of journey times for the Sutton Hoo original. Suffolk to Canterbury was a half-day trip, as was Canterbury to France. From Canterbury up to York was a two-day journey. The key role of boats in the Anglo-Saxon world should not be underestimated. Places that were readily accessible by boat (whether up the east coast to the north of England or over the sea to the low countries) were more likely to be part of the political and economic landscape than places far inland and to the west. The speed of Raedwald's vessel may have had a bearing on his surprise attack and defeat of Aethelfrith in Northumbria, and was most probably the means by which he travelled to Aethelbert's court in Kent where he was tempted to become a Christian. The rivers and the seas played a greater role in Anglo-Saxon life than the roads that had once been so important during the Roman occupation of Britain.
The Cutting Edge of Anglo-Saxon Technology
One of the king's most precious and personal belongings was his ornate pattern-welded sword that would have been placed by his side. The blade itself was made from bundles of iron rods twisted left and right by a master swordsmith to create a distinctive herringbone design. The blade would have been kept bright and clean by the oiled lamb's wool lining of its wooden scabbard. The hilt and the scabbard were adorned with gold and garnets, two precious materials that were used to make other objects which were also part of the king's regalia.
Archaeologists can only tell us so much about this magnificent sword. I was fortunate enough to gain a very different perspective on its significance from a modern exponent of this art who can read a sword like a book. Hector Cole was commissioned to make an authentic replica of the Sutton Hoo sword in his Wiltshire forge. Not only was he required to make a finished product as close in appearance to the original as possible, but also to make it using traditional techniques like those the Anglo-Saxon smiths themselves would have used.
Barbarians- Secrets of the Dark Ages Page 18
