A whole royal ship, buried beneath a mound, full of gold and weapons – and a helmet that became the face of an entire age.
In 1939, archaeologists in eastern England opened an unremarkable burial mound – and found one of the most magnificent burials of the early Middle Ages: Sutton Hoo.
Beneath the mound lay the impression of a nearly 27-metre-long ship. The wood had long since rotted away, but planks and rivets showed in the sand. In the middle stood a burial chamber full of treasures – the burial of a powerful man, probably a king of East Anglia in the early 7th century.
Most famous of all became the Sutton Hoo helmet with its face mask and fine ornamentation – today an icon of the British Museum. Alongside it came gold buckles, a sword, a shield and silverware from distant Byzantium.
The find shows a world that strikingly resembles that of the Old English epic Beowulf: kings who reward their followers with gold, ship burials, weapons of high rank. Sutton Hoo is thus a bridge between the poetry and the reality of the Germanic heroic age.
You can find the Old English Beowulf epic linked, in the public domain, in our Library.