Sutton Hoo: Unmasking a Kingdom

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Recommended: Medieval and the dark ages period

The Dark Ages, the time period between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance, has garnered a reputation for brutality, barbarism, low quality of life, and constant fighting between warlords and tribes. This was the age of heroes and legends, of kings and kingdoms unknown. Little is known about the Dark Ages as the name suggests, but as recent generations of historians have found, The Dark Ages were not as dark as once supposed.

In 1939, a ship burial site was unearthed which shook the historical foundations of Britain. Sutton Hoo, located in the south-east region of Britain, was the epicenter of a major discovery which housed the earliest and richest medieval burial in Britain and perhaps the whole of Europe1. The largest of the burial sites which housed the ship and all its artifacts, was believed to be the burial site for an ancient Saxon king named King Raedwald, ruler of the East-Angles. The artifacts found in his burial chamber were dated to around early 7th Century. The amount of gold and silver buried at Sutton Hoo suggests that that kingship was wealthier than most people think. Having buried that much gold and silver means that they had yet to deplete their riches and they still had much more left. The belt buckle artifact was made of gold equivalent to the price of a noble man. Having that much value on your belt buckle alone suggests wealth and power beyond what historians thought at that time.

Within the Sutton Hoo burial site were artifacts that originated from distant locations, showing the far-reaching network of which the supposed king was a part. G. Baldwin Brown wrote “the Germanic art of the Migration Period…may have been affected by classical, Oriental and Celtic traditions before it took a form and ...

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Works Cited

1. Martin Carver, Sutton Hoo Burial Ground of Kings? (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), xi.

2. Peter S. Wells, Voyage to the Other World: The Legacy of the Sutton Hoo (U of Minnesota Press, 1992), p.29

3 Carver, Sutton Hoo: Burial Ground of Kings?, 35

4 Bernice Grohskopf, The Treasure of Sutton Hoo: Ship-burial for an Anglo-Saxon King (Kingsport, TN.: Kingsport Press, 1970), 64.

5 Grohskopf, The Treasure of Sutton Hoo, 62-64

6 "Sutton Hoo Ship Burial Helmet Clip 2." Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 23 Oct. 2012. Web. 17 Nov. 2013.

7 R.L.S Bruce-Mitford, The Sutton Hoo Ship-burial: A Handbook (British Museum, 1972; 2nd ed. 1979), p.51

8 Grohskopf, The Treasure of Sutton Hoo, 66.

9 Bruce-Mitford, A Handbook, 51.

10 “Sutton Hoo Ship Burial Helmet Clip 2." Online video clip. YouTube

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