Essay On Sutton Hoo And Beowulf

Sutton Hoo and Beowulf

Beowulf displays at the beginning and at the end such very lavish burials that they formerly seemed to be the work of the poet’s imagination. Then Sutton Hoo changed all that by giving historic evidence supporting not only the types of burials but also many other aspects of the Old English poem.

“. . . the poem is the product of a great age, the age of Bede, an age which knew artistic achievements of the kind buried at Sutton Hoo . . . (Stanley 3).

Sutton Hoo was the ancestral burial ground of the East Anglian kings, called the Wuffings, from Wuffa. Their father was said to be the first of this dynasty to rule the East Angles. Fifteen of their barrows or grave mounds make up Sutton

In the poem, Beowulf’s burial mound is very similarly located:

a memorial barrow that was high and broad

to be seen far off by ocean travelers (3157-58)

The equipment and jewelry which the warriors in Beowulf received as rewards for their heroism (“helmet and mailshirt,” “sword,” “horses and weapons,” “gold paid,”) – many of these are found in the burial site – helmets, shield mounts (from shields that long ago rotted), rings, necklaces, etc..

Sutton Hoo also contained a boar-crested helmet, a feature of the Geat warriors in the poem:

Boar-figures gleamed

over plated cheek-guards, inlaid with gold (303-4) (Cramp 117)

Mound Two at Sutton Hoo was mostly emptied in the nineteenth century, but the few fragments remaining suggest its occupant was as richly buried as King Raedwald , and the burial chamber more closely resembles that of Beowulf (Clark