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Sutton Hoo helmet: A gold- and jewel-encrusted relic with ties to Beowulf and a lost Anglo-Saxon king
Fragments of a helmet recovered from the Sutton Hoo ship burial show that early-medieval metalwork could be decorative and functional.
Name: Sutton Hoo helmet
What it is: A decorated Anglo-Saxon metal helmet with a faceplate
Where it is from: Woodbridge, Suffolk, England
When it was made: Circa A.D. 600 to 625
Related: Roman scutum: An 1,800-year-old shield dropped by a Roman soldier who likely died in battle
What it tells us about the past:
This helmet was discovered in pieces in an early-medieval ship burial at the archaeological site of Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, England, in the late 1930s. On display at the British Museum in London, the Sutton Hoo helmet is an iconic relic of early British history. Although rusted and fragmentary, the helmet reflects the power of its owner, who may have been the Anglo-Saxon king Rædwald.
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The reconstructed helmet — which consists of a cap, cheek pieces, a mask and a neck guard — is made primarily out of iron and copper alloy, with accents of silver, gold, tin, enamel and garnet. As restored, the helmet is 12.5 inches (31.8 centimeters) tall, and it is estimated to have originally weighed around 5.5 pounds (2.5 kilograms).
The most striking features of the helmet are in the face. The eyebrows, which are laced with silver wire and studded with garnets, end with miniature boars' heads. An engraved copper mustache lies beneath the iron nose protection, which starts between the eyebrows with an animal head. When it was found, the Sutton Hoo helmet was called the "British Tutankhamen."
The animal motifs on the helmet, as well as other artifacts found at Sutton Hoo, have led archaeologists to link the burial with the epic poem "Beowulf," an Old English tale that connects East Anglia with Scandinavia through the voyage of the eponymous hero. Beowulf's helmet in the poem is described as made of "beaten gold" and "adorned with boar shapes."
MORE ASTONISHING ARTIFACTS
More importantly, the Sutton Hoo burial was the first to reveal the cosmopolitan nature of southern England in the early Middle Ages. The ship burial's style is Scandinavian, and within the ship, excavators found gold coins from France, bowls from the Celts in western England, silver plates from the Byzantine Empire, and garnets that likely came all the way from India or Sri Lanka.
Much is still unknown about the Anglo-Saxons, who ruled England from the fifth to 11th centuries, primarily because in the ninth century, the Vikings destroyed churches where records were kept. The absence of historical records is one reason this time period has been called the "Dark Ages."
But large mounds like those found at Sutton Hoo were almost certainly the final resting places for Anglo-Saxon nobility such as King Rædwald. The Sutton Hoo discovery shows that the "Dark Ages" of early medieval Europe were a vibrant time.
Kristina Killgrove is a staff writer at Live Science with a focus on archaeology and paleoanthropology news. Her articles have also appeared in venues such as Forbes, Smithsonian, and Mental Floss. Kristina holds a Ph.D. in biological anthropology and an M.A. in classical archaeology from the University of North Carolina, as well as a B.A. in Latin from the University of Virginia, and she was formerly a university professor and researcher. She has received awards from the Society for American Archaeology and the American Anthropological Association for her science writing.