What do Babe Ruth, Jimi Hendrix and the man in the mound at Sutton Hoo have in common?
I'm Sue Brunning, curator of the European early medieval collections at the British Museum
and this is my corner.
So today we are doing a sequel to my previous episode
all about early Anglo-Saxon swords
but today we're actually going to be looking at
the most famous anglo-saxon sword ever discovered
and that's the sword from the Sutton Hoo ship burial
which is laid out beautifully in front of me here.
Now for those of you who perhaps don't know what the Sutton Hoo ship burial is
it was a grave that was made in the eastern part of England in a county called Suffolk
which at that time was part of the East Anglian Kingdom in Anglo-Saxon England.
Now to call it a grave is to sell it short slightly because it was actually
no ordinary grave it was actually a grave made in the middle of a
twenty-seven meter long ship that was buried beneath a gigantic earth mound
and inside a burial chamber that was placed in the middle of the ship
were laid out some amazing treasures drawn from all over the known world at that time
and one of those pieces was this magnificent sword
and the quality and the quantity of the pieces that were laid out inside that burial chamber
were so great that the speculation is that actually what we have here
is the burial of an early Anglo-Saxon king of East Anglia.
So let's look a little bit more closely at the sword itself.
So here we have the blade of the sword which is made from iron
and of course the reason that it looks like this kind of brown and a bit lumpy
is because it's corroded in the ground over time, you can see it's now in two pieces
but originally this would have been a very shiny, iron weapon
that was made with a technique called pattern welding which is quite complicated
but it basically involves the twisting of iron rods and the grouping together of a bunch of these
which are then hammered and then create these beautiful patterns inside the blade
so originally this would have been quite a piece of work.
Then at this end we have the various pieces of the hilt or the handle of the sword
which is the part that's obviously held in hand
so here we have the lower guard plates which are, as you can see,
made of beautiful lustrous gold.
In the middle, we have the grip, which is the part
that the hand holds on to and on this side towards me we have two decorative gold clips
and this part, it's actually going to be the part that I'm going to speak about the most today,
is the pommel cap, which is made from gold, inlaid with these beautiful red lustrous stones which are garnets.
Now what's interesting about the pommel is that it actually provides us with quite an intimate detail
about the person that was buried at Sutton Hoo.
Although the Sutton Hoo sword pommel here looks absolutely pristine,
it looks almost as if it was made yesterday, it's still very shiny and perfect looking.
In actual fact it has one of the most striking patterns of wear
of any Anglo-Saxon sword that I've ever studied or seen.
So we can see that the edges of the pommel here are decorated with gold beaded wire
you can see lots of these individual beads running all the way along the edges of the pommel here
but at this end of the pommel we can see that it's it looks more like a flat strip
now that was originally beaded wire like the rest of it around here
but where the person's hand has been resting on that over time
it's actually worn flat and where gold is quite a soft metal
it starts to flatten down and those beads start to lose their integrity
and it looks more like a flat strip which is what we can see at the very end.
But interestingly, if I turn it around the other way we can see that the mirror image part
that's flat on that side still retains its beads,
still looks quite you know like a piece of beaded wire on this side
but in order to sort of explain how this has come about
I need to bring back my trusty foam sword which I'm sure many of you
remember and enjoyed from last time so you get to see it again...
Here it is, so I'm gonna stand up again.
Now in early Anglo-Saxon graves the sword as I mentioned in the previous episode
they are normally buried very close up to the dead person
and they're normally on the left hand side of the person so the side of wearing.
So they'll be buried, you know, normally in about this location like this.
Usually also on early Anglo- Saxon sword pommels
we find that their are two broad faces are decorated with different designs
so one side is normally more complicated with its decorative design than the other side.
There we go.
And normally it's the plainer side of the pommel that has the more degradation
it's more worn, whereas the other side is normally better preserved
and that's because probably the slightly less interesting face
is worn on the left-hand side of the person rubbing against their clothing,
we can imagine a large cloak on the person here
and so that planar face is rubbing against the clothing
whereas the more decorative face, the one that's outside
so that people can admire it, is a bit more protected from that sort of thing
and so if we think that the sword is always worn with the same face looking outwards
then the same part of the top of the pommel is always angled upwards
and, as I mentioned in the previous episode, that's the part that the hand is resting upon
and so over time we can see how that side of the pommel is just going to become worn
and this part is more protected from that type of wear.
So that's what we have.
When we go back to Sutton Hoo things start to get a little bit weird
so we might not quite be able to see but I assure you that it is the case,
the two faces of the Sutton Hoo sword pommel are differently designed
so it's it's quite subtle but it is there
so if you focus in particular on the little cross motif that's in the middle,
we can see that that's surrounded by a greater number of cells of differently shaped garnets
than if I spin this around
the other side so we have a slightly more complex face on this side
there is a slightly more complicated design
if that more complicated design is facing outwards
and the sword is worn on the left hand side in the Sutton Hoo sword case
then the wear pattern is actually in the wrong place
the wear is actually underneath, which is, you know, the part of the sword that would be more protected.
Now that kind of messes with my lovely pattern a little bit.
But if we switch the sword over to the opposite side
onto the right hip and we have that more complex face looking outwards
then actually the wear on the Sutton Hoo sword pommel is facing upwards
where the hand would rest upon it and lo and behold it fits with the profile again
and what that means potentially is that the person who is carrying the Sutton Hoo sword was left-handed.
Now that's obviously very interesting, a very intimate detail about the person that was buried at Sutton Hoo
and we do actually find some corroboration for this theory in the grave plan at Sutton Hoo.
So famously no human remains were found in the Sutton Hoo ship burial
but what we do have is a sort of human sized void or gap inside the burial chamber
with the grave goods laid out around it
and the Sutton Hoo sword is laid out in the position that we might expect to find a human body.
If we imagine a human being back into that gap that I mentioned
then the sword is actually found on the right hand side
the side of wearing if the person was left-handed.
So with the wear pattern on the Sutton Hoo sword pommel
and also with the grave plan at Sutton Hoo
we are starting to build a case that maybe this person was actually left-handed
and I'm sort of fairly fairly comfortable with that idea.
Now this is very interesting because it starts to make us think a little bit
about how this person may have been perceived in society
now there's been a bit of a historic stigma surrounding left-handedness
in many places around the world, throughout time
and to some degree the idea that being left-handed is somewhat of a disadvantage
is still l part of society really, because society is geared up for the right-handed majority
but I can think of one situation in which perhaps actually being left-handed in early Anglo-Saxon England
may have been an advantage and that's in combat.
Now I actually have some very limited experience of this sort of thing
because I'm a very very rookie boxer
so most boxers are right-handed including me, the orthodox stance
and that means that most boxers whether they are right or left-handed
are used to facing right-handed opponents
and so the hardest punches are coming from the right hand side.
Now if you're left-handed or southpaw stance
everything is opposite, so when you're facing a left handed person
it's a completely different prospect and that kind of throws you off a little bit
and it's only in those split seconds where you kind of adjust
and you have to compensate for that that's all the time that is needed in
actual fact for that person to put your lights out.
I'm wondering if it could have been similar in the early Anglo-Saxon period...
So of course these are different styles of fighting;
boxing and sword fighting they're not the same thing
but actually I would argue that the principles could be the same
this idea of being used to a right-handed fighter and then being faced with a left-handed fighter
in actual fact some of the reenactors that I've spoken to talk about this very thing
so they say that you expect, as a sword fighter,
sword strikes to be coming in from a certain angle
and so you stand you hold your shield in a way that can compensate a gap
against that but when you're actually facing someone left-handed the sword strikes
are coming in from the complete opposite direction
and that's a bit of a nightmare, quite frankly, to face.
And it's similar, I think, with boxing when you're faced
with a left-handed, southpaw fighter.
So in actual fact the person buried at Sutton Hoo may have been viewed as even more powerful,
even more formidable, rather than being at a disadvantage
and the way that the grave is laid out is also really interesting in this respect
because it shows us that the mourners burying this person
didn't feel the need to correct that left handedness by placing the sword on the orthodox side
on the left hand side, at the side of wearing if you were right-handed
in actual fact they chose to enshrine that left handedness by placing the sword on the right hand side,
the side that that person would have worn it
in this very public very very visual context of the funeral.
This left handedness is shown there for eternity, in the grave.
Now when I first put this theory together and I noticed these things about the sword
and what they might mean I had a little electrical moment
because Sutton Hoo is one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all time
and the mystery at the very heart of it is who was the person that was buried there?
You know was this person a king? If so, which king? what was that person's name?
And sadly I think these might be unanswerable questions,
we might never know who this person was,
but when I look at the sword I actually feel a lot less sad about that
because by looking at these signs on the sword and signatures of wear on this pommel here
we actually get such an intimate detail that this person
may actually have been left-handed, which is really incredible to me
and it shows me that, although these objects might sit quietly in a display case,
these are not actually quiet objects, they're really full of messages,
they're loud with information about the people in the past
and the other thing that I find amazing about this wear pattern on the sword
is that these marks were made by this person's actual hand, you know, how close can you get.
We can, you know, by touching those wear patterns
we're almost touching that person's hand through time,
so even though this person is a mystery to us and is separated from us by 1500 years or so
we can really still actually almost reach through time and touch that person's hand
and get to know that person in a really intimate way.
By the way if you haven't made the link they're all left-handed!
Now if you've enjoyed my corner today you can find my previous curator's corner over here
all about early Anglo-Saxon swords and if you like that
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