On the eve of the Second World War in 1939, a buried Anglo-Saxon ship was discovered at Sutton Hoo, near the town of Woodbridge in southeastern England. It was the final resting place of King Raedwald, whose corpse would have been taken on a winding waterborne trip down the River Deben, his boat then dragged up a steep hill.
The discovery of the burial site dramatically furthered our understanding of Anglo-Saxon culture. With the fall of Rome circa 476 A.D., the Angles, Saxons, and other northern European tribes settled in Britain, but until Sutton Hoo there was precious little archaeological evidence from this period. Previously thought of as lacking in civil infrastructure, engineering, and trade, Anglo-Saxon Britain was proved to be culturally rich and complex because of this excavation, the subject of the 2021 Netflix film The Dig.
First the rivets of the boat came out of the ground, then slowly treasures including King Raedwald’s helmet emerged, all shedding light on a culture of sophistication, knowledge, and trade. Constructed from gold, silver, iron, and copper alloy, the helmet—with its moustache and bushy eyebrows—may reflect what the king actually looked like.
On display, Room 41
