The Staffordshire Hoard

There are many mysteries wallowing unsolved in the murky depths of the period known - erroneously as it happens - as the Dark Ages, from the identity of the man associated with the Sutton Hoo burial chamber to the final resting place of Harold Godwineson’s body after the battle of Hastings.

But today I want to talk about a field just off the A5 near Lichfield, or, more specifically, what was found there in July 2009: The Staffordshire Hoard.

Image Credit

The largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver to be found, it comprised almost 4600 pieces but these items are just that: pieces. Torn from the weaponry they would originally have adorned, they are decorative fittings from, for example, swords, though the sword blades are missing. Where are the blades? No one knows. Blades were perhaps considered more valuable, passed down from father to son. They were forged by skilled metalworkers and were definitely not a one lifetime-only product. Only one item survived complete, and that was a gold pectoral cross. There was another gold cross, larger, which had been bent as if folded. I’ll come back to that. Around one third of the pieces came from a helmet, which has been reconstructed. It is rare to find a helmet from this period - only around 5 have been unearthed.

Image Credit

Other fittings came from such things as saddles, reliquaries, and bibles. 

There are more gold items than silver, although some of the silver was originally gilded. The decoration techniques include filigree and cloisonné. There is also niello which produces a silver inlay.

Anyone familiar with the gold and garnet pieces from Sutton Hoo will spot a similarity. Sword pyramids with their multi-faceted garnets set in gold have also been found in the Sutton Hoo burial treasure. In keeping with the mystery theme, no one is sure how they were actually attached to the weapons.

There’s a piece which looks like a seahorse, but isn’t. It probably decorated the hilt of a sword. It has tiny fixing holes. 

Image Credit

The hoard was found in Mercia, but the pieces weren’t made there and they weren’t collected there, if we consider the fact that the hoard probably dates to a period when Mercia was still pagan, and yet it includes crosses. The gold must have come from somewhere other than England, most likely from Byzantium, possibly in the form of gold coins which had been melted down. There are different shades within the gold suggesting impurities (each time the gold was melted down, further impurities would have been introduced).

Speaking of melting down, was it on its way to be melted down and repurposed? The location, near two places called Hammerwich, has sparked interest, because Hammerwich means a hammer working or trading place. But nothing else has been found in the area to suggest that there is a link to the hoard or that there was any kind of production or worksite nearby and besides, this wouldn’t explain why there are only ‘elite’ pieces, nor why they show little sign of wear and tear, almost as if they are part of a ‘dress uniform’. 

There are no items associated with women, nor are there any everyday objects. The hoard is a curated collection of items found only in an aristocratic, male, martial environment. Perhaps even the pectoral cross was owned by a priest who carried it whilst going into battle?

It may be that it was heriot – war gear given by the lord to his retainers and paid back upon death, but this doesn’t explain why it was buried.

So where did it come from, and why and how did it come to be buried? There is a significance about where it was found, and I’ll come back to that, too. It might, indeed, have been put there by a non-Mercian. As Archaeologist Helen Geake has pointed out, anyone could have been travelling along that road.

But let’s assume that it has something to do with Mercia. What was going on at around that time? Quite a few historians have pointed to a ninth-century Welsh poem which details a battle at Lichfield, very close to where the hoard was found. 

In the Marwnad Cynddylan (A Lament for Cynddylan), Morfael is depicted as taking loot and killing the bishop and many monks at Caer Lwytgoed. But the dates don’t really fit if Caer Lwytgoed is supposed to be Lichfield. There was no reason for there to be monks in pagan Mercia and the first bishop of Lichfield wasn’t appointed until 669. It has been suggested that this religious community were in fact not at Lichfield but at Wall, and serving the religious needs of a Northumbrian army.

Hmm, Northumbria. Well, for a long time during this period it dominated Mercia and parts of Wales. Was this treasure collected as some sort of owed tribute? What we do know is that the hoard wasn’t buried in the equivalent of someone’s back garden. Excavation of the site revealed that there were no buildings, or burials so this was not a settlement or cemetery, so if this is tribute, again, why was it buried?

The epic poem Beowulf – thought to have been composed in Mercia – describes how objects of gold were placed ritually in a grave and given back to the earth as they had been taken from a barrow guarded by a dragon. Was the Staffordshire Hoard similarly given back to the earth? No barrow was found at the site and there is no pagan shrine associated with this spot, despite the nearby Wednesbury and Wednesfield suggesting a Woden cult in the area. If it wasn’t put there as part of a ritual, was it accidentally lost? It seems unlikely. 

A page from Beowulf

So what if… Well, here’s the thing. The burial of the hoard seems to coincide with the reign of King Penda, the last pagan ruler of Mercia. Clearly the stuff wasn’t his, not if it included Christian items. But remember that larger gold cross, that had been bent as if folded? And remember that I said the location of the find was significant? In my novel Cometh the Hour I played with the idea that this hoard was treasure which Penda collected after his battle victories, and I show him ordering the cross to be bent so that it fits into a sack. I also show one of his daughters taking a shine to the ‘seahorse’ and him making a gift of it to her. 

The bent gold cross

The significance of the burial spot? Well, yes, it’s not far from Lichfield and you’d go past it if you’re heading from Tamworth. You see, the road, the A5 as it's now known, is an old road. It existed in the seventh century and it was known as Watling Street. 

I can’t explain why the hoard only contains elite weapon fittings that had barely been used, but I did come up with a scenario in which it was buried, deliberately, by someone intending to come back for it…

My two-book series, The Tale of the Iclingas, begins with the story of Penda, the last pagan king of Mercia, and in a sweeping saga of bloodfeud, love, and loss, includes the collection of the Staffordshire Hoard, the Sutton Hoo ship burial, and the founding of the Lindisfarne holy community. It continues with the story of Penda's sons, their continuing fight against the murderous Northumbrians, and focuses on Ethelred, the youngest of Penda's children, on whose shoulders the fate of the kingdom and his kin ultimately rests.

The books can be read as standalones.

Cometh the Hour

The Sins of the Father

The Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art

Commemorating the millennium of the death of St Æthelwold, bishop of Winchester, who died in 984, this sumptuous collection was gathered together and put on display in 1984. At that time, I was a student in London, taking modules which mainly taught me about pre-Conquest history, so I popped along.

Recently, I picked up a second-hand copy of the catalogue and realised that, although I thoroughly enjoyed my visit, I hadn't really appreciated at the time just exactly what it was that I had been privileged enough to see.

I distinctly remember feeling excited to see an open page from Beowulf 

but it's only now that I appreciate all those other treasures, which I've written about so much and so recently.

The Fuller Brooch, dated to the ninth century, is made from silver, and inlaid with the material known as niello (a black mixture of copper, silver and lead sulphides used as an inlay). It depicts all the senses, in the form of a man pictured rubbing his hands, smelling a plant, cupping a hand to his ear etc, and the full length figures depicted are of high quality.  

Attribution Link (Wiki CC Commons)

The Abingdon Sword is an iron sword with a pattern-welded blade (twisting strands of metal together and forge-welding them to form intricate patterns) and it's dated to the late ninth/early tenth century. It has curved upper and lower guards decorated with ornate silver panels.

Attribution link

 As the catalogue notes, such swords were highly prized which is indicated by the frequent mention of them in wills, such as that of Athelstan Atheling, son of Æthelred the Unready. Alfred the Great bequeathed an expensive sword to his son-in-law, Æthelred of Mercia in his will.

The Regularis Concordia is a work to which I've frequently referred, writing fictional and non-fictional accounts of the reign of Edgar and the monastic reform of the tenth century. But I'd forgotten that all those years ago, I saw one of only two surviving original manuscripts. It was in all likelihood drawn up by Bishop Æthelwold and, based on the rule of St Benedict, it was essentially a handbook for monks, and it made clear that monks were under the special care of the king, and nuns under that of the queen. Read more about the Regularis Concordia HERE

Edgar depicted in the Regularis Concordia,
seated between Æthelwold & Dunstan

The Regularis Concordia makes clear that the queen is the 'protector' of nuns, and suggests tacit support by Æthelwold for Edgar's queen, Ælfthryth. In the New Minster Charter, she was described as 'lawful wife' and her son is described as the atheling (heir) whereas Edgar's son by another woman, is not.

Frontispiece of New Minster Charter

The Alfred Jewel and its purpose is hotly debated. But it has been suggested that it is an æstel, a pointer for reading manuscripts, or a bookmark. The inscription famously reads 'Alfred had me made' and the figure has been variously suggested to be Alfred himself, Christ, or a personification of Sight, as in the Fuller Brooch. Whether it represents Sight, or the wisdom of God, either would fit well if its function was as a tool for reading and teaching holy texts.

Showing the inscription. Attribution link

In To Be A Queen, we meet Æthelflæd's aunt, briefly. A gold

ring, with the inscription Æthelswith Regina, is believed to have belonged to, or given as a gift by, this aunt, Alfred the Great's sister, who married King Burgred of Mercia.

St Kenelm, whose sad, if apocryphal (by which I mean doubtful), story is retold in my forthcoming history of Mercia, has his name in capitals at the head of the martyrs in the Winchcombe psalter. 

The will of the ætheling Athelstan, son of Æthelred the 'Unready', is an important document. It tells us, among other things, that Ælfthryth, his grandmother, who was the aforementioned queen of King Edgar, was the woman responsible for his upbringing. It gives insights into the factions and friendships at court centred around the younger members of the aristocracy and royal family. Athelstan leaves the sword which 'belonged to King Offa' to his brother, Edmund Ironside.  

Another important document is the Encomium Emmæ Reginæ, commissioned by Queen Emma, a fairly biased account of her life, and in praise of the sons by Cnut, and carefully ignoring that fact that she had been married to, and had sons by,  Æthelred the 'Unready'. The mansucript on display was thought at the time to be the only surviving medieval copy.

Other important documents in the exhibition included The Sermon of the Wolf to the English,  which can be dated to around 1014. The context of the sermon is the murder of Archbishop Ælfheah by Danish invaders, and some versions of the document also record the flight overseas of Æthelred the unready. Wulfstan, the 'Wolf' referred to, was archbishop of York from 1002-23. The sermon's themes reflect the turbulent times and suggest that the English are responsible for their desperate plight.

Along with the exquisite metalwork, jewellery, charters and documents, there was also an array of Anglo-Saxon coins and strap-ends, seals, and decorative mounts and panels.

I knew, as an undergraduate, how special this collection was. What I couldn't know, of course, was that I would be using translations of the documents, and writing about the artefacts, more than three decades later.

There's to be a new exhibition at the British Library from October this year. I hope this generation's batch of budding historians makes their way to see it and I hope they still find it all beautiful, fascinating and inspiring nearly 40 years hence.

The Legacy of Technology

In Lethal Weapon 4, Leo says to Riggs that he should get married again. He talks to him about his childhood pet Froggy, whom he loved. And he compares that love to his current friends, whom he loves. And he says "They're not better than Froggy, they're just different." And so today I'm wondering if we can say that about the modern world ...

On 27th October it was reported in the national press that more than seven million adults have never used a roadmap and 2.5 million of these would not know how to use one. "Critics also claim it reveals a lack of curiosity in drivers about where they are travelling." This was a tiny piece in the gizzard of the paper, but it gave me pause, because I was at that time writing the first draft of this blog piece.

Recently we had to take a major detour whilst travelling across country. For various reasons, mainly my aversion to it, using the Satnav was not an option. 

And suddenly we realised the truth in the old adage about travelling hopefully - because we actually took pleasure in our journey. Not using the satnav meant relying on map-reading skills. This provided a sense of achievement. But there was more satisfaction to be gained from learning about the landscape, the relative positions of the towns and villages and cities, the geography - for example the length and size of the river Nene.

Not only did the map-reading make the journey less of a chore, giving me a task, but it enhanced it because it was educational. Yes it might only have been learning for learning's sake and useful only for the next round of University challenge, but it turned it from a drudge journey into an enjoyable and rewarding experience.

I have a vision that the archaeologists of the future will discover nothing but mounds of old tablets and phones. They will never know what information is stored on them because they will never find the chargers (even we can't - unless they can locate the man drawer/plastic box). 

There won't be carbon-dating in the future; phones will be dated according to size. Children already know which generation they belonged to by the size of their phone proportionate to the size of their hand.There will be no other artefacts - all music, including instruments will have vanished, (in my beginners' recorder class just last week a seven-year-old told me he would practise at home with his 'recorder app') - along with books and paintings. Computers now do everything for us; isn't this what 20thc people were afraid of? We didn't realise how benevolent it would seem in reality.

(Although, my washing machine decides for itself whether or not it will spin the load. It is, apparently, protecting itself against uneven loads and therefore wear and tear. It exists to protect itself, not to serve me!)

We think we choose to use all this technology but the truth is there is no alternative nowadays. I have real difficulty buying presents for my 'kids' (19, 20 &22) because they have no 'stuff'; they download music, and films (although, thankfully, they still read and enjoy books made of paper.)


Suzannah Lipscomb wrote recently in History Today about being hauled to a stop when she realised that although she could explain what a cache-batard, or 'bastard-hider" was, she could not adequately describe the farthingale, or hoop worn under the skirts and realised that she had become "Divorced from the lived reality of the past". A problem for historians; a disaster for historical novelists! After a music appreciation course, she learned to understand Renaissance music and says "Just this quick look at some of the period's profound musical changes indicates how much music perfectly embodied the 16th-century worldview. Any understanding of historical artistic, religious, cultural and technological change is deepened by musical appreciation. What else about a period might we be overlooking when trying to produce a real and total history?"


When I was a student in the 80s I hopped on a bus and went to the Exhibition of Anglo-Saxon Art. I still remember how I felt when I saw the text of Beowulf and marvelling at it.  The person next to me was staring at the Beowulf Ms and explaining that it was in Latin. I smiled, said nothing. These people weren't dismissing the artefact, they had chosen to be at the exhibition, and yet their pleasure and understanding was diminished because they had no background information to help them understand just what it was they were looking at. Staring at a document when you understand its significance is both humbling and moving. I was moved to tears a few years ago when I went to Trinity, Dublin, and saw The Book of Kells.

As was Dr David Starkey in a recent series on television when he saw a document for the first time. His humble wonderment was a joy to behold. 

The modern world brings modern challenges to custodians of the past. Where once, old documents were in danger from fire and flood (and still are, of course - the Jorvik museum in York was recently flooded and staff worked round the clock to save as much as they could), new documents will be lost if they are not backed up, backed up again and then sent to the cloud.

'History' is ever-changing, too. I learned modern Russian when I was a student, which was no use at all for looking at old documents. Four letters were eliminated from the Russian alphabet in 1918 but many more hadn't been in use from about 1750

Nowadays we possibly have a greater sense of what needs to be preserved and archived.  Perhaps though we are more discriminating about what we keep and what we discard?  Jane Austen's sister famously burned her letters, so maybe selective archiving is nothing new?

And of course it's not just selective archiving, but a different morality. A famous scene deemed offensive was cut from all future showings of Fawlty Towers. But isn't this excising history? A recent sale of Margaret Thatcher's dresses meant that these items were not kept for the nation which, whatever your politics, might represent a case of a political decision overriding historic consideration.

And technology CAN help the historian/historical novelist, with archives available on-line. Professor Simon Keynes has been instrumental at Trinity Cambridge in making the extant Anglo-Saxon charters available - with translation - on-line.

But with our ever-increasing dependency on technology, something has been lost. On our impromptu cross-country journey that day, I commented that the younger generation would not have been able or bothered to do this, relying solely on Satnav which gets you there without giving you any sense of where you've been or how you've arrived at your destination (and I would say that the same is true of studying history generally - the knowledge of the route is important, if we are to have any understanding of the destination.) 

The kids would argue "So what - we got there didn't we?" But my response would be "Yes, but you don't know how." What is true of the car journey is also true of life. We should care just not about the destination but also about the journey. I think this applies to our understanding of history, too. And I don't just mean the essentials of knowing the timeline. Music, art, culture, why things were hidden up skirts - these things matter. Will our modern-day equivalents be preserved for future analysis?

Culture, Language and amateurish Romans ! Old English Specialist and Author Stephen Pollington casts some light ...

Today I have the enormous pleasure and honour of speaking to Stephen Pollington:

I asked him -

You grew up in what was then countryside - was it idyllic, and how old were you when you were first aware of 'history'?

The presence of the past was part of the backdrop to everyday life from a very early age. Saturday mornings were spent with friends in the local cinema (which was still painted with WWII camouflage!) followed by the mandatory trip to the nearby site of a motte-and-bailey castle where we acted out the key events from the films we had just seen - most often westerns, wartime thrillers or historical dramas.

My strongest recollection is of being impressed by the age and size of a church tower that stood on the hilltop above my grandparents' home - compared to the humble dimensions of my house it seemed immensely tall and sturdy, and being made from stone - in Essex, where the soil is mostly clay - it struck me a s a strange structure, a relic of a time when all the effort and resources it took to build it could be concentrated on such a project.

image by oneblackline

What were history lessons like at school - did they nurture or stifle your interest? (People's experiences of school history lessons vary so widely and I wonder what periods you were taught about and whether it fired your interest)

History was taught as a narrative back then - it was a LONG time ago - with a focus on key events and personalities, and an unspoken theme of human progress as the underlying assumption. This was in the days of the 'Space Race' in the 1960s when the nation was encouraged to look to the future and ignore the past - Thunderbirds and Dr Who were the key items of children's TV viewing. History in school was used as a means of explaining how we got to where we are now, with the assumption that the future would be better, cleaner, healthier and more affluent. I am still waiting for my jet-powered skates and three-course meal in tablet form.

I always enjoyed formal lessons with a specific theme and I think they awoke in me an urge to share my own (flawed) understandings with others.

Image from blastr.com

You obviously have an abiding love for the Anglo-Saxon period. It's perceived though as not 'popular' - do you think we English have a problem connecting with our past? (The Irish, Scots and Welsh don't feel the same - have we lost sight of our own heritage somehow?)

The Anglo-Saxon period gave rise to the modern nations: there was no 'king of all the English' before Athelstan in the mid 10th century. But you are right - it is no longer popular perhaps because the height of its popularity coincided with the period of Victoria and Albert. After the First World War, opinions of things 'German' nosedived, and after the Second World War the situation got a whole lot worse. The extent to which the historical 'Saxons' have anything to do with the more recent German political unit of the same name is usually ignored.

Palgrave's book was first published in 1831

I think we have been encouraged to downplay English history in favour of the inclusive term 'British' while simultaneously celebrating the Irish, Scots and Welsh. This leaves people confused at to where the English fit into this picture. Even the name 'Anglo-Saxon' creates the impression that these were a foreign people, not really 'English' at all.

You are fluent in Old English. How easy was it for you to find the resources you needed to study the language?

As a young man it was very difficult to find the resources, especially in a small market town. But I was always a bit of a language-nerd and haunter of the public library. I studied not just individual languages but began to see the relationships between them - in the way that even a basic knowledge of French can help you recognise words in Italian or Spanish, poulet and pollo for example.

In my early teens I acquired a second-hand book on Old Norse and began to study that language with great enthusiasm. Further purchases provided an insight into Old English. I bought a worn copy of Beowulf which someone had heavily annotated in pencil, and that set me off on a voyage of discovery from which I have never ceased.

How important do you think it is to keep the language 'alive'? Is it a difficult language to learn, in comparison, say, to learning Modern English as a foreign language?

It rather depends where you start from. If you are a native speaker of English, Dutch or German a lot of it is very familiar and things that are puzzling in modern English start to fall into place - the relationship between 'old' and 'elder', 'slow' and 'sloth' or 'steal' and 'stealth', for example. Most of the basics of Old English are still present in the modern language, despite the vast influx of Greek, Latin and French vocabulary. When Neil Armstrong stepped out onto the surface of the moon, his immortal words, 'One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind' are all taken directly from the language that King Alfred used in the 9th century.

Without a detailed understanding of its history, a full appreciation of the modern language is not possible. This applies as much to words introduced in relatively recent times as to those with roots stretching back millennia.

A few talented people who may have no formal training instinctively know which words fit together - we call them 'poets'.

This blogger used Sweet's when she was a student!

Are there any common misconceptions about the Anglo-Saxons which you'd like to take the opportunity to correct?

If you watch TV dramas, Hollywood films or other superficial forms of entertainment, you quickly find two standard stereotypes for the Anglo-Saxons. The first is of marauding warriors with no organisation or loyalty whose sole aim is to despoil and destroy. 

The second group are the downtrodden serfs who lost the battle of Hastings and are forever destined to be cannon-fodder for their social superiors. These 'Saxons' all wore brown sacks for clothing, lived in mud huts and were covered in soot, soil and sticky stuff and had only a rudimentary grasp of any skills or crafts.

Image from luckinlove.com

Both these portrayals leave me exasperated because they are the inventions of lazy media people who are too self-obsessed to do any actual research - you know, reading a book or looking at some artefacts, or just asking someone who might know a little about the period.

Anyone who has seen even photographs of the best-known material - such as the finds from Sutton Hoo, the Staffordshire Hoard, the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Alfred Jewel, the Franks Casket - cannot fail to be impressed by the quality of the workmanship and the skilful combination of a variety of materials into a unified and beautiful object. Then look at the range of books the Anglo-Saxons produced in their own language - everything from detailed laws and land charters to translations of Roman and Greek religious texts, chronicles, medical books, poetry, legends and rude jokes - they are all there.

Look at the garnet and gold wargear from the Staffordshire Hoard and explain to me in what sense this was 'the Dark Ages' - it was a Golden Age when some of the finest decorative items produced north of the Alps were put together. Bear in mind that Anglo-Saxon goldwork could not be replicated to anything like the same quality as the originals until the 19th century. No doubt I will get into trouble for saying this, but a lot of the allegedly superior Roman and medieval material looks pretty amateurish by comparison.

The Sutton Hoo Gold belt buckle - image from the British Museum

Are there important lessons to be learned from studying the Anglo-Saxon period?

All history is important and should be instructive. The Anglo-Saxon period laid the foundations of our social structure, our language, our political organisations and to a large extent our identities. As with the language mentioned above, if you don't understand how modern counties came into being and what they replaced, you will never fully understand modern British political geography. A knowledge of the effects of the Norman invasion is no bad thing either, if you are interested in social structures and elitism.

Can you sum up why you love the Anglo-Saxon history, culture and language so much?

It is the beginning of so much that we take for granted: many of our warmest and most powerful words, our ideas about family and society, our regional identities, the framework by which our lives are lived. To me, that is endlessly fascinating.

Thanks to Stephen for his insights. To discover more about him and his work:

www.stevepollington.com

Wordcraft ~ The English Warrior ~ First Steps in Old English ~ Meadhall - Feasting Tradition in Anglo-Saxon England ~ Leechcraft - Early English Charms, Plantlore and Healing ~ Rudiments of Runelore ~ Anglo-Saxon Burial Mounds ~ Anglo-Saxon FAQs ~ Wayland's Work – Elder Gods – The Sutton Hoo Stone