The newly-released movie The Dig starring Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan, based on the superb novel of the same name by John Preston, has focused attention on one of the great mysteries of Anglo-Saxon history: who was the great warrior who was buried in his warship under the mound at Sutton Hoo?
“Hoo” derives from the Old English word “hoh,” meaning a spur-shaped hill, and it was under one near Woodbridge in Suffolk on England’s east coast that a treasure trove was discovered on the eve of the Second World War. The great king or chieftain who was buried there was clearly rich and powerful—he had silver bowls from Byzantium, Sri Lankan semi-precious stones, a silver ladle from the Mediterranean, and beautifully wrought gold accoutrements—but who was he?
The historian Ben Mcintyre has set out the various theories in The Times of London: that the potentate was in fact a rich foreigner, or a trader, or a pre-Viking Swede, but concludes that he was probably, although all the evidence is circumstantial, King Raedwald of East Anglia who ruled from c. AD 599 until his death in 624, monarch of the area south of the River Humber. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes him as “Bretwalda,” meaning “wide-ruler.” Other contenders for the occupancy of Sutton Hoo include Raedwald’s son Eorpwald (who was assassinated by a pagan in 627) and his stepson Sigeberht (who died peacefully in a monastery).
“He was a scion of the Wuffinga dynasty, which claimed descent from the god Woden,” writes Mcintyre of Raedwald, “a Germanic version of the Norse god Odin and king of the Anglo-Saxon pantheon.” The Vikings’ destruction of East Anglia’s monasteries meant that records of Raedwald’s reign were probably lost in the ninth century. All we really know is that he converted to Christianity, but not convincingly enough for the Venerable Bede, who complained that Raedwald “seemed at the same time to serve Christ and the gods whom he served before.”
The sheer splendor and gorgeous intricacy of the workmanship of the Sutton Hoo hoard—easily the greatest Anglo-Saxon one ever found, and a highlight of the British Museum—argues that it must have been not only a king who was buried there but also, as Mcintyre points out, one who was “sufficiently powerful to extract tribute from subject rulers.” It is also proof positive that the Dark Ages could not have been all that dark.
