Sutton Hoo

Sutton Hoo, estate near Woodbridge, Suffolk, England, that is the site of an early medieval burial ground that includes the grave or cenotaph of an Anglo-Saxon king. The burial, one of the richest Germanic burials found in Europe, contained a ship fully equipped for the afterlife (but with no body) and threw light on the wealth and contacts of early Anglo-Saxon kings; its discovery, in 1939, was unusual because ship burial was rare in England.

The impression of the rotted-away ship’s timbers in the trench of sand 25 feet (7.6 metres) deep and the remaining rivets showed the ship to have been a mastless clinker-built rowboat more than 80 feet (27 metres) long. The dating of coins found at the site and the presence of both Christian and pagan features suggest that it may have been the cenotaph of Raedwald (died 624/625), an East Anglian king who had converted to Christianity and subsequently returned to paganism. The identity of the king is still in question, however, and another candidate is Aethelhere who died in 654 fighting for Penda, pagan king of Mercia, at Winwaed. The rite of ship burial and certain items in the grave have parallels in Sweden and suggest a hitherto unsuspected Swedish origin for the East Anglian royal dynasty.

In the burial site there were 41 items of solid gold, now housed in the British Museum, along with a quantity of imported silverware. One great silver dish bears the control stamp of the Byzantine emperor Anastasius I (491–518). In addition, silver bowls, cups, and spoons inscribed in Greek and a bronze bowl from the Middle East show the range of the kingdom’s contacts. The royal tomb and its grave goods throw much light on the civilization depicted by Beowulf.