The society behind Sutton Hoo- a brief primer to accompany the film

 

If you were to make a list of iconic archaealogical artefacts from the marketing perspective of Brand Recognition, the Helmet from the Sutton Hoo burial would be a strong contender for the top 10. Often used as a shorthand image for History and available on all sorts of items, including drinks coasters, it is instantly recognisable. But many of us know little about the society from which it comes. So, as a primer of sorts, to accompany the Netflix film ‘The Dig’, I offer this brief excursion into 7^th Century England before casting an eye over 1930’s Suffolk.

To set the scene, let us start a little further back. 55 B.C. to be precise, the year Julius Caesar paid us a visit. The Romans had recently pacified much of Celtic Gaul; their attention was drawn to Britain not only because some of their opponents had escaped there but because it was the reputed centre of the Druid cult, whose adherents were notorious as stirrers up of resistance to Roman Rule.

Caesar didn’t stay long. He skirmished with the Catevellauni north of the Thames, declared a victory and left. To the East of the region he visited was the great bulge we today call East Anglia. Norfolk and north Suffolk was the heartland of the Iceni; Essex was controlled by the Trinovantes.

When the Romans returned in 43 A.D. they received the submission of both tribes, but greed on the part of Roman officials sparked a great revolt, led by Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni. The Romans loved to extol their enemies (once they had safely defeated them) and they were fascinated by Boudicca. The description by their historians of the warrior queen with the mass of red hair still resonates today. Xena the Warrior Princess, the Black Widow and Wonder Woman are all modern avatars of the Iceni queen.  She burned the new Roman settlements of Colchester, St Albans and London before going down to defeat. Thereafter, Eastern England was a bit of a backwater. The big Roman towns in the East were further North, at Lincoln and York, or to the south like Colchester and St Albans, although there were places like Caistor that were significant Roman settlements. Roman rule lasted around four hundred years and Suffolk was home to Romano-British estates, though not to large conurbations, linked by the ubiquitous Roman roads In 410 A.D. Rome itself was sacked by the Goths under Alaric. The Roman legions in Britain returned to the continent, leaving the Romano-British to fend for themselves.

But the seeds of change had already been sown. Raiders from North Germany had begun to be a problem by the middle of the fourth century. The Romans fortified the coast; there was a fort at Felixstowe which is now under the sea, and another at Burgh on the Suffolk coast. This was something that would be repeated under the threat of invasion by Napoleon and then Hitler, but the troops defending the forts were often from Northern Europe themselves. As soldiers do, they settled with local women and became part of the population. Archaeology tells us they were present long before 410; after the legions left the East rapidly ceased to be part of the Post-Roman society that survived in the south and west for much longer. A British writer, Gildas, suggests that a British Leader, Vortigern (whom Gildas describes as a tyrant) invited Anglo-Saxon mercenaries over to fight the Scots and Picts, letting them settle in East Anglia.

Waves of settlers soon augmented those already in the country and eventually some struck out West. We call those who came to Norfolk and Suffolk Anglian, as opposed to the Saxons who landed further south. At some point there were enough Anglian settlers further west for those nearer the coast to be called East Angles, a name that survives as a geographical and to some extent an ethnic description.

So a genuinely Germanic society developed here as early as the fifth century. At this point, the question has to be posed, through assimilation or extermination? Of course, the bards entertaining the Royal courts when they arose in the following century, would tend to emphasise the heroic element of the settlement, framing the dynastic founders as brave conquerors. Undoubtedly, some of the inhabitants would have fled west, especially those with something to lose. But many would have stayed and come to terms with the newcomers. There is place name evidence to suggest this happened. Walton, on the outskirts of Felixstowe, for instance is Wealh Tun, the hamlet where the Welshmen lived. Other evidence in favour of continuity as opposed to a clean break comes from the survival of place names associated with coppicing and charcoal burning (there are thirty-one place names ending in field, denoting an open space within a forest, many of which are near Roman roads, or Roman potteries, which needed a constant fuel supply), which suggests survival of these activities without a break from Roman times. In the 1970’s Oliver Rackham suggested that without continuity of use the Roman roads would not have survived, nor would the coppices, which would revert to woodland within a generation. Names beginning with Ix, Ik and Ick (such as Ixworth, Iken and Ickworth) may also relate to the Iceni, being places where people who still identified themselves as such still lived.

What happened next is more difficult to discern. At some point an aristocracy developed, or was imported. The finds at Sutton Hoo suggest a close affinity with South Sweden, where similar burials have been unearthed at Uppsala. One possibility is that aristocratic Swedes came to East Anglia and took over leadership. Another suggests that East Anglian people visited Sweden and gained ideas directly through cultural copying. Either possibility has in its favour the seafaring bent of this society. The heartland of the kingdom that arose lies on a river estuary close to the coast. Culturally, these people seem to have looked outward across the sea even more than they looked inland. As such, they shared ideas, beliefs and an economy with Frisia (what is now Holland and Belgium), North Germany, Denmark and Sweden.

To them, the sea was a road, and as such, more reliable than travelling overland. A trader based in Ipswich, the commercial outlet of the kingdom, could get to York by sea quicker than by land, by sailing up the coast and down the Humber. For that matter they could get to Dorestad or Quentovic, the great trading ports on the continent, more quickly than they could get to York, as Michael Pye points out in his book about the North Sea cultures, The Edge of The World.

This East Anglian kingdom thus developed and matured whilst other Anglo-Saxons were still fighting the Britons. The idea of kingship seemed to come to fruition at the same time in the various Kingdoms. Once a particular family reached a dominant position in their territory it was in their interests to foster a sense of belonging, encouraging everyone to identify as East Anglians, in this case, regardless of their ethnicity.  As the seventh century dawned the Kings of East Anglia were well placed to take a leading role in the politics of the day. The kings of Kent, Sussex and Wessex had briefly had status as Over-Kings. The next to do so was the East Anglian Raedwald. Bede calls him Bretwalda, a king who had the allegiance of other kings. His family called themselves the Wuffingas, after the founder Wuffa. The name survives in the village name of Ufford, a few miles from Sutton Hoo. Raedwald influenced the politics of Northumbria, sheltering the exiled Prince Edwin, and was clearly a man of substance. His court in the early decades of the century was the epicentre of influence.

This then, was the family who were burying their leaders above the Deben at Sutton Hoo. But, like a Football team who has a brief moment of league and cup success before sinking into obscurity, they couldn’t sustain their pre-eminence. Raedwald’s successors were eclipsed by the Northumbrians and, even more unluckily, came up against a man who could pick a fight in an empty room and usually win it; Penda of Mercia. Penda was a man who lived for war and who seemed to really have it in for the East Anglian kings and whose successors demanded and received homage from them. Geography was also against East Anglia remaining the centre of attention, they were too much on the edge of things in terms of purely English politics.  

But although their moment of glory came and went, the East Anglian Kings may have done their people a favour through their acquiescence. After Aethelhere died in 655 fighting on the same side as Penda at the battle of Winwaed in 655, an acknowledgment of Penda’s dominance of the East Anglians, they stayed out of much of the warfare that characterised the rest of the century.  Very few of the battles and carnage occurred on East Anglian soil and the people probably appreciated the peace and quiet. It is notable that when the run of Mercian Overlordship came to an end the East Anglian rulers seemed to have supplied the forces that defeated them; the kingdom still remained economically and militarily significant despite their submission up to that point.  But thanks to the obscurity, the mounds at Sutton Hoo were allowed to fade into history; until the twentieth century.

The finds in the mound seem to signify both tradition and something new. The style of the burial is pagan, perhaps ostentatiously so, proclaiming the old ways. At the same time the richness of the finds hints at the need for the dynasty to proclaim their importance, to advertise themselves as more than just local leaders. This could denote an insecurity or simply be an example of one-upmanship. The Wuffingas at this point seem to be sitting on the fence between the new religion of Christianity, which offered to consolidate their power (as earthly representatives of the Heavenly King) and the old pagan ways, still embraced by their contacts in the North. Penda’s animosity may be explained by the fact that he remained pagan whilst Raedwald’s successors converted to Christianity.

East Anglia saw a fresh influx of newcomers; the Danes of the Great army that came in 865 and stayed. Then, having been re-absorbed into the Anglo-Saxon sphere of influence by the kings of Wessex, it came under the domination of the Norman Conquerors. In the future, everything between the departure of the Romans and the arrival of the Normans in 1066 became lumped together as ‘The Dark Ages’. Written records were thin on the ground but life then was felt to be primitive. The rationalists of the Enlightenment were inclined to doubt much of what records survived. For instance, they saw the stories and characters in the Bible as mere stories with probably no historical basis behind them. It was only in the nineteenth century when places like Ur, Nineveh and Babylon were excavated that we began to realise the accuracy of the biblical narrative.

Similarly, even in the twentieth century, historians were pretty sure they knew that the early English were little better than savages, especially when contrasted with the achievements of the Romans. Imperial Britain of course modelled itself on the Roman Empire rather than make too much of the obscure kings of Anglo-Saxon England.

It is interesting that Suffolk in the 1930’s was, like Roman Suffolk, something of a backwater. Its last period of economic importance lay five hundred years back, when wool towns like Lavenham had flourished; its most famous son was Cardinal Wolsey, from the time of Henry the Eighth. Country Estates dominated the rural hinterland. At this point, there were still homes in Suffolk villages with no gas or electricity. Few people owned cars and there were only two main rail routes; Norwich to London and Ipswich to Cambridge.

The excavation at Sutton Hoo was commenced on the instructions of the landowner, Edith Pretty. The Estate associated with her house extended over 526 acres adjacent to the River Deben and included the burial mound field. She invited Basil Brown, a self-taught local excavator, to explore the mounds. This was not popular with either Ipswich Museum or later, when the finds became public knowledge, the British Museum. Although the theme of the local man of integrity being responsible for the discoveries makes for a great story, which is at the heart of the film, The Dig, it nonetheless shows us the essentially feudal nature of the society at that time, which allowed the landowner with money to overrule the professional archaeologists. This rural Suffolk was lovingly documented by Ronald Blyth in his book Akenfield, it arguably survived into the late twentieth Century.

As it happens, Mrs Pretty showed herself to be a good judge of character, as well as demonstrating an admirable ability to not be influenced by social niceties, in choosing and championing Basil Brown. But it could have turned out otherwise. Under the direction of a less capable man much could have been lost. Luckily for us, he was the right man for the job.  The excavation took place in the summer before the outbreak of World War Two. So there was a certain irony in that it was opening a window on a connection between Britain and Germany at the very point the two countries were about to go to war.

Some of the objects, such as the Byzantine Bowl, could be interpreted as plunder or gift giving between rulers. But the quality of the jewellery and embellished items such as the gold buckle left no doubt that the society responsible was a cultured and sophisticated one and forced revision of the view of the early seventh century. As stated at the beginning, the artefacts have world significance; the helmet, the gold buckle, the jewellery, are up there with the death mask of Agamemnon, the items from Egyptian tombs and objects from early medieval China. Because they were unearthed from beside an English river, it is sometimes hard to appreciate them clearly. The helmet is especially interesting. It so matches the description in the poem Beowulf of such a helmet that it is tempting to wonder if the poet had seen it with his own eyes. Other people have written about them with more knowledge than I so I won’t go into details here. A link at the end of this article will take you where you need to go.

At this point I must, as they say, declare an interest; I grew up in Ipswich and was a frequent visitor to the museum where records of the dig, and replicas of some of the pieces, are housed. To me they are old friends. Indeed, when, as an adult, I saw them in the British Museum, it was a bit like hearing of a school friend who had become some-one important; pride by association mingled with a certain regret they couldn’t have stayed in Suffolk. The older I get, the more I appreciate that I cannot ever understand the full symbolism of the zoomorphic animals or the significance of the whetstone, the world they come from, whilst still Suffolk, is a place beyond my comprehension. Despite that, we can feel an affinity for it too. They valued family and social connections, they appreciated beauty and they were connected to a wider world in a way that too many of their descendants never were.

 

 https://blog.britishmuseum.org/inside-the-dig-how-star-studded-film-squares-with-reality-of-sutton-hoo/

See also my Review of the film:

https://curiousmiscellanies.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-dig-film-review.html

The Dig: A film review

 

When it comes to survivals of the past there are names of places and specific objects that have come to stand for whole cultures. Mycenae and the “Mask of Agamemnon”, Chichen Itza in Peru, Ankor Wat in Cambodia, the valley of the kings and the tomb of Tutankhamun. These rightly have global recognition. It seems appropriate that their locations should be exotic; on mountainsides, deep in jungles, out in the desert.

It can be difficult to see the British examples in the same way. But Stonehenge, Skara Brae, Newgrange in Ireland, all deserve to be mentioned in the same breath. When such an example is on your own doorstep, the sort of place your family drive past on a Sunday afternoon, or you cycle to in your teens, it is more difficult still. This was my relationship with Sutton Hoo and the treasures found there. Growing up in Ipswich, I suppose I could say I have known about it all my life. I certainly began learning details early. On Saturday mornings I used to attend something called Young Rescuers at the Museum in Ipswich. They had replicas of the Sutton Hoo finds and I was familiar with the buckle, the purse and the other jewelled objects.

Ten years later, Michael Wood’s Series and accompanying book, which I still own, In search of the Dark Ages, gave me more detail still. Since then I have built a small library of Dark Age literature; Angus Wilson’s The Anglo-Saxons, D.P. Kirby’s the Making of Early England, as well as reading Myres and Stenton, the classic texts on the arrival of the English these shores. I have never lost sight, in all this study, of the beauty of these objects. The red and gold glow of the garnet jewellery, the intricate writhing of the zoomorphic creatures on several of the objects, the clever design of the helmet decoration, still move me. When I saw Janina Ramirez handling these objects on one of her shows, I was jealous for weeks.

Around twenty years ago I attended a talk on the discovery by Basil Brown, which opened up my eyes to the human story of that event. The Film The Dig, rightly focuses on this, whilst also firmly rooting it in the Suffolk Landscape. I looked forward to watching it and it did not disappoint. So what did I enjoy about it?

First and foremost, it is a film about people, although the uncovered ship is arguably a character too, one which the others revolve around. There is no discernible use of CGI (although it may be there in the background), there are no superheroes, no overblown dialogue, little profanity (although Basil gives us some Suffolk examples) and no constant inter-cuts, slow-motion repeats or other tricks that cinema is so fond of.

This as an unfolding story of a taciturn working man, a widow stoically coping with illness and couple acknowledging they are not right for each other, and as such it is a delight. Furthermore, there are a number of things it does not employ which would undoubtedly would have spoiled it. Firstly, there are plenty of filmmakers who would have been tempted to recreate the interment with dramatic music and moody swirling mist as an opening scene. Secondly, it avoids being an archaeology and history lesson. Basil tells Mrs Pretty that the mounds could be Viking but he thinks they could be earlier, but he doesn’t bore her, or us, with the technical detail behind his hunch. Similarly, when Basil hands the director from the British museum a coin he has just pulled from the earth, he tells him that it’s Merovingian; but we are spared a character saying: “what’s Merovingian” and another character replying with either a potted history of the dynasty of Clovis or a numismatic lecture.

The coins found are of course immensely important in terms of being able to date the finds. They provide an earliest and latest date at which the interment could have happened, but this is not laboured in the film, just briefly referred to.

The understated nature of so much of the interchange between characters is, to my mind, both true to the period and quintessentially Suffolk. When we first see Basil taking his bike with him on the ferry across the river he explains where he is going to the boatman with a single sentence which he clearly thinks tells the man all he needs to know:

“What’s goin’ on this afternoon then?”

“There’s a lady got an excavating job”.

That is such a great opening scene; one that gives us the character of Basil Brown and immediately re-assures those of us watching who hail from Suffolk that Ralph Fiennes has mastered the accent. We can now settle down to enjoy the film. But it also sets the template for what follows in its brevity and determination not to over-explain. Fiennes is excellent in this film. Basil Brown is a local hero and he has done him more than justice.

Carey Mulligan’s performance is equally understated. She conveys Edith’s sadness as a widow and weariness (caused by her chronic illness) without histrionics and by saying very little directly. She also shows the character’s love of history by a subtle shift into being more animated when talking to Basil. Whether or not there is a romantic attraction between them I will leave to the viewer to decide. There is certainly a connection based on mutual understanding.

The showing without telling is never better than when exploring the relationship of the married couple. When Lily James character displays herself to her husband and he turns away from the sight of her nakedness, the viewer already knows why if they have been paying attention. We have seen her husband wrestling in the rain with one of his male co-workers and understand where his inclinations lie. The sterility of their marriage is a tragedy for both of them and the film invites us to sympathise with them both.

The arc of the story is about an outsider getting one over on the establishment. The social situation of the time allowed Mrs Pretty, as the aristocratic landowner, to defy the men from the British Museum and support Basil Brown. This could have gone badly wrong if he was incompetent or careless. The film is careful to show us that he is neither.

Although the film is slow paced, there is an element of a race against time. The threat of war draws ever closer; it will bring an end to further excavations, but it also imperils all the characters. The planes flying overhead, the troops marching in the lane, let us know what is going on.

There is also an element of this film operating at two levels; one for the general viewer and one for those of lucky enough to hail from Suffolk. Only the second group can really appreciate Basils Suffolk mumble, or the character saying “she’s only been here twelve years” meaning she is definitely not local. I thoroughly recommend this film to both categories. You will not be disappointed.

 See also my discussion on the nature of the East Anglian Kingdom:

https://curiousmiscellanies.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-society-behind-sutton-hoo-brief.html

 

The Hill that we climb: Amanda Gorman at the Inauguration

 

Amanda Gorman, by common consent, stole the Inauguration show with her poem: The Hill that we climb. But let’s be clear, this was not some whimsical performance, a little girl singing tomorrow from Annie to charm the grownups. These were powerful words, powerfully delivered, whose emotional force was enhanced by, although not reliant on, the relentless onrushing speed of her speech. So what did she say, and how did she use language to connect to those listening?

Firstly, it should be said, Gorman stood on the shoulders of the African-American oral tradition. Even I, as a middle-aged white male, could recognise that, whilst it was not a rap, it borrowed from that forms use of rhythms, rhymes, repetition and variation on a theme to generate momentum.

Secondly, she clearly displayed the heritage of some-one familiar with the bible and with preaching style. ‘We’ve braved the belly of the beast’, an early reference to Jonah that set the tone. The poem is steeped in King James version phraseology; from ‘and so we lift our gazes’ a clear nod to the psalms ‘I shall lift up mine eyes to the hills’ to the explicit reference ‘Scripture tells us to envision that every-one will sit beneath their own vine and fig tree and no-one shall make them afraid’, Amanda gives her poem a biblical authenticity.

Thirdly, Miss Gorman demonstrated her mastery of literary techniques to grab our attention. She is rightly unafraid to use rhyme in a poem that people were initially going to hear rather than read:

‘where can we find light in this never-ending shade, the loss we carry, a sea we must wade’

 ‘because we will never again sow division. Scripture tells us to envision………..’,

‘victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made’

The power of rhyme in the spoken word is another strength of rap, as is alliteration, which Miss Gorman sometimes wields like a weapon:

‘We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation’.

And sometimes like a call to arms:

‘to compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man’.

Where she and the poem really take flight is with her mastery of techniques such as inversion and opposition to sculpt memorable phrases:

‘So while once we asked, ‘How could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?’ now we assert, ‘How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?’

‘We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be’

Just read that line again. See how ‘march’ and ‘move’ are connected by alliteration, yet separated by meaning, the one redolent of bellicosity, the second of possibility. This poet takes a delight in language. This can be seen in her supple, subtle phrasings:

‘That even as we tired, we tried’.

‘the norms and notions of what “just” is isn’t always justice.’

That last line delivers it’s meaning to the ear by a subtle shift in the s sound, to sell a powerful political statement. Because this is a political poem that confronts the realities of January 6^th and offers a way to rise above and move beyond them. Its message is rooted in religion without labouring it and it delineates what is going on and asks the question, ‘which side are you on?’ without giving in to negativity. The unity message that President Biden is pushing is re-inforced at the end using history and geography. Gorman uses the compass to encompass the whole nation in her description, name-checks the revolution and echoes one of her poetical predecessors, Woody Guthrie, in doing so embracing a tradition beyond the African-American one and telling her audience, all our stories matter. In ‘This land is our land’ Guthrie surveys the continent:

“This land is your land, this land is our land, from California, to the New York Island,

From the Redwood forests, to the Gulf stream Waters, this land belongs to you and me’.

Compare Miss Gorman’s lines:

‘We will rise from the golden hills of the west.
We will rise from the wind-swept north-east where our forefathers first realized revolution.
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states.
We will rise from the sun-baked south.’

and see she has picked up the baton and run with it. Only a National poet could end with:

‘In every known nook of our nation, in every corner called our country,
our people, diverse and beautiful, will emerge, battered and beautiful……..’

‘When day comes, we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid’.

Lines which manage to simultaneously affirm an almost religious message of hope whilst firmly rejecting the chaos that has so recently erupted. Comparisons have already been made with Maya Angelou. If Amanda Gorman fulfils her potential she may, in a future interview, critique her own work and perhaps call it youthfully naïve, poetically clunky and over-earnest. But for now, at this moment in our time, let’s celebrate it. 

Follow the link to see and hear wonderful performance: 

Amanda Gorman: The hill that we climb

Standalone trees in January

 The architecture of trees

On recent walks I have noticed a number of single trees at the edges of fields, just the other side of the hedge that marks the road. When you walk rather than drive, you notice them more. Whether they have always been standalone, or whether they are survivors of what was originally a line of trees planted to mark the road, I cannot say. Researching old photographs would possibly shed some light. Anyway, at this time of year, their leafless state enables you to appreciate the beauty of their structure, each tree unique, the product of their slow-growing life. Of course, a photograph does not show the three dimensional truth of their appearance. However, on a blue sky day, such as this morning (10th January 2021) was, something of the essence of them can be captured. 

The photographs below were taken on the minor road between Stanwick and Raunds in East Northamptonshire in the hour before mid-day. I make no claims for photographic or artistic excellence, simply offering them to be appreciated: 

Photographs of four standalone trees in the landscape