#long ship

My mother told me Someday I would buy Galleys with good oars Sail to distant shores

Stand up on the prow Noble barque I steer Steady course to the haven Hew many foe-men Hew many foe-men

Latest addition to the growing collection - Vikings and their Long-ship ready for BOYL2018.

Thanks for looking

Helmet of Sutton Hoo

beaten iron, covered with tinned bronze, gilding, garnets, silver wire, niello

buried around 625 CE 

13" height (bowl): 6" neck guard: 7" ear guard: 6 1/4" mask (chin to brow): 5 1/4" helmet bowl: 8 1/2" x 6 1/2"  

Designs on the helmet indicate and portray themes from a cult to Odin. The current reconstruction was done in 1970-71.

Sutton Hoo is located near Woodbridge in Suffolk. It is the site of two 6th- and early 7th-century cemeteries. One contained an undisturbed ship burial dating from the early 7th century which was first excavated in 1939. The ship burial contained a treasure of Anglo-Saxon artifacts, including the helmet.  

The archaeologists did not find a body in the ship burial chamber. As the soil in the site is acidic in nature the body probably dissolved away in the 1300 years it lay undisturbed.

Given the richness of the site the identity of the body was likely a king, or son of a king. By far the most likely candidate due to the dating is Rædwald, also written as Raedwald or Redwald  (560-624/25 CE), or possibly his father Tyttila or his son Earpwald (died 627-8 CE). Subsequent monarchs in East Anglia were Christian and as little material was found in the burial was overtly Christian — and in the absence of any sort of written inscriptions —Rædwald remains the most likely candidate.

What is known of Rædwald focuses on the religious and political machinations of the time. In 597 Augustine had arrived in Kent on a mission from Pope Gregory to convert the royal dynasty — a mission in which he was very effective.  The early seventh century Britain thus became a transitional period between paganism and Christianity with religion a highly political issue.

Rædwald visited Kent and while there he converted to Christianity, though on his return home he reverted to his ancestral religion. 

Rædwald became bretwalda, or high king of East Anglia, in 616 CE, and is thought to have died in either 624 or 625, his position as bretwalda passing to the Christian Edwin of Northumbria. 

www.nationaltrust.org.uk/sutton-hoo

http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details/collection_image_gallery.aspx?partid=1&assetid=1013336001&objectid=86159#more-views

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutton_Hoo_helmet

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutton_Hoo