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From Egypt to East Anglia: design in the Sutton Hoo scabbard bosses

5/3/2023

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​Secrets in the Stones: Decoding Anglo-Saxon Art.  Part 1
​
From Egypt to East Anglia: design in the Sutton Hoo scabbard bosses

PictureSutton Hoo scabbard boss ( (C) Trustees of British Museum)
​This article is part of a series about our increasing understanding of the meanings behind the designs of Anglo-Saxon art. For other chapters click here. 

Amongst the glittering masses of gold and garnet treasure, from the Sutton Hoo royal burials in East Anglia and the Staffordshire Hoard to the smaller discoveries of furnished graves and chance finds, it can be hard to concentrate on individual pieces. In the scabbard bosses from Sutton Hoo, however, close inspection reveals an exciting possibility — that the people who created these masterpieces of jewellery not only had the most sophisticated craft skills, but also possessed mastery of classical philosophy from the Eastern Mediterranean.


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​Secrets in the Stones: Decoding Anglo-Saxon Art (Introduction)

1/3/2023

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​Secrets in the Stones: Decoding Anglo-Saxon Art
Introduction

This introduction is the first instalment of a series. For other chapters click here.
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Once dismissed as frivolous and merely decorative, Anglo-Saxon artwork is increasingly recognised to be loaded with hidden meaning, but we have barely begun to decode this visual language. Doing so offers the potential to transform our understanding of this historical cultural network of the so-called “Dark Ages” as a significant world civilization.

New research by Thegns of Mercia member James D. Wenn, focused on a seemingly unrelated subject area, and a series of chance discoveries, have led to transformative new learning perspectives with wide-ranging implications. A book due to be published soon by Canalside Press will lay out many of these discoveries, with key concepts discussed in an upcoming public lecture in April 2023, but neither can fully document the application of these new perspectives on the corpus of Anglo-Saxon art. In the coming weeks we will, therefore, be publishing a special series of articles, here, which will explore the decoding of Anglo-Saxon art made possible by these perspectives.


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Anglo-Saxon Yule

21/11/2022

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How did folk in early medieval lowland Britain spend the coldest and darkest time of the year?  What evidence do we have for their midwinter traditions, how did they change and evolve during the period, and have any survived to influence our own festive traditions today?

In preparation for a special midwinter event and seasonal exhibition at the most famous early Anglo-Saxon archaeological site - Sutton Hoo, and building on an earlier article on this subject published in 2012, we embarked on a project to re-examine the evidence for Anglo-Saxon midwinter traditions.  Though noting the existence of a well established image of a generalized early medieval Yule based on passed-down folk traditions and logical inferences is held dear by many people today, we found that many traditions assumed to be Anglo-Saxon in origin are absent from primary sources from the period and are first documented surprisingly late. On the other hand, we found evidence for surprisingly familiar traditions established during the Anglo-Saxon period which can be thought of as distant ancestors of aspects of modern Christmas we still observe today.
So don your warmest cloak, grab a horn-full of mead, and join us on a journey through time, back to the Anglo-Saxon midwinter festival known as Yule.
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A Woman as King? The Secret Legacy of Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians

1/6/2022

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At the time of writing a season of celebrations is underway for the Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, marking her 70 years as reign as monarch of the UK and Commonwealth.  Such a long reign is historically unprecedented and means that the overwhelming majority of people living in countries where she serves as head of state have no living memory of the reign of another monarch. In turn this also means that few have any memory of the reign of a king; a woman as head of state in these realms feels perfectly normal - even 'default' - and we have grown up talking of the history of "kings and queens" as if the words and roles have always carried equal weight. Historically this was not the case. Centuries ago, that which now goes without saying -that a woman could rule, competently and successfully in her own right - was a truly revolutionary idea. It only became accepted as the result of the examples set by a series of remarkable female rulers in Britain and the twists of fate which crowned them and tested them. 
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Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians. (Credit: Jennifer Peters)
Though certainly not the first female ruler on these islands, a disproportionate debt is owed to one remarkable lady in particular, who lived eleven centuries ago. Emerging from an age and culture in which female leadership was largely unthinkable and all but unprecedented, she took power only reluctantly, and ruled with such brilliance that any doubt in female leadership would have been banished. But in so doing, she established a dangerous precedent, leading men to try, and thankfully, fail, to erase her from history....

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