Road To Hel - Rune Web Vitki

24
FUNERAL CUSTOMS
soot then thought to indicate a possible cremation are more likely to be traces of decayed
woodwork. Another very puzzling feature of the Sutton Hoo burial was the basin of
rough clay which seems to have been placed above the roof of the burial chamber, and
which it is suggested may have been intended for libations.
The evidence of the finds dates the grave in the early part of the seventh century. The
numismatists are disposed from the evidence of the coins to select a date about the
middle of the century, or at any rate after 630. But such late dating is most improbable,
since we know that by 640 Christianity was well established in East Anglia, and a burial
such as this would necessitate a reversion to heathen customs for which we have no
evidence. If a date between 600 and 640 is accepted, it seems probable that the cenotaph,
if cenotaph it is, is that of Redwald, who ruled East Anglia from about 593 to 617, and
was the only one of its kings to hold the title of High King of Britain, which belonged to
him for some years before he died. This is Chadwick’s suggestion, 1 supported by Bede’s
picture of the king as a man who never wholly gave up his heathen beliefs, and by the
probability that Rendlesham, only four miles from this group of barrows, was Redwald’s
palace. It seems likely that a king with well-known tendencies towards the old faith, and
who moreover was survived by a wife who supported it with enthusiasm, was the person
in whose honour the barrow was raised; and this is rendered more probable by the fact
that at the end of his reign he must have been the richest king in England. 2
The barrows at Sutton Hoo, two of which have proved to be ship-graves, evidently
formed part of a cemetery which goes back into the heathen period, and of which the
chief grave has remained, miraculously, untouched. Excavation of the remaining barrows
may throw more light on the date of the treasure. But we have undoubtedly here an
example of an elaborate ship-burial in Anglo-Saxon times in the kingdom of East Anglia,
corresponding in date with that of the Vendel graves in Sweden. Here, moreover, the
erection of a burial chamber above the ship provides a parallel to the later ship-graves of
the Viking period, and probably too with the burial chamber of which traces have been
left in the Uppsala gravemounds. The barrows at Snape, where the other ship-burial was
found, indicate a second cemetery a little farther along the East Anglian coast; if the
earlier date suggested for this burial is correct,
1 Chadwick, Antiquity, op. cit. p. 76 f.
2 Bede, Historia Ecciesiastica (ed. Plummer, vol. 1), II, ; III, 22; II, 5.