The Sutton Hoo Helmet

The Sutton Hoo helmet was dug from the ground in the summer of 1939, weeks before the Second World War began. It came from Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, part of a ship burial that also contained gold buckles, a sword, a shield, and a collection of silver bowls and drinking vessels. The ship itself had rotted away, leaving only its impression in the soil and the iron rivets that once held its planks. The helmet was found near where the body would have lain, though no bone survived in the acidic sand.

It was not found intact. The iron had corroded and the structure had collapsed, leaving the excavators with hundreds of fragments, some recognisable — a cheek guard, part of the crest — and many not. The pieces were lifted, boxed, and stored. The site was backfilled, and the war began. The helmet would not be reassembled for six years.

The first reconstruction was undertaken in 1945 and 1946 by Herbert Maryon, a metalworker and conservator at the British Museum. Working without close parallels and with fragments whose original positions were often unclear, he produced a helmet that was too tall and too narrow. It was displayed in that form for more than two decades. By the late 1960s, comparison with similar helmets from Sweden and new analysis of the fragments made it clear the reconstruction was incorrect. In 1970 the helmet was disassembled and rebuilt by Nigel Williams, also at the British Museum. The current form — broader, lower, with the decorative panels properly aligned — is the result of that second effort.

The face is where the design does its most complicated work. The nose is a bronze boar's head, cast in the round, with small garnets for eyes. The eyebrows are inlaid bronze wire formed into the shape of two dragons, their heads meeting at the boar, their wings extending back along the brow line, their tails curling at the temples. Below the eyebrows are the eye openings, and below those a bronze moustache, also inlaid with wire. The effect is a human face made from animal parts, or alternatively a pair of animals arranged to suggest a human face. The ambiguity appears to be deliberate.

The crest — the strip running from front to back over the crown — is a bronze channel inlaid with silver wire, forming interlaced animal ornament. At the front it terminates in a small dragon's head; at the back, another. The cheek guards, which would have hung down to protect the sides of the face, are decorated with pressed foil panels showing warriors, some on horseback, some on foot, carrying spears and swords. The imagery is martial, but the execution is decorative. This was not purely functional armour.

The helmet is often associated with Rædwald, king of East Anglia in the early seventh century, though the identification is not certain. No inscription names the occupant of the burial, and the dating is based on the style of the grave goods and the coins found with them. Rædwald is a plausible candidate — he was a powerful king, and the burial is exceptionally rich — but the evidence does not settle the question. What is clear is that the person buried in Mound 1 was of high status, and that the helmet was among the most elaborate objects placed with them.