|
|
"One of my colleagues used to tell his Beowulf students the story of the well-intentioned stranger who, late one night, seeing a man on hands and knees beneath a streetlight searching for something, offered assistance. "Are you sure this is the spot?" he asked. "No," came the answer," but this is where the light is." Sutton Hoo in 1939 lit up a bit of Dark Age Britain; Beowulf responded, like a moth to a flame; and nothing has been the same ever since."
The poem Beowulf gives an insight into the social structure of the late sixth and early seventh centuries. It describes a society where an elite warrior class were armed by their lords and expected to fight, win treasure and capture the arms of their enemies. The poem reflects the heroic values evident in the mythological genealogies of the Anglo-Saxon kings (Drewett etal 1988:259-262). Of particular interest is the description in Beowulf of a ship burial closely resembling the Sutton Hoo site. Some have even suggested that the Sutton Hoo burial is, in fact, the burial described in Beowulf.
While scholars and amateurs alike used the findings from the excavation to interpret and date the poem, it is also true that they explored the poem in an effort to interpret the findings of the excavation. Roberta Frank, however, argues that while there are certainly parallels, the direct relationship between the poem and the ship burial is rather tenuous. She suggests that a process of reinterpretation and retranslation of the poem took place after the 1939 excavation to further enhance the perceived relationship (Frank in Kendall 1992:41-64).
The parameters of this project do not allow a full discussion of the perceived connection between Sutton Hoo and the poem Beowulf so we have included a translation of Beowulf in two parts for your perusal.
You may also like to view the Electronic Beowulf Project and the Beowulf Resources Page
 | Homepage< /a> |  | Maps |
 | Burial Practices |  | Artefacts |
 | The Ship |  | Bibliograp hy |
 | Other Interesting Sites |  | Armoury and Weaponry |