Guilden Morden boar

Last updated

Guilden Morden boar
Boar crop sharpen.png
The Guilden Morden boar
1904 Guilden Morden boar drawing.png
1904 drawing of the boar
Material Bronze
Size2.5 in × 1 in
(6+1⁄4 cm × 2+1⁄2 cm)
Createdc. 500–700 AD
Discovered1864 or 1865
Guilden Morden, England
Discovered byHerbert Fordham
Present location British Museum
Registration 1904,1010.1

The Guilden Morden boar is a sixth- or seventh-century Anglo-Saxon copper alloy figure of a boar that may have once served as the crest of a helmet. It was found around 1864 or 1865 in a grave in Guilden Morden, a village in the eastern English county of Cambridgeshire. There the boar attended a skeleton with other objects, including a small earthenware bead with an incised pattern, [1] although the boar is all that now remains. [2] Herbert George Fordham, whose father originally discovered the boar, donated it to the British Museum in 1904; as of 2018 it was on view in room 41. [1] [3]

Contents

The boar is simply designed, distinguished primarily by a prominent mane; eyes, eyebrows, nostrils and tusks are only faintly present. [2] A pin and socket design formed by the front and hind legs suggests that the boar was mounted on another object, such as a helmet. [1] [4] Such is the case on one of the contemporary Torslunda plates found in Sweden, where boar-crested helmets are depicted similarly. [5]

Boar-crested helmets are a staple of Anglo-Saxon imagery, evidence of a Germanic tradition in which the boar invoked the protection of deities. [6] The Guilden Morden boar is one of three—together with the helmets from Benty Grange and Wollaston—known to have survived to the present, [7] and it has been exhibited both domestically and internationally. [3] The Guilden Morden boar recalls a time when such decoration may have been common; [7] in the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf , where boar-adorned helmets are mentioned five times, [8] [9] Hrothgar speaks of when "our boar-crests had to take a battering in the line of action." [10]

Description

The Guilden Morden boar is simply designed and well preserved. [2] Made of cast bronze [1] [2] or copper alloy, [3] it is approximately 64 mm (2.5 in) long [11] and distinguished by little other than a prominent mane. [2] An eye, eyebrows and nostrils leave slight traces and were possibly punched after the boar was cast, while a tusk is indicated on the boar's right side. [2] The tail once formed a full circle but was broken around 1904. [1] [2]

The front two and back two legs were each cast as one piece, yet where a 3.5 mm (0.14 in) deep socket was hollowed into the front piece, a 6 mm (0.24 in) long pin extends down from the back piece. [2] The resultant pin and socket design would allow the boar to be mounted on another object, [5] particularly a helmet. [1] [4]

Discovery

1882-1883 drawing of the Guilden Morden grave goods Guilden Morden grave goods drawing.png
1882–1883 drawing of the Guilden Morden grave goods

The boar was found around 1864 or 1865 in Guilden Morden, a parish in Cambridgeshire about 16 miles (26 km) south west of Cambridge and 5 miles (8 km) west of Royston in Hertfordshire. [1] It was found by Herbert Fordham, co-managing partner at a successful family brewery, [12] [13] while digging for coprolites, [1] a particularly rich phosphate then used as fertiliser and the pursuit of which effectively provided the only employment other than agriculture in Cambridgeshire. [14] Writing about the boar in 1904, his son Herbert George Fordham suggested that:

I have always understood that it was found in the subsoil, or at no great depth, associated with some other objects, including (at all events) a small earthenware bead bearing incised pattern, the whole group occurring in what was, no doubt, a grave, and so placed with regard to remains of human bones as to suggest that the various objects were originally hung round the neck of the person buried. [1]

A drawing made between April 1882 and September 1883, held by the British Museum, shows the boar alongside a bronze ring and two glass beads, one amber-coloured, the other red with white inlay. [15] [note 1] Underneath the images it is noted that the items were "all found in a grave with a doubled-up skeleton". [15] Fordham had had no further information about the discovery of the boar, its location or the associated (and now lost [2] ) objects, [1] and donated the boar to the British Museum in 1904. [2] [3] [16]

The boar is displayed in Room 41 of the British Museum. [3] The gallery covers Europe from 300 to 1100 AD, and includes objects such as the finds from the Sutton Hoo ship-burial and the Lycurgus Cup. [17] In addition to its place at the British Museum, the Guilden Morden boar has been shown in both domestic and international exhibitions. [3] From 1 April to 30 October 2004, the boar was displayed at the Sutton Hoo Visitor Centre in Suffolk as part of Between Myth and Reality. [3] It was again exhibited from 26 July to 16 October 2013, this time at the Diocesan Museum  [ de ] in Paderborn, Germany, as part of CREDO: Christianisierung Europas im Mittelalter (Christianisation of Medieval Europe). [3] [18] [19]

Typology

Warriors wearing boar-crested helmets on a Torslunda plate, dated to between the 6th and 8th century CE. Patris Torslundaplatarna - Historiska museet - 108869 HST (cropped).jpg
Warriors wearing boar-crested helmets on a Torslunda plate, dated to between the 6th and 8th century CE.

The Guilden Morden boar is of Anglo-Saxon origin, so marked by the additional items found in the grave, [2] [20] and by comparable helmets discovered elsewhere in England, [4] although until 1977 it was misidentified as Celtic. [2] [21] It was likely once mounted atop a boar-crested helmet, [5] [21] [22] [7] a number of which have been either found in archaeological excavations or seen in artistic depictions. [23] Two other boar-crested helmets are known—from Benty Grange and from Wollaston [7] [24] —and the Guilden Morden boar is a close parallel of the boar fixed to the former. [4] The Benty Grange boar has a similar shape; it has a long and distinctive elongated snout projecting forward, a similar stance, and front and hind legs each joined as one. [22] [note 2] It dates to approximately 650 to 700 AD [26] and the Wollaston helmet to the time around 675 AD, [27] although a date more specific than the sixth or seventh century AD has not been suggested for the Guilden Morden boar. [3]

Understood in its broader context, the boar would likely have adorned an early model of the "crested helmets" known in Northern Europe in the sixth through eleventh centuries AD. [28] [29] Though the remains of fifty such helmets are known, most are from Scandinavia and only five from the Anglo-Saxon period are preserved enough that their original form can be determined. [30] [note 3] These, the helmets from Benty Grange, Sutton Hoo, Coppergate, Wollaston and Staffordshire, may have shared similarities with the helmet to which the Guilden Morden boar was attached. Scandinavian helmets are also depicted artistically with boar crests, such as on one of the four Torslunda plates found in Sweden. [5] [32] The boars atop the helmets worn by the two warriors on the plate are highly similar to the one from Guilden Morden, and similarly appear to be fastened to their helmets with a pin and socket device. [5]

Iconography

A Central European boar Locha(js).jpg
A Central European boar

The boar was an important symbol in prehistoric Europe, where, according to the archaeologist Jennifer Foster, it was "venerated, eulogised, hunted and eaten ... for millennia, until its virtual extinction in recent historical time." [33] Anglo-Saxon boar symbols follow a thousand years of similar iconography, coming after La Tène examples in the fourth century BC, Gaulish specimens three centuries later, and Roman boars in the fourth century AD. [34] They likely represent a fused tradition of European and Mediterranean cultures. [35] The boar is said to have been sacred to a mother goddess figure among linguistically Celtic communities in Iron Age Europe, [36] while the Roman historian Tacitus, writing around the first century AD, suggested that the Baltic Aesti wore boar symbols in battle to invoke her protection. [37] [38]

Boar-crested helmets are depicted on the turn-of-the-millennium Gundestrup cauldron, discovered in Denmark, and on a Torslunda plate from Sweden, made some five hundred years later. [36] Though the Romans also included the boar in their stable of symbols—four legions, [34] including the twentieth, [39] adopted it as their emblem—it was only one among many. [36] The boar persisted in continental Germanic tradition during the nearly 400 years of Roman rule in Britain, such as in association with the Scandinavian gods Freyja [40] [41] and Freyr. [42] Its return to prominence in the Anglo-Saxon period, as represented by the boars from Benty Grange, Wollaston, Guilden Morden, and Horncastle, may therefore suggest the post-Roman introduction of a Germanic tradition from Europe, rather than the continuation of a tradition in Britain through 400 years of Roman rule. [40] Whatever its precise symbolism, the Anglo-Saxon boar appears to have been associated with protection; the Beowulf poet makes this clear, writing that boar symbols on helmets kept watch over the warriors wearing them. [43] [44]

Boar-crests in Beowulf

The boar-crested Benty Grange helmet BentyGrangeHelmSide.jpg
The boar-crested Benty Grange helmet

The Guilden Morden boar recalls the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf , [22] where helmets with boar imagery are referenced five times. [8] [9] [45] [46] In three cases [47] they appear to feature freestanding boars atop the helmets, [48] [49] [44] like the Guilden Morden example. [note 4] Such is the case when Grendel's mother seeks vengeance for the death of her son. [32]

In another case, Hrothgar laments the death of Æschere, "my right-hand man when the ranks clashed and our boar-crests had to take a battering in the line of action" [10] (eaxlgestealla, ðonne we on orlege hafelan weredon, þonne hniton feþan, eoferas cnysedan [58] ). Both instances likely refer to crests such as those on the Benty Grange or Wollaston helmets, [48] [49] [53] or to the one found in Guilden Morden. [59]

Notes

  1. ↑ "Unfortunately the name associated with the objects is Great Maldon, rather than Guilden Morden. It is likely that this was merely a mistake in copying, as Guilden Morden was specifically mentioned as the findspot by Fordham. ... Also, despite extensive research, it seems that no settlement named Great Maldon exists, or existed in the 19th century, in any county of England." [2]
  2. ↑ Rather than the legs being cast individually, the Benty Grange boar was cast in two longitudinal halves. [25]
  3. ↑ A sixth reconstructible Anglo-Saxon helmet, the Shorwell helmet, is known. It is of the Frankish style and not of the crested variety. [31]
  4. ↑ In the other two instances boars are referred to in the plural, [50] such as when Beowulf and his men leave their ship as "[b]oar-shapes flashed above their cheek-guards". [51] (eoforlic scionon ofer hleorbergan [52] ) These references were perhaps made with the intention of recalling boars like those on the eyebrows of the Sutton Hoo helmet. [48] [49] [53] [54] [55]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sutton Hoo</span> Archaeological site in Suffolk, England

Sutton Hoo is the site of two Anglo-Saxon cemeteries dating from the 6th to 7th centuries near Woodbridge, Suffolk, England. Archaeologists have been excavating the area since 1938, when an undisturbed ship burial containing a wealth of Anglo-Saxon artifacts was discovered. The site is important in establishing the history of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia as well as illuminating the Anglo-Saxons during a period which lacks historical documentation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Benty Grange helmet</span> 7th-century boar-crested Anglo-Saxon helmet

The Benty Grange helmet is an Anglo-Saxon boar-crested helmet from the seventh century AD. It was excavated by Thomas Bateman in 1848 from a tumulus at the Benty Grange farm in Monyash in western Derbyshire. The grave had probably been looted by the time of Bateman's excavation, but still contained other high-status objects suggestive of a richly furnished burial, such as the fragmentary remains of a hanging bowl. The helmet is displayed at Sheffield's Weston Park Museum, which purchased it from Bateman's estate in 1893.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rupert Bruce-Mitford</span> British archaeologist and scholar (1914–1994)

Rupert Leo Scott Bruce-Mitford was a British archaeologist and scholar. He spent the majority of his career at the British Museum, primarily as the Keeper of the Department of British and Medieval Antiquities, and was particularly known for his work on the Sutton Hoo ship-burial. Considered the "spiritus rector" of such research, he oversaw the production of the monumental three-volume work The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial, termed by the president of the Society of Antiquaries as "one of the great books of the century".

Sir Herbert George Fordham, was a British writer on cartography whose Carto-Bibliography method of cataloging maps was widely adopted. He was the benefactor of the Fordham collection housed by the Royal Geographical Society - one of the most important map collections in the country.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sutton Hoo helmet</span> Decorated Anglo-Saxon helmet

The Sutton Hoo helmet is a decorated Anglo-Saxon helmet found during a 1939 excavation of the Sutton Hoo ship-burial. It was buried around the years c. 620–625 AD and is widely associated with an Anglo-Saxon leader, King Rædwald of East Anglia; its elaborate decoration may have given it a secondary function akin to a crown. The helmet was both a functional piece of armour and a decorative piece of metalwork. An iconic object from an archaeological find hailed as the "British Tutankhamen", it has become a symbol of the Early Middle Ages, "of Archaeology in general", and of England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pioneer Helmet</span> Anglo-Saxon helmet from the late seventh century found in Wollaston, Northamptonshire

The Pioneer Helmet is an Anglo-Saxon boar-crested helmet from the late seventh century found in Wollaston, Northamptonshire, United Kingdom. It was discovered during a March 1997 excavation before the land was to be mined for gravel and was part of the grave of a young man. Other objects in the grave, such as a hanging bowl and a pattern welded sword, suggest that it was the burial mound of a high-status warrior.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shorwell helmet</span> Anglo-Saxon helmet from the early to mid-sixth century AD found near Shorwell on the Isle of Wight

The Shorwell helmet is an Anglo-Saxon helmet from the early to mid-sixth century AD found near Shorwell on the Isle of Wight in southern England. It was one of the grave goods of a high-status Anglo-Saxon warrior, and was found with other objects such as a pattern-welded sword and hanging bowl. One of only six known Anglo-Saxon helmets, alongside those found at Benty Grange (1848), Sutton Hoo (1939), Coppergate (1982), Wollaston (1997), and Staffordshire (2009), it is the sole example to derive from the continental Frankish style rather than the contemporaneous Northern "crested helmets" used in England and Scandinavia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Weapons and armour in Anglo-Saxon England</span> Types and usage of weaponry in Anglo-Saxon England

Many different weapons were created and used in Anglo-Saxon England between the fifth and eleventh centuries. Spears, used for piercing and throwing, were the most common weapon. Other commonplace weapons included the sword, axe, and knife—however, bows and arrows, as well as slings, were not frequently used by the Anglo-Saxons. For defensive purposes, the shield was the most common item used by warriors, although sometimes mail and helmets were used.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Staffordshire helmet</span> 7th century Anglo-Saxon helmet

The Staffordshire helmet is an Anglo-Saxon helmet discovered in 2009 as part of the Staffordshire Hoard. It is part of the largest discovery of contemporary gold and silver metalwork in Britain, which contained more than 4,000 precious fragments, approximately a third of which came from a single high-status helmet. Following those found at Benty Grange (1848), Sutton Hoo (1939), Coppergate (1982), Wollaston (1997), and Shorwell (2004), it is only the sixth known Anglo-Saxon helmet.

Ian David Meadows is a British archaeologist. He has worked in archaeology for some 40 years, including as a Senior Project Officer at Northamptonshire Archaeology from 1992 to 2014. During that time he excavated a number of large quarries in England and Wales, and excavated the boar-crested Anglo-Saxon Pioneer Helmet in addition to discovering the first definitive evidence for viticulture in Roman Britain. He has also worked for the Museum of London Archaeology, and has taught archaeology and landscape history for Cambridge University, Anglia Ruskin University, the University of Bath, and the Workers' Educational Association.

Hans Klumbach was a German archaeologist and scholar of classical and provincial Roman studies. He served as a curator at, and later the director of, the Romano-Germanic Central Museum. His 1973 work Spätrömische Gardehelme laid bare the relationship between the late Roman ridge helmets and the later Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon crested helmets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gevninge helmet fragment</span> 6th or 7th century artefact

The Gevninge helmet fragment is the dexter eyepiece of a helmet from the Viking Age or end of the Nordic Iron Age. It was found in 2000 during the excavation of a Viking farmstead in Gevninge, near Lejre, Denmark. The fragment is moulded from bronze and gilded, and consists of a stylised eyebrow with eyelashes above an oval opening. There are three holes at the top and bottom of the fragment to affix the eyepiece to a helmet. The fragment is significant as rare evidence of contemporaneous helmets, and also for its discovery in Gevninge, an outpost that is possibly connected to the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf. It has been in the collection of the Lejre Museum since its discovery, and has been exhibited internationally as part of a travelling exhibition on Vikings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lokrume helmet fragment</span> Decorated fragment from a Viking Age helmet

The Lokrume helmet fragment is a decorated eyebrow piece from a Viking Age helmet. It is made of iron, the surface of which is covered with silver and features an interlace pattern in niello or wire. Discovered in Lokrume, a small settlement on the Swedish island of Gotland, the fragment was first described in print in 1907 and is in the collection of the Gotland Museum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Benty Grange</span> Site of Special Scientific Interest in Derbyshire, England

Benty Grange is a Site of Special Scientific Interest in the parish of Monyash in Derbyshire, England. 21.1 ha in size and with at least four species of grass and ten others of plant, it is considered of national importance as one of the largest areas of unimproved species-rich neutral lowland grassland in the Peak District National Park. The area was confirmed as a Site of Special Scientific Interest on 8 March 2013, following notification of the designation on 19 June 2012.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Horncastle boar's head</span> 7th-century Anglo-Saxon ornament depicting a boar

The Horncastle boar's head is an early seventh-century Anglo-Saxon ornament depicting a boar that probably was once part of the crest of a helmet. It was discovered in 2002 by a metal detectorist searching in the town of Horncastle, Lincolnshire. It was reported as found treasure and acquired for £15,000 by the Lincoln City and County Museum—now Lincoln Museum—where it is on permanent display.

Leslie Elizabeth Webster, is an English retired museum curator and art historian of Anglo-Saxon and Viking art. She worked from 1964 until 2007 at the British Museum, rising to Keeper, where she curated several major exhibitions, and published many works, on the Anglo-Saxons and Early Middle Ages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Benty Grange hanging bowl</span> Anglo-Saxon artifact from the 7th century AD

The Benty Grange hanging bowl is a fragmentary Anglo-Saxon artifact from the seventh century AD. All that remains are parts of two escutcheons: bronze frames that are usually circular and elaborately decorated, and that sit along the outside of the rim or at the interior base of a hanging bowl. A third one disintegrated soon after excavation, and it no longer survives. The escutcheons were found in 1848 by the antiquary Thomas Bateman, while excavating a tumulus at the Benty Grange farm in western Derbyshire. They were presumably buried as part of an entire hanging bowl. The grave had probably been looted by the time of Bateman's excavation, but still contained high-status objects suggestive of a richly furnished burial, including the hanging bowl and the boar-crested Benty Grange helmet.

Jennifer Foster is an English scholar of prehistoric and medieval archaeology, who specializes in the study of artifacts, particularly metalwork.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hellvi helmet eyebrow</span> Iron Age helmet eyebrow fragment

The Hellvi helmet eyebrow is a decorative eyebrow from a Vendel Period helmet. It comprises two fragments; the arch is made of iron decorated with strips of silver, and terminates in a bronze animal head that was cast on. The eyebrow was donated to the Statens historiska museum in November 1880 along with several other objects, all said to be from a grave find in Gotland, Sweden.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Germanic boar helmet</span> Decorated helmet in Germanic cultures

Germanic boar helmets or boar crested helmets are attested in archaeological finds from England, Denmark and Sweden, dating to Vendel and Anglo-Saxon periods, and Old English and Old Norse written sources. They consist of helmets decorated with either a boar crest or other boar imagery that was believed to offer protection in battle to the wearer. They have also been proposed to be a costume for the ritual transformation into a boar, similar to berserkers, and to be associated with Freyr.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Fordham 1904, p. 373.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Foster 1977a, p. 166.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 British Museum boar.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Foster 1977a, pp. 166–167.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Fordham 1904, p. 374.
  6. ↑ Foster 1977b, pp. 5, 27.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Meadows 2010, p. 16.
  8. 1 2 Beowulf, ll. 303–306, 1110–1112, 1286, 1327–1328, 1448–1454.
  9. 1 2 Hatto 1957a, pp. 155–156.
  10. 1 2 Heaney 2000, p. 93.
  11. ↑ Fordham 1904, pp. 373–374.
  12. ↑ Whitaker 2006, p. 42.
  13. ↑ ODNB.
  14. ↑ Grove 1976, p. 36.
  15. 1 2 Foster 1977a, pp. 166, pl. XIV.
  16. ↑ Morley 1905, p. 73.
  17. ↑ British Museum room 41.
  18. ↑ Stiegemann, Kroker & Walter 2013a.
  19. ↑ Stiegemann, Kroker & Walter 2013b, pp. 189, 825.
  20. ↑ Foster 1977b, p. 23.
  21. 1 2 Hatto 1957b, p. 258.
  22. 1 2 3 Foster 1977a, p. 167.
  23. ↑ Frank 2008, p. 76.
  24. ↑ Meadows 1996–1997, p. 193.
  25. ↑ Bruce-Mitford 1974, p. 237.
  26. ↑ Bruce-Mitford 1974, p. 242.
  27. ↑ Meadows 1997, p. 4.
  28. ↑ Steuer 1987, pp. 199–203, 230–231.
  29. ↑ Tweddle 1992, pp. 1083, 1086.
  30. ↑ Butterworth et al. 2016, p. 41 n.27.
  31. ↑ Hood et al. 2012, p. 92.
  32. 1 2 Stiegemann, Kroker & Walter 2013b, p. 189.
  33. ↑ Foster 1977b, p. 1.
  34. 1 2 Frank 2008, p. 78.
  35. ↑ Frank 2008, p. 82.
  36. 1 2 3 Foster 1977b, p. 5.
  37. ↑ Tacitus 1868, p. 31.
  38. ↑ Tacitus 1886, p. 25.
  39. ↑ Foster 1977b, pp. 15, 19, 26.
  40. 1 2 Foster 1977b, p. 27.
  41. ↑ Frank 2008, p. 80.
  42. ↑ Frank 2008, p. 86.
  43. ↑ Beowulf, ll. 303–306.
  44. 1 2 Chaney 1970, pp. 123–124.
  45. ↑ Speake 1980, p. 80.
  46. ↑ Bateman 1861, p. 33.
  47. ↑ Beowulf, ll. 1110–1112, 1286, 1327–1328.
  48. 1 2 3 Cramp 1957, pp. 62–63.
  49. 1 2 3 Davidson 1968, p. 354.
  50. ↑ Beowulf, ll. 303–306, 1448–1454.
  51. ↑ Heaney 2000, pp. 21–23.
  52. ↑ Beowulf, ll. 303–304.
  53. 1 2 Chaney 1970, p. 123.
  54. ↑ Bruce-Mitford 1972, p. 122.
  55. ↑ Bruce-Mitford 1974, p. 200.
  56. ↑ Beowulf, ll. 1279–1291.
  57. ↑ Heaney 2000, pp. 89–91.
  58. ↑ Beowulf, ll. 1326–1328.
  59. ↑ Frank 2008, pp. 78–79.

Bibliography

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.