Metal detector find links Sutton Hoo helmet to Denmark

A small metal object discovered by a detectorist on the Danish island of Tåsinge may rewrite the history of the famed Sutton Hoo helmet. The piece is a stamp known as a “patrice,” used to hammer a design into a thin sheet of metal, and it bears the image of a mounted warrior that is very similar to a design on the Sutton Hoo helmet. So similar, in fact, that it is likely that the helmet was produced in Denmark, not in Sweden as has long been believed.

The Sutton Hoo helmet was made of iron and covered with sheets of tinned bronze accented with gilt iron and gilt bronze. The sheets were stamped with patterns generated from five different dies, two for the zoomorphic interlaced motifs, three for the figural scenes known as the “Dancing Warrior” and the “Rider and Fallen Warrior.” The latter is the design found on the Tåsinge patrice.

The helmet was produced in the late 6th or early 7th century, and was believed to have been made in the Uppland province of Sweden, where other helmets decorated with both warrior motifs have been found (helmets 7 and 8 from the Valsgärde ship burials, helmet 1 from Vendel). An almost identical (albeit mirror-image) design is also found on the Pliezhausen bracteate, a gold medallion mounted onto a disc brooch found in the 7th century grave of a woman in Reutlingen, southern Germany.

The helmet was found in hundreds of fragments in the 1939 excavation of the Sutton Hoo ship burial. They were puzzled together for the first time in 1945-6, but archaeologists went back to the drawing board for a second reconstruction in 1970-1, and that one has stuck. The five designs were identified in the original reconstruction.

Comparing the motif on the newly discovered patrice from Tåsinge to the mounted warrior on the Sutton Hoo helmet and those from Sweden, it is clear that the Tåsinge patrice is much closer to the one on the helmet than the Swedish motifs.

Similarities can be seen in the details, such as the cuff at the warrior’s wrist, the warrior’s hair, the almond-shaped harness fitting on the horse’s head, its reins, the sword protruding below the warrior’s shield, and the ‘bunions’ or circles on the feet of the man lying down. The Swedish equivalents have a wild boar or bird of prey on the helmet, something not seen in the Sutton Hoo helmet or the new find from Tåsinge.

There are fragments from a second mounted warrior motif on the Sutton Hoo helmet, but so few of them that it hasn’t been possible to reconstruct it. Elements of this second design are a strong for match the Tåsinge patrice: the lines next to the rider’s foot and the edge of the shield of the fallen warrior. None of the other motifs on the Swedish and German artifacts have those lines next to the foot and the Tåsinge stamp matches these two elements from the Sutton Hoo fragment exactly.

If the Sutton Hoo helmet was actually made in or around Tåsinge this would change former understandings of the role Denmark played in the power balance in Northern Europe around the year 600.

No traces of the magnificent burial sites discovered in England and Sweden from this period have been found in Denmark, which has led some to conclude that the Danish region played no significant role.

According to Peter Pentz, however, the new find establishes a much stronger basis for thinking Denmark was relatively powerful during this period, maybe even one of Northern Europe’s leading powers.

* This article was originally published here