Sutton Hoo

Last Saturday, Dave, Malo, and I went to Sutton Hoo, which is an ancient Anglo-Saxon Burial Site near Ipswich. Unfortunately this first sentence already contains more confirmed information than the guide at Sutton Hoo was willing to give us. Let's rephrase it: Sutton Hoo is an area where, based on the findings of three independent excavations during the 20th century, some archeologists may think, that it was used to bury the high-society of ancient East Anglia until around the late 6th century A.D., when Britain finally became more and more christianized.The most important thing we discovered that day was that wind and rain brought from the nearby North Sea had about 1.400 years time to wash the ancient burial mounds to the ground and they did succeed overwhelmingly. As a result, visitors basically see a large area of green grass with tiny ripples that you would not recognize as being graves if the guide didn't tell you so. The only thing that really looks like a mound and where one may be able to believe in the stories of ancient kings buried with their boats, armory and other belongings is the one on the photo (which is the most spectacular landscape photo I took that day). And guess what: it has been rebuilt by the last team of archeologists digging around in Sutton Hoo after they finished their work in the 1990s.

The three us of had decided to spend 3 pounds in addition to the entrance fee in order to take the guided tour around the site, which definitely was the right thing to do. Otherwise we had probably just given the site a short look, decided that we must have got lost and spent 3 more hours searching for the right place before realizing that this was really all we could see. ;) With the tour we only spent one hour outside on the cold and windy field close to the sea. However the guide could give us a lot of interesting information about the Anglo-Saxons (descendants of the Vikings, often visiting their relatives in Denmark and the Netherlands for a short boat tour), their lifes (short, hard, battlesome) and about how they buried their death (along with all their belongings and real boats which got carried up to the site by hoards of servants).

To warm up after being in the cold wind all the time (can't mention that too often!), we afterwards visited the Sutton Hoo Museum where some replicas of the ancient findings were on display. Next interesting thing to learn: the real cool stuff of course is on permanent loan to the British Museum in London. Since the BM does not charge admittance fees, we might as well have travelled to London and visit these things there.