“þa Gewiton Hi Swa Swa Smic”

Millefiori Stud

We’re intending to see tomorrow the parts of the Staffordshire Hoard which are on display at Birmingham Museum and Art Galleries, queues or no queues. To which end we may have been stalking the blogosphere in search of writing to whet our appetite, and perhaps also to illuminate ourselves a little further about what has already been speculated regarding the origins and import of the find.

Hat-tip to Mercurius Politicus (to whom belated congratulations – both for submission and new arrivals) for this lovely piece from Jonathan Jarret: “What we are looking at here may be a tribute payment, demanded in silver and gold by weight (which might explain the apparently roughly proportional allotment of each metal).”

Following the links outwards, Brandon Hawk has some analysis of what is fast becoming the most famous piece in the hoard, the gold strip with a biblical inscription: making a link with Felix’s Life of Saint Guthlac, he says the piece “hearkens to a warrior’s need to keep himself safe from his all-too-real opponents.” (As he says in the comments to Hawk’s post, Jeffery Hodges has some objections to the Guthlac stuff here.)

JJ Cohen at In The Middle spins off Hawk’s post, too, and develops something well worth reading in its own right. If nothing else, it shows how it is possible, contra Karl Steel (also writing at In The Middle), for material finds to deepen and change our understanding of their correspinding (if currently still rather vague and disputed) period.

And, as if to remind us yet again of Sutton Hoo and The Dig, the fight over who gets to display the hoard permanently has begun. We know how this ends.

Everywhere, The Glint of Gold

Eoforlic scionon
ofer hleorbergan gehroden golde,
fah ond fyrheard,— ferhwearde heold
guþmod grimmon. Guman onetton,
sigon ætsomne, oþ þæt hy sæl timbred
geatolic ond goldfah ongyton mihton;
þæt wæs foremærost foldbuendum
receda under roderum, on þæm se rica bad;
lixte se leoma ofer landa fela.

–Beowulf, lines 303-311

"Rise up, o Lord, and may thy enemies be dispersed and those who hate thee be driven from thy face."

Though early modern history is mostly what we write about on this blog, finds like this remind us all what wonder all periods of history hold – and for an undergraduate Anglo-Saxonist like myself,  remind you of a good deal more. I read John Preston’s The Dig last year, and it’s marvellous to think Sutton Hoo is happening all over again. Inspiring, too, to consider all the ways our understanding of Anglo-Saxon Staffordshire and England will adapt and change to fit this new evidence. A friend of ours wrote his doctoral thesis on this county in this period, and we can only imagine the boggling currently going on in his brain. There’s a beautiful selection of images of items from the hoard on Flickr.

Anyway. Colour me very excited indeed. We’ll getting down to Birmingham Museum and Art Galleries, where the headline pieces from the find are being displayed until October 13th.