Sutton Hoo helmet replica

Steel, tinned and gilded electrotypes
Tower of London Armouries and British Museum 1973
Circumference at brow level: 74cm
British Museum SHR 2

The replica is based on the fragmentary helmet found in Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo, excavated in 1939. Like the original helmet, it is made with a cap forged from a single piece of iron to which deep ear-flaps and neck-guard are attached with leather hinges. A realistic facemask, pierced with two holes beneath the nose to enable the wearer to breathe, is attached to the front of the cap. The surface of the helmet is covered with decorative panels, two filled with sinuous zoomorphic interlace and two with figural scenes. One of these scenes depicts a pair of warriors, wearing horned helmets and holding spears and short swords or daggers. The other shows a mounted warrior riding down a fallen, mail-clad warrior who stabs upwards at the horse as it rides over him. This scene has its roots in the Roman period, but the origin of the dancing warrior scene is unknown although its distribution in Eastern England and Sweden suggests that it belongs within Scandinavian mythology.

The Sutton Hoo helmet is one of only four helmets found in early Anglo-Saxon England. Each is quite different from the other, suggesting that helmets were not made to a common design, but were individually made by master smiths for a high status patron. Structurally, with its single piece cap, ear-flaps and facemask, the Sutton Hoo helmet is unique, but its surface decoration and indeed the themes of the two figural panels have close parallels in the high status grave-fields in Uppland, Sweden. Similarities between the helmets – and the shields – from these grave-fields and Sutton Hoo suggest that while the helmet was made in Anglo-Saxon England, the metalsmiths who made it may have come from Sweden.