A Reinterpretation of the ‘Dragon’ Images on the Sutton Hoo Shield as Images of Wolves

Abstract

The 7th-century Anglo-Saxon ship burial at Sutton Hoo includes a shield with a plaque (London, British Museum, inv. no. 1939,1010.94.B.1) that depicts an animal that researchers usually describe as a winged dragon. However, it does not resemble other early medieval dragon depictions. Comparison with contemporaneous art executed in the same style (Salin’s Style II) indicates that the so-called ‘dragon’ is more likely to have been meant as a wolf. The same shield bore three depictions of animal heads that are identical to that on the plaque in question, which has led to the assumption that they too represent dragon heads. The reinterpretation of the animal on the plaque as a wolf suggests that these three other heads are also stylized wolf heads.

Keywords:

• Sutton Hoo
• Anglo-Saxon
• stylization
• dragon
• wolf
• Style II

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 R. L. S. Bruce-Mitford, The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial, Vol. 2: Arms, Armour and Regalia (London 1978); idem, The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial: A Handbook, 3rd edn (London 1979); A. Care Evans, The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial, rev. edn (London 1994); M. Carver, Sutton Hoo: Burial Ground of Kings? (Philadelphia 1998); D. Phillips, ‘A Wealth of Evidence: The Identity of the Man Commemorated at Sutton Hoo’, Elements, 3/i (2007), 67–74; A. Bayliss, J. Hines and K. Høilund Nielsen, ‘Interpretative Chronologies for the Male Graves’, in Anglo-Saxon Graves and Grave Goods of the 6th and 7th Centuries AD: A Chronological Framework, ed. J. Hines and A. Bayliss (London 2019), 231–338; A. Bharna Arna, ‘What is the History of the Sutton Hoo?’ in The Sutton Hoo: A Look into the Anglo-Saxon Past, ed. A. Mardon (Edmonton 2019), 1–9. The attribution of the grave to Rædwald has been questioned by some. See, for example, M. Parker Pearson, R. Van de Noort and A. Woolf, ‘Three Men and a Boat: Sutton Hoo and the East Saxon Kingdom’, Anglo-Saxon England, 22 (1993), 27–50.

2 H. R. Ellis Davidson, ‘The Hill of the Dragon: Anglo-Saxon Burial Mounds in Literature and Archaeology’, Folk-Lore, 61 (1950), 169–85; C. Green, Sutton Hoo: The Excavation of a Royal Ship-Burial (London 1963), 76; Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo, II, 63–66; idem, Handbook, 37, 39; T. L. Keller, ‘The Dragon in Beowulf Revisited’, Aevum, 55 (1981), 218–28; B. Mundkur, ‘The Bicephalous “Animal Style” in Northern Eurasian Religious Art and its Western Hemispheric Analogues’, Current Anthropology, 25 (1984), 451–82; C. Hicks, Animals in Early Medieval Art (Edinburgh 1993), 58–60; Care Evans, Sutton Hoo, 49, 80; T. M. Dickinson, ‘Symbols of Protection: The Significance of Animal-Ornamented Shields in Early Anglo-Saxon England’, Medieval Archaeology, 49 (2005), 109–63; J. D. Niles, ‘Pagan Survivals and Popular Belief’, in The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, ed. M. Godden and M. Lapidge, 2nd edn (Cambridge 2006), 120–36; S. Pollington, L. Kerr and B. Hammond, Wayland’s Work: Anglo-Saxon Art, Myth, and Material Culture from the 4th to the 7th Century (Little Downham 2010), pl. 40; H. Williams, ‘The Sense of Being Seen: Ocular Effects at Sutton Hoo’, Journal of Social Archaeology, 11 (2011), 99–121; Carver, Sutton Hoo, 69; T. Flight, Basilisks and Beowulf: Monsters in the Anglo-Saxon World (London 2021), 92–93, 99.

3 Tanya Dickinson, for example, notes that the ‘dragon’ (her inverted commas) has a wolf’s head, and Daniel Ogden doubts that it is meant as a dragon at all. Dickinson, ‘Symbols of Protection’, 135; D. Ogden, The Dragon in the West (Oxford 2021), 315.

4 Davidson, ‘Hill of the Dragon’, 180; Keller, ‘Dragon in Beowulf’, 220; Mundkur, ‘Bicephalous “Animal Style”’, 457; Hicks, Animals, 58–60; Dickinson, ‘Symbols of Protection’, 135; Niles, ‘Pagan Survivals’, 126; R. D. Fulk, R. E. Bjork and J. D. Niles, Klaeber’s Beowulf, 4th edn (Toronto 2008), 242; Carver, Sutton Hoo, 29, 49; Flight, Basilisks and Beowulf, 92–93, 99.

5 K. H. Høilund Nielsen, ‘Ulv, Hest og Drage. Ikonografisk Analyse af Dyrene i Stil II–III’, Hikuin, 29 (2002), 187–218; eadem, ‘Germanic Animal Art and Symbolism’, in Altertumskunde—Altertumswissenschaft—Kulturwissenschaft: Erträge und Perspektiven nach 40 Jahren Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, ed. H. Beck, D. Gruenich and H. Steuer (Berlin 2012), 589–632; L. Hedeager, Iron Age Myth and Materiality: An Archaeology of Scandinavia AD 400–1000 (London 2011), 51–62.

6 Høilund Nielsen, ‘Ulv, Hest og Drage’, 189–91, 194, 195, 203.

7 Ibid., 205–10.

8 B. Salin, Die Altgermanische Thierornamentik. Typologische Studie über Germanische Metallgegenstände aus dem IV. bis IX. Jahrhundert, nebst einer Studie über Irische Ornamentik (Stockholm 1904), 245–71; L. Karlsson, Nordisk Form om Djurornamentik (Stockholm 1983), 23–30; Hedeager, Myth and Materiality, 52–74.

9 Høilund Nielsen, ‘Ulv, Hest og Drage’, 210–11.

10 Davidson, ‘Hill of the Dragon’, 180; Green, Sutton Hoo, 76; Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo, II, 63–66; Keller, ‘Dragon in Beowulf’, 220; Hicks, Animals, 59; Niles, ‘Pagan Survivals’, 126; Fulk et al., Klaeber’s Beowulf, 242; Williams, ‘Sense of Being Seen’, 109–10.

11 Salin, Die Altgermanische Thierornamentik, fig. 592; Pollington et al, Wayland’s Work, pl. 503; N. Adams, ‘Between Myth and Reality: Hunter and Prey in Early Anglo-Saxon Art’, in Representing Beasts in Early Medieval England and Scandinavia, ed. M. D. J. Bintley and T. J. T. Williams (Woodbridge 2015), 13–51, fig. 1.17.

12 Care Evans, Sutton Hoo, pl. 8.

13 Pollington et al, Wayland’s Work, pls 50c, 50d, 61.

14 Salin, Die Altgermanische Thierornamentik, fig. 517.

15 P. Senter and J. G. Moch, ‘A Critical Survey of Vestigial Structures in the Postcranial Skeletons of Extant Mammals’, PeerJ, 3/e1439 (2015), 1–48; D. Phillips, ‘Wealth of Evidence’, 67–74.

16 Salin, Die Altgermanische Thierornamentik, fig. 517.

17 Senter and Moch, ‘Critical Survey’, 37.

18 Mundkur, ‘Bicephalous “Animal Style”’, 457; Hicks, Animals, 59; Williams, ‘Sense of Being Seen’, 109.

19 Hicks, Animals, 59; Williams, ‘Sense of Being Seen’, 109.

20 See D. Ogden, Drakōn: Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Greek and Roman Worlds (Oxford 2013); idem, Dragons, Serpents, and Slayers in the Classical and Early Christian Worlds: A Sourcebook (Oxford 2013); P. Senter, U Mattox and E. E. Haddad, ‘Snake to Monster: Conrad Gessner’s Schlangenbuch and the Evolution of the Eragon in the Literature of Natural History’, Journal of Folklore Research, 53 (2016), 67–124.

21 L. Bodson, Hiera Zoia. Contribution à l’Étude de l’Animal Dans la Religion Grecque Ancienne (Brussels 1975), 72; Senter et al., ‘Snake to Monster’, 72.

22 Ogden, Drakōn, passim; idem, Dragons, Serpents, and Slayers, passim; P. Senter, ‘Dinosaurs and Pterosaurs in Greek and Roman Art and Literature? An Investigation of Young-Earth Creationist Claims’, Palaeontologia Electronica, 16/3:25A (2013), 1–16.

23 J. Beckwith, Ivory Carvings in Early Medieval England (London 1972), fig. 10; J. J. G. Alexander, Insular Manuscripts, 6th to the 9th Century (London 1978), pls 173, 175, 181, 188; C. E. Karkov, The Art of Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge 2012), fig. 34.

24 B. Brenk, Tradition und Neuerung in der Christlichen Kunst des Ersten Jahrtausends (Graz 1966), pl. 83; O. Pächt, Book Illumination in the Middle Ages (Oxford 1984), fig. 169; P. Lasko, Ars Sacra 800–1200 (New Haven 1994), fig. 27; H. Pulliam, ‘Humiliation and Exaltation: The Decorated Initials of the Corbie Psalter (Amiens, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 18)’, Gesta, 49 (2010), 97–115, fig. 26; Ogden, Dragon in the West, 125–26.

25 Ogden, Dragon in the West, 125–26.

26 Such roles are usually those of dragons versus equestrian saints. S. Waetzoldt, Die Kopien des 17. Jahrhunderts nach Mosaiken und Wandmalereien in Rom (Vienna 1964), fig. 42; C. Walter, The Warrior Saints in Byzantine Art and Tradition (Aldershot 2003); D. Quast, ‘Merovingian Period Equestrians in Figural Art’, Archaeologia Baltica, 11 (2009), 330–42.

27 Green, Sutton Hoo, 78; Hicks, Animals, 60–62; Niles, ‘Pagan Survivals’, 126.

28 Carver, Sutton Hoo, 29. See also Care Evans, Sutton Hoo, 31; M. Carver, Formative Britain: An Archaeology of Britain, Fifth to Eleventh Century AD (New York 2019), 98.

29 E. Nylén, Stones, Ships and Symbols: The Picture Stones of Gotland from the Viking Age and Before (Stockholm 1988), 69, 71. On the association of eight legs with speed, see B. Thorpe, Northern Mythology, comprising the principal popular Traditions and Superstitions of Scandinavia, North Germany, and the Netherlands, 3 vols (London 1851), I, 163–64; L. J. Murphy, ‘Herjans Dísir: Valkyrjur, Supernatural Feminities, and Elite Warrior Culture in the Late Pre-Christian Iron Age’ (unpublished MA thesis, University of Iceland, 2013), 132.

30 A. E. Knock, ‘Wonders of the East: A Synoptic Edition of the Letter of Pharasmanes and the Old English and Old Picard Translations’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of London, 1982).

31 London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B.v, fol. 79r.

32 Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo, II, 63–66; Bruce-Mitford, Handbook, 34; Care Evans, Sutton Hoo, 125.

33 C. Heck and R. Cordonnier, The Grand Medieval Bestiary (New York 2012), 292–93, 482.

34 See, for example, A. Pluskowski, Wolves and the Wilderness in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge 2006).

35 K. H. Høilund Nielsen, ‘The Wolf-Warrior—Animal Symbolism on Weaponry of the 6th and 7th Centuries’, in Archäologisches Zellwerk. Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte in Europa und Asien, ed. E. Pohl, U. Recker and C. Theune (Rahden 2001), 471–81.

36 J. Jesch, ‘Eagles, Ravens and Wolves: Beasts of Battle, Symbols of Victory and Death’, in The Scandinavians from the Vendel Period to the Tenth Century, ed. J. Jesch (Woodbridge 2002), 251–71.

37 Ibid., 256.

38 Heck and Cordonnier, Grand Medieval Bestiary.