page_title: Sutton Hoo helmet
section_title: Cultural impact
hierarchical_section_title: Sutton Hoo helmet / Current reconstruction / Cultural impact
caption_attribution_description: English: A wicker copy of the Sutton Hoo Helmet. On display at the Museum of English Rural Life in Reading, Berkshire.
context_page_description: The Sutton Hoo helmet is a decorated and ornate Anglo-Saxon helmet found during a 1939 excavation of the Sutton Hoo ship-burial. It was buried around 625 and is widely believed to have belonged to King Rædwald of East Anglia; its elaborate decoration may have given it a secondary function akin to a crown. The helmet was both a functional piece of armour that would have offered considerable protection if ever used in warfare, and a decorative, prestigious piece of extravagant metalwork. It is described as "the most iconic object" from "one of the most spectacular archaeological discoveries ever made," and perhaps the most important known Anglo-Saxon artefact.
  The visage contains eyebrows, a nose, and moustache, creating the image of a man joined by a dragon's head to become a soaring dragon with outstretched wings. It has become a symbol of the Early Middle Ages and "of Archaeology in general." It was excavated as hundreds of rusted fragments, and was first displayed following an initial reconstruction in 1945–46, and then in its present form after a second reconstruction in 1970–71.
context_section_description: The 1971 reconstruction of the Sutton Hoo helmet was widely celebrated, and in the five decades since it has come to symbolise the Middle Ages, archaeology, and England. It is depicted on the covers of novels, textbooks, and scholarly publications, such as The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell and The Anglo-Saxons by James Campbell, and has influenced artists, filmmakers and designers.  At the same time, the helmet has become the face of a time once known as the Dark Ages, but now recognised for its sophistication—in part because of the finds from Sutton Hoo—and referred to as the Middle Ages. It gives truth to a period of time known from depictions of warriors and mead halls in Beowulf, once thought fanciful, and personifies the Anglo-Saxons in post-Roman Britain. Considered "the most iconic object" from an archaeological find hailed as the "British Tutankhamen," in 2006 it was voted one of the 100 cultural icons of England alongside the Queen's head stamp, the double-decker bus, and the cup of tea.
caption: A wicker copy of the helmet on display at the Museum of English Rural Life in Reading, Berkshire[775][776]
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