Symbols of Protection: The Significance of Animal-ornamented Shields in Early Anglo-Saxon England

Abstract

Anglo-Saxon society is sought in the coincidence of artefactual, stylistic and iconographic symbolism. Twenty shields buried in the 6th to earliest 7th century, together with seventeen further mounts which were probably originally designed for shields, form the basis of a systematic typological review; decoration in Salin's Style I is emphasised. Analysis of dating, distribution and use in burial establishes cultural and social contexts. The meaning of the ornamental repertoire is sought through iconographic analogies, notably with Scandinavian bracteates and their putative association with a cult of Ó ðinn/Woden. It is proposed that the animal ornament invested the shields with a specific apotropaic quality, which emphasised, and amplified, the protective role of select adult males, and hence their authority over kin, community and even kingdom. Anthropomorphic and zoomorphic decoration of shields can be evidenced, at least sporadically, from Roman to Viking times. While textual and pictorial information contributes to this knowledge, detailed archaeological analysis depends primarily on the survival of metal fittings. In post-Roman Europe, with its custom of burial with weapons, shields with such fittings are famously known from later 6th-and 7th-century northern Italy, parts of Germany and Vendel-period Sweden, with the most magnificent being the great shield buried in mound 1 at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk. 1 Standing behind these, qualitatively and partly also chronologically, there is, however, a significant group of Early Anglo-Saxon shields which have their iron bosses and/or wooden boards embellished with zoomorphic metal fittings. They have been the subject of many, albeit brief, discussions, which have dated them to

The Apotropaic Symbolled Threshold to Nevern Castle—Castell Nanhyfer

“…Apotropaic beliefs have been present throughout the Medieval period, either in the form of symbols on Anglo-Saxon objects (Dickinson 2005) or as amulets in Anglo-Saxon graves (Meaney 1981). Gilchrist has shown, through the continued deposition of amulets in graves in monastic cemeteries from the 11 th to 16 th centuries, that older beliefs in good and evil spirits existed alongside Christianity (Gilchrist andSloane 2005, Gilchrist 2008).…”

Rethinking Hardown Hill: Our Westernmost Early Anglo-Saxon Cemetery?

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Fig 7(a) Type ia fish design from Eriswell, Suffolk. Drawing : digitally redrawn by the author, based on Dickinson 2005, 130; (b) the Hardown Hill symbol. Drawing : digitally redrawn by the author, based on Evison 1968, 235

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‘Fancy Objects’ in the British Iron Age: Why Decorate?

“…She also suggests that decoration can serve a protective function (see also Dickinson 2005), or act to signal a famous object of renown which confers a certain identity on the owner, user, or social group. Elaborately decorated swords and scabbards are rare and largely restricted to some East Yorkshire burials and later swords from northern England (Stead 2006).…”