Guest Blog - Another Hidden Gem, by Nicky Ellam

Another Hidden Gem

Long before I came to the museums I worked in a pub with a lass called Pat who, at the end of every shift, would always say, ‘another day, another dollar’. It happened so often that it never felt like our day’s work had truly ended until she said her little catchphrase. If that was Pat’s saying, then my version of her mantra has definitely got to be ‘another day, another site’ because I have moved once again. This time I’m at the Hull and East Riding Museum which tells the geological and archaeological stories of the local area, and the people who lived here in the past. Beginning with the Ice Age and concluding with Beverley Gate’s role during the Civil War, our museum houses a huge variety of artefacts and virtually all of them have been unearthed locally. From an Iron Age boat that’s over 2,000 years old to more everyday objects like Roman perfume bottles, we seem to have everything here. It was extremely difficult choosing just one artefact to write about, but after much thought and despite facing stiff competition, our Viking sword finally emerged triumphant.

This sword always mystified me; I spent well over a year walking past the cabinet it’s displayed in without knowing anything about it other than it dates from around 900-1000 AD. My knowledge of history was reasonable enough for me to know that, by this time, Christianity was well and truly established in England, and yet there was something about the diamond-shaped pattern on the pommel, (the semi-circular part at the top), and the guard that felt…different…there was something about it I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Maybe it’s Viking, I thought to myself, and again my knowledge of history served me well.

I already knew that England had experienced numerous Viking raids from the 8^th century onwards and that some of the raiders had stayed to settle. Although the number of raids fluctuated over time, there was a huge increase of them in the tenth and early-eleventh centuries, particularly during the reign of Æthelred II (978-1016AD), whose strategy for dealing with these invading forces was to give them money to go away. Of course, all that served to do was to encourage them to visit more often so that they could extort even more money. These pay-outs became known as ‘Dane-geld’ and it’s partly because of them that England developed one of the most sophisticated taxation systems in Europe, although I don’t think many working people thanked the king for this because he ended up earning himself the unworthy nickname of ‘Æthelred the Unready’.

However, knowing all of this only got me so far: if the Vikings were only staying long enough to extort money, why was the sword left behind? Swords were extremely time-consuming and expensive to make. As such, they were owned by the ruling elites in society who often passed them down to the next generation and so were highly valued. We only have to look at Norse myths and sagas to find evidence of how much the Vikings cherished their swords. These tales tell of the magical bond that existed between a warrior and his sword, and although the sword had power that it gave to the warrior, he in turn transferred some of his strength to the sword. This is why swords were often given names. There are even tales of swords being created by magical dwarves, and even the techniques used by blacksmiths to make them, took on mythical qualities. It therefore made absolutely no sense for something so precious to be left behind, and my unsatisfactory conclusion that a clumsy oaf lost it by accident just didn’t quite add up; the riddle of why the sword was here in our museum remained unsolved.           

Fortunately for me, I have fantastic colleagues who are always finding new ways of informing visitors about the collections. The sword is displayed alongside other weapons and warfare equipment. To accompany these cabinets, my colleagues recently added a screen that shows a slideshow featuring images from the original Bayeux tapestry in France, which the town of Bayeux kindly let us use free of charge. The Bayeux tapestry depicts the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and provides everyone with a well-known context for how armour was worn, how warfare equipment was used, the types of weapons used and by whom. Alongside these images are photos of artefacts from our collections, accompanied by captions that tell the viewer more about them. The slideshow features a whole section about the sword and it was with this addition to the display that the mystery slowly, but surely, began to unravel.

The sword was found in 1982 near the village of Skerne, which is not far from Driffield. It was found in a waterlogged site alongside the oak logs of a wooden bridge or jetty, four knives, an adze, axe, as well as the bones of sheep, cows, dogs and horses. The other finds with the sword point to it having been deliberately dropped from the bridge or jetty as part of a pagan ritual of sacrifice to the Norse gods, often known as blót. That paganism was still being practiced at this late stage caused me some confusion. Not only was Christianity the dominant religion in England, it had also become well established in Denmark by the mid-eleventh century. Furthermore, the church had very strict views about the practice of pagan rituals. Because of its associations with blót, early Christian laws in Iceland and Norway prohibited eating horse meat. Despite this, why then, did we find evidence of pagan practices so late on? I was inspired to learn more and decided, if you’ll excuse the archaeological pun, to do some digging.

It turns out that there’s a number of academics who think that, despite the predominance of Christianity, paganism was dormant but not necessarily forgotten, and that the surge of Viking visitors brought the practices back to the surface. What’s even more exciting is that the Skerne sword is but one example of a weapon that’s been deposited in wetlands or directly into running water. Not only have there been similar finds in Lincolnshire and near the River Thames, weapon deposits have also been found in Irish crannogs, as well as in Denmark and other Scandinavian countries. This points to rivers and wetlands holding some sacred significance to multiple groups of Scandinavian people who we loosely refer to as ‘Vikings’. There’s a number of potential explanations for what the sacred significance of these areas was. Is it possible that wetlands were seen as ‘in-between’ spaces where the physical world we know met with the spiritual world of the gods? These types of places are often described as ‘liminal’ because they are neither one thing nor another. If this is so, then you might choose to invoke the gods to bear witness to an oath you were making or ask for their protection, and what better way of showing the seriousness of your intentions by offering them your most treasured possession?

Rivers might also have been seen as liminal places because they physically separate areas of land and so could mark the end of your territory. By crossing a river, you could be travelling to someone else’s land and so areas near rivers could have been regarded as places of potential conflict and danger. Consequently, when crossing a bridge you might wish to make an offering to guarantee safe passage. It’s worth bearing in mind that bridges both connected and divided areas of land, and that in both pagan and early Christianity the journey across a bridge mirrored that of the departing soul making its way to the next world. In early Christianity, building a bridge was seen as a good deed because they enabled departing souls to make their journey more easily.  

Sadly we will never know the reasons behind why the owner of the Skerne sword used it as part of a ritual; that little piece of the puzzle will forever remain lost to time, but the event that prompted the ritual must have been of great importance. Also, because swords were handed down through the generations, we also can’t be sure if the date of the sword tallies with when it was deposited. Despite having done my best to unravel its mysteries, the Skerne sword still has its secrets, and I guess there’s nothing more I can do except live in hope that a clever scientist will build a time machine and let me borrow it. I can’t help but wonder what other hidden gems might lie beneath the ground I walk across when I nip to the corner shop to get my pint of milk.