The Sutton Hoo Drinking-Horns

Sofia Utkina

15.09.15

English 2

Period B

The Sutton Hoo drinking-horns

Did you know that nowadays a wreath of oak leaves with large drinking horns together is the habitual and traditional prize for the champion team of the Hornussen sport competition in the Swiss culture?

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        The ancient drinking-horns derive from the Viking age in Scandinavia, however they were excavated from the princely burial at Taplow, Buckinghamshire, and at the Sutton Hoo burial site in the late 6th century A.D. They were made of massive horns of the auroch, a vast kind of ox obsolete in Britain by the Anglo-Saxon extent of time, and used as drinking vessels throughout the Middle Ages in Europe. They are one of the most rare and prestigious belongings, and have a long history among the ancient population of mainland Europe; from were they were possibly brought. The drinking-horns could hold near two liters of fluid, conceivably brew or mead, and were used at social assemblages and feasting. The genuine horns did not survive in modern times and have been remade utilizing the first plated silver fittings. They were stamped with outlines of intertwining illustrations of animals, which were depicted with raised hands and helmeted heads. Human veils and masks were also represented on the horns, with the edge of every horn finishing in a ruthless bird’s head.  

         According to an English archaeologist Leslie Webster, throughout the poem of Beowulf the drinking-horns are described as being created in order to be “passed by women from hand to hand” (214) at the feasting and drinking gatherings, such as ones that were held in the Mead-hall (Heorot), built by King Hrothgar, and the Hygelac’s hall, in which “Hygd and Wealhtheow” (214) orderly “served warriors” (214), to show off power and dominance among their reign. The poem also depicts the drinking-horns, with the purpose of being used at the Feast of Heorot, as the serving of mead in carved horns, through lines 494-496: “An attendant stood by with a decorated pitcher, pouring bright helpings of mead”.