SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Beowulf and Sutton H 00 279
there are no animal or human sacrifices in the English
instance, and the Sutton Roo boat was not covered by
a low, flat-topped circular mound typical of the Swedish
boat-graves. In fact, as he remarked in an earlier
publication, 'The only thing that appears distinctively
Swedish about the funeral arrangements is the use of
a boat.'109 A recent review of boat-grave burials,
written because of the many finds in the past fifteen years,
calls for a reconsideration of the custom, because of the
'high degree of local variation in the construction and
treatment of the boats";'!" I am not qualified to say how
this affects the East Anglia-Uppland relationship; but it
seems that the distinctive similarity between boat-burials
in these two areas lies merely in their early date.
If we begin our relation of the Sutton Roo material to
the poem Beowulf with the ship as our starting-point, the
way is indeed rough. Dr Bruce-Mitford tells us:
The Sutton Hoo burial shows ... that ship inhumation, with
provision of grave-goods similar to that of Scyld, was being
practised in an Anglo-Saxon setting, in a royal context and on
a scale comparable with Scyld's funeral, as late as the second
quarter of the seventh century ... 111 .
While this is true, the uncomfortable fact remains that
there is no ship-burial in Beowulf. Scyld is laid in a
vessel, and his treasures are piled about him. The ship
is then let loose, to sail where it will, in God's keeping.
The most convincing parallel yet cited for this practice
comes from an unexpected quarter, the life of St Gildas,
written by a monk of Ruys in Brittany. Mr Cameron has
recently commented on the relations between the burials
of Scyld and St Gildas, and cites the following parallels:
(r) Both 'sea burials', if such they may be called, were
undertaken at the express wish of those so honoured.
(2) Both had treasure laid on their bodies, Scyld his golden
109 'Recent theories', 64.
110 See Jenny-Rita Nsess, 'Grav i bat eller bat i gray', Stavanger Museum
Arbok (1969), 57-76, quotation 76.
111 Beowulf and the Seventh Century (1971), 88.