"Scroll" inspired by the Sutton Hoo Helmet and Franks Casket.
Knighting “Scroll” for Richard Rampant
Richard asked me to do a scroll
to mark his knighting. His persona is pre-Christian Norse, and this always
causes a problem, because prior to the conversion, there really is little in
the way of Nordic written material.
Although runic lettering from the period exists, it is carved rather
than written, on materials such as stone, wood or bone. The use of parchment or other paper
equivalents belongs to a later date, or to other cultures.
Richard is head of household for Brighthelm,
and this gave me inspiration for how to tackle the problem. The “Bright Helm” that gives the household
its name is based on the Sutton Hoo helmet.
I decided to create a scroll based on designs used on the helmet. The helmet was, of course, found in an
Anglo-Saxon context, but is either a Scandinavian import or evidence of a
trans-boundary cultural style which is usually called the Vendel culture in
Scandinavia, but which influenced or even included early Anglo-Saxon England.
The Sutton Hoo helmet is
decorated with embossed panels made of tin-plated iron. These include three
pictorial designs (of which two have survived well enough to be reconstructed)
and several abstract designs, which I will refer to as knotwork, though they
are rather more meandering than most knotwork.
The two reconstructable pictorial
designs show:
·
Two warriors side by side carrying spears and
wearing horned helmets
·
A mounted warrior wielding a spear riding down a
man with a sword, who in turn is stabbing the horseman’s horse. Meanwhile, another figure (rather smaller in
scale… perhaps a spirit rather than another human?) either restrains or guides
the horseman’s spear from behind.
Both these designs seemed
appropriate for a knighting scroll.
These decorative panels were made
by beating thin iron plate to shape over a bronze die. We know this because such dies have been
found in Denmark (including one at Tåsinge which contains all the same elements
as the horseman panel on the Sutton Hoo helmet). The iron was then treated with tin,
presumably to give it a shiny and rust-proof finish.
I am no metal worker, but I created my dies
by using Milliput, an epoxy resin based modelling material, on a thick card
base. They were based as closely as
possible on surviving or reconstructed panels from the Sutton Hoo helmet.
I would have liked to have used
tin foil to make the actual panels, but could find no source for this, so I
used aluminium foil instead, from disposable baking trays. This was laid over the dies and rubbed down
until it took on the shape of the relief pattern of the die beneath it.
On the helmet, the panels are
placed side by side and the joins covered by grooved lengths of tinned iron,
which I made in the same way, this time using strips of half-round plastic
lengths (produced for modellers) to make the die.
Richard’s heraldic device is a
black scorpion. Scorpions understandably
do not occur much in Anglo-Saxon or Vendel imagery. However, by chance, at the time I was making
this I came upon a 3rd century image of a Palmyran god which included a
scorpion carved in relief. Wrong time,
wrong place, but the nearest I was going to get if I wanted to include
Richard’s heraldry in the scroll, which is an expectation of an SCA peerage
scroll. It is not an exact copy, but
inspired by the Palmyran example.
The panels on the helmet sit
either side of a ridge which runs front-to-back across the top of the
helmet. It is made of iron with
decorative inlay of silver wire in a scale pattern to suggest a dragon’s body. At either end is a dragon’s head, gilded and
with inlaid garnet eyes. Again, not
being a metal-worked, I used Milliput to come up with my equivalent, painted
accordingly and with craft-shop plastic gems for the eyes.
All very well, but a scroll has
to have a text, and the Sutton Hoo helmet has no lettering on it. So I needed to come up with something in a
similar style which did have text on it.
I settled on the Franks Casket.
This is named after a previous owner, not the Germanic people… it is in
fact Anglo-Saxon in origin, and includes pictorial decoration in a style
reminiscent of that on the Sutton Hoo Helmet.
It dates from the transition between paganism and Christianity, as the
images include the god Wayland and Jesus being adored by the Magi. Most crucially for my purposes, it includes
lines of Old English text carved in relief in runes.
The
casket is made of whale’s bone (not whalebone, the baleen that is used for
corsetry, but actual bones from a whale).
My own stocks of whale’s bone were somewhat depleted, so I had to come
up with an alternative material to use.
Unable to come up with anything very good, I decided to use the only
suitable thing I had to hand, which was mounting board (as used by
picture-framers). I decided I would cut
out the runic text and then glue it onto another layer, which would give the
impression of the relief carving of the original. I planned then to paint it so as to resemble
whale’s bone.
At
once it seemed I had chosen the wrong material.
Mounting board is compressed from a series of parallel layers, and these
started to de-laminate when I cut the intricate, small runes. Despairing, I used superglue to try and
repair the damage. Incredibly, not only
did it do that, but it soaked into the card creating a composite material that
had the colour, texture and strength of bone!
More by luck than judgement, I had stumbled on the perfect
material. Cutting out the text was a
laborious process, taking a fortnight or more, but I got there in the end.
So what was the text? I did not just want to transcribe a modern
English text into the Futhark runic alphabet, but just as I am not a
metalworker, so I am also not a scholar of Old English. Was there a suitable existing text I could
use? The obvious choice was
Beowulf. Might there be something in
Beowulf that was suggestive of a knighting ceremony?
Incredibly, I quickly found the
perfect text. After defeating Grendel,
Beowulf is rewarded by King Hrothgar:
Forgeaf then Beowulfe bearn
Healfdenes
the segen golden sigores to
leane;
Hroden hildecumbor, helm evil
byrnan,
mære maðþumsweord manige gesawon
Bein front of Beorn Beran. Beowulf
geþah
full on braid; no he þære
feohgyfte
for sceotendum scamigan ðorfte.
Ne gefrægn ic freondlicor feower
madmas
Golde gegyrede gummanna fela
in ealobence other gesellan.
Ymb þæs helmes hrof heafodbeorge
wirum bewunden walu without
heold,
þæt him hide laf frecne ne
meahton
Scurheard sceþan, þonne
scyldfreca
Ongean Gramum Gangan Scolde.
Or in modern English:
To Beowulf gave the Bairn of
Halfdane
a gold-wove banner, guerdon of
triumph,
broidered battle-flag,
breastplate and helmet;
and a splendid sword was seen of
many
borne to the brave one. Beowulf
took
cup in hall: for
such costly gifts
he suffered no shame in that
soldier throng.
For I heard of few heroes, in
heartier mood,
with four such gifts, so
fashioned with gold,
on the ale-bench honouring others
thus!
O’er the roof of the helmet high,
a ridge,
wound with wires, kept ward o’er
the head,
lest the
relict-of-files should fierce invade,
sharp in the strife, when that
shielded hero
should go
to grapple against his foes.
It is the most perfect text! It
shows a warrior being honoured for his brave deeds in a public ceremony by a
king in a court, with a gift-giving ceremony including the presentation of a
sword. True knighting ceremonies didn’t
exist in Beowulf’s time, but this surely is exactly the sort of ceremony which
would ultimately evolve into knighting.
No surviving text of “Beowulf” is
written in runes (the Cotton manuscript, the only original source, is in the
Latin alphabet), but I did the best I could to transcribe it into Futhark runes
(probably very inaccurately). For
“Beowulf”, I substituted “Richard” and for “the Bairn of Halfdane” I
substituted “Aerikr and Jacqueyna” (in the process massacring the alliterative
poetry of the original, but there you go!).
To conform to the requirements of
an SCA scroll text, I also added a couple of lines saying “In this manner
Aerikr and Jaquelyna, King and Queen of Drachenwald, knighted Richard Rampant
at Double Wars on 25th May AS 60”. I
asked AI to translate this into Old English, and it came up with “Þisum wīsan
Aerīcr and Iacwelyna, Dracanwealdes Cyning and Cwēn, ridderedon Rīceard
Rumpende æt Twifeald Wīgum on XXV Maius, þæs gēares MMXV”. So let’s hope that is correct! And as I had an empty space to fill, I added
a line after the Beowulf poem saying “This is the Bright Helm” (“Þis is
sebeorhta Helm”) to emphasise the link between the poem and Brighthelm.
On the assumption that Aerikr and
Jaquelyna would not want to carve their signatures in runes out of fake whale’s
bone, I added their signatures for them!
The elements were then mounted
together onto a board to create the final “scroll”.
Richard of Salesberie.
To
Richard gave Aerikr and Jaquelyna
a
gold-wove banner, guerdon of triumph,
broidered
battle-flag, breastplate and helmet;
and a
splendid sword was seen of many
borne to
the brave one. Richard took
cup in
hall: for such costly gifts
he
suffered no shame in that soldier throng.
For I
heard of few heroes, in heartier mood,
with four
such gifts, so fashioned with gold,
on the
ale-bench honouring others thus!
O’er the
roof of the helmet high, a ridge,
wound
with wires, kept ward o’er the head,
lest the
relict-of-files should fierce invade,
sharp in
the strife, when that shielded hero
should go
to grapple against his foes.
This is
the Bright Helm.
In this manner Aerikr and
Jaquelyna, King and Queen of Drachenwald, knighted Richard Rampant at Double
Wars on 25th May AS 60
Aerikr, Jaquelyna
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