| Guilden Morden boar | |
|---|---|
 The Guilden Morden boar | |
 1904 drawing of the boar | |
| Material | Bronze |
| Size | 2.5 in × 1 in (6+1⁄4 cm × 2+1⁄2 cm) |
| Created | c. 500–700 AD |
| Discovered | 1864 or 1865 Guilden Morden, England |
| Discovered by | Herbert Fordham |
| Present location | British Museum |
| Registration | 1904,1010.1 |
The Guilden Morden boar is a sixth- or seventh-century Anglo-Saxon copper alloy figure of a boar that may have once served as the crest of a helmet. It was found around 1864 or 1865 in a grave in Guilden Morden, a village in the eastern English county of Cambridgeshire. There the boar attended a skeleton with other objects, including a small earthenware bead with an incised pattern,[1] although the boar is all that now remains.[2] Herbert George Fordham, whose father originally discovered the boar, donated it to the British Museum in 1904; as of 2018 it was on view in room 41.[1][3]
The boar is simply designed, distinguished primarily by a prominent mane; eyes, eyebrows, nostrils and tusks are only faintly present.[2] A pin and socket design formed by the front and hind legs suggests that the boar was mounted on another object, such as a helmet.[1][4] Such is the case on one of the contemporary Torslunda plates found in Sweden, where boar-crested helmets are depicted similarly.[5]
Boar-crested helmets are a staple of Anglo-Saxon imagery, evidence of a Germanic tradition in which the boar invoked the protection of deities.[6] The Guilden Morden boar is one of three—together with the helmets from Benty Grange and Wollaston—known to have survived to the present,[7] and it has been exhibited both domestically and internationally.[3] The Guilden Morden boar recalls a time when such decoration may have been common;[7] in the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, where boar-adorned helmets are mentioned five times,[8][9] Hrothgar speaks of when "our boar-crests had to take a battering in the line of action."[10]
- ^ a b c Fordham 1904, p. 373.
- ^ a b Foster 1977a, p. 166.
- ^ a b British Museum boar.
- ^ Foster 1977a, pp. 166–167.
- ^ Fordham 1904, p. 374.
- ^ Foster 1977b, pp. 5, 27.
- ^ a b Meadows 2010, p. 16.
- ^ Beowulf, ll. 303–306, 1110–1112, 1286, 1327–1328, 1448–1454.
- ^ Hatto 1957a, pp. 155–156.
- ^ Heaney 2000, p. 93.