Archaeologists Unearth Early Medieval Sword Engraved With Mysterious Runes in a Cemetery in England

Archaeologists have discovered an early medieval cemetery in southeastern England. Inside one of its treasure-filled burials—which date to the fifth and sixth centuries C.E.—they have also unearthed a well-preserved sword.

Found in a man’s grave, the weapon’s silver- and gold-plated hilt is engraved with patterns, and a ring is fused to its pommel (the top of its handle). Its long blade sports a “runic script,” reports the Guardian’s Dalya Alberge. Remarkably, researchers also recovered parts of the sword’s scabbard—a sheath of wood and leather lined in beaver fur.

“Swords like this are very special,” Duncan Sayer of the University of Central Lancashire, the site’s lead archaeologist, tells Smithsonian magazine. “It looks like the man it was buried with is hugging it. … The hilt and guard end up at head and shoulder height, visually intermeshed with his face and his personal appearance.”

The sword might have been a gift from a royal, Sayer adds, and it may have been used for generations—signifying social status—before accompanying its last owner to the grave. “It gives him authority,” he says.

Archaeologists have excavated 12 burials in the cemetery, which they think could hold as many as 200 interments. The sword-hugging man’s grave also contained a gold pendant engraved with a dragon or serpent, which researchers think might have been a “treasured keepsake” belonging to a female relative, per the Guardian.

All of the men’s graves contained larger weapons, like spears and shields, while the women’s graves held knives, brooches, buckles and other artifacts. The sword will soon be featured on BBC Two’s “Digging for Britain,” which is hosted by anthropologist Alice Roberts.

“It’s an extraordinary Anglo-Saxon cemetery, with really beautifully furnished graves, a lot of weapon burials where you find things like iron spear-points and seaxes, which are Anglo-Saxon knives—and then there’s this astonishing sword,” Roberts tells the Guardian. “I’ve never seen one that’s so beautifully preserved.”

Researchers are working to understand the weapon’s significance and markings. In particular, the ring attached to its hilt indicates an interesting origin.

“It’s been suggested that swords had their own distinct identity, and the ring on this one may suggest that it is a gift from a king or important lord,” Sayer tells Newsweek’s Flynn Nicholls.

Hoping to shed new light on funerary practices, conservator Dana Goodburn-Brown is studying and preserving the sword in a lab. Her analysis shows that the body wasn’t covered right away, “perhaps giving loved ones time to say their goodbyes,” writes the Guardian.

Because the weapon is in the lab, Sayer’s team hasn’t yet examined all of its mysterious runes. “They don’t often say anything that we can understand,” he tells Newsweek. “But they would have been meaningful to the people who used and saw the sword and understood its story.”

The cemetery also holds foreign objects like Scandinavian and Frankish grave goods, which researchers say reflect a changing political landscape in fifth- and sixth-century England.

After the cemetery’s artifacts are excavated and conserved, they’ll travel to the Folkestone Museum in Kent. Researchers have said the graves are near Canterbury, north of Folkestone, but they haven’t divulged the cemetery’s exact location.

Sonja Anderson | READ MORE

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in New York City.