That was when she noticed #SuttonHoo on Twitter tends that Sue Brunning knew it was not going to be like any other week.
As curator of the early medieval collection at the British Museum, and as the guardian of the spectacular Sutton Hoo treasures, Brunning is very accustomed to taking an interest in what is rightly one of the museum’s most beloved exhibits.
But with the launch last week of The Dig, a major Netflix film about the dramatic discovery of the Anglo-Saxon tomb and artifacts in a Suffolk field in 1939, interest in Sutton Hoo has risen.
Traffic to the museum’s web pages about the treasure has tripled, while a video recorded by Brunning about the famous Sutton Hoo helmet, reconstructed from fragments discovered in the tomb, has been viewed 650,000 times since mid-January.
A blog by Brunning about the discovery crashed under the weight of interest while her own email inbox and Twitter feed was overwhelmed with queries. For a while, the movie was Netflix’s no. 1 in the UK the most viewed.
“I knew the film would be popular with fellow archaeologists and people interested in periods and things like that,” says Brunning, who advises the actors and filmmakers behind the production, “but it seems to have surpassed ordinary audiences and really touched. a nerve in people.
‘I mean, I think Sutton Hoo is obviously worthy of inclining, but to actually see it [doing so] was surreal in many ways. ”
It was a similar story on the site of Sutton Hoo himself, the house and grounds formerly owned by Edith Pretty, portrayed by Carey Mulligan in the film, commissioned by the self-taught local archaeologist Basil Brown, played by Ralph Fiennes, around the great heaps that stood on her land.
Sutton Hoo is now run by the National Trust, and although the new visitor center and Pretty house are currently closed, their website and social media channels were also ‘insane’, according to Laura Howarth, the site’s archeology and engagement manager. .
“We knew Sutton Hoo was a real source of pride for local Suffolk people, but it would be fair to say that none of us expected how much interest would be generated from this story,” says Howarth.
Although only locals who can do their closing exercise can currently visit, they have noticed that more people are walking the field, and they are eager to see where the real Brown worked with a team of other archaeologists more than 80 years ago.
Both Brunning and Howarth would like to see this interest translate into visitor numbers when their sites finally reopen, perhaps later this year. But they are also hopeful that the interest will spark curiosity about the period in which the unknown king was buried in Sutton Hoo, in the early 7th century.
“If you call the Tudors, the Victorians, everyone knows what we’re talking about,” Howarth says. ‘But the Anglo-Saxons have always been something we do not really know where it fits into the timeline. Are they the same as the Vikings? Who are they? “
For Howard Williams, professor of archeology at the University of Chester, fictitious depictions of archeology and shiny treasures can be of great importance in stimulating real interest in the field, even though in many cases the fictions are very inaccurate.
Students still excitedly show up on his courses about a legendary King Arthur or inspired by reading the Lord of the Rings, he says, ‘and it’s still positive because we can use it to take them creatively on a travel to what we actually know, which is much more interesting and exciting.
‘Generations of students love Indiana Jones, [and] I’m not cuddly about it. I like that. You can work with it. ”
Brunning, who admits that it was ‘swords and sandals movies’ that first inspired her interest in the past, agrees. In her own case, it was a “lightning moment” on her first encounter with the Sutton Hoo treasure during a university visit to the museum that turned her into an early medieval, she says.
“I was completely electrified. I could not believe that people were capable of doing this kind of technical art at a time I had always thought of as the dark ages after the Romans left. And I just thought, ‘I need to know more about this.’
“It’s still hard to believe I’m taking care of it now.”
What did the Anglo-Saxons ever do for us?
Language
While modern English has been heavily influenced by Latin, Old French and many other languages, it is the dialects spoken by the Germanic peoples that have settled in England since the fifth century. Many of the most common words used daily come directly from Old English, and it is possible to compose simple sentences in Anglo-Saxon English that are essentially unchanged today.
The English nation
Initially formed into a group of separate (and often conflicting) kingdoms, it was among the Anglo-Saxons that the idea of England as a nation arose. The Northumbrian monk Bede’s Church History of the English People was completed in 731, but only in the 10th century did the kingdoms unite as a recognizable English nation.
Christianity
Christianity first came to Britain under the Romans, and the invading Saxon kings and their kingdoms were initially pagan. However, under the influence of Roman missionaries and Irish and Scottish monks, the Anglo-Saxons gradually converted to Christianity. There is still little Anglo-Saxon architecture, but there are still a number of churches facing the conquest that indicate they worshiped.
Poetry
The Anglo-Saxons left behind a collection of the richest and most provocative poetry in the English language, from Beowulf’s heroic fantasy to mystical religious verses such as The Dream of the Red to historical accounts such as the Battle of Maldon, which tells of an Anglo -Saxian defeat at Essex by invading the Vikings in 991.