Heathen Burial

The two most common forms of burial in Heathen England were those of full body interment and cremation. Full body graves are very helpful for those people wishing to learn more about the Heathen period in England as those buried were usually done so with grave goods, usually treasured personal items. Men, especially if they were warriors, were buried with weapons such as a sword, a spear and a shield, whereas women were buried with items that seem to have held some form of healing or magical purpose to them. Items such as a spoon bearing holes, possibly used as a kind of strainer, a pouch that maybe held herbs, and also a small crystal ball. Such contrasting items from male and female graves maybe goes some way to showing the differing roles that men and women played in Heathen England. The men as the warrior and protector buried with his weapons, and the woman skilled in herbs and healing buried with the tools of her trade. Such women may have been the wicce that later Christians would condemn in their laws forbidding any form of Heathen practice, women that possibly performed charms such as the Nine Herbs Charm. These items were interred with their owners bodies so as when the deceased reached the afterlife they would still own and possess what was personal to them in life, and would therefore be able to carrying on living their life and role even after death. And personal items were not restricted to full body interments, but have also been found within cremation urns too. One such cremation urn, holding the remains of a man, was found holding what was described as a form of grooming kit, bearing items such as a comb, showing, that looking presentable was just as important after death.
But before reaching the afterlife evidence seems to show that the Heathens believed there was a long journey to be made before reaching it. Within some graves food has been found, this could possibly be food for the dead to eat in the afterlife, or alternately the food could have been buried so that the deceased would have something to eat during the journey there. Giving strength to the theory of a journey to the afterlife is that some Heathens were buried with what could be described as transport. The famous Sutton Hoo burial not only held personal possessions and food, but also an entire ship. For a coastal people such as the East Anglians the ship was of course a form of transport, so if such a vessel could transport a person from place to place during life, a belief may have developed that the ship could also transport the dead from life to the afterlife.
To get a good literary insight into the custom of ship burial, we only have to read the following passage from the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf describing the funeral of a King as he lays to rest in a ship:


Then they bore him over to ocean's billow,
loving clansmen, as late he charged them,
while wielded words the winsome Scyld,
the leader beloved who long had ruled....
In the roadstead rocked a ring-dight vessel,
ice-flecked, outbound, atheling's barge:
there laid they down their darling lord
on the breast of the boat, the breaker-of-rings,
by the mast the mighty one. Many a treasure
fetched from far was freighted with him.
No ship have I known so nobly dight
with weapons of war and weeds of battle,
with breastplate and blade: on his bosom lay
a heaped hoard that hence should go


The big differnce between the Sutton Hoo and Beowulf funerals is of course that one is cast to the land, whilst the other is cast to the sea, but in principle they are very much the same, with what is very likely the same objective, to carry a King to the next life. And Sutton Hoo is not the only example of ship burial in England, for others have been found in Snape, which again is in East Anglia, and also remains of smaller boats have been found within graves at Caister-on-Sea, showing that this belief of a ship or boat being able to carry the dead to the afterlife may have been quite widespread. But such a belief was more than likely confined to coastal peoples such as the East Anglians, for those who dwelled farther inland either never developed such a belief, or lost it through years of being seperated from coastal areas. Horses too have been found in graves, and like ships and boats the horse carried the living through life, so too like ships and boats they were perhaps believed to be able to carry the dead along the journey to the afterlife. Also connecting the horse, or it's image, to burial and death is that horse images have been found upon cremation urns, possibly symbolically representing the horse as a means of transport after death. In life the Heathen Anglo-Saxons possessed objects and items that were personal and precious to them, they sailed sea's and rivers in boats and ships and covered the land or battle-field upon a horse. And so too with these forms of transport they believed they could fare along the journey to the afterlife, but not just themselves, but also their personal possessions too, to live the afterlife as a continuation of their earthly life.

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