Ormsgard! Spear Dance Reconstruction at Sutton Hoo.

Apprentice Carpenter                                                                       Combat                                                             Crowd examine food display

One of the modern pleasures of re-enactment for any historical period is to conduct experimental archaeology, an activity valued by many professionals and featured in TV programmes such as Time Team. Ormsgard! Dark Ages Theatre, our independent group of enthusiasts decided to tackle a hitherto unexplored feature of Anglo Saxon and Germanic activity; that of ritual dance, over six weekends when we are performing other re-enactment activities at the spectacular Anglo Saxon site Sutton Hoo, Suffolk this summer. For a relatively small independent group we cram a lot in: talks on food and runes, archery and storytelling, leatherwork, woodwork and blacksmithing as well as the more usual combat activities, cooking, spinning and weaving.

The existing evidence.
There is certainly evidence fordancing with spears in both Anglo Saxon and Viking sources. The Mantebo memorial stone, and the Oland metal helmet stamp from Sweden, and the foil covered helmet plates from Sutton Hoo, Suffolk and Caenby, Lincs , England all show figures bearing spears, (and sometimes additionally a sword), in dance poses. The helmet foils are similar to dies found at Torslunda, Sweden. They frequently feature either animal masks or helmets with a boar crest (such as the one from Torslunda bronze die) or elaborate horned bird terminals. This motif can also be found on a Anglo Saxon buckle from Finglesham, Kent.

The bird terminal helmets would certainly be too unwieldy to fight in. The boars shown on some helmets , (and mentioned in the Anglo Saxon poem Beowulf) are similar to the 7th century helmet finds at Benty Grange, Derbyshire and Woolaston in Northants, and the boar found without a helmet at Guilden Morden, Cambs. The boar is sacred to the Heathen fertility god Frey. Some texts mistakenly associate it with Freyja, his sister/consort, but she is associated with cats and tigers.

The Sutton Hoo helm is of Anglo Saxon ownership, generally believed to be King Rædwald, who died around 625 CE, and thought to have been the occupant of the spectacular treasure ship burial there. It is possible the helmet was made for him by Swedish craftsmen. Another helmet fragment discovered in Caenby, Lincolnshire, shows further traces of similar ritual dancers, and could be directly related: King Rædwald who defeated Æthelfrith of Northumbria near there, losing his son Rægenhere in the battle.

Figures on the golden Gallehus horns from Tønder, Denmark also included dancers

There is historical written evidence for Scandinavian warriors dancing: the Vikings who formed the Emperor’s Varangian Guard in Constantinople are described in Constantine VII Porphrogenitus’ Book of Ceremonies (c.953) as dancing in two circles, with some wearing skins or masks, along with chants of “Toúl!” and clashing staves on shields. Whether those dancers are of the same type illustrated above is hard to say. It seems to be a very different tradition. The Roman historian Tacitus describes a dance performed by unpaid, naked youths of Germanic tribes at each festival, who danced amongst swords and spears levelled at them, showing skill and daring my making moves around them.

How to reconstruct?
Whilst I have knowledge of common folk dance moves from several cultures, we wanted to see what could be achieved bearing a pair of spears? How far could we end up in the poses shown in the illustrations? E.g. one dancer appears to be dragging his leg in a classic ‘slide’ movement, of advancing one leg, then dragging the other to meet it. There was the influence of the Viking inspired, but still active communal chain dance of the Faeroes Islands, as well as rapper and long sword dances from England. We came up with some possible moves as part of a weekend workshop session, but deliberately left things open; it would be unlikely we could reproduce the diverse dances, (from different time periods and countries) accurately, but we could try to see what worked, and what didn’t.

                                             Spear Drill                                            Clashing                                                       Threat to Centre

Cross Spears                                            Side Slide Step                                            Leaping the Spear

Involving public participation.
It felt important to change the general public perception of the spear as a ‘poor mans weapon’ so we started our display with a fierce formation ‘martial arts style’ single spear drill, showing what was possible with it in both attack and defence, and emphasising that it was the basic weapon set (together with a shield) for the majority of Anglo Saxon warriors.

Having put together a chorus move (to link the dance together) and some basic moves, we decided to throw it open to the public, who would provide a wider range of opinions, and many more bodies than our meagre dozen or so available to do it. The first outing to Sutton Hoo for us this year was the first weekend in May, and proved gloriously sunny. Having not yet researched what Anglo Saxons did to prevent sunburn we had to use some modern cream! From a safety angle we assessed the risk and provided them with blunt broomsticks instead of sharp pointy spears. We created information boards with pictures of artefacts and some description of what we were trying to achieve, as well as some more detailed handouts for the enthusiastic. After demonstrating a little of what we had already worked on, we simply asked for volunteers from the audience to join in. They volunteer willingly with the help of axe, sword and spear, and the activity proved popular with children as well as adults!

The chorus movement of clashing spears, outstretching arms and bashing the spear butts to the ground proved useful in getting people back to a recognisable stage of the dance. Other movements included presenting the spears crossed to both the circle and audience (“Look, I’ve got two spears!”) and charging across the circle avoiding someone doing the same from the opposite direction. This evolved into holding them on the hips, protruding out like boar tusks, and clashing tips in the middle. Something we found from the experiment was that unless everyone was carefully rehearsed, someone had to indicate which pair of opposite dancers would go next. Otherwise, either nobody went, or two or more couples tried to go at a time. This was part of our learning as a larger group: whilst in our own small set of dancers it was easy to communicate and see who was to go next – a larger group needed someone to co-ordinate them. (Cue me and my big mouth!)

There was learning to with the crossed spear movement: we had not realised when some youngsters joined in that their hands were not big enough to hold two spears crossed in one hand. From this we can conclude that there must have been a minimum age/size requirement for dancers, probably related to when they were recognised as warriors.

A very warrior-like move of driving the two spears into the ground as a mock attack on the audience was popular, but it felt quite tricky circling with the ‘lame step’ in any co-ordinated way without a bit of concerted practice.

Keeping a fun element, we invited everyone who wanted to a brief solo spot in the middle. Imagination generated everything from a Cossack move to jumping over spears and a hilarious ‘pole dance’ with leg provocatively coiled around a spear!

One group move lifted directly from sword dancers was to work in couples, holding the spears between us and moving in a dos-i-dos figure of eight around other couples. It could be confusing, but was worth the effort when it went right. One visitor ingeniously suggested that we stand in a circle and do a 'Mexican wave' movement by sequentialy raising and lowering our spears.

Music
With a need to have the maximum number of us dancing, it was decided at this stage to use recorded music of a simple percussive kind, to keep us to a rhythm. Later we intend to equip others in the audience with percussion instruments to join in with, so that a larger number can be involved.

Pagan religious tunes were played at a wedding in the Icelandic saga Bosi and Herraud, but no instruments are mentioned. Whilst the lyre and harp are well known in Viking and Saxon contexts, it is also known that a loud lurs trumpet, stone framed drums and bird bone whistle were all available to various Viking ancestors, as well as the bull roarer and rattles in the shape of bulls testicles. (Funny, but I haven’t seen those on sale at any re-enactors market yet, but give them time.) One source says that late period Anglo Saxons had bagpipes, cymbals, chimes, psaltery and horn available as well as the ubiquitous lyre and harp, so if ever we manage to recruit a band to accompany us, it should be loud, varied and should provide hours of fun producing and practising the instruments. Any volunteers?

The Future
As the season progresses we should learn more and refine the dance. Then we intend to bring in other embellishments such as dressing in animal masks & skins, boars helmets or horned headdresses, and possibly providing tabards for our volunteers. Developing a period ‘band’ would be great, but continuing to involve audience participation by handing out simple percussion instruments is part of the plan to.

The dates Ormsgard! Dark Ages Theatre are conducting this exercise at Sutton Hoo, (near Woodbridge, Suffolk) are:
3rd-5th May, 25th -26th May, 12-13th July, 26th-27th July, 9th-10th August & 30th-31st August, 2008.

Illustrations from ‘Heathen Paths: Viking & Anglo Saxon Pagan Beliefs’ by permission of Pete Jennings and Capall Bann Press. Other photographs © Pete Jennings & Kerstin Neumann, 2008.

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