21. Journey to the Edge of Middle-earth

I am sitting on top of King Redwald’s burial mound. It was built by the Anglii people in around AD 650, at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk. This large, oval pile of earth covers one of the most famous graves in the world. The original vista from the top of the mound would have been breathtaking, and can still be glimpsed between the stand of trees planted in the nineteenth century. Beyond them, almost immediately below one end of the mound, the ground drops away steeply to the Deben river below – from where Redwald’s ship and others would have sailed the short distance to the North Sea, and directly to what is now Denmark.

All around still, today, are the undulations of other mounds in this graveyard of kings and warriors. In the background are views across distant fields. This would be the last sight of the dead, about to embark on their final journey down the River Deben and out into the ocean, sailing to the edge of Middle-earth.

The Anglii tribe, like many in seventh-century Anglo-Saxon England, celebrated their great chiefs by interring them in coffins and then piling earth over them to make a great mound to identify the place. These burials were once the occasion of great rituals. Most historians reckon that the chieftain honoured in this mound was Redwald, buried with a full-sized, 90-foot long ship, and a great hoard of treasure. The site has been excavated by archaeologists, and the treasure removed to the British Museum. Redwald’s body had completely disappeared by the time the mound was excavated. Experts reckon that the acid in the soil might well have disintegrated him within the first seven of the 1,300 years that the mound has existed. It is just possible, although highly unlikely, that the mound was built simply to house his valued belongings. It could also be that something else happened to his body – as would be the case if he had been lost at sea in a storm or a battle.

Archaeologists have estimated that originally the mounds would have been visible from the site of Ramsholt Church, four miles away – perhaps even from as far away as the Roman Saxon Shore fortress at Walton, formerly situated eight miles to the south on a cliff (now lost through coastal erosion).

So the mounds, now smaller as a result of weathering over the last 1,500 years, once stood high and dominant on the East-Anglian skyline. Visitors sailing the short distance upriver from the east coast to reach the king’s stronghold would have seen, looming up on the right, these impressive tributes to the former chieftains of these tribes. Their substantial size, and the valuable nature of the buried treasure hoard, would certainly have impressed incomers to the kingdom with the earthly influence, mana and luck of the buried chieftains and, by extension, the whole tribe.

Kings were aware of the eternal glory emanating from having erected to their memory and their honour one of these barrows, as the mounds are called. In the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, the hero lies mortally wounded from his battle with the dragon. In his dying speech, he instructs his warriors to have the greatest of them erect him a barrow: ‘Bid the famed-in-battle build me a splendid mound on the headland after my pyre; it shall be a reminder to my people, rising high on Hronesnaesse, so that seafarers will call it Beowulf’s Barrow.’ The barrows seem to have served for generations to come as sites of honour and veneration of dead chiefs.

Burial Mounds in Britain

Burial mounds in Britain stretch back in time as far as Stonehenge. The earliest ones were long mounds, with ditches dug around them. Usually they contained a chamber of wood or stone that enclosed the body. Then around 2300 BC people – perhaps incomers from the Iberian peninsula – started building round barrows. These were constructed of an earth bank and surrounded by a ditch. They eventually replaced the long barrows, although archaeological evidence shows that people re-used the old barrows as well.

In the first millennium, the Celtic people of early Middle-earth used flat burials like in modern cemeteries until around the mid-sixth century, when people started burying their dead in the ancient burial mounds left by earlier civilizations, along with cremation burials. In the seventh century the building of mounds began again, like the ones at Sutton Hoo.

Historians have suggested that the reasons for the return of burial mounds may have been the evolving of more hierarchical kingship societies, rather than the small-scale tribal and extended-family settlements of earlier times. The impressive mounds mark the return of the big chiefs. There were also continuing influences from Scandinavia with later waves of settlers, and the tradition may have been transported from there.

There are many burial mounds still visible in England. In addition, we can identify the sites of former mounds by the evidence of place-names that have survived, or can be read in ancient documents. For example, in Derbyshire, the word ‘hlaw’, meaning mound, appears in placenames as ‘-low’. Over thirty of these can be shown to have been burial mounds. At least eleven of them have a personal name as the first element, identifying the person who was buried there – for example, Bassa at Baslow, Eatta at Atlow, Hucca at Hucklow and Tidi at Tidelow.

Some other names include Taplow in Buckinghamshire, which means Tappa’s Mound – he was a warrior. There are many in Shropshire also, including Beslow, Longslow, Munslow, Onslow, Peplow, Purslow and Whittingslow and in Herefordshire, Wolferlow. All these appear to be named after individuals, probably chiefs of early Anglo-Saxon settlements in these regions.

The Anglo-Saxons practised two kinds of burial – either interring the body in a grave, or cremation, in which the body was burned, and the ashes buried in a pot. In either tradition, people in pre-Christian burials were often laid to rest with some selected personal effects, usually assumed to be used in the afterlife.

The nature of the objects buried with the individual seems to reflect the status of the person. Male burials sometimes included a spear, or spear with shield, sometimes neither. Such standard practice would reflect the status of warrior class and serf. The placing of swords with burials are rare. Perhaps these expensive weapons served as symbols of a more potent power and rank.

Between the sixth and seventh century, some Anglo-Saxons were cremated, while others were buried. The reason is still a mystery. Perhaps the differences in practice were to do with tribal customs stretching way back in history and reflecting differences in the gods being honoured. It may have been a choice of the person in their lifetime. Or it may reflect on the character or status of the person concerned in some way that we do not yet understand.

On the continent, the Romans tell us that the early Saxons cremated their tribal chieftains with specially designated kinds of wood – oak, beech, pine or juniper. So it was obviously a finely-tuned ritual. Cremation seems to presume that the afterlife could be reached without the physical body, although since the soul was believed to journey beyond the body in life, this is hardly surprising.

Redwald’s Burial Mound

As the afternoon light begins to fade, the power of the Sutton Hoo looms larger. I feel some unease, sitting on King Redwald’s mound. Some years ago it was opened for archaeological excavation, and then covered again. Today visitors to the site are ushered onto its surface for historical talks. But beneath me, the burial took place of a great king, amid much pomp and ceremony. And presuming that Redwald’s body was inhumed in the part of the boat where the treasure hoard was located, he would have been directly beneath where I am sitting.

A light mist begins to creep up from the river. Energy forces all around. If the Anglii were here today, they would probably feel that Redwald’s spirit could still be contacted on this mound. We know that these people assumed a continuing spirit, for we have accounts of their going to burial mounds and leaving offerings, in order to converse with the spirits of the dead. And as so often before, we know what rituals were being practised from the complaints and laws of the Christian authorities. Aelfric for example, railed that ‘Still witches resort to heathen burial-sites with their evil rites, and call upon the devil, and he arrives in the form of the person who lies buried there as if he had arisen from death.’ So Aelfric imagined a kind of ghost form for the person who has died, which came in response to the ceremonies, the evil rites – except that Aelfric believed it was not the person himself who had arisen from the dead, but only the devil impersonating him. Aelfric went on to explain that a witch could not bring about this appearance of a person from the dead, when he said, ‘… but she can not achieve that, that a dead person arise by her witchcraft’. When Aelfric says that the witch can manifest a figure from the burial mound, but not the real person, he is reserving for the Church the exclusive right to resurrection.

Seeking to speak with the dead at burial mounds was not only the preserve of witches. Ordinary people tried it too, at least towards the end of the Middle-earth period. One of the Icelandic sagas tells the story of a shepherd named Hallbjorn. He sought inspiration for his poetry by sitting, and then even sleeping on the mound where the poet Thorleif was buried. To make initial contact with his spirit, he started to compose a poem in Thorlief’s honour. But Hallbjorn was overwhelmed by the emotion of what he was trying to achieve, and found it impossible to complete.

One night as Hallbjorn slept on the mound, he dreamed that the figure of a person came out of the mound, and showed him how to compose such a poem properly. As he came to wakefulness, he thought he glimpsed the figure re-entering the mound. The story reassures us that the poem he wrote as a result of ‘the dream’ was a successful one – as indeed was all the poetry he wrote after that.

Even the gods talked to the dead. In the Ynglinga Saga, Odin would ‘… wake up dead men from the earth, or sit down under men hanged’ as ways of seeking knowledge. The sitting under hanged men perhaps refers not to burial mounds, but the practice of executing criminals at crossroads.

We also know that in Norse legend, Odin journeyed like a shaman to the Lowerworld to gain knowledge from seeresses who had died. A disturbing dream suggested bad omens regarding the fate of the god Balder. Odin rode to the Lowerworld to raise a seeress from the dead, in order to consult her about the meaning of the dreams: ‘On Odin rode … till he came to the lofty hall of Hel. Then Odin rode to its eastern gate, where he knew the Sibyl’s barrow stood. He chanted the mighty spells that move the dead, till she rose all unwilling, and her corpse spake…’ This story also seems to indicate that the seeking of knowledge from dead people was not a mere mental process like meditation. It involved some sort of manifestation of a person, as if in ghost form.

Sometimes the corpse could not speak of its own accord. We have a report of a ritual for requiring a corpse to speak prior to burial. In another saga, the character Hading and his female companion Harthgrepa sought shelter for the night at a house, ‘where they were celebrating in melancholy manner the funeral of the master, who had just died. Desiring to probe the will of the gods by magic, she inscribed most gruesome spells on wood and made Hading insert them under the corpse’s tongue, which then, in a voice terrible to the ear, uttered these lines…’ We do not know whether rune staves could be similarly inserted under the tongue of a ghost raised from the dead.

The relationship between the people and the dead spirits was not all one-way. The corpses still retained some sense of character. Sometimes they simply did not feel inclined or obligated to answer the call from the living. In ‘The Waking of Angantyr’, in the ancient collection of Norse poems called the Elder Edda, a character called Hervor summons her father Angantyr from his grave with this invocation: ‘Angantyr, wake! Hervor calls you,/ Your only daughter whom you had by Tofa … / Hervard, Hjorward, hrani, awake!/ Hear me, all of you, under the tree-roots…’

This spell does not result in any response, and Hervor has a tantrum. She curses all of the spirits who are ignoring her: ‘May ants shred you all to pieces,/ Dogs rend you; may you rot away.’ She seems to damn their physical corpses to destruction as a way of insulting their spiritual beings. At this, Angantyr manifests before her, and tells her she is crazy: ‘Your words are mad, without meaning to them.’ Perhaps he is saying here that her damnation of the physical corpses is nonsense, and that she misunderstands the nature of their relationship.

Ship Funerals

When the people of the Anglii tribe constructed the large mound as a monument to King Redwald, they buried not only his body and a treasure hoard. Remarkably, they also interred with him in his honour an entire ship, complete with its 38 oars. Archaeological exploration revealed the impression the ship left in the soil of the mound. It was slender and elegant and nearly 90 feet in length. Historians presume that it must have been dragged up from the river below the hill, and moved on log rollers to its position in the mound.

This procedure seems to have a long history. From very early times in the north, ships have been associated with fertility and the cycle of birth, life and death. Bronze Age carvings have been found in Scandinavia depicting ship and horse in conjunction with the sun wheel, the prime source of life.

And in the Celtic tradition, the beautiful maids from the Land of Youth in the Irish legends often arrive in boats – the voyage over the water is remembered in Celtic tradition as an entry into the Otherworld. So ship burials seem to symbolize the journey beyond death in this world, and entry into life in another.

Certainly they could be magical. In one of the stories, Skidbladnir was a marvellous ship made by the dwarves for the god Frey. It was golden, and large enough to hold all of the gods, fully armed. As soon as its sail was hoisted, a breeze sprang up and filled it, projecting the boat forward. But then, when no longer needed, Frey could dismantle the ship, fold it up and put it into a pocket.

Ship burial was widespread in the Nordic countries during the Viking Age and among the Anglo-Saxons in Britain. In Bronze and Iron Age peat-bog sites in Scandinavia, small model ships have been found. By about AD 600, the dead were buried in real boats that were lowered into the ground and, if the deceased was a king, accompanied by weapons, jewellery and various treasures.

Tolkien used this powerful image in The Lord of the Rings. Boromir was a powerful and dedicated warrior. He died in battle fighting Ores, and in defending Merry and Pippin. He was given a full funeral, and his body was set afloat down Anduin, the greatest river of Tolkien’s fictional Middle-earth. The characters Aragorn, Legolas and Gimil placed Boromir in the middle of the boat, his head resting on his folded cloak. Around him they laid his weapons, and beneath his feet the swords of his enemies. The funeral boat was towed out into the river behind another, and when they were in the swift running river they cast loose the funeral boat. It rode the whole river, over fall and rapids, and eventually took Boromir out into the Great Sea, at night and under a starry sky.

In the real Middle-earth, the dead may have been cremated on their ships. This happened in Snorri Sturluson’s account in the Prose Edda story of Balder’s funeral. He was burned on his ship, in the presence of all the gods. In fact, the burning of a ship may have been necessary to ensure a satisfactory outcome, for it could have been a macabre and somewhat anti-climactic ending to find the ship ground onto the beach at the next tide, or stuck in the reeds at the edge of a river.

Over the Edge of Middle-Earth

Why a ship? There are prosaic possibilities. Perhaps Redwald sailed often himself to the Danish shore, trading or fighting. Possibly ships were, along with treasure, the ultimate sign of wealth, and burying a whole ship was a symbol of Redwald’s power. But the evidence below, following on from what we have just considered, suggests that the burying of a ship enabled the honoured deceased to undertake a journey after death.

The Beowulf poem relates such a ship burial. After loading the body of the ‘beloved folk-king, lord of rings, the mighty one by the mast. There was much treasure, a fortune fetched from afar…’ – just like Redwald. Then something different happened. ‘There now they set up for him a golden sign, high over head, and let the waters bear him, gave all to garsecg … No man, whether the wise under the hall’s roof, or heroes under the heavens’, can know and truly say who received that lading.’

Garsecg is the ocean. But it is more than the sea as we know it. Anglo-Saxon cosmology featured a vision of Middle-earth ringed with garsecg. It was a waterway that marked the boundary between this world and the next. So this ocean went to infinity. The ship, whether that described in Beowulf, or belonging to Redwald at Sutton Hoo, was a means of voyaging out of this Middle-earth, and across the encircling waters of garsecg, the boundary between worlds.

The weapon of the Norse giants, Aegir and Ran, seems to have been a net, with which Ran would entrap seafarers. All waters had a presence, and a spirit, but the ocean in particular was powered by a personality which moved the people. We can see this in one of the many Anglo-Saxon riddles, in which the task of the listener was to guess what, or whom, is speaking. The lines of this riddle, originally written over a thousand years ago, translate into modern English as follows:

Sometimes I plunge through the press of waves, surprising men, delving to the earth, the ocean bed. The waters ferment, seahorses foaming … The whale-mere roars, fiercely rages, waves beat upon the shore; stones and sand, seaweed and saltspray, are flung against the dunes when, wrestling far beneath the waves, I disturb the earth, the vast depths of the sea … Sometimes I swoop to whip up waves, rouse the water, drive the flint-grey rollers to the shore. Spuming crests crash against the cliff, dark precipice looming over deep water; a second tide, a sombre flood, follows the first; together they fret against the sheer face, the rocky coast. Then the ship is filled with the yells of sailors … Tell me my name.

The voice is that of Aegir, god of the sea, who is creating a storm. The lines portray the sea storming, a personality with attributes, actions, powers, and they leave it to us to name it. This act of water is seen as a force with vitality and a sacred name, rather than an abstract meteorological process, mapped and tracked on satellites and computer screens.

A folk-belief referred to in one of the Icelandic sagas suggests that when people were drowned, they were thought to have gone to Ran, and if they appeared at their own funeral feasts, it was a sign that she had given them a good welcome. In a late saga, Fridhjof’s Saga, it is said to have been a lucky thing to have gold on one’s person if lost at sea. The hero went so far as to distribute small pieces of gold among his men when they were caught in a storm, so they should not go empty-handed into Ran’s hall if they were drowned. It may be that the gold in Redwald’s tomb was not for use in the afterlife, but rather to ensure that he did indeed reach that next world.

The Return of Middle-Earth

As the sun sinks towards the west over the River Deben, shadows gradually creep from the woods and up onto the ancient funeral grounds of the East Angles. All around me, the grassy landscape swells with the large, ancient barrows entombing the bodies and prized belongings of historic kings and battle heroes from the real Middle-earth. It is like a symbol of the end of this remarkable era. A thousand years where, above the usual turmoil of tribal warfare and difficult times, the lives of people were enchanted by an advanced imagination. And there lay the deeper dimension to the ancient history of these times. The realms of the imagination made possible the insights of Middle-earth.

As a psychologist, I do of course value the welcome advantages of twenty-first-century science, engineering and medicine – and some would say that such a fantastical culture as that of ancient England is irrelevant to the imperatives of contemporary life. But sophistication comes in many forms. What I find so important, and such a revelation, is that Middle-earth, both Tolkien’s epic fantasy and the real historical culture I am writing about here, sweep us away on seemingly essential journeys into our own imaginations. We are familiar with all of the ingredients of these people’s imagined world – concepts like ‘life-force’ feature hugely in fantasy books and film entertainment like Star Wars. Our hunger for it is so all-embracing that we hardly note its strangeness. But we should be aware of the implications of the fact that, in the western world, we spend literally billions of dollars each year on ‘leisure time’ stories which reconnect us with the sense that there is a dimension beyond the pragmatic parameters of the material world. It is there that, while being absorbed by the vivid stories and visions, we encounter deep, timeless elements of our psyche.

And now, a thousand years after that era closed, Middle-earth is returning. The huge interest in fantasy literature and films inspired by those times shows that it never really left our minds. It just lay fallow, until it was needed again. And now is perhaps when we most need to once again recognize that beyond the bounty of our rational, scientific, engineered society, the forces of fantasy, intuition, and imagination may yield some deeper perspectives which could help us better understand our place in the world.

For thousands of years, people have been enthralled by essentially the same adventures, whether told by Stone-Age storytellers or cyber-age producers of feature films. The stories are so compelling because they emanate from dreams that animate the most ancient depths of our consciousness. Like all mythology, they are stories which capture the essential spirit of our lives, from all cultures. Often they came from the visions and dreams of people identified as wizards, sorcerers, shamans and seers – those in the community whose imaginations were believed to receive material from the spirit world. We are most disconnected, fragmented, exposed, frail when we are separated from the deep dream – the story of the earth’s mind, the rhythm of its beating heart. It is the landscape of our deep imagination. And when we read about the real Middle-earth, we feel reconnected with ourselves.