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Rebuilding the Fabulated Bodies of the Hoard-Warriors

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Abstract

When Anglo-Saxon warriors buckled on gem encrusted, intricately wrought gold arms and armor, they did not merely transform their appearance, but shifted their fundamental ontology. We consider objects from the Staffordshire Hoard as embodiments of fah and ælf-sciéne, specifically Anglo-Saxon ideas of visual splendor, and the modern notion of bling in order to excavate their role in the transformation of men into posthuman teratological wonders. We strive to imagine the hoard not as a series of objects but as embodied apparatuses inextricable from those who wore them and from the violence they were intended to fend off, yet accelerate.

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Figure 1

Source: Lichfield District Council, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Figure 2

Source: Portable Antiquities Scheme; licensed under CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Figure 3

Source: © Birmingham Museums Trust

Figure 4

Source: Portable Antiquities Scheme, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/. For another view of K0550, see Figure 3, Gurnon and Harris, in this volume

Figure 5

Source: St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, licensed under Creative Commons

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Notes

  1. All translations into modern English are by Asa Simon Mittman.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Art and Art History, California State University, Chico, CA, USA

    Asa Simon Mittman

  2. Department of English and Media, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK

    Patricia MacCormack

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  1. Asa Simon Mittman
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  2. Patricia MacCormack
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Mittman, A.S., MacCormack, P. Rebuilding the Fabulated Bodies of the Hoard-Warriors. Postmedieval 7, 356–368 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-016-0008-0

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