Episode 229
Guilden Morden boar
Wed, 2017-Dec-20 00:15 UTC
Length - 2:38
Direct Link
Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.
The featured article for Wednesday, 20 December 2017 is Guilden Morden boar.
The Guilden Morden boar is a sixth- or seventh-century Anglo-Saxon copper alloy figure of a boar that may have once served as the crest of a helmet. It was found around 1864 or 1865 in a grave in Guilden Morden, a village in the eastern English county of Cambridgeshire. There the boar attended a skeleton with other objects, including a small earthenware bead with an incised pattern, although the boar is all that now remains. Herbert George Fordham, whose father originally discovered the boar, donated it to the British Museum in 1904; in 2017 it was on view in room 41.
The boar is simply designed, distinguished primarily by a prominent mane; eyes, eyebrows, nostrils and tusks are only faintly present. A pin and socket design formed by the front and hind legs suggests that the boar was mounted on another object, such as a helmet. Such is the case on one of the contemporary Torslunda plates (de) found in Sweden, where boar-crested helmets are depicted similarly.
Boar-crested helmets are a staple of Anglo-Saxon imagery, evidence of a Germanic tradition in which the boar invoked the protection of the gods. The Guilden Morden boar is one of three—together with the helmets from Benty Grange and Wollaston—known to have survived to the present. These boar-crests recall a time when such decoration may have been common; in the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, where boar-adorned helmets are mentioned five times, Hrothgar speaks of when "our boar-crests had to take a battering in the line of action." The Guilden Morden boar is a link between the legendary Anglo-Saxon warrior hero and reality, and has been exhibited both domestically and internationally.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:15 UTC on Wednesday, 20 December 2017.
For the full current version of the article, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilden_Morden_boar.
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This has been Amy. Thank you for listening to featured Wiki of the Day.
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