Thursday, 24 September 2009

The shiny ages


Anglo-Saxon colour terms tend to be about the degrees of shininess rather than actual tones; horses, for example, are described as bright rather than bay or chestnut, etc. There are now some pictures of the recent Anglo-Saxon hoard find on the Guardian website, including some rather nice script complete with Insular wedges. (On descenders too.) The above is a dagger hilt, with a variant of an interlocking sea-horse pattern found on other early Insular artefacts. (I can't remember where exactly, but I do remember copying it for a Christmas card when I was a sixth-former.)

No comments:

Post a Comment