The case for Rædwald, by no means conclusive, rests on the dating of the burial, the abundance of wealth and items identified as regalia, and, befitting a king who kept two altars, the presence of both Christian and pagan influences. The preferred candidate, with some exceptions when the burial was thought to have taken place later, has been Rædwald his kingdom, East Anglia, is believed to have had its seat at Rendlesham, 4 + 1⁄ 4 miles (6.8 kilometres) upriver from Sutton Hoo. Owner Īttempts to identify the person buried in the ship-burial have persisted since virtually the moment the grave was unearthed. Had the helmet been crushed before the iron had fully oxidised, leaving it still pliant, the helmet would have been squashed, leaving it in a distorted shape similar to the Vendel and Valsgärde helmets.
The fact that the helmet had shattered meant that it was possible to reconstruct it. It is thought that the helmet was shattered either by the collapse of the burial chamber or by the force of another object falling on it. Long afterwards, the chamber roof collapsed violently under the weight of the mound, compressing the ship's contents into a seam of earth. An oval mound was constructed around the ship. Inside this, the helmet was wrapped in cloths and placed to the left of the head of the body. The ship had been hauled from the nearby river up the hill and lowered into a prepared trench. The helmet was buried among other regalia and instruments of power as part of a furnished ship-burial, probably dating from the early seventh century. The ship impression during the 1939 excavation Basil Brown is in the foreground, and Lieutenant Commander John Kenneth Douglas Hutchison in the background.
The Sutton Hoo helmet is an ornately decorated Anglo-Saxon helmet found during a 1939 excavation of the Sutton Hoo ship-burial.