Grime’s Graves — Though Woden Was Never Here
Into a Neolithic Flint Mine — Hard hats at the ready!
Grime’s Graves, in the county of Norfolk, England, was given its name during the Anglo-Saxon period in the centuries after the Roman legions departed. It was the Angles, peoples from what is now southern Denmark and northern Germany, who first plundered and then migrated to this area, creating the Kingdom of the East Angles. Prominent was the Wuffingas dynasty, whose leading light inadvertently bequeathed us the Sutton Hoo ship burial.
1500 years on, the region containing the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk (North Folk and South Folk) is still known as East Anglia, and Grim’s Graben — “the diggings of Grim”, a guarded euphemism for their main god, Woden — became Grime’s Graves.
This 91 acre area of chalk grassland surrounded by thin conifers, is overseen by English Heritage, and it is on its website that the best overview image of the area is to be viewed.
Even seeing such a photograph didn’t prepare me for driving out of the Thetford woodland and along the designated chalk track, to park on the edge of what can only be described as a green moonscape of gently waving grasses. It’s just… odd.
