IN the preceding section, most of the evidence considered came from archaeological sites or from technical descriptions and analyses of the surviving objects. Here we will investigate whether the Anglo-Saxons left any more direct account of their attitudes to smiths, their works, or their working practices, either in their literary or non-literary works or in the inscriptions by or about them which have survived in manuscripts and on the metalwork objects themselves. It is to be expected that the contribution from any single example of these possible sources will be very slight, but the accumulation of small details may nevertheless contribute to the wider picture. Descriptions of objects from contemporary sources, which are usually short on detail of other than the precious materials of which they were made, are not included here. This section should, however, be seen in conjunction with the first. The intention is to look at all the evidence, epigraphic, documentary and archaeological, including the technical evid- ence from the objects themselves, with a view to assessing what it is possible to know about the Anglo-Saxon goldsmith: his place of work and working methods, and the tools and technology he used or had available to him. It should be possible, therefore, to assess where the objects themselves are the only surviving witnesses to either tools or practices, and, indeed, to what extent there is any kind of fit between the evidence from documentary, visual and archaeological sources at any part of the period.

The evidence to be considered here might be regarded as ‘soft’ compared to the ‘hard’ evidence from archaeology and the objects themselves: that is, the manuscript illuminations and the literature, poetic, homiletic and pedagogic, of the Anglo-Saxons. These sources, however, contain many references to smiths and their work, in visual or metaphoric illustration to religious or poetic themes: few if any other occupations are so well represented. Of course the origin of some of the material illustrated is not original to the Anglo-Saxons: for example from the Old Testament a verse of the Book of Genesis, and two of the Psalms have illustrations of smiths.