Knots characterize Anglo-Saxon poetic imagery and ornamental metalwork. In Anglo-Saxon jewellery and weaponry, images of dragons and other beasts and birds are stylized, abstracted into geometric designs, as in the renowned great knotted buckle of the Sutton Hoo excavation in England
Interweaving strands of knots might be metaphoric for the interlacing of tribal bloodlines through intermarriage and inter-clan fellowship in the comitatus, as well as the interweaving of words and stories in Anglo-Saxon oral-formulaic poems, such as Beowulf.
