I have been listening to a podcast regarding myths and legends in European history and have gotten to the area going over the Aurthurian characters. I have imagined characters like Uther, Hengist, Horsa and Vortigern with the regard of: "oh, they are from the Anglo-Saxon settlement area and I have no idea what they wore or what kind of "soldiers" they were other than a few references to "clubs", "swords" and "shields" but then when I imagine the "Knights of Arthur" I imagine the look, equipment and supplies portrayed in Monty Python.
So fact, fiction or myth aside, I am curious as to what the "Knights" of the 5th, 6th and 7th century look like. Armor, weapons, equipment, anything. The few depictions that I have looked at come from the 11th-17th century and I doubt that they have much historical accuracy.
The armour, weaponry and equipment (though not the horses) of the knights in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" are surprisingly accurate... for the period in which the Arthurian legends were WRITTEN. (No coincidence: Terry Jones is a medievalist)
That is to say, the 12th/13th century.
In 5th, 6th and 7th century Britain, there was no such thing as "knights."
But if you want to know what the Briton and Anglo-Saxon warriors in this time-period used for weapons and what they looked like, you can do no better than this amazing series of post by u/alriclofgar, who compares the two for the centuries you're interested in.
I would highly recommend browsing through the photos of a reenactment group called Wulfhoendenas. They portray princely warriors from the seventh century, and have commissioned some of the highest quality reproductions of historical artefacts from this period. They frequently give museum demos, and several of their members also publish academic research on this material.
Like all reenactment, they have to make some interpretive decisions and don't always get everything right, but they're constantly doing new research and trying new ideas to learn as much as they can about clothing, weapons, and armor from this period, and I think they offer a great resource for helping us imagine what the fragments and rust we find in archaeology looked like when they were still new. They also have a facebook page that's worth following for photos and links to good academic articles about this time period.
If you want to go deeper, Penelope Walton Rogers' book Cloth and clothing in early Anglo-Saxon England is the best discussion of what people wore in this period. It's technical and full of lots ofnarchaeological data, alongside some useful artists' sketches - so you can go as deep with it as you want to or just enjoy the illustrations. It's out of print and hideously expensive, so ILL it.
I summarize the weapons and armor of this period in this post (thanks, u/Iguana_on_a_stick !), and would happily answer any more questions you might have.
As a note on terminology, the word 'knight' is generally not used to talk about warriors in the fifth-seventh century; it's just one of those things. 'Warrior' is more typical. But there were warriors associated with horses - we sometimes find them buried together, like this late fifth century man who might have been a contemporary of Arthur (if Arthur existed; who knows?).
if you want to read more about the historical arthur (while avoiding the crazy fringe theories), I recommend Guy Halsall, Worlds of Arthur. It provides an excellent overview of what we do and don't know about these centuries (spoiler: if Arthur existed, we can't know any specifics about his life).
Piggy backing off of this, but how accurate was Bernard Cornwell's The Warlord Chronicles trilogy in painting a realistic picture of post-Roman Britain?