Beowulf - Institutionen för arkeologi och antik historia

order to survive and develop, but at the same time it is also an example of a suitable
context: Beowulf visiting the Danish court in his father’s company. There is a similar
example in the meeting between the Latin-loving Lupus and the amiable young
Venantius on the occasion of the wedding between Sigibert and Brunhild. In that
example too the hall and its community constitute a suitable context which makes it
possible to form a relationship based upon unconditional goodness.
Beowulf’s goodness, on the other hand, although based on the unconditional, is
inspired by the idea of honouring a contract set up between the hero, in his capacity
as a retainer or drengR, and the king. This social practice is neither a loan from the
classical tradition of virtue nor a continuation from the Early Germanic tradition of
loyalty as a duty to an elected chieftain or king. There are obviously possible connections,
but the contract represents something new, namely a practical way of selecting
the individual: a way of pointing him out as an aristocrat and eventually a
responsible leader and, moreover, a way of securing for him the wealth which is
necessary to live a good life, but not sufficient to create it.
This means that when looking for the roots of the Late Iron Age concept of being
good we may expect remote connections with an unspecified Aristotelian and Greek
as well as with an Early Germanic tradition, but also a strong affinity with a new
Germanic tradition. We can therefore conclude that concepts like goodness, virtue
or honour have very deep roots, but also that goodness in its Late Iron Age version
exploits and transforms older traditions for obvious power-political reasons and as
part of the ongoing process of social stratification
The good designates the individual and those of his actions that, in the long run,
maintain the civilised or, indeed, the good society. The concept is complex, it can
create conflicts and it is partly reserved for the individuals of the upper strata of
society. Due to its character of a contract which must be honoured, even good people
in the upper classes may find themselves in troublesome conflicts when trying to
be good. Since the concept involves areas of general conflict in a society, the negation
of being good is not always to be bad or evil—we may just be more or less
lacking in goodness.
The glimpses we have received of the lower classes, i.e., Sabas, have showed us
that here people may be considered evil or monstrous by the upper classes, while
they are themselves prepared to defend their goodness, and to define the good
members of the upper classes as utterly evil and monstrous. Sabas’ goodness is a
matter of a world-rejecting disposition as well as of actions. It is, moreover, very
Christian. Sabas’ attitude, or rather hate, towards the representatives of the nobility,
whose behaviour is modelled on that of Beowulf, convinces us of the possible social
conflict behind the notion of the good. But even from an aristocratic point of view not
everybody in the upper classes is good. This implies that doing the good is a universally
accepted means of social selection.
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