Beowulf - Institutionen för arkeologi och antik historia

Figure 37. Possible and impossible friendship relations in Havamál, vv. 41–46. It is impossible
for one of my friends to be friends with a friend of one of my enemies.
Complementarity
Several of the most important concepts in the texts analysed so far display their
complementarity. The concept of good is the example par excellence and so are the
characters of Lupus and Beowulf, inasmuch as they denote the concept of the outstanding
individual who is the complement of the collective. However, in their role as
the complement of the king they represent the collective. In this role the
complementarity becomes extra intricate inasmuch as both Beowulf and Lupus can
also act as the complementary partner in a social set-up, in which they represent the
top of the hierarchy. This goes for the landnámakóna Aud too, but she is also part
of an incredibly stable and much wider gender complementarity with Skalagrim, the
landnámsmann at the fjord south of Hvammsfjord (Herschend 1994).
In the Sagas of the Icelanders the scene changes, but still the complementarity of
concepts like honour and friendship is visible. We must ask ourselves about the
origins of this conceptual structure and when it became decisive in the Northwest
Germanic culture?
In my opinion the first complementary division where inequality and difference are
incorporated into a whole is the division of the dwelling into the kitchen dwelling and
the hall. The double-sidedness to be found in the construction of Early Iron Age
houses (especially Jutland and Northwest Germany) with a central entrance room
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