Beowulf - Institutionen för arkeologi och antik historia

competition on the farm was smooth and unregulated with a large measure of
solidarity and a ‘good’ leader who provided for his people without constantly grading
them.
The hierarchic structure of the hall-farm is extended to the hierarchy of farm
groups, and that leads to a need for differentiating a larger number of people each
belonging to one of the smaller farm/family hierarchies, but also in this larger social
context the aim is still a life guided by the good.
In the settlement structure we can see these hierarchies as one large farm surrounded
by several smaller ones, but eventually when we may expect the hierarchies
to have grown to cover regions, so that they comprise several farms groups or villages,
it becomes difficult to actually see the leader’s farm or the leading farm and its
hall, while the magnates of a society may own several widely separated farms. Be
this as it may, the point is that the leader of any hierarchy, independent of its size, is a
man characterised by the same form of goodness and no matter what other qualities
he may possess, goodness is always there. Farm and society are organised the same
way, headed by and aiming at the good. We can say that individuals and society are
good-orientated.
It is thus only natural that due to their varying economic power, leaders may be
more or less good. The concept can in other words be used for differentiating people
independently of the farm or family hierarchy to which they belong, and that differentiation
need not be a simple reflection of economic power. In the Late Iron Age it is
the ability to honour the good as a contract that is the instrument of differentiation,
and it works across the hierarchies, which are only loosely segmented.
If Fig. 38a shows the general character of the farm-bound hierarchies, then Fig.
38b shows how a leader, e.g., a king, and his men, are chosen both from the farmbound
hierarchy closest to the leader himself and from other hierarchies, without this
being a simple reflection of the men’s previous ranking. The group around the leader
form the aristocracy of the Late Iron Age and with changing leaders the aristocracy
eventually becomes a group with internal ties as well as ties to the farm-bound hierarchies
on the one hand and to leaders and kings on the other. The membership rules
and the individual rights in the aristocratic group are defined primarily in relation to
the good with a lot of surrounding concepts such as mildness, eloquence, righteousness,
bravery, warrior skills, loyalty, honour etc., etc., facilitating differentiation.
When Simmel points out that differentiation within a group (Simmel 1923, pp.
530 ff.) leads to alliances between similar segments in different groups, then this is
the mechanism acting in the formation of the Late Iron Age aristocracy, and the good
must be the general differentiating concept since it is the segment-producing concept
of the basic groups, i.e., families as well as farm hierarchies. Good people like the
ones we have met in the texts stand out as segments of the aristocratic family and a
segment, perhaps only one or two persons, on a farm. Hroðgar is thus the only good
man on his own farm before Beowulf arrives.
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