Beowulf - Institutionen för arkeologi och antik historia

democratic congregation had been established and when ideas about a systematic
separation between general categories, defined, e.g., as men or women, were becoming
essential (cf. Nilsson 1994, pp. 29 ff.). These ideas were partly an echo of
an earlier Christianity and they created an absolute difference between worldly powers,
with a minutely graduated ranking of people, and a secular power which defined
people in a few broad groups, such as men, women, children, heathens or Christians.
This, in turn, was a challenge to the supremacy of the hall ideology since in the
developed Christian state the good and goodness could not be exclusively upperclass.
However, during a period before the congregation grew democratic, the concepts
may well have had an upper-class bias.
It falls outside the framework of the investigation of the setting to study closely the
architectural link to Christianity, but in principle large farms also seem to have a
topological relationship with early churches, which may indicate that large farms
played a considerable role in the moral development of Christianity. There may be
many reasons for the congruency, but it is important to stress the probability that the
morality of early Christian society among the Germans could have evolved on the
large farms among their upper-class inhabitants.
From Anglo-Saxon England the connection seems to be archaeologically established,
e.g., at Northampton, Norwich, Yeavering or Cowage Farm (Williams et al.
1985; Aldous 1995; Hope-Taylor 1977; Hinchcliffe 1986), and in his discussion of
Yeavering, David Wilson (1992, pp. 44 ff.) has pointed out the correspondence
between Pope Gregory’s letter about the usefulness of transforming Pagan buildings
into churches as a means of facilitating ideological infiltration. Wilson has pointed to
the building D2b and the graves in connection with it as an example of this kind of
early church and churchyard (cf. Hope-Taylor 1977, pp. 97 ff.). He also refers to
Bede’s story about how Paulinus made use of the hall at Yeavering in his work of
conversion (Bede II; 14, p. 127). On the basis of these written sources it is natural to
infer that the large (Royal) farm and the hall created a suitable environment for the
Germanisation of Christianity and the Christianisation of Pagan morality.
A couple of hundred years later we find some Scandinavian examples of a similar
connection between a church and a big farm, e.g., Tamdrup, Lisbjerg, (Jutland) Lilla
Köpinge (Scania) or Borg in Lofoten (Schiørring 1991, pp. 11 ff.; Jeppesen and
Madsen 1990, pp. 289 ff.; 1997; Tesch 1993, pp. 106 ff. and 131, Fig. 52.; Munch
et al. 1989). The quality of the contexts vary and the contemporanity between
church and hall cannot always be proved, but by and large the connection must be
recognised.
As a parallel to the Yeavering case and Paulinus we can also refer to Wilhelm
Holmquist’s suggestion (Holmqvist 1969, pp. 23 f.; Lundström 1969, p. 75) that the
religious objects found at Helgö might have belonged to a missionary living in the
Helgö settlement. Holmqvist’s suggestion has gained support from a revision of the
interpretation of the so-called Foundation Ia at Helgö, since we now know that the
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