Beowulf - Institutionen för arkeologi och antik historia

Figures 38a and b. Hierarchies of the Late Iron Age: (a) five topologically and socially
defined farm hierarchies—a model of the basic structure of the Late Iron Age society, (b)
the kingship hierarchy: the elevation of one of the hierarchies in Fig. 38a, in this case no.
3, to which is added an extract of men belonging to the farms of the basic hierarchies. In
this case farm hierarchy no 4 in Fig. 38a is not represented in the kingship hierarchy.
From an economic point of view there is little doubt that the means for keeping a
retinue and an aristocracy are eventually produced by a pillage economy supported
by a surplus-producing self-sustaining economy. Therefore the ruthlessness of the
pillage and its horrors together with the multiple ways in which they backfire in all
kinds of violence are intimately linked to being good. Being ourselves the result of
this kind of goodness, as well as in parts the reaction to it, we should in other words
be puzzled by the fact that we can form such different opinions about Beowulf and
Atharidos in their relationships with Grendel and Sabas respectively.
There is equally little doubt that it is the contractual aspect of the good which
eventually leads to consequences that we find hard to connect with our own ideas of
what the good is, but it so happens that our views on such matters are in themselves
a result of the formation of the Late Iron Age aristocracy. When the upper classes
encountered Christianity they must have seen an advantage in replacing the contractual
aspect with concepts like loyalty and duty.
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