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whom the hall is his classroom as he develops towards ideal manhood. Later on hall society becomes a collective in which the members, regardless of rank, have obvious duties. The king himself is an example: first of the splendid individual career towards unquestioned leadership, but later even the king becomes a member of the collective, who like everybody else has duties to perform in accordance with the formal character of his role in the hall institution. If we look at our early examples, Sigibert and Hroðgar, we see that these kings are always right whatever they decide to do. In reality they may of course have been criticised, but there is a natural ring to their being described as perfect. Later on, however, we see a tendency to criticise the wisdom of a truly kingly decision, namely the comment about Byrhtnoth’s ófer-mode. Compared with Hroðgar’s forgetfulness when he did not tell <strong>Beowulf</strong> about the existence of Grendel’s mother, Byrhtnoth’s ófer-mode, the decision to fight rather than to withdraw, is a small point in the criticism of leadership, since he did not deliberately withhold any crucial information. He misjudged the situation. We may argue that it is the divine character of the Migration Period king which explains Hroðgar’s forgetfulness of earthly matters and that Byrhtnoth should be criticised since he is not kin to any of the gods. This line of argument leads, however, to the same conclusion, namely that leaders are becoming more equal to their retainers. From later periods there are even more striking examples. In Saga Hákonar goða (Heimskringla, vol. III, Ch. 14 ff.; translation, Hollander 1964, pp. 106 ff.) Snorre Stulasson depicts a conflict situation in a hall. Here the hall is the gathering place for the invited assembly of the aristocracy, i.e., the farmers of the Trondheim District, who are engaged in the performance of the mid-winter or Yule offerings— the communal meal sponsored by the top of the local aristocracy, the earl at Hlaþír, Sigurð. The ceremony is chaired by the King, Hakon the Good, but being a Christian the King has difficulties performing his duties and he is criticised by the assembly. This criticism is based on the opinion that as a member of the assembly, as well as its head, he must drink from the horn dedicated to the gods and eat of the consecrated meat. What the King, rather vainly, tries to do is first to refuse and later to change the ritual so that it may suit him as well as the farmers gathered in the hall, but he succeeds only thanks to the intervention of Sigurd Jarl, and neither party is satisfied with the sacrificial feast. The King and the Earl fall back upon the more basic and also more informal and indisputable privilege pertaining to the King as the foremost among the aristocrats, namely the right to lay down rules for formalised and ritual behaviour in the hall. In this saga we witness a kind of discussion, although it does not go as far as a real argument, like the one that took place earlier in the saga at the Frostathing Assembly. Whatever happened in the hall at Hlaþír, (cf. Hultgård 1993, pp. 224 ff.) it was, at least for Snorre Sturlasson, reasonable to imagine a revolt in the hall, and to argue that the revolt could have emanated from the invited guests. The reason for this must 169
have been their obvious right to expect a certain formal kingly behaviour. The aristocracy in the hall acts as a norm-governed group with rights, not as individuals, i.e., invited guests competing for rank. In early examples of hall behaviour any kind of royal decision was hailed and a king was never heard arguing with anyone. This lack of argument on the king’s part is a sign of the Iron Age ideal, and in minor conflicts we can expect it to have lived on far into the Middle Ages. In the Saga about Aud, Vifil’s complaint that he has not yet been given a farm, does not start an argument as to whether or not he should have one. On the contrary, Aud explains the idea of individuality as an Iron Age phenomenon to him and then she gives him a farm, which to her mind is not really the important thing to get. Likewise when Aud’s male counterpart Skalagrim is criticised for driving his men too hard, he responds with a song about how nice it is to work (Egils Saga, pp. 404 f.; Herschend 1994a). The Iron Age leader does not respond to a critical argument with an argument that speaks in favour of his/her behaviour, but with moral guidance and decision. Our examples have indicated that what happens in the hall is a complex phenomenon, but also that there seems to be a unity between the hall and the talk in the hall, which in its turn seems to support the notion of an aristocracy being born. Let us begin by focusing on the room itself in the developed Scandinavian Iron Age state. Due to excellent preservation conditions this is best known from the peripheral Borg case, but given that it can also be seen in the way the hall at Lejre may have been organised, I venture to take the Lejre hall as an early royal or aristocratic hall designed to fulfil the needs of an aristocracy which is about to become a group (Fig. 39). In view of the way in which content, setting and talk are structured in <strong>Beowulf</strong> (Part I), the hall-room may be said to contain primary performance qualities comparable to what is later found in the courtroom, in the church, or on the stage as a general phenomenon. With respect to the stage part of the hall the performance may be divided into, on the one hand, the public entertainment by the scop on the estrade and, on the other hand, the realistic drama in the sitting-room of the royal family with one wall lacking. The secondary quality of the hall is that of the chaotic battle field. Although we do not know very much about the talk during the recurrent fights, it is likely that the clashes were preceeded and accompanied by a certain amount of talk or oral activity (cf. Herschend 1997). The design for the formal usage of the room suggests a devision into different parts, the first of which is an entrance room where the humbler visitor is expected to wait for leave to enter the hall proper. Earlier that would of course have been outside the house if it lacked an entrance room as such, but some sort of borderline must be crossed, and that can happen only after seeking the king’s permission. Having crossed the first border the visitor finds himself in the lower part of the hall where people sit in the side-aisles engaged in a conversation with their neighbours at the table, but, in larger halls, hardly a conversation across the mid-aisle and the fire. 170
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Occasional Papers in Archaeology 15
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Published with grants from Swedish
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6 The Two Panegyrics ..............
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I. Introduction This study seeks an
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(Herschend 1993). It has also becom
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democratic congregation had been es
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ample of a need for large storage f
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mately the sense applied to the oth
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is found at Borg in Lofoten and dat
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Figures 3a and b. (a) The hall at W
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(b) An early phase of a farm at Cow
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The Farm Owner’s Seat The positio
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place. Living quarters are limited
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Figure 9. A proposed schematic deve
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When eventually hall and power, kin
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Figures 12a and b. A comparison bet
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kitchen. The tempo in Northern Norw
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have their obvious counterparts in
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they, contrary to most of the guest
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accessible, elevated and at the sam
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Figures 17a-c. Three sections of ro
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this farm, however, the village was
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Figure 19. The Oelandic Iron Age vi
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50 Figures 21a and b. (a), Early Me
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question. This is certainly a matte
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the sources used, houses as well as
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Although we may accept the argument
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The change in the meaning of the wo
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60 UlfR ok þeR Ragnarr restu sten
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Earlier discussions of the Old Engl
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Figure 22. The structure of Wealhth
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than pious disposition, ought to do
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Figure 25. Two partly overlapping e
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good father, good son or good broth
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72 In reality it gives a significan
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and immediately afterwards he is cu
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current, throughout the poem as wel
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2209 hé gehéold tela fiftig wintr
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Figure 30. The use of the word good
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to introduce Beowulf and to describ
Page 85 and 86: mate success, but there is no sharp
Page 87 and 88: Wealhtheow, whose name means ‘cel
Page 89 and 90: In verse 1810 the sword Hrunting is
Page 91 and 92: you and perhaps take a liking to yo
Page 93 and 94: it must be discussed how a Late Cla
Page 95 and 96: 45 Post tenebras noctis stellarum l
Page 97 and 98: Sigibert burn to marry the maid. Th
Page 99 and 100: why is the description of Brunhild
Page 101 and 102: Skírne-motif and hints at the para
Page 103 and 104: fourth belongs to a period after Si
Page 105 and 106: The second poem seems ultimately to
Page 107 and 108: 106 You have adopted the custom of
Page 109 and 110: Distant or stand-offish Germanic ki
Page 111 and 112: 110 So am I, exhausted by the might
Page 113 and 114: the first poem to express the unite
Page 115 and 116: How fast does Fame fly, rising on f
Page 117 and 118: order to survive and develop, but a
Page 119 and 120: Their peaceful role in general and
Page 121 and 122: eciprocal connection between a pair
Page 123 and 124: esult of a philosophical developmen
Page 125 and 126: connections is marked and dispropor
Page 127 and 128: and humans and animals on each side
Page 129 and 130: competition on the farm was smooth
Page 131 and 132: The established aristocracy is alwa
Page 133 and 134: 166
Page 135: peasants, namely the marriage betwe
Page 139 and 140: not free to pass through the lower
Page 141 and 142: 174 Then Ælfwine said, he talked b
Page 143 and 144: was a child. Today we would not cou
Page 145 and 146: Beowulf in the first part of the po
Page 147 and 148: 180
Page 149 and 150: Andersson, K., 1993. Romersk guldsm
Page 151 and 152: Fabech, C., 1998. Slöinge i perspe
Page 153 and 154: ⎯ 1993. The origin of the hall in
Page 155 and 156: Knudsen, S. Aa. & Hertz, E., 1994.
Page 157 and 158: Nielsen, K. M., 1945. Var thegnerne
Page 159 and 160: ⎯ 1993. Vikingetidens volde og bo
Page 161 and 162: Williams, T. A., M. Shaw & V. Debha
Page 163 and 164: 212
Page 165 and 166: 214
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Page 169 and 170: 3 Dejbjerg. The hall from Dejbjerg
Page 171 and 172: on a central farm among other large
Page 173 and 174: 186 Appendix II An English version
Page 175 and 176: 188 To him who strengthless fled th
Page 177 and 178: 190 When I, as a stranger, saw Germ
Page 179 and 180: Notes 1 The translation follows the
Page 181 and 182: always fasting, incessantly praying
Page 183 and 184: 7. When Atharidos got to know this
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