Beowulf - Institutionen för arkeologi och antik historia

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 Beowulf
(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