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174
Then Ælfwine said, he talked boldly:
Do you remember the speeches which we often spoke at the mead,
when on the bench we made up boast,
Heroes in the hall, about bold fighting:
Now may it be tested who is brave (Maldon vv. 211–215).
When Beowulf is about to fight Grendel in the hall, i.e., the episode framed by vv.
675–956, he effectively pulls himself together by recollecting his speech in the hall.
As an aristocrat he uses the hall to clarify his aristocratic mind, self and society. In this
interaction with his own past he does not reconsider his speech or have second
thoughts about fighting Grendel’s mother. The reflection of Beowulfian homily in the
conversation among tablemates was no doubt often the pompously declared promises
hinted at in Maldon. Such promises express loyalty to the high ideals of the hall,
but as their natural complement we may also expect collusion and innuendo
(Goffman 1981, p. 134) by means of which hall-guests comment upon the talk from
the upper part of the hall in which the guests in the lower part of the hall participated
as hearers. Examples of this can be found in Beowulf when the tale about the fight at
Finnsburg, a great, but cruel victory for the Danes, is told in Hroðgar’s hall. The men
in the hall cheer in delight when the scop tells the saga (vv. 1066–1162). This is a sign
of appropriate behaviour, but it also shows us that the possibilities for the men to
engage themselves in penetrating discussions are limited and nobody can take the
floor in the lower part of the hall.
Owing to the construction of the hall and the way the guests are seated, their
comments, if critical, can hardly engage more than a few persons and they are under
observation. In the very end of Beowulf (Part I) we are given to understand that
people are observed and judged by their behaviour in the hall (vv. 2178 ff.; cf. above
p. 89) when the Lord of the Weather-Geats does not accord the young Beowulf a
place of honour on the meadbench because the young man is slow and feeble. Viga-
Glum in Vigfus’ hall is given an inferior seat as a result of his being judged and obviously
considered a bore in a hall (Viga-Glums saga, 6; translation Hollander 1972).
This should convince us that enthusiastic consent and solemn man-to-man vows
were the expected behaviour in the lower part of the hall. Furthermore, the wouldbe-wise
character of the poems, Latin as well as Anglo-Saxon, Aud’s homily and
Skalagrim’s verse tell us that the need to educate the hall-guests and inspire loyalty
was deeply felt.
The tension between the loyal, cheering collective and the possibilities of practising
collusion and innuendo on a man-to-man level worked like a filter for those
seeking a better position in the hall. Obviously one should neither be too critical nor
too enthusiastic, since the message from the upper part of the hall is not always one
and the same. In the situation when the story about the fight at Finnsburg is being
told, this obvious opportunity for the men to applaud the raw slaughter of Jutes and