Beowulf - Institutionen för arkeologi och antik historia

Beowulf in the first part of the poem we can hear how he progresses from the
courtroom format to that of the realistic family drama. If we are leading participants
in that production, then we are also at the top of the hierarchy. It is typical
that the most informal formats – chatting and cheering in the lower part of the hall
and drama in the upper – may clash. They are obviously the most potent and
dynamic formats. Courtroom and Church are interesting inasmuch as they tend to
be so formalised that already by the end of the period we can see that they may be
taken out of the hall and used as formal institutions in the society, as texts. This
development is of course hinted at in their present labels, and the event takes place
relatively early with the change to Christianity and the creation of the congregation
as well as somewhat later when the State manages to formalise the thing assembly
into a courtroom with judge, prosecution and defence, now and then assisted by a
jury. When this exodus from the hall takes place the scope of the format is narrowed
so as to permit fewer variations. The lavish food, for example, does not
leave the hall for the Church (Holy Communion cannot be considered a lavish
feast) and a court session is not opened unless there is a matter to be adjudicated.
Eventually the stage performance in the form of the estrade entertainment is also
brought out of the hall or its successor, the king’s residence, into public institutions and
changed into historical drama and light entertainment. In the 19th century the evolution
from Wealhtheow’s speech commenting upon the scop, over Hamlet’s instruction of
the visiting actors, and the monologue he puts in the mouth of the leading actor, resulted
in realistic drama such as Ibsen’s. Today in soap-opera television this drama has become
a highly formalised and thus a totally foreseeable institution. Similar to the narrowing
of the other formats the crucial tension within the family drama did not survive
exportation from the hall. The most sophisticated production format introduced in the
hall is thus about to become commonplace. This is in a sense true of all four hall formats,
but they still exercise an almost universal fascination.
This is due to the fact that justice, belief, arts and love are phenomena not totally
but more or less dependent on their format. However, from a social point of view the
formats in which these concepts are expressed are nonetheless essential ways of
keeping track of them and of employing them in social life. If a social group manages
to develop its informal norms concerning concepts like justice, belief, arts and love
into formalised institutions based on the forms of talk that characterised the informal
treatment of the norms, then the influence of this social group will become paramount.
During the Late Iron Age the hall room inspired a moral view of man as a
social being signified not least by the word good. Together with the hall room these
moral standards were capable of producing the self-confident class of the aristocracy
and, moreover, a number of social norms that were later to guide social life.
It is most significant that good and goodness are strongly attached to the realistic
family drama, which was the last of the original formats to leave the hall, and it is even
more characteristic that the examples of good people from the obituaries over six
178