Beowulf - Institutionen för arkeologi och antik historia

kitchen. The tempo in Northern Norway was no doubt relatively slow and relaxed,
despite the possibilities of sailing wherever one pleased, and well suited to the
equally slow and ceremonial process of seething (Snorre’s Edda, 9. 95), where the
opening of the pit when the meat was ready could easily be fitted into the inauguration
of a feast and a communal meal similar to that we hear of in the saga about
Håkon the Good (cf. Hultgård 1993, pp. 225 ff.). In more densely populated areas
most of the guests could have been expected to time their arrivals and departures in
accordance with a more rigorous time-table. The special character of the feast
seems to be proved by archaeological and literary sources alike and we may say that
the hall owner displays himself and his family in front of a selected number of people
in order to realise himself socially.
The Retinue and the Smashed Hall
The existence of a retinue or house-cearls in the hall shows itself in the artefact
distribution as an element of weapons and fragments of armory. We find this at
Dejbjerg, at Helgö and in Eketorp. In the two former sites the finds do not indicate
the foremost activity in the hall, but in Eketorp, (Fig. 14), with its emphasis on defence,
the weapon finds are characteristic of the hall room.
In the ideal and very densely populated Eketorp society we find an early example
of the hall being a room in a house. The division between kitchen and hall room is
very obvious and so is the gender division: in the kitchen women cooking and in the
hall room men-at-arms. A similar division may also have existed in the hall at Helgö
although the two rooms, one with artefacts pertaining to the family, the other with the
weapon finds pointing to the retinue, is more remarkable (Figs 10 & 14). In particular,
the fact that the two rooms both contain fragments of drinking vessels can be said
to unite the master, his family and the retainers in a formal rather than natural way.
The great number of glass vessels has already been mentioned, but one is struck
not only by the abundance of glass, but also by the size of the fragments. At Helgö
and Borg this can partly or perhaps theoretically be explained by the well preserved
state of these sites. This is, however, not a strong argument since in the equally well
preserved, albeit continuously cleaned Eketorp settlement, the shards are very often
very small, but their number so large that originally there must have been many
glasses in the settlement (Herschend 1974, Näsman 1984; 1986). It must also be
observed that contrary to Borg, Helgö and Eketorp, Dejbjerg and Dankirke have
been so heavily ploughed that big shards have had little chance of surviving, a fact
which makes their occurrence even more striking.
On all sites, except Eketorp, the size of the shards can thus be associated with the
fact that they were most often found in sheltered positions, in postholes and foundation
trenches (Hansen 1990; Hansen 1996; Holmqvist 1961; Lundström 1970, pp.
132 ff.). But this fact alone cannot account for their preservation, since if the shards
35