Beowulf - Institutionen för arkeologi och antik historia

fier good is even more difficult to judge. Nevertheless, when Aakjær turns to the
Old English usage of the words he finds that the position of the thane, þegn, is
more official and regulated as if thanes made up a formal group or category of
people. Drengr, a peculiarly Nordic word, is less common in Anglo-Saxon texts,
but the use of the qualifier good in combination with þegn eventually convinces
Aakjær that during the Viking Age the expressions góðr þegn and góðr drengr
signified members of the nobility if they were not simply titles. The fact that later on
the expressions lost their specific meaning is of course no argument against their
having had a Viking Age meaning inspired by Anglo-Saxon usage.
Aakjær favours a thesis that defends the existence of a formal institution, i.e., a
class of nobility in Denmark during the Viking Ages. In a recent study, based partly
on literary, partly on archaeological evidence, Duczko (1995, pp. 634 ff. & 658)
argues that in Sweden the place-name Tegneby, but also rune-stone texts, in
which the appellative or name þegn/Þegn is used, signify the introduction of a
þegn-based and Danish administrative system in Sweden. Duczko may thus be
said to support Aakjær’s strongest formulation which states that drengr and þegn
were in Viking days titles of a sort for members of the king’s attendant nobility
(Aakjær 1927, p. 29).
If we disregard the strongest interpretation and confine ourselves to drengir
and þegnar being noblemen with a more than personal relationship with the king,
then the core of Aakjær’s thesis has been widely accepted (cf. Christensen 1969,
pp. 218; ff. Moltke 1976; Randsborg 1980, pp. 29 ff., 12 ff.; Roesdahl 1980, pp.
28 ff.; Christophersen 1982, pp. 129 ff.). It is, however, doubtful whether the
rune-stone texts can prove an institution formally recognised as a nobility. Nonetheless,
even cautious historians like Aksel E. Christensen come close to describing
drengr and þegn as a formal stratum in society (Christensen 1969, p. 222).
Jacobsen and Moltke (1942) concur with Aakjær, but they do not deny of
course that the usage favoured by Jónsson (1926) can be found. On the grounds
of the formulaic prose and the verses on the Danish rune-stone, and bearing in
mind those high social status of the commemorated, e.g., on the Karlevi-stone
with its verse glorifying the warrier, we must agree with Moltke and Jacobsen that
to understand the epithet good as meaning merely brave, honest or righteous
seems not quite to the point. Sibba’s virtues are undoubtedly linked to his social
status as a chieftain whether inherited or not. In 1976 Moltke (1976, pp. 237 ff.)
repeats his earlier views but he also makes a distinction between an ethical usage,
e.g., faðir sin góðr, and a social usage in which good means well-born. His point
of departure is still the usage of the words þegn, drengr and perhaps svein as
military titles connected with the age of the person; þegn being the older warrior.
The word good was thus meant to differentiate between warriors of different descent.
This means that we may be born good, i.e. noble, but not born drengr or
þegn, on the contrary the titles are part of a career.
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