Beowulf - Institutionen för arkeologi och antik historia

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The discussion of good in Scandinavian research emanates from its connection with
the terms þegn and drengr. Good in its own right has attracted interest only in recent
years and the dependency on earlier discussions is very obvious. However, the will
to see the concept in view of the tension between the private and the public character
of goodness seems to provide an appropriate basis for summing up a discussion in
which few contributors have been totally wrong and nobody totally right.
There is a link to the public and the professional in the use of good in a text like
this:
RikR/RinkR/RingR ok Hulti ok FastgæiRR þæiR letu . . . stæin at Vigmar, faður
sinn, styrimann goðan. Likbiorn risti. (U FV1976, p. 104).
Rikr and Hulti and Fastgæir they had . . . stone after their father Vigmar; a good
ship’s captain. Likbiorn carved.
In this text the professional/social qualities match Vigmar’s family position and character
as a father. With the Glavendrup-stone in mind (DR 209) and the link to the
obvious usage of at least þegn as a title in Anglo-Saxon contexts (Aakjær 1927;
Lindow 1976, pp. 106 ff.) we may well see the above usage as connected with the
tendency to view some skills and professions as more or less synonymous with the
state of being good—a gender goodness. It is, moreover, a usage in connection with
a profession and a styriman is close to being an exponent of a formal institution in
the Viking Age world.
The contrast to this public/professional usage in connection with institutions about
to become formal, i.e., the obviously family-good text, can be exemplified by another
stone from Uppland:
Gy ok Svæinn þæiR ræistu stæin at Birsu, faður sinn goðan. Ærnfastr hiogg stæin
at Birsu, bonda VigærðaR, sun ÞorgærðaR goðan. (U 79).
Gy and Svæin they erected stone after Birsu their good father. Ærnfastr hewed the
stone after Birsu, Vigærða’s husband (master), Þorgærða’s good son.
In this case good is a family matter. Birsi is good as a father and good as a son, but not
in his position as his wife’s master. His goodness is of a most informal kind. This is
noteworthy, since bóndi góðan, where bóndi is drifting towards the public role of a
master, is a common expression and it is much more common to describe a bóndi as
good than it is to say the same of a father or a son. The meaning of good seems to have
been distributed between two different qualities: one in which it becomes a synonym
for some of the public roles of the male gender, another in which good seems to mirror
the private character of a person. This later ideal is not well developed among the runestone
texts: first of all, because this way of using good is a late phenomenon probably
inspired by the transition from Pagan to Christian ethics, secondly, owing to the cultural
blockage which made it virtually impossible to call a rune-stone woman good.
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