Beowulf - Institutionen för arkeologi och antik historia

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In reality it gives a significant and graceful verification of brotherhood and love
between brothers (brothers-german), of which we find so many a handsome expression
in the old Norwegian-Icelandic literature. (Jónsson 1926, my translation).
The interpretation is clearly inspired by a modern Christian ideal linking brotherhood
with love, but the parenthesis, which explains to us that Jónsson is thinking of brothers-german,
shows that while writing down his opinion the author came to think of
another side of brotherhood—social, external, brotherhood. He preferred to reject
the existence of this kind of brotherhood on the rune-stones despite the fact that both
he and we immediately come to think of it when we reflect over the concept.
For this reason the explanatory parenthesis opens our eyes and makes us remember,
e.g., the Hellestad stones, which actually tell us about a social brotherhood,
namely that of brothers-in-arms:
Askil sati stin þansi iftir Tuka Kurms sun sar hulan trutin. Sar flu aigi at Up-Salum
(A-side) Satu trikar iftir sin bruþur stin a biarki stuþan runum þir. (B-side) Kurms
Tuka kiku nistir (C-side), (DR nos. 295–297).
Eskil put up this stone after Toke, Gorm’s son, who was his kindly lord. He (i.e.,
Toke) did not flee at Uppsala. Drengr put up stone on the mound, steadfast with
runes, after their brother (i.e. brother-in-arms). They went next to Gorm’s Toke.
There is a clue to understanding the situation in Östergötland in this brotherhood
discrepancy, since if we look at brotherhood we shall find that it is a symmetric
relation governed by reciprocity and solidarity irrespective of our finding it among
brothers-in-arms or brothers-german, and it seems that in this fact we may have
found the reason why good can more easily be applied to a father or a son since their
relationship is asymmetric. So, if brothers are to show themselves to be good, it will
have to take place outside their relationship with each other, namely when they compete
for a social position by proving themselves to be better than others, e.g., by
fighting well enough to become a drengr goðr rather than just a drengr.
If this is so, it explains the fact that in areas where the rune-stone tradition is early
there are no good brothers, but in areas where it is late we may find some. This in its
turn amounts to saying that asymmetric relations are one of the preconditions for
being good in a Pagan way.
Finally in the saga about Aud seemingly obvious opportunities to use the word
good are not taken. Honour fills the place of good where men are concerned, and
Aud herself, who could well have qualified as good, is called ‘the deep-minded’.
This means that among the texts analysed here, Venantius’ first two poems about
Lupus and what Landnámabók relates about Aud are narratives about two people
who rank among the good, although neither Venantius nor the compiler of
Landnámabók are prepared to use the word. This is an intriguing similarity, which
defines two areas in which the Germanic ideal of the good ceases to aply: Christian
ideology and the female gender. They make up the boundaries of the present study.