Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011) 1933

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Journal of Medieval History

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jmedhist

The mead-hall community

Stephen Pollington*
46 Beeleigh East, Fryerns, Basildon, Essex, SS14 2RR, UK

a b s t r a c t
Keywords:
Mead-hall The paper provides background context to the Anglo-Saxon concept
Feasting of the mead-hall, the role of conspicuous consumption in early
Gift giving medieval society and the use of commensality to strengthen hori-
Ritual
zontal and vertical social bonds. Taking as its primary starting point
Anglo-Saxon England
the evidence of the Old English verse tradition, supported by
linguistic and archaeological evidence and contemporary compar-
ative material, the paper draws together contemporaneous and
modern insights into the nature of feasting as a social medium. The
roles of the lord and lady as community leaders are examined,
with particular regard to their position at the epicentre of radiating
social relationships. Finally, the inverse importance of the mead-
hall as a declining social institution and a developing literary
construct is addressed.
2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The term mead-hall is no longer current among English-speakers; it is used here as a shorthand
notation for the Germanic customs and observances surrounding the consumption and distribution of
food and drink in a ceremonial setting, the giving and receiving of honorics and rewards, and the
establishment of a communal identity expressed through formal relationships to a pair of individuals
whom we may call the lord and lady. It further relates to a set of traditions concerning hospitality
offered to strangers, informal entertainment and the maintenance of wider social relationships. This
paper draws on evidence from across the Anglo-Saxon period, from settlement and mortuary
archaeology, from didactic literature and above all from verse, for the imaginary world of the Old
English (OE) poets is the world of the mead-hall itself.
There are several OE terms for the concept of the mead-hall, of which borsele and meduseld are
typical:1 a specic beor and medu signifying alcoholic drink and a generic sele, salor, rn, signifying

* Corresponding author. Tel.:44 (0)7796015846.

E-mail address: [email protected].
1
Old English words are referenced from the on-line Bosworth and Toller, An Anglo-Saxon dictionary, at http://beowulf.engl.
uky.edu/~kiernan/BT/Bosworth-Toller.htm, accessed 11 November 2010, and from F. Holthausen, Altenglisches etymologisches
Wrterbuch (Heidelberg, 1974).

0304-4181/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jmedhist.2010.12.010
20 S. Pollington / Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011) 1933

large building. OE words denoting the idea of a hall include heall, sele, salor, seld, reced and rn. The
term heall simply means a covered place, an indoor area, from the verb helan, to cover, hide. A reced is
a place with a roof stretching over it, cognate with our word reach. The terms sele, seld and salor are all
derivatives from a root meaning sit or settle. rn and its metathetic variant rn denote a resting
place, where things are put away. All these words convey the idea of a public space available for
communal activity, rather than an intimate space for working or sleeping.
The hall was in both a literal and a gurative sense the centre of its community.2 The small, early
Anglo-Saxon settlements of the fth to seventh centuries so far identied d such as West Stow,
Mucking and Sutton Courtenay d often show a scatter of buildings, some only 2 metres wide and
3 metres long, and probably used for functional purposes (workshops, storerooms, byres, weaving
sheds, butchery sheds, dairies, smithies and foundries). Where settlements have been excavated fully
there is often one building, larger and more rmly planted in the landscape than the rest. This is char-
acterised as the hall, though most are devoid of any pretension d they are merely larger examples of the
kind of building found elsewhere. It is likely that these buildings housed the settlements principal
family, and this familys ownership of the largest available indoor space underscored its control of access
to the formal, communal rites and observances: dominance of the settlements social life would ensue.
In the compound mead-hall, the element mead stands for all alcoholic drinks, including beer, wine,
ale, cider and probably others. These drinks held a very special place in Anglo-Saxon cultural life as
extraordinary substances which could have potent effects on human beings: stimulating warmth and
affection, lust, anger, envy, and oratory. For these and other reasons, alcoholic drinks in pre-Christian
Germanic Europe seem to have been regarded as a sacrament, both the pathway to the gods and the
road to Hel.3 The preferred terms for drink in these OE compounds are medu- and beor-, with win-
a poor third. Medu or mead is a honey-based drink, while beor or beer is derived from grain. These are
domestic brews which could be produced in quantity while preparing food and processing agricultural
output; they need little in the way of special equipment to make and store them. The vocabulary is
traditional, and the less frequent use of win (wine) perhaps reects the status of that drink as less
commonly available and a little incongruous in the context of traditional Germanic agriculture. In the
eleventh-century Colloquy on the occupations, the master asks his student what he drinks, and receives
the reply ealu gif ic hbbe oe wter gif ic nbbe ealu (ale if I have [some] or water if I have not ale);
the teacher then asks whether the student drinks wine and is told that ic ne eom swa spedig t ic mge
bicgean me win 7 win nis drenc cilda ne dysgra ac ealdra 7 wisra (I am not so prosperous that I might buy
myself wine, and wine is not a drink for children and fools but for the old and wise).4 A signicant
omission here is ealu (ale) which does not form part of these poetic compounds relating to ceremonial
drinking, although it does occur in prose contexts, such as ealuscop (ale-house singer), in the Laws of
Edgar (preost ne beo ealuscop, a priest shall not be an ale-house singer).5 The poetic reference to
ealuscerwen (ale-loss), in Beowulf will be examined below.
Alongside the emphasis on drink, there is a parallel vocabulary of food.6 The OE term from which
we derive our word lord is hlaford, a compound of hlaf and weard, meaning loaf-ward: the head of the

2
H. Hamerow, Migration theory and the Anglo-Saxon identity crisis, in: Migrations and invasions in archaeological
explanation, ed. J. Chapman and H. Hamerow (British Archaeological Reports, International Series 664, Oxford, 1997);
H. Hamerow, Early medieval settlements. The archaeology of rural communities in north-west Europe 400900 (Oxford, 2002).
3
The role of mead as a numinous substance within Scandinavian mythology has been examined in detail in J.P. Schjdt
Initiation between two worlds. Structure and symbolism in Pre-Christian Scandinavian religion (The Viking collection, Studies in
northern civilisation 17, Aarhus, 2008). The use of mead in Beowulf as part of sacral performance is referenced in P.A. Shaw, The
uses of Wodan. The development of his cult and of medieval literary responses to it (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of
Leeds, 2002). A comparative study of poetic inspiration is found in A. Faulkes Poetical inspiration in Old Norse and Old English
poetry (Dorothea Coke Memorial Lecture in Northern Studies, London, 1997).
4
G.N. Garmonsway, lfrics Colloquy, 2nd edn (London, 1947; repr. Exeter, 1983). All translations are the authors unless
otherwise stated.
5
Bosworth and Toller, s.v. ealu-scop
6
S. Brink, Lord and lady, bryti and deigja. Some historical and etymological aspects of family, patronage and slavery in early
Scandinavia and Anglo-Saxon England (Dorothea Coke Memorial Lecture, London, 2005); M. Jones Feast. Why humans share food
(Oxford, 2007), especially ch. 10; and compare the use of food in commemoration of the dead in C. Lee Feasting the dead. Food
and drink in Anglo-Saxon burial rituals (Woodbridge, 2007).
 S. Pollington / Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011) 1933 21

household conceived as the protector and maintainer of the food supply. The corresponding female
term is hlafdige d loaf-dough-maker d symbolising the traditional female role as processor of raw
materials into food. For members of Anglo-Saxon society, the consumption of food provided and
prepared by others was symbolic of economic, social and political dependence. Lordship, at its most
basic level, was a means of controlling the supply of food d both in terms of husbanding resources for
the communitys survival, and of offering hospitality for political gain.
The consumption of alcohol was a critical aspect of the Anglo-Saxon version of the idealised
good life, not because alcohol was considered an end in itself, but rather because participation in
public ceremonies in which special foods and drinks were consumed in a highly structured and
ritualised manner was a conspicuous statement of involvement, of belonging to the host
community.7 In a world which was generally non-inclusive to the point of hostility, public
demonstrations of solidarity with kindred and political leadership were of immense importance.
Special kinds of tableware were used to underscore the signicance of these occasions.8 There
are numerous examples from pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon graves of drinking horns (Sutton Hoo
Mound 1, Taplow, Prittlewell, from the late sixth or early seventh century), metal-bound cups
(Sutton Hoo Mound 1), glamorous vessels for the transporting and dispensing of ale (Sutton Hoo
Mound 1, Taplow, Wollaston, Prittlewell, again late sixth to early seventh century), glass beakers
and goblets (Rainham, Kempston, Prittlewell, Broomeld, Asthall, all sixth or early seventh
century), strainers (Bifrons, sixth century), and bowls and pots (Sutton Hoo Mound 1); their
deposition in the graves of their deceased owners demonstrates that possession and use of feasting
equipment was part of the idealised image of the worthy dead. Participation in the sharing of
food and drink could denote membership of a family, whether a kindred community based on
shared blood relationships or a ctive community assembled for the purpose of celebration.
Kindred d meaning the extended family, agnatic and consanguinary d was of crucial importance
in the Anglo-Saxon world, since legal and social status was shaped and dened by membership of
a network of overlapping familial relationships. It was a largely patrilocal construct based around
descent from a common male ancestor, while recognising the overlapping allegiances entailed by
maternal and paternal ancestry. To some extent, this was the whole point, because a marriage
inevitably entailed an adjustment in the network of relationships between kindreds. This principle
was often used to found alliances between powerful families, to cement friendly relationships and
to give formal structure to them. It was also used to heal rivalries by bringing former enemies into
a new unied entity, a new kindred. One poetic name for a bride given in marriage to a member
of a former enemy kindred is friowebba d peace-weaver d a graphic term found in Beowulf,
Widsith and Elene, denoting the ladys symbolic duty to create a state of friendly relations; weaving
was one of the expected social accomplishments for a freeborn female, and peace-weaving was of
paramount importance for the survival of the social group.9 Evidently, the offspring of such
a union would have kin on both sides.
Fosterage within and between kindreds was an important means of strengthening the bonds of
affection and trust among the juvenile and adolescent members. In the upper ranks of society,
fosterage within an extended network of peers was a means of reinforcing political ties with potentially
useful allies d the later King Hkon of Norway was fostered by the English King Athelstan, for
example.10 Fosterage was therefore a useful diplomatic tool within the network of chiefs and kings, and
among those who wished to join their ranks. To the extent that fosterage is a ctive kinship

7
Compare the later medieval treatment of drink in Joanna Bellis, The dregs of trembling, the draught of salvation. The dual
symbolism of the cup in medieval literature, Journal of Medieval History, 37(2011), 4767.
8
The age of Sutton Hoo. The seventh century in North-Western Europe, ed. M.O.H. Carver (Woodbridge, 1992); M.O.H. Carver.
Sutton Hoo. A seventh-century princely burial ground and its context (Reports of the Research Committee of the Society of
Antiquaries of London 69, London, 2005); S. Pollington, Anglo-Saxon burial mounds d princely burial in the 6th and 7th centuries
(Swaffham, 2008).
9
K. Herbert, Peace-weavers and shield-maidens. Women in early English society (Hockwold-cum-Wilton, 1997), 16; J.L. Sklute,
Freouwebbe in Old English poetry, in: New readings on women in Old English literature, ed. H. Damico and H. Hennessy Olsen
(Bloomington, 1990), 20411.
10
E. Roesdahl, The Vikings, trans. S.M. Margeson and K. Williams (London, 1991), 75.
22 S. Pollington / Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011) 1933

relationship, it could be viewed, like peace-weaving, as a means of promoting good relations and,
critically, it is founded on the sharing of food: OE fostor is a derivative of fod (food), with the impli-
cation of sharing sustenance with an individual from outside the kindred, a fostorcild (foster-child).11
For the general populace, the essence of the kindred was the protection it offered its members d an
attack on one member was construed as an attack on the whole family, and vengeance might fall
anywhere within the family of the attacker. Legal compensation and reparation for a crime committed
by one kindred member could be drawn from the group collectively; symmetrically, compensation was
payable to the injured partys kindred as a whole. As a social mechanism it was designed to restrict or
channel violence and to promote group solidarity.
The ties of kindred were loosened when a young man entered the service of a warlord, the head of
a social group in which membership was not based on birth but rather on bonds of voluntary mutual
support. Within the culture of the warband, internal bonds of trust and loyalty were paramount, both
vertical bonds between leader and follower, and horizontal bonds between fellow warriors. While the
duty to kinsmen was always acknowledged, oaths of loyalty to the lord were held to override those to
family members. This is illustrated in a passage from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (s.a. 755) in which a lord
and his troop of warriors were besieged by a rival. Men in the attacking army found that they had
kinsmen among those besieged and offered to allow them to leave their comrades and join the
attackers; this approach was scornfully refused, as the Chronicle says: Then they said that no kinsman
was dearer to them than their lord and never would they follow his slayer.12 In warrior groups, the
duty to ones leader ideally overrode duty to kinsmen. These groups ultimately formed the political
leadership, or at least in the earlier Anglo-Saxon period leaders of such groups gained and maintained
political control. They celebrated their special social status in halls of their own.

The mead-hall and hospitality

Hosting d the conspicuous provision of food and drink in lavish quantities d was a key concept for
the formation and maintenance of social networks.13 Hosting could involve the hall-owner offering
a feast to his followers in order to strengthen internal social bonds. It likewise included an externally
focused act, the reception of social superiors, whether as an act of ingratiation or as part of the duty of
hospitality which was central to the role of the itinerant kings of the early middle ages.14 The duty to
supply a king and his retinue with lodgings for one night was xed in early English law as the feorm.15
The kings regular exercise of this right at settlements within his polity served several purposes: rst, it
allowed freemen access to the king and therefore to the political process; second, it offered freemen the
opportunity to seek justice in the court without having to absent themselves from their estates; and,
third, it spread the burden of maintaining the royal household across the whole polity without the
need to levy taxes.
Access to the king was crucially important, given the central place he held in political, economic
and legal administration d and in the pre-Christian period his role had a religious dimension in
addition.16 The level of proximity to the king was probably indicated publicly by careful manage-
ment of the seating arrangements within the hall17 d such is the impression given in Beowulf and

11
F. Holthausen, Altenglisches etymologisches Wrterbuch, s.v. fostor.
12
a cue don hie t him nnig mg leofra nre onne hiera hlaford 7 hie nfre his banan folgian noldon: Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle electronic edition, ed. Tony Jebson, <http://asc.jebbo.co.uk/a/a-L.html>, accessed 11 November 2010, and in Two of the
Saxon chronicles parallel, ed. J. Earle and C. Plummer (Oxford, 1889).
13
H. Magennis Images of community in Old English poetry (Cambridge, 1996); D.A. Bullough Friends, neighbours and fellow-
drinkers. Aspects of community and conict in the early medieval west (H.M. Chadwick Memorial Lecture 1, Cambridge, 1990).
14
See Levi Roach, Hosting the king. Hospitality and the royal iter in tenth-century England, Journal of Medieval History,
37(2011), 3446
15
R.P. Abels, Lordship and military obligation in Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1988), 21 and following; A. Gautier, Hospitality
in pre-Viking Anglo-Saxon England, Early Medieval Europe, 17 (2009), 2344.
16
J.C. Russell, The Germanization of early medieval Christianity. A sociohistorical approach to religious transformation (Oxford,
1994); O. Sundqvist, Freyrs offspring. Rulers and religion in ancient Svea society (Uppsala, 2000).
17
Shaw, The uses of Wodan; A. Gautier, Le Festin dans lAngleterre anglo-saxonne (VeXIe sicle) (Rennes, 2006).
 S. Pollington / Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011) 1933 23

elsewhere by the references to bencsittend, bench-sitters, as distinct from nobles; in Hrothgars hall,
the hero takes his place on the bench among the lords young kinsmen on the evening before his
rst encounter with the monsters. It is worth noting in this context that all the beautiful jewellery
and metalwork, embroidery and carving which the Anglo-Saxons used to embellish their houses,
furniture, weapons and personal effects are, for the most part, quite small items; from this it follows
that the more detail a viewer could appreciate in the leaders sword-hilt or cloak-pin, the closer he
must be to the owner and therefore the more intimate must be their relationship. The general shape
of a brooch might be detectable from across the hall, but only the closest condants were ever able
to appreciate the symmetry of the serpentine designs or the lustre of the cloisonn garnet
decoration.
When in Beowulf Hrothgar, king of the Spear-Danes, determined that his fame among men was
insufcient, he set about building a mighty mead-hall to remedy this deciency:
It came into his mind
that he would order a hall-building
d a greater mead-house to be built by his folk
than the sons of men had ever heard of,
and in there he would share out all
that God gave him to young and old
except for common property and the lives of his warriors.
Then I heard of the workforces summoning far and near
among many peoples across this middle-earth
to adorn the meeting place. It happened over time
along the lives of men that all was ready,
the greatest of hall-buildings d he shaped its name Heorot,
he whose word had wide rule.
He did not betray his oath, he dealt out rings,
treasures at the feast. The hall towered up
high and wide-gabled.18
Hrothgar clearly understood the symbolic importance of having a really large and impressive hall in
which to celebrate his victories, welcome guests, take tribute from neighbours and provide his men
publicly with the food and drink which was their reward. It is clear that within the context of the
poems world Heorot is the kings own hall, that Hrothgar is not an Anglo-Saxon itinerant king with the
needs of clients to accommodate, but rather he is shown as a landowner with a xed base in dened
territory which he inherited from noble forebears. In this, his status coincides with the generally
heroic milieu of the poems action, in which the qualities and deeds of key individuals were stressed at
the expense of those of the group.

18
Him on mod bearn
t healreced hatan wolde,
medorn micel, men gewyrcean
onne yldo bearn fre gefrunon,
ond r on innan eall gedlan
geongum ond ealdum, swylc him god sealde,
buton folcscare ond feorum gumena.
a ic wide gefrgn weorc gebannan
manigre mge geond isne middangeard,
folcstede frtwan. Him on fyrste gelomp,
dre mid yldum, t hit wear ealgearo,
healrna mst; scop him Heort naman
se e his wordes geweald wide hfde.
He beot ne aleh, beagas dlde,
sinc t symle. Sele hlifade,
heah ond horngeap.
Beowulf with the Finnsburg fragment, ed. A.J. Wyatt and R.W. Chambers (Cambridge, 1920), lines 6782.
24 S. Pollington / Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011) 1933

The poem continues:

The hall towered up

high and wide-gabled, it awaited the ames of war,
of hateful re, nor was it long thereafter
that the sword-borne hatred between uncle and nephew
should awake after murderous deeds
when the monstrous spirit with difculty
endured torment d he who dwelt in darkness
while every day he heard merriment
loud in the hall.19
There is a double irony here: the kings emphatic imposition of humanity, community and order in the
wilderness led almost unavoidably to the chaos and bloodshed of civil war in which members of
the younger generation vied for control of the mighty hall and its symbolic position of prestige. In the
shorter term, the loud merriment in Hrothgars hall offended a local troll, Grendel, who undertook
deadly revenge and temporarily succeeded in stilling the laughter on the lips of Hrothgars men.
Hrothgars hall functioned as a communal dining room for large, festive gatherings and meals. The
principle of commensality extended from the magnicent halls of gold-laden kings to the cottages of
rural communities and the two different types of communal meal coexisted: the informal drinking
party called in OE a beoregu or gebeorscipe, and the more formal ritual assembly of the warriors and
nobility. The former event would seem to have been simply an excuse for the community to come
together and share food and drink, perhaps timed to celebrate some annual or social event, or it might
be an impromptu gathering. We may read of such an incident in the OE Life of St Oswald, where the
saints remains were collected from a Mercian battleeld and were being brought back to his kingdom
of Northumbria.20 The man charged with this task came to a house while a drinking party was in
progress, where gemette he gebeoras blie, he met happy beer-sharers, and gladly took part in their
festivities. It is evident that the custom of sharing food and drink with travellers was not conned to
kings and lords, but extended to humble assemblies.
Bede gives us some wonderful vignettes of Anglo-Saxon social life, for example the story about
Cdmon, the humble herdsman who belonged to an early Christian religious community at Whitby,
where the lifestyle for lay brethren was drawn from traditional practice, including the gebeorscipe.21
They had the custom of passing a harp round the assembled members for each to entertain the
others; Cdmon used to absent himself from the proceedings before the harp could reach him rather
than embarrass himself with a poor performance. He was later visited by an angel who questioned him
about his reluctance to sing for his comrades, and then provided him with a means of creating poems
which conformed to the didactic needs of a Christian community, and sent him back into the hall to
show off his new talent. The hall in Cdmons tale is so obviously a place of warmth and friendship that
one might question why the herdsman wanted to leave, but the answer is clear: the price of sitting in
the hall was participation, being part of the entertainment as much as of the audience. Pride forbade
him to remain d the fear of losing face among his neighbours and workmates. Through the angelic
intervention, verse in the traditional English metre began to be composed which was appropriate for

19
Sele hlifade,
heah ond horngeap, heaowylma bad,
laan liges; ne ws hit lenge a gen
t se ecghete aumsweorum
fter wlnie wcnan scolde.
a se ellengst earfolice
rage geolode, se e in ystrum bad,
t he dogora gehwam dream gehyrde
hludne in healle.
Beowulf, ed. Wyatt and Chambers, lines 819.
20
See G.I. Needham, lfric. The Lives of three English saints (London, 1966; repr. Exeter, 1984).
21
Bedes story of Caedmon, ed. B. Slade, <http://www.heorot.dk/bede-caedmon.html#bede-oe>, accessed 11 November 2010.
 S. Pollington / Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011) 1933 25

recital in a monastic context. The words of the fteenth-century, anonymous carol Make we merry both
more and less for now is the time of Christmas seem to echo this tradition of mandatory participation:
Let no man come into this hall,
Groom, page nor yet marshal,
But that some sport he bring withal,
For now is the time of Christmas.
If that he say he cannot sing,
Some other sport then let him bring,
That it may please at this feasting,
For now is the time of Christmas.
If he say he can naught do,
Then for my love ask him no mo,
But to the stocks then let him go,
For now is the time of Christmas.22
We can imagine that small-scale celebrations were used to lift the spirits of an agricultural
community in troubled times, as well as to use up temporary surpluses which could be converted into
a few evenings merriment in the hall where games, music and laughter were to be found. Aside from
this aspect, which we might think of as the job of the traditional English inn, there was a more solemn
side to the hall as a public space. As substantial edices in a landscape where large buildings were
generally rare, halls such as the examples at Cheddar and Yeavering were an imposing expression of
political power and dominance over territory. They were not courts of law, in the modern sense of
buildings in which the law was upheld and enacted; this seems to have been the function of the
hundred meetings and the royal circuit, which traditionally took place in the open, and around which
customary trade markets grew up.23 But control of the mead-hall entailed dominance of local political
and economic d as well as social and religious d activity.

The mead-hall and social ritual

As well as the various formal aspects of the halls social function outlined above, the ritual function
of the hall is potentially important to our understanding of pre-Christian religion. Pope Gregory I
(590604) advised his envoy to the newly-formed Christian church in England, Bishop Mellitus (d.624),
against destroying the heathen places of worship, but rather converting them to the service of the
Christian god; the correspondence was available to Bede and inserted into his narrative of the early
church, the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum.24 The lack of identiable pre-Christian temples in
Anglo-Saxon archaeology is well known, even on sites which bear names such as weoh (for example,
Weeley) and hearh (for example, Harrow), both of which point to some kind of structure for religious
worship. Probably the bishops sites of heathen worship were present, not as free-standing shrines and
temples, but as buildings within settlements. Perhaps these buildings had other uses than the exul-
tation of heathen gods and sacrice of animals which Gregory so deplored: given that the popes
instructions were for the slaughtered animals to be consecrated to the benet of Christian commu-
nities, it seems a reasonable inference that the sacrice of animals was in fact part of the preparations
for a religious ceremony of which an important aspect was a communal meal.25 Therefore one might

22
Edith Rickert, Ancient English Christmas carols: 14001700 (London, 1914).
23
See discussion in A. Meaney, Pagan English sanctuaries, place-names and hundred meeting-places (Anglo-Saxon Studies in
Archaeology and History 8, Oxford, 1995).
24
Bedes Ecclesiastical history of the English people, ed. B. Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors, rev. edn (Oxford, 1991), 1069.
25
This development nds a parallel in the Christianisation of the sacrice of animals in Scandinavia. The earliest Norwegian
law codes stipulate that Christian feasts must be held three times a year and these seem intended to replace traditional pagan
religious meals: see S. Bagge and S.W. Nordeide, The kingdom of Norway, in: Christianization and the rise of Christian monarchy.
Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus c. 9001200, ed. Nora Berend (Cambridge, 2007), 12166 (124). Also, in Sweden, on the
island of Gotland, the early Christian law code forbade invocations with food and drink as follow not Christian traditions:
N. Blomkvist, S. Brink and T. Lindkvist, The kingdom of Sweden, in: Christianization and the rise of Christian monarchy, ed.
Berend, 167213 (16970).
26 S. Pollington / Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011) 1933

argue that the existing rituals which were to be adapted to Christian usage were the customary meals
and hostings which formed the punctuation points in the round of the agricultural year.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the usage of the hall as envisaged by poets is its function as
the site for formal, ceremonial activity d especially that ritual which is now known as symbel, the ale-
sharing ritual.26 This custom appears to have been a pre-Christian rite developed from the warband
culture, in which oaths of brotherhood were sworn and vows to perform honourable deeds were
publicly announced; the new religious climate could not forbid such traditions. The role of the hlaford
as overseer and ofciant at these rituals would coincide with his role as leader of the military forces
available to the community.
The lords hall was also used to receive visitors formally d which is to say, to bring visitors before the
community and make them ctive members for a limited period. Such circumstances would apply to the
informal visits of travellers seeking lodgings, to traders and peddlars with goods and services to offer, and
to storytellers such as Widsi and adventurers such as Beowulf. The formal hosting of a king or overlord
was a rather different matter: since the hospitality extended to a king and his court was by denition more
lavish than the usual household preparation and consumption of food and drink, a greater degree of
planning must have been involved.27 Indeed, the visit of a king and his retinue of perhaps several dozen
persons was an honour accorded to relatively few people d only those with a direct relationship to the
king d and necessarily involved considerable preparations by the host community, and therefore the visit
must have been planned. It is not difcult to imagine that the kings routine procession (iter) might have
been scheduled to occur at a dened calendrical point and that the gathering of food, drink, fuel and other
consumables would have been undertaken well in advance to coincide with his arrival.
Within the hall, positions of prestige were available to members of the community; of these, the
lords special seat was the most important as it was generally the focus for the rituals enacted in the
hall. The lords seat was the source of bounty, of rewards for deeds done and tokens for deeds to come.
In Beowulf, line 168, we learn that this seat was forbidden to the monster, Grendel; no he one gifstol
gretan moste (nor was he allowed to come to the gift-stool). Exclusion from the social rites of the hall
implies exclusion from human society d although the poet leaves open the question of whether this is
a matter of human social exclusion or an interdiction laid down by the Christian god.
From the custom of handing out rewards from the high-seat comes its OE name of gifstol (gift-stool,
chair of giving). From the thirteenth century we have the account of the tenth-century Icelander, Egil
Skallagrimmsson, who allegedly took part in a great military victory at Vinheir under the English King
Athelstan. After the battle, at the victory celebration, Egil was offered a place on the bench opposite the king,
who passed a magnicent arm-ring to the Icelander on the tip of his sword over the ames of the long-re.
The king was seated in his traditional place of honour, the gift-stool, and his celebrated guest was facing him.
Egils tale brings us to the matter of the high-seats pillars, that is to say the earth-fast posts which
supported the lords special seat. There are saga references to this structure, supported on a platform,
and in Norse tradition it was only to be used by the head of the household. Indeed, the Elder Gulaing
Law species that a bereaved heir might not take possession of his inheritance until he had organised
a memorial feast, at which he must be seated on the dais (at the foot of the high-seat) until he had
raised the cup of memorial ale (erl) and formally commemorated his forebear.28 Only then might he
step up to the seat and place himself upon it, formally acquire the heritable properties and the status of
community leader. Egilssaga indicates that in his day English halls had high-seats too, at least in the
saga-makers imagination.29 But there is some supporting local evidence: the image from the lid of the
Franks Casket, carved from whalebone in eighth-century Northumbria, shows a house with a defender
at the window and behind him a raised dais with animal-head carving and carefully engraved twin
posts d this would seem a likely image of a high-seat.30

26
P. Bauschatz, The well and the tree. World and time in early Germanic culture (Amherst, 1982).
27
See Levi Roach, Hosting the king.
28
The Gulaing law was published as Regis magni legum reformatoris leges Gula-thingenses, sive jus commune Norvegicum, ed.
Grmur Jnsson Thorkelin (Copenhagen, 1817).
29
Egils saga, ed. G. Jnsson, http://www.heimskringla.no/wiki/Egils_saga_Skalla-Grimssonar, accessed 11 November 2010.
30
A. Becker, Franks Casket. Zu den Bildern und Inschriften des Runenkstchens von Auzon (Regensburger Arbeiten zur Anglistik
und Amerikansitik 5, Regensburg, 1973).
 S. Pollington / Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011) 1933 27

The gift-stool was a physical emblem of the community which depended upon the skill and
goodwill of its incumbent. At the foot of the high-seat were found gifts of food and drink, badges of
merit and tokens of acceptance. In this sense it was the central point of the society. Gift giving in early
medieval Europe was not simply a matter of handing over tokens of affection to friends. It had a whole
tradition behind it, a protocol for who might receive what, and in which circumstances. Accepting a gift
was not something one might lightly do d the gift placed both giver and recipient in a relationship of
obligation. Indeed gifts in the modern sense of things given freely could not exist in the mead-hall.
Every presentation was a badge of honour for the recipient and a mark of nobility and largesse for the
donor; this was an economy of prestige in which gold necklaces, ring-hilted swords, battle-coats,
helmets and horses were the currency.
There is something of a gap in the evidence when it comes to female participation in mead-hall
rituals.31 We hear of the queens entrance at Heorot:
A ballad was sung
a glee-mans song, merriment arose once more
the bench-noise brightened, cupbearers dealt
wine from wondrous vessels, then Wealhtheow came forth
with her golden rings to where the two good men,
uncle and nephew, sat together.32
The presence of noblewomen is not an explicit feature of many scenes in Beowulf, yet Hrothgars queen,
Wealhtheow, is present here along with the lady Freawaru, as we later learn when Beowulf tells of the
feast to his own lord, Hygelac, on his return:
The warband was merry-making, nor have I ever seen in all my life
under the reach of the heavens, for hall-dwellers
a greater mead-joy; at times the famed queen,
the peace-pledge of nations, went about the oor
urged the young kinsmen; often, ring-wreathed,
she passed to a man before she went to her seat,
sometimes for the older men Hrothgars daughter
bore the ale-vessel to the nobles in turn.
Freawaru a hall-dweller
I heard name her when a studded gem
she handed to the heroes; she is betrothed
d young and gold-adorned d to the lucky son of Froda. 33

31
H. Damico, The Valkyrie reex in Old English literature, in: New readings on women, ed. Damico and Hennessy Olsen, 17692.
32
Leo ws asungen,
gleomannes gyd. Gamen eft astah,
beorhtode bencsweg; byrelas sealdon
win of wunderfatum. 3a cwom Wealheo for
gan under gyldnum beage, r a godan twegen
ston suhtergefderan.
Beowulf, ed. Wyatt and Chambers, lines 115964.
33
Weorod ws on wynne, ne seah ic widan feorh
under heofones hwealf healsittendra
meadudream maran, hwilum mru cwen
friusibb folca et eall geondhwearf
bdde byre geonge, oft hio beahwrian
secge sealde r hie to setle geong,
hwilum for dugue dohtor Hrogares
eorlum on ende ealuwge br
a ic Freware etsittende
nemnan hyrde r hio ngledsinc
hleum sealde, sio gehaten is
geong goldhroden gladum suna Frodan
Beowulf, ed. Wyatt and Chambers, lines 201425.
28 S. Pollington / Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011) 1933

Frodas lucky son was Ingeld, an adventurer whose fame was widespread in the early Anglo-Saxon
period;34 and with characteristic irony, the ring-adorned ladys presence at a feast later caused the
bitter internal strife which destroyed the hall and the social group itself. Far from being a peace-
weaver, the woman acted as an unwelcome reminder of former rivalries which soon spilled over into
renewed violence.
The notion of community fostered by the symbel imagery is not consistent with a at or egalitarian
social structure. Rather, the purpose of the ritual feast was to highlight and re-afrm the hierarchical
structure of the group, the pre-eminence of the leader and the gradation of followers. The role of the
richly-dressed female, consort to the lord, in this structure was paramount as the lodestone of his will,
just as the poet was the conscience of the warriors and wise men. Neither could be lightly ignored.
Wealhtheow evidently had an active role in the ceremonies of the hall, where she not only perambu-
lated doling out drink to the assembled worthies but also took part in the formal dialogue which
established Beowulfs credentials and eased his acceptance as a welcome rescuer in their time of
troubles.
We understand that the ceremonial honouring of the headman was undertaken by the lady of the
household at the onset of the ale ceremony, but what of the other women? Perhaps the scant evidence
for female participation in the literary sources is due to the nature of the surviving tales: stories about
outstanding men and their deeds. One would expect that the free-born of both sexes and their guests
would take part fully in rites and celebrations.
Relevant here is the Norse custom of tvimenning (two-manning), where a man and woman
would drink from the same vessel.35 This implies that they sat close together, perhaps across the
table from each other. Yet this custom is mentioned as if it were a deviation from normal practice
d something remarkable or specic to a certain kind of occasion d and one suspects that women
normally sat separately from men, and that they did not take part in the oath-making and horn-
drinking; they were not actively involved in the ale-rites as regards consumption. Probably, females
had traditions and customs of their own: if so, then the Norse stories of itinerant spaewives who
could foretell the future in a state of trance, and of prophetic and magical seir rituals which were
normally forbidden to males, may reect aspects of the contribution free women made to such
events.36 Geoffrey of Monmouths tale of the Anglo-Saxons early dealings with the Britons in
chapter 37 of the Historia regia Britanni, for all its ctionalised content, tells that the Saxon
princess Rowena was deliberately introduced to a celebration at which the British leader, Vortigern,
was present; she was ordered to serve him with copious quantities of wine and ale and, under the
inuence of the drink, the king became so smitten with the lady that he asked for her hand in
marriage. The English leader, Hengist, asked for the territory of Kent as bride-price and this was
agreed. While the account of the gaining of Kent by Hengist is legendary, it nevertheless points to
an expectation among the readership that high-born women were to be found supplying drink to
visiting dignitaries.37
One of the great strengths of the mead-hall feast as a ritual observance was the parallel relation-
ships it demonstrated. The lord d the community leader d presided over the public ceremonies and
offered gifts to the fellowship, his supporters and warriors and farmers and producers. They in turn
supported their lord, and ascribed their worth (good deeds, good name) to him, and handed him their
material gains.

34
Beowulf, ed. Wyatt and Chambers, 174, s.v. Ingeld.
35
R. Cleasby and G. Vigfusson, An Icelandic-English dictionary (London, 1874), 105; W. Gronbech, The culture of the Teutons,
trans. W. Worster (London, 1931; repr. 2010), 322.
36
Compare the three powerful women who visit the farmhouse on the night when Nornagestr is born and x the term of his
life in ttr af Nornagesti, and the story of the seeress in Greenland in ornns saga Karlsefnis: G.N. Garmonsway, An early Norse
reader (Cambridge, 1928). Prophecy and rites associated with females are discussed in N.S. Price, The Viking way. Religion and
war in late Iron Age Scandinavia (AUN 31, Uppsala, 2003), and in M. Enright, Lady with a mead cup. Ritual, prophecy and lordship
in the European warband from La Tne to the Viking age, (Dublin, 1996). For a more recent overview of research, see C. Tolley,
Shamanism in Norse myth and magic, 2 vols (Helsinki, 2009).
37
R. Bartlett, England under the Norman and Angevin kings, 10751225, (Oxford, 2002); Geoffrey of Monmouth. The history of
the kings of Britain, trans. L. Thorpe (London, 1966).
 S. Pollington / Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011) 1933 29

Mead-hall as poetic image

Perhaps the main strength of the mead-hall, outside the political and spiritual aspects of its use, is the
part it played in the development of Anglo-Saxon creative arts. If the evidence of the verse is
accepted, mead-halls were the backdrop for just about every important event, including ghts to the
death (Beowulf and Grendel, Hnf and Finn, Ingeld and his father-in-law) and the cementing of
friendships (Beowulf and Hrothgar, Beowulf and Hygelac). Although it cannot be proved that weighty
matters really were discussed over a cup of ale in fact, it is clear that Anglo-Saxon audiences expected
important discussions to be situated in the environment of the hall. This is why all but a handful of
verse frames its narratives in terms of lordly halls d and this is true even when the tribes and nations
in the source texts, the Romans and Hebrews in the poems Elene, Judith and Exodus, had no mead-
halls of their own.38 The cultural expectations of the Anglo-Saxons were such that these powerful
nations had to be provided with these edices d how could a leader without a mead-hall call himself
a king?
The focus on kings and heroes is perhaps to be expected from a poetic tradition which routinely
exalted the wisdom of elderly males and the courage of younger ones. The hall in the imagination of the
audience appears as a male-dominated structure for a patriarchal society, and the heroes of old who
swagger through the halls of this tradition are men larger than life, bound by terrible oaths, haunted by
implacable nightmarish spirits, forsaken by loved ones and kin. Expanding on its association with
negotiations and discourse, the hall became the only appropriate venue for the display of power, both
secular and religious. Power was manifest through ritual; through the deference of others in authority;
through the careful use of rich display. Anglo-Saxon taste in the visual arts centred on the costly, the
sumptuous, the eye-catching. Gold, silver, gemstones and rich coloration are all characteristic of the
Anglo-Saxon style.
The image of the hall was, then, very much the image of the good life in Anglo-Saxon thinking, the
idealised epicentre of social and political life. No less important than the individual seledreamas, joys of
the hall, was the fact of their availability only through the hall. For the loner, the traveller, the outcast,
there could be no hall-joys because there were no hall-fellows with whom to enjoy them. The
fellowship and commensality of hall-meetings, the opportunity to display membership of a commu-
nity, was the whole point of them.
Critically, one mid-eleventh century, Anglo-Saxon manuscript illustration (Plate 1) demonstrates
the equivalence of mead-hall trappings with the desirable things in life. It shows the temptation of
Christ, and among the worldly treasures offered to him are: a metal bowl, two arm-rings, an ornate
shield, a smaller nger-ring, a sword in a decorated scabbard, a drinking horn and a metal cup. All these
items are taken directly from the material culture of the weapons-bearing freeman, celebrating with
friends in the hall, which was in both a physical and a gurative sense the centre of its physical
environment, while the rites and formal occasions which took place within it were at the centre of the
social structure.
The validation of individuals and the underpinning of hierarchy were primary goals at the formal
symbel: seating positions, gifts, kind words could all give encouragement to those who were in the
ascendant, and provide a spur to those who were not. The leaders of individual households were at the
top of the domestic hierarchy but still part of a larger, regional network and would have to attend
the symbel of their overlords. Wider networks of mutual dependency were created and maintained
through shared experience of the ceremonies; these were what we might call regional, but in smaller
kingdoms of just a few hundred hides, the whole hierarchy of leaders could be brought together in
a single building for a single act of communal worship and beer-drinking.39 We may infer that the early

38
E. van Kirk Dobbie, Beowulf and Judith (Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 4, New York, 1953); P.O.E. Gradon, Cynewulfs Elene
(Exeter, 1977); P.J. Lucas, Exodus (Exeter, 1994).
39
The gathering of the powerful men of a territory is implicit in the witness lists to land-grants, which usually include the
name of the land-holding donor, the king (rex), the higher-ranking ecclesiastics (episcopi), nobles (duces) and men termed
ministri, who probably correspond to the Anglo-Saxon class of egen, thanes. S.E. Kelly, The charters of Selsey (British Academy,
Anglo-Saxon Charters 6, Oxford, 1998) includes some examples from the minor kingdom of Sussex; C. Hart, Early charters of
Essex (Department of English Local History occasional papers 10, Leicester, 1971).
30 S. Pollington / Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011) 1933

Plate 1. The temptation of Christ. The vessels and military accoutrements with which the seduction of Christ was attempted are all
drawn from the culture of the Anglo-Saxon mead-hall. London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius C. VI, f. 10v. Reproduced with the
kind permission of the British Library.

medieval notion of the formal communal meal was one of the mainstays of the economy of prestige, in
which public recognition of deeds done and oaths to be fullled was paramount: without the pivotal
opposition of glory (success) and shame (failure), and the societal reactions which accompanied these,
the honorics and worldly treasures would have had no meaning.40

40
Although Welshmen, Irishmen, Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons often found themselves on opposing sides, the literary
evidence suggests that their societies valued similar forms of behaviour and used similar badges to reward success. Lordship
among Anglo-Saxons, Britons and Scandinavians shared familiar rights and obligations. See S. Evans Lords of battle: image and
reality of the comitatus in Dark Age Britain (Woodbridge, 2000).
 S. Pollington / Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011) 1933 31

The OE term ealuscerwen in Beowulf was mentioned previously; its supercial meaning is ale-loss
or deprival of ale. It will come as no surprise to learn that it has a deep resonance in Anglo-Saxon
society. The context is the heros rst monstrous encounter and the destructive ght which took place
in the kings hall:
The lordly hall resounded; to all the Danes
d to each of the daring fort-dwellers
came ale-deprival for the heroes. Angry were both
the mighty hall-keepers. The chamber groaned.
Then it was a great wonder that the wine-hall
withstood the war-keen ones, that it did not fall to earth,
that fair dwelling. 41
The Danes are struck with terror at Grendels strength and destructive power, but their fear is framed in
terms of the object of his hatred: he wishes to destroy human society, to silence the sweet song of the
minstrel, to take away the wine-benches. In the opening lines of the poem, the predatory aggran-
disement undertaken by Scyld, rst of the Danish royal line and himself an otherworld saviour, is
depicted as removal of mead-benches from foes:
Often Scyld son of Sceaf with troops of warriors
withdrew mead-seats from many folks,
overawed the earls.42
The symbolic removal of mead-benches is a poetic device which signies the destruction of the tar-
geted societies d their halls destroyed, their mead-benches withdrawn, their young men slain, their
women abducted, their leadership broken. Without the political centre of a mead-hall, no lord could
claim to rule. The Danes fear of loss of ale therefore denotes and entails loss of independence, of
political mastery, and ultimately it is fear of the destruction of the society which they have built for
themselves at the expenditure of so much labour and bloodshed.
The mead-hall image remained a central concept in poetic vocabulary across the Anglo-Saxon
period, from the eighth-century excerpt from the Dream of the Rood on the Ruthwell Cross, which
frames Christ as a young lord with a loyal band of followers, through to the prophetic words spoken
before the ght in the Battle of Maldon (991) concerning the leaders insight that many who boasted
of their courage sitting in the hall would prove unworthy standing on the battleeld.43 The end of
the mead-hall feast was a process, not an event: the rise of centralised legal, military and
commercial authority in the Alfredian burh system had rendered the local hall redundant as a seat
of government. Here the disparity between words and deeds was already being exploited: image
and reality were rather different. The social and political developments which enabled Athelstan to
form a united kingdom of England in the tenth century had left behind the localised centres of
family and feasting which the poets still loved to recall. Yet while the mead-hall ceased to hold the
central place in everyday life, it remained the hub of the Anglo-Saxon mental picture, the idealised
model community of story-telling, legend and myth. In that sense, the idea radically gained in
importance. The mead-hall was bound up with the Anglo-Saxon idea of the community, the good

41
Dryhtsele dynede; Denum eallum wear,
ceasterbuendum, cenra gehwylcum,
eorlum ealuscerwen. Yrre wron begen,
ree renweardas. Reced hlynsode.
a ws wundor micel t se winsele
wihfde heaodeorum, t he on hrusan ne feol,
fger foldbold.
Beowulf, ed. Wyatt and Chambers, lines 76571.
42
Oft Scyld Sceng sceaena reatum,
monegum mgum, meodosetla ofteah,
egsode eorlas.
Beowulf, ed. Wyatt and Chambers, lines 46.
43
M. Swanton, The dream of the rood, new edn (Exeter, 1996); D.G. Scragg The battle of Maldon (Manchester, 1981).
32 S. Pollington / Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011) 1933

life where each person carried out his daily tasks and all came together in the evening for a meal,
a drink, some gossip and laughter. It is a reassuring image, and it became increasingly important as
the tenth century progressed.
There are around 100 poems surviving in Old English, about 30,000 lines of verse. Of these, all but
a tiny handful deal with life in the hall, or use mead-hall imagery to tell their stories. This applies not only
to the native verse d the Beowulf and Widsith narratives44 d but just as much to Anglo-Saxon recitations
of biblical stories. It does seem that verse and hall went together in Old English cultural life d verse was
the medium for the hall, and the hall was incomplete without verse.
Having touched upon the fall of the mead-hall from its position of centrality, it seems appropriate to
end with the image of the broken and deserted mead-hall from the Exeter Book poem, The ruin:
Doomed men fell widely, woeful days came
death took away all the troop of men
their dwellings became bare foundations,
the stronghold crumbled. Defenders fell
warriors onto the earth. Thus these buildings grow gloomy
and the red gabled roof sheds its tiles,
the vaulted covering. Harm brought it down
broken inside the walls, where in olden times many a warrior
d glad at heart and gold-bright, adorned with glittering raiment
proud and wine-ushed d shone in his wargear,
looked on the jewels, on the silver, on the cunningly made gems,
on the wealth, on the riches, on the splendid stones,
on the bright stronghold of a broad kingdom.45
The nostalgic quality of this poetic, yearning for a society which no longer existed, comes through
strongly in this passage: the transience of human life, the impermanence of mans success, was a theme
which Anglo-Saxon poets never tired of rehearsing.

Conclusion

The early Anglo-Saxon hall was central to the social life of the individual settlement and to the com-
munitys situation within the wider society. While we may wonder whether the mead-hall was
necessarily a source of pleasure for the lower orders for whom the lords hospitality merely meant
more work, it remains likely that informal drinking parties were a source of enjoyment and bonding
across the social spectrum. In the poetic imagination at least, the loss of the hall was tantamount to and
emblematic of the dissolution of the social group. Men denied their dole of mead were not social beings
in the fullest sense d they were outcasts, the otsam and jetsam of military conquest. They had no
focus for their loyalties, no gift-stool from which to receive the badges of worth and merit which gave
meaning to their acts of courage.

44
Widsith, ed. K. Malone (London, 1936; rev. edn. Copenhagen, 1962); Beowulf, ed. Wyatt and Chambers.
45
Crungon walo wide, cwoman woldagas,
swylt eall fornom secgrofra wera;
wurdon hyra wigsteal westen staolas,
brosnade burgsteall. Betend crungon
hergas to hrusan. Foron as hofu dreorgia,
ond s teaforgeapa tigelum sceade
hrostbeages hrof. Hryre wong gecrong
gebrocen to beorgum, r iu beorn monig
gldmod ond goldbeorht gleoma gefrtwed,
wlonc ond wingal wighyrstum scan;
seah on sinc, on sylfor, on searogimmas,
on ead, on ht, on eorcanstan,
on as beorhtan burg bradan rices.
R.F. Leslie, Three Old English elegies. The wifes lament, The husbands message and The ruin, rev. edn (Exeter, 1988), lines 2537.
 S. Pollington / Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011) 1933 33

The meduseld was ousted from its central role in social life, but at just the time when it might have
fallen into obscurity, the notion was revived and given new life by those poets who valued the
symbolism, and used it as the backdrop for political and social commentary.
The imagined mead-hall may have been very different from the mead-hall experienced by young,
would-be warriors, by warlords, by distributors of bread and drink, but the poets created such
a beguiling window into the imaginary world of Anglo-Saxon England that we may forgive them their
embellishments.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thanks Lars Kjr, Anthony Watson and Christopher Woolgar for offering me the
opportunity to participate in the conference on Medieval Feasting, Gift Giving and Hospitality at
Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in 2009.

Stephen Pollington is an independent scholar working in the elds of language and archaeology in early medieval Europe,
particularly the Anglo-Saxons and their neighbours.