Anglo-Saxon Attitudes
One of the great interests of Anglo-Saxon poems is the heroic code of the warriors. They fight for their own glory, of course, but also to protect and avenge their lord, to preserve their religion, and defend the liberties of their people. Unlike the Vikings, they are neither savages nor merely predators.
Before going on to discuss the code(s) adhered to by the warriors at Maldon and earlier at Brunanburgh, I want to reach back to Beowulf and repeat some of what I wrote in that discussion:
We have next-to no knowledge of Anglo-Saxon society on the eve of the invasions that Germanized England, but we know a little more about Vikings several hundred years later. At the top of the social order were kings, members of royal kindreds, though power did not pass automatically to eldest son or, failing sons, a daughter, either in Scandinavia or in AS England. The king was primarily warchief and thus a tough and resolute warrior was needed to protect the people. King much more loosely applied than among Goths and other tribes to the South—often claimed by members of royal clan. Under the king were jarls/earls, who enjoyed power and prestige over community or communities, and in Scandinavia were commissioned by the king to represent his government, much like the comites in Carolingian Francia. These nobles, powerful as they might be, lacked the divine sanction of kings who claimed descent from Woden.
“The basic unity in society…was no king or earl but a bondir, a free farmer, roughly equivalent to the Anglo-Saxon ceorl…” [H.R. Lloyn, The Vikings in Britain] The bondir was no little man in our sense of the word. He was at his most typical the head of a household, a man of some property in land and especially in stock. He was a slave-owner. His symbols of rank were his axe and his spear. The mark of the freeman was the right to bear arms. He was oath-worthy and law-worthy… Sturdy and at times savage, independence was a characteristic of this breed, but…his very litigious and squabblesome nature found its outlet in what was essentially communal institutional life, in the folk-court, the local thing held at some traditional spot…”
Anglo-Saxon society developed under Frankish and Christian influence, but it started from roughly the same place and was never fully detached from its foundations. The freemen and Earls were fiercely individualistic, self-assertive, quick to anger; also intensely familial and devoted to kin. Marriage far more egalitarian than among more developed peoples. Free contract between man and woman, dissolvable by either party. Scandinavia and AS societies were not the Playboy Club that Iceland has become, but they were freer and less restricted in their sexual mores and attitude toward women than, say, Mediterranean cultures. This is one more indication of how primitive they were and are.
In Beowulf, the most important social and legal fact to notice is the code of the Germanic warrior. A free man, by definition, was a man who could fight to defend himself, his kin, and his king. Blood revenge and what would later be called dueling were social and moral norms. In modern times, English law has gone farthest in restricting the individual's recourse to violence. Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, if they were freemen, did not so much take the law into their own hands as exercise the law on their own authority. In avenging a death in the family, they were less interested in the motives and circumstances than in the fact. Blood once spilled cannot be recalled, as the furies say in Aeschylus' Eumenides. Even in a case of accidental homicide, where no negligence is involved, a man is still dead, and--as the legal maxim held--"Legis enim est qui inscienter peccet, scienter emendet", that is a man should knowingly fix the harm he had done in ignorance." In tort law, this principle endured into the 19th century.
For the Saxons, murder as well as accidental homicide were settled by payment of blood-money to the kindred. "Homicide appears in the Anglo-Saxon dooms as a matter for composition in the ordinary case of slaying in an open quarrel. There are additional public penalties in aggravated cases, as where a man is slain in the king's presence or otherwise in breach of the king's peace." [Maitland and Pollock I.52]
Wergeld, as our Saxon ancestors called it, is a custom of many nations, although none, perhaps, has elaborated it into a social system so successfully as the Germanic peoples. The monster Grendel, whom Beowulf kills, is an outlaw not so much because he kills the Danish king's retainers as because his refusal to pay compensation puts him outside society.
“Although it may be assumed that the primitive Germans recognized only the fact of bloodshed, motivation and circumstance did come to play an important part. Of course the slayer's kin could stick to the letter of the law of blood, but "one may almost say that the leading motive in heroic literature is precisely this difference of opinion between the people who hold that under any circumstance it is shameful to come to an agreement with the bana (slayer) of one's lord or friend or kinsman, and the people who are willing under certain circumstances to come to such an agreement." [Beowulf: An Introduction to the Study of the Poem with a Discussion of the Stories of Offa and Finn by R.W. Chambers with supplement by C. L. Wrenn, IIIrd Ed., Cambridge UP, 1963, 276-77.] Liability also extended to one who loaned weapons or was present in a fray.
Much of what underlies the principle of blood-revenge is summed up in the phrase “collective responsibility.” In other words, an individual who killed or maimed or robbed someone was not the only person responsible. If a town rose up against the king, it was not just the guilty parties who suffered. In Medieval Tuscany, Florence in particular, wide networks of kinfolks were held collectively responsible for paying the fines of an offending member, and this gave the Florentine business classes the ability to expel entire noble kindreds. One of King Alfred’s successors made local communities responsible for paying the fines for unpunished criminals—which must have served as a powerful incentive to punish the guilty parties.
This is a very inadequate and amateurish introduction, which can be fleshed out in many directions, but I wanted to begin to show that in the heroic world of Beowulf, we shall not find many things to confirm our modern liberal prejudices in favor of equality, individualism, and universal moral rules.
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Fascinating stuff. A few thoughts...
While marriage among the Germanic peoples might have been more egalitarian, don't you think it was somewhat strict? On this subject, Tacitus writes: "[The Germans'] marriage code however is strict and indeed no part of their manners is more praiseworthy. Almost alone among barbarians they are content with one wife, except a very few among them, and these not from mere sensuality, but because their noble birth procures for them many offers of alliance." Interestingly, stressing the warrior code, the "gift of arms" given at marriage are considered to be the "strongest bond of union, these their sacred mysteries, these their gods of marriage." He then goes on that "very rare for so numerous a population is adultery."
Granted, Tacitus at times seems to romanticize the Germans. He might have been contrasting them, especially in terms of monogamy, to the more polygamous cultures of the Asiatics; or, in terms of adultery, to imperial Rome, but he paints a rather sympathetic picture. Do you think Tacitus is completely off?
Regarding the Germanic warrior code, the codes in the Havamal often stress a form of moderation that one would find among the Greco-Romans: many warnings about the dangers of drinking too much (because it might have been a real problem), how to treat friends, how to work hard / not be lazy, etc.
A saying regarding fatalism:
"Moderately wise
a man should be
not too crafty and clever.
A man's fate
should be firmly hidden
to preserve his peach of mind."
This one, regarding the importance of procreation to keep alive the ancestral religion, reminds me of Roman practice:
"A son is better
though late begotten
of an old and ailing father.
Only your kin
will proudly carve
a memorial at the main gate."
(I've read that the Germanic kobolds might have served the same function as the lares.)
Regarding homicide in the Germanic world, what do you think of the story "Thorstein the Staff-Struck"? It emphasizes a moderation in retribution for homicide and moderation in maintaining honor. It seems to be both pagan and Christian, borrowing elements from both. When reading it, I've always felt that I've mostly left the Wergeld-world of Beowulf.
As a depressing side note - and sorry for interjecting the mundane world of contemporary politics into this discussion - here we are discussing some of the great warriors of the English tradition, while David Cameron seems dead-set on purging the Conservative Party of the very blood-descendants of this tradition.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1252145/David-Camerons-plan-impose-women-gays-ethnic-candidates.html
If only a Byrhtnoth were around today....Cameron would be swimming the channel faster than one could say feyman.
When I consider Byrhtnoth and his kind and then consider their near ancestors who converted to Christianity, I know that they were men who knew who lords were and the loyalty, chief among Germanic virtues and the one most often compromised in conflict, that a worthy thane must have to his lord. Their conversion was to Christ the Lord and not to Jesus the ticket to heaven or the therapeutic counselor at our beck and call to assuage our Freudian guilt. Such men would ride with their Lord against the gates of hell itself. Such men are sorely lacking among us today. After all, we have made "progress."
... dang good article.
Tacitus was going mostly on hearsay and using the Germans as a foil for criticizing the Romans of his day. It is a little like conservatives who praise Mexicans for their fine family values. We do know that later Germans, e.g. the Franks and Lombards, were anything but chaste or even restrained in their sexual behavior.
I find generalizations about Germanic peoples to be troublesome. The Vikings of the 10th century are truly horrible people, violent in a sick way that is hard to find parallels for among white Europeans. They appear to have been as fond of torture and mass murder as the Comanche. This may have something to do with the build-up of state power in Denmark and Norway and the imposition of Christianity.
In general, systems of vendetta are designed to reduce, not increase violence. The depiction of the city at peace on the shield of Achilles is a scene or arbitration for blood money. It is true that vendettas can get out of control but it is also true that we have crooked cops and judges and in general government authorities who refuse to protect the innocent against black and Mexican gangs and against Islamic terrorists, whom we actively recruit for the armed forces. Every system has its limitations. In the AS system, it is not easy to divorce the idea of vendetta from the general sense of obligation toward family members and a warrior's obligation to his lord. Byrhthnoth made a mistake, but that mistake in no way releases his companions from their duty to avenge his death, even though the death took place in battle.
In my completely amateurish opinion, Bernard Cornwell's novels set in this period seem to convey some of the nature of the times. ???
"The monster Grendel, whom Beowulf kills, is an outlaw not so much because he kills the Danish king’s retainers as because his refusal to pay compensation puts him outside society."
Grendel might have been one of the first honest libertarians from the Anglo-Saxon line. When Dr. Fleming first made the above quoted remark about Grendel years ago on the Beowulf thread, I found it very strange -- assuming cold blooded murder the more heinous offense. Since then I have come to understand that the classical definition of hell is to have ones own will forever. Grendel certainly is this type of hellish creature. Especially when contrasted to the hero who must lay down his life to slay the dragon.
"The mark of the freeman was the right to bear arms."
This is interesting to chew on; perhaps obvious to everybody else, but it seems to highlight the essential distinction between modern & ancient rights. Under egalitarianism, the idea is that we cannot tolerate any rights which are restricted to some but not others. A right exists either for everybody or nobody, for we can make no distinctions.
I think one thing most on the Left and the Right would agree upon is that either everybody should have the right to bear arms or nobody should. The suggestion that such a right might be properly restricted to those of a certain status -- landowners, for instance -- would cause both wings of America to go ballistic.
I found this on a website, but it wasn't attributed or dated. Does anyone know if it has the authenticity of an earlier era, or is it contemporary propaganda? Either way, does the message accurately convey how the Saxons once understood themselves?
The Saxon Code.
No crown but ours shall govern here,
No strangers rule with gold or fear,
No plow but ours may slough the loam,
No prow but ours slash the spume,
No hand but ours may bind our kin,
No gods but ours proclaim a sin,
No law but ours may stay a blow,
No hand but ours may draw a bow,
No men but ours may hunt the land,
No sons but ours bear sword in hand,
No word but ours shall we trust,
No flags be flown except of us,
No land but ours do we demand,
No more than what we have farmed,
No strangers slaving on our soil,
No man unpaid or forced to toil
No heroes priased but ours alone,
No other kin but our blood and bone
No strangers to tell us who we are,
No obedience to any foreign laws.
The Saxon code is a favorite, apparently, on white nationalist websites. It's a pretty poor specimen of English versification and is obviously not a translation of anything AS. I have nothing in particular against bigot, but why do they have to be so illiterate? It's been a long way down from Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant, Revilo Oliver and Wilmot Robertson. I suppose that is what happens with all movements, from Marx to Teddy Kennedy, from Calvin and Luther to Rick Warren, from Bill Buckley to Bill (not seem him around lately) Kristol.