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CHAPTER 4
WEALTH'S DISEASE: BEOWULF AND
THE RETURN OF THE HOARD1
"I speak with my words thanks to the Lord of All for these treasures, to the King of Glories, Eternal Prince,
for what I gaze on here, that I might get such for my people before my death-day..." Beowulf (Donaldson,
trans., 1974, 79)
"... Now haste is best, that we look on the people's king there and bring him who gave us rings on his way to
the funeral pyre. Nor shall only a small share melt with the great-hearted one, but there is a hoard of
treasure, gold uncounted, grimly purchased, and rings bought at the last now with his own life. These shall
the fire devour, flames enfold..." (ibid, 83)
Treasure Hoards in Ritual and Epic
It had never seemed easy to understand: Beowulf slays a dragon, wins its treasure
hoard, and expresses pleasure that he could enrich his people, and then his people quickly
consign the hoard to his pyre along with other treasure collected just for the funeral.
Then several years ago my teacher Robert Creed gave me Janet Levy's article (1982)
about Bronze Age treasure hoards, suggesting that it had some bearing on this enigmatic
final third of Beowulf. That suggestion has led to this chapter, which relates the
archaeological pattern of treasure hoards to the story pattern of the treasure hoard in
Beowulf. I also examine briefly an analogous pattern in the Old Norse lays of Sigurth.
Together, the archaeological and narrative patterns form the greater picture of what may
have been an important ritual in early Germanic culture. The role of story traditions in
supporting this ritual is the topic of concern here, and from it we begin to discover the
relationships between social problems, rituals, and narrative art.
Hoards of valuable objects occur in Europe's archaeological record from the
Bronze Age through the medieval period. (Although note that hoards are found in other
times and places, and perhaps deposited for different purposes; see for example Smith
1976, 47 (Paleolithic [19,000 YBP] hoard of flint blades in France), and Clark 1968, 184,
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250 (Neolithic European hoards of flint bars and axes). These are generally caches of
valuable objects not directly associated with human remains, and so hoards usually form a
counterpoint to funeral goods. Archaeologists have often suggested that these caches are
votive offerings or attempts to safeguard valuables in times that did not have bank vaults.
(See Bradley 1990 for a general review of approaches to hoards from the Neolithic to the
Roman Iron Age in Europe.) These general explanations are logical but only tell us that
people made sacrifices or feared plundering expeditions or local thieves. However, Janet
Levy (1979; 1981; 1982) offers another explanation for Bronze Age finds, whose
approach, as I already mentioned, I apply to the Iron Age. Levy correlates the existence
of internal tensions of a society — especially the tension produced by the differential
distribution of wealth — with the use of hoarding to reduce those tensions. I became
interested in her idea as I was studying the other record of past behavior, storytelling. In
particular, Beowulf and the Sigurth story recorded from medieval Europe preserve
information about hoards.
The dragon and its hoard in Beowulf has itself generated much thought. Cherniss
(1968, 473) summarizes the situation well:
The final one-third of Beowulf, that portion of the poem which deals with the
hoard, the dragon, and the death of the hero, continues to be a source of problems
and cruxes for modern scholars and critics. Many have offered various
explanations for the burial, discovery, rifling, conquest and final cremation of the
dragon's store of treasure, but still the controversies go on and questions remain
unanswered. What, precisely, is the significance of the dragon? What is the
nature and ultimate effect of the curse on the hoard? Why is the hoard not
distributed among Beowulf's comitatus?
I will try to answer some of these questions by considering explanations of
treasure hoards proposed by anthropological archaeologists; then I will extrapolate the
consequences of these explanations to the story patterns to discover their own specific
role. Epics have sometimes been expected to verify archaeological reconstructions of
past cultures, as Schilemann expected the Iliad to validate the Trojan war (of course, he
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was deceptively proved correct, because there were many 'Troys' over the site's long
history, and the city was destroyed many times, by raids and earthquakes). But ancient
stories can themselves retain information that the trowel and transit cannot yield.
Archaeologists suggest ways in which treasure hoards were part of an adaptive
mechanism for reducing social tensions and inflation; I will examine how hoarding and
poetry were complementary components of this mechanism.
Literary Criticism about the Beowulf Hoard
First, I will summarize Beowulf, focusing on the final third of the poem containing
the dragon hoard episode. The poem, set in the early sixth century A.D., can be
approximately divided in three main parts.
In the first third, Hrothgar, an aged Danish king, is plagued by an ogre named
Grendel, who had become envious of the joy he hears streaming from the royal hall.
Grendel had attacked the hall and occupied it nightly for 12 years so that none could enter
this symbol of community. Beowulf, a Geat (the Geats are from the southern part of
Sweden) hears of the monster's depredation and sails forth with companions to offer help
against the monster. He rips off Grendel's arm in combat in the hall.
In the second third, following joyous celebrations, Grendel's mother, an even
stronger ogre, attacks the hall and kills Hrothgar's old companion. Beowulf again offers
service, entering Grendel's mere, swimming downward to kill Grendel's mother and bring
back Grendel's head (he sees piled treasure in the underwater hall but takes none of it).
Beowulf returns to his home and tells his story and gives his gifts to his own king,
Hygelac, who rewards him with a sword and a throne.
In the last third, the story jumps over many years. Beowulf is now an old king
himself, having ruled the Geats for 50 years. A fugitive slave accidentally finds a hoard
of treasure guarded by a dragon. In a flash-back, the poet depicts the Last Survivor, who
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buried the treasure after the last of his people were killed in war. Later, a dragon finds
and guards the treasure. The thief steals a cup to bring back to his master as a peace
offering, and the enraged dragon lays waste the kingdom with his fiery breath. Beowulf
prepares to fight the dragon. He seeks the dragon's barrow (which is described to be
rather like a Neolithic passage grave), speaks of his own history, then orders his
companions to withdraw as he challenges the dragon. The dragon comes forth, Beowulf
breaks his sword on its head, is overwhelmed by flames and a poisonous bite to the neck,
and his companions flee to the woods. Only his young nephew, Wiglaf, comes to his aid,
and Beowulf is at last able to slay the beast, though he now lies dying from wounds.
After his death, Wiglaf exposes the hoard to the public and arranges for Beowulf to be
cremated and the hoard deposited with him.
Literary discussion of the hoard might well start with the dragon who guards it.
Scholars have used the dragon with its western associations with the Devil to explicate
the poem as a Christian rather than a pagan epic. The dragon has been seen realistically
(as a great creature but an enemy like any other), a symbol (the dragon is death), and
allegorical (the dragon is Satan) (Calder 1972, 33). Dual roles have also been proposed
— dragon as either satanic serpent or the world serpent from Germanic myth (Fisher
1958, 182). The dragon has also been seen simply as an agent of fate rather than a
creature of evil (Leyerle 1965, 91), and as a presider over treasure that symbolizes
reciprocity, honor, hall joy, and protection (Berger and Leicester 1974, 66). Helder
(1977, 321) feels that the hoard thief is a righteous man taking back treasure from the
miserly dragon, a treasure which, like the ideal of Heorot, symbolizes social harmony
when distributed properly. Thus the princes who laid the spell on the hoard are likewise
guilty of hiding treasure (ibid, 322) — a viewpoint that should now be tempered by
Levy's theory of hoarding. The dragon has even been seen as an incarnation of the Last
Survivor (the speaker who inters the hoard and utters the elegy over it near the beginning
of the dragon passage), who, like Fafnir in Norse lore, might have turned himself into a
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dragon, although the poet has stated the speaker dies (Klaeber 1950, 209). Sisam notes
that Beowulf's, Sigurth's, and Frotho's dragons are all vulnerable in the same way,
suggesting a tradition of Germanic dragons (1958, 134). He also notes that the words for
the dragon's den — beorh and hlæw — can mean both mountain or tumulus, and so the
hoard might well be either natural or artificial in setting (ibid, 131-132).
In the dragon passage Beowulf himself has been seen as 1) a deliverer and
sacrifice for his people (ibid, 178), 2) a failure through his pride and self-will (ibid, 183),
3) a man damned to Hell (symbolized by his funeral pyre) because of his avarice and
earthliness (Brown 1980), and 4) one doomed by social restrictions (as I discuss later).
The hoard has been discussed as a symbol of earthly wealth in a Christian,
antimaterialist context rather than as a treasure in the Germanic social context (Fisher
1958, 181), and as a means to honor Beowulf for his victory over the dragon (Sisam
1958, 139) and service to his people (Cherniss 1968, 485). The poet may even be
ambivalent about the hoard, seeing it as representative of useless things in general (Berger
and Leicester 1974, 74).
These arguments have been put forth by some remarkable scholars. However, in
the tradition of Occam's Razor I want to shear away from these arguments and return to a
more direct explanation assisted by modern archaeological theory: first, that the Beowulf
poet was speaking of material things well known in Germanic society — exotic status
goods — rather than of moral philosophies whose context is more modern than ancient;
and second, that rather than borrowing from a relatively new religious symbology, the
poet was rather drawing his dragon out of a native symbol for the terrible events that
might spring from a disease of overabundant wealth. I will now describe this illness and
a possible prevention of it.
The Functions of Bronze Age Hoarding
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To start, I ask my reader to follow me through a general archaeological discussion
pertaining to the facts and theories of treasure hoards, following which we can consider
the narrative traditions that may have supported the rituals of hoards.
Hoards have traditionally been categorized in these ways: 1) personal hoards: an
individual's personal valuables buried for safe keeping; 2) industrial hoards, consisting of
merchants' hoards: fresh pieces awaiting distribution to customers; and 3) founders'
hoards: scrap metal awaiting reworking (Bradley 1990, 12-13). In general all of these
hoards have been thought of as "utilitarian hoards" (ibid). Archaeologists sometimes use
the term 'cache' for such hoards.
Bradley notes that "...specialists in different archaeological periods take the term
'hoard' to mean different things" (ibid, 15). Interestingly, the Old English poet did, too,
the word hord meaning both the cache of wealth a chief had at hand for his use (usually
for distribution to followers) and the wealth deposited in the dragon's barrow. But
problems have arisen with these different scholarly traditions, problems that have
impeded a broad understanding of hoarding (ibid). Levy's approach to hoards marks an
important break with traditional approaches.
My theory is based on Levy's work — or the assumption that certain kinds of
hoards were deposited for ritualistic purposes and not for directly practical ones. Some
hoards are evidence of such practical concerns as the guarding of valuables against theft.
But if all hoards reflect only a concern for safety, one might expect more of them to be of
a varied, personalized nature. Yet particular guidelines seem to have dictated the
deposition of some hoards, as Levy has discovered in her Scandinavian assemblage. She
notes that Bronze Age hoards sometimes contained sets of artifacts that denoted ranks of
high-status people (1982). She suggests that the conspicuous wealth of such people
caused social tensions — what I call the 'envy syndrome' — and that hoarding these status
symbols would remove them from sight and reduce conflict. I quote Levy (1982, 45) at
length:
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It would have been very useful to the elite if they could have maintained their
control over fertility religion. A population is not likely to rebel against those
who control access to a spiritual world which influences health and prosperity.
Yet, where differences in wealth and prosperity exist, resentment and rebellion
may grow despite fears of spiritual retribution. The offering ritual, as reflected in
the hoards...helped to ameliorate these tensions. It consisted, after all, of burying
wealth and status symbols. The ritual thus allowed high status individuals to
demonstrate their power by making the appropriate gifts to the gods. At the same
time, it served to remove wealth and sumptuary goods from the elite's control.
When the offering ritual was over, the elite were reduced in wealth and lost
control of the very sumptuary goods that had set them apart from the general
population. Tensions would be eased, yet the hierarchical ranking would remain
clear.
Analogies to this mechanism exist in the present. Levy (ibid) cites an example in the
cargo ritual in Mesoamerica, in which
...the expenses and organization (called cargoes) of various religious festivals
rotate among the wealthy and high-status men of the community. Social position
can be maintained only by taking on the most expensive and complex cargoes.
Whoever takes on the responsibility is almost impoverished in the process, but
public acknowledgment of his contribution to the festival strengthens his elite
status. Nevertheless, envy of his wealth is lessened in the rest of the community
because his resources are greatly reduced.
Levy has described the effects of a 'ritual of communion', which reduces evident
status. Perhaps such a ritual is akin to rituals of status reversal, which Victor Turner has
studied. He states that these rituals "...reaffirm the hierarchical principle" when lowstatus people mimic or caricature high status people, and also by "...restraining the
initiatives of the proud" (1969, 176). He observes that these status rituals occur at fixed
points of the annual cycle, near movable feasts, and "...when calamity threatens the total
community" (p. 177). Such rituals reaffirm the hierarchical order of society because order
is not destroyed, but instead reversed for a short time before those of high status are again
returned to their positions, humiliated but back in their high seats. "Rituals of status
reversal, either placed at strategic points in the annual circle or generated by disasters
conceived of being the result of grave social sins, are thought of as bringing social
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structure and communitas into right mutual relation once again" (p. 178). He concludes
that the liminal state that occurs during rituals of status reversal offers "release" to the
superior whereas inferiors enjoy temporary rank (p. 200-201).* Turner's definition of
communitas as a Utopia in which equality and lack of property are equated (p. 134) seems
useful to apply to the hoarding ritual, in which status seems to be destroyed (submitted
during the ritual) and people are forced to seem equal in terms of their material goods.
Bradley (1990, 38) challenges Levy's analysis:
If they were able to display their status so effectively through the offerings that
they provided, it is hard to see quite how any 'leveling' mechanisms can have
operated. And if the population was equally reassured by their leaders' knack of
accumulating wealth and by their willingness to let it go, it is hard to see why this
charade was so beneficial.
An answer to these questions may exist in the possibility that the population is indeed
impressed by the discarding of material goods because few others were rich or 'generous'
enough to make such a sacrifice (when this behavior is ritualized, anthropologists call it
potlatch, which I discuss below). When elites rid themselves of visible status goods,
stress arising from the material inequity of the community is eased (or "leveled"), but the
fact the the elite were rich enough and generous (or holy) enough to make an offering in
the first place is a fact that easily remains in the population's memory,
* "Communitas" is Turner's term for the liminal period of status transition in which all social structure is
abolished for those about to undergo a change of status. Communitas blends "lowliness and
sacredness...homogeneity and comradeship...a communion of equal individuals who submit together to the
general authority of ritual elders." Communitas is opposed to the normal system of relationships in
hierarchical society which separates individuals "in terms of 'more' or 'less'" (1969, 96).
and the elite guarantee themselves respect in the community and a charter for their
position of authority. The reputation of the sacrificers would earn them status as news of
the sacrifice circulated through the oral tradition of the community, both soon after the
sacrifice and in later times.
We should also consider that hoards do not represent the entire material wealth of
a community — no evidence supports this notion. Therefore, a hoard ritual may represent
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material goods considered to be in excess of some amount that the community thought
was sufficient for its elite (as an analogy, we may not begrudge a financially successful
person a Mercedes Benz automobile, especially if the person is reputed to have 'earned' it;
and yet we might think the ownership of a car for each day of the week to be excessive
materialistic behavior). The elite may have collected this excess wealth through trade or
war or well-managed industry. The wealth must go somewhere, at least in a chiefdom or
egalitarian society. Perhaps the elite could not or did not wish to distribute wealth to the
community, for reasons discussed below. And so distribution to the gods is an acceptable
alternative, still leaving the elite with socially-acceptable status goods but reduced stress.
I say stress is reduced, even if the elite retains some goods, because unused wealth must
have been a curse itself as the community waited tensely to see where it would go — to
create alliances with other elite or subordinates, or to fulfil ritual obligations, or to sit
unused, unhelpful to human or god, the worst possibility of all.
Second, if the population is impressed, to use Bradley's words, by their leaders'
knack of accumulating and sacrificing wealth, then their respect need not surprize us.
The ability to accumulate wealth might, in the ancient community, have been perceived
as verification of the luck and prowess of the community's leader, certainly a thing to be
proud of, especially when wealth is returned to the gods to fulfill important contracts with
the supernatural forces perceived to govern life. Levy's analysis of the benefits of
hoarding seems to hold strong.
In support of these ideas, note that in many societies wealth production is
encouraged, but not necessarily its retention (John R. Cole, personal communication
1992). As stated above, the ability to accumulate wealth might be perceived to be a good
thing — especially when wealth is distributed in socially approved directions. The
existence of potlatch ceremonies in different parts of the world attests to this general
philosophy. The term 'potlatch' specifically refers to the "... extravagant ceremonial
distribution of property by North Pacific Coast [Kwakiutl Indian] chiefs to chiefs and
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nobles of the moiety opposite their own, given in order to establish superiority in social
and political status, or to assume inherited status" (Leach 1972 rpt./1949, 882).
This type of ritual was first studied extensively after the 'inexplicable' Kwakiutl
ritual was discovered. At potlatch rituals, food was given away to guests from other
groups by powerful chiefs — those vying for the status to be gained by 'outgiving' other
powerful chiefs — or valuable materials such as fish oil, blankets gained from fur trading,
and sometimes even the chief's own house, were destroyed; the more material that one
could afford to give away or destroy, the more status one could attain to attract followers
(Harris 1974, 112-115).
Potlatch serves more than the 'big man' vying for status. True, in such rituals it is
a fine thing to show off your wealth and earn status, but the wealth is consumed by the
local population. As the giver receives respect, the receivers receive gifts or food. The
society in general also benefits, as Harris (1974, 118-119) writes:
Under conditions where everyone has equal access to the means of subsistence,
competitive feasting serves the practical function of preventing the labor force
from falling back to levels of productivity that offer no margins for safety in crises
such as war and crop failures. ... [and in addition:] Despite the overt competitive
thrust of potlatch, it functioned aboriginally to transfer food and other valuables
from centers of high productivity to less fortunate villages.
The only losing group is the one comprising competitors for status who become ruined
economically as they spend but do not win the competition.
The term 'potlatch' is generally used in anthropology to label similar rituals in
other societies, as Harris (1974, 116) notes:
All of the basic ingredients of the Kwakiutl giveaways, except for their destructive
aspects, are present in primitive societies widely dispersed over different parts of
the globe. Stripped down to its elementary core, the potlatch is a competitive
feast, a nearly universal mechanism for assuring the production and distribution of
wealth among peoples who have not yet fully acquired a ruling class.
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Bradley suggests that some European hoards represent the 'potlatch-type' of
competition, which is an alternative to Levy's theory that also seems compelling; his
theory has the important distinction that the redistribution ceremony leaves the local gods
wealthy rather than the local human population. Thus, the individual making a hoard
offering can gain status while ruining his competitors at the same time, even though in the
hoard ritual the wealth is given to the supernatural community. Offerings made to the
gods might earn the depositor status, thus sparking competition among other elite
(analogous to potlatch ceremonies). In effect, the richest person wins, because he has the
material wealth to continue disposing of, whereas, to keep up with him, competitors drive
themselves to ruin. This event can happen because of the general concept in these
societies that holds that to give gifts is to gain alliances, but to receive gifts is to admit
subordination to the giver (Bradley 1990, 38-39). Additionally, unlike gifts to humans,
which can be returned to fulfill the original debt and end subordination, gifts to the gods
cannot be returned, and competitors have a reduced metal supply after the ceremony and
are less able to respond with a counter ritual (ibid, 138).
In the end, whether one accepts either Levy's or Bradley's theory, troublesome
status goods are removed from society, and the status of the most powerful elite is
maintained. At the same time, perhaps, the community is centralized because the weaker
leaders have been reduced in the competition, or given incentive to try again later.
Observe that my theory about the function of the poetry to support hoarding (by showing
the consequences of recovering the goods) remains unchanged no matter what viewpoint
we take of the hoarding ritual: the poems always assist the ritual by supporting the notion
that hoarded goods must stay hoarded.
Besides reducing conflicts associated with the envy of conspicuous status, the
ritualistic deposition of hoards may have also mitigated problems created when inflation
reduced the value of prestige goods. The hypothesis of inflation has been developed by
other authors in regard to exchange systems (Dupre and Rey 1973, Rathje 1975,
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Haselgrove 1982, Halstead and O'Shea 1982) and in regard to the value of status symbols
(Champion, Gamble, Shennan, and Whittle 1984). Haselgrove writes,
As Dupre and Rey (1973) point out, because the production of prestige goods is
an integral part of the [social] system, there will be a tendency for them to
accumulate, leading to an 'inflationary spiral' and the collapse of the whole
structure, unless some form of periodic readjustment is made. Such readjustments
may be particularly vital where a major external input of prestige items is
involved, and such behavior patterns as burial, hoarding and votive deposition
might well have a role in the overall regulation of the system. (1982, 82)
(See Note 2, where I mention a possible source of "major external input of prestige
items".)
Champion's (et al) concept of inflation also seems applicable to eras after the
Bronze Age even though these authors use the Bronze Age for their application:
The value of the status conferred by such objects [of prestige]... depended on
control over their supply and on limitation of the quantity available; the more
bronze there was in a society, for instance, the harder it would be to restrict access
to it, with the consequent risk of diminution in the status to be derived from its
manipulation. One solution to this problem was to take prestige items out of
circulation by depositing them where they would not be recovered; it would be
then possible to continue to acquire them by exchange without the risk of
lowering their value. (ibid, 294)
In such a case, high-status people whose rank is partly dependent on their monopoly and
distribution of trade goods can maintain their rank; this might be called the 'selfish'
hypothesis of hoarding, although some communal importance to keeping the elite in
power is not necessarily excluded (see, for example, Earle 1987 on the managerial
function of the elite in chiefdoms).
Inflation could affect the position of entire groups in relation to other groups.
Haselgrove (1982, 81) suggests that groups monopolizing trade in prestige goods were
able to exchange the goods in return for tribute: "...whereas within the lineage the supply
of prestige goods is merely used to regulate the advance of individuals to senior status,
between groups it is used to maintain a permanent difference of status between lineages,
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which is nevertheless advantageous to the seniors of a dependent lineage in that they
receive the prestige goods they require to regulate the reproduction of their own group." I
extrapolate these consequences: when abundant prestige items become devalued, the
previously subordinate groups might no longer sacrifice materials or services to acquire
these objects, and the would-be monopolizer might have suffered reduced power.
Finally, I have speculated that over-abundant status objects might have also
created confusion in a community when distribution of the objects 'created' many
apparent leaders or 'big men'. For example, such a situation could exist after a successful
battle, in which valued objects (war booty) might suddenly flood the group of victors. In
this case, those with the actual capability and training for leadership would have suffered
reduced effectiveness because inflation would affect (perhaps increase) positions of
leadership rather than simply the status goods attending those positions. That is, too
many roosters spoil the coop. The community would have been less centralized or united
for some time, which might have cause danger during times of crisis when a strong,
central leadership is desirable (as in times of war). The hoarding ritual, if it were a
community event calling for ritual donations from those who could donate, would relieve
individuals of status objects, leaving, perhaps, the original elite in control of the majority
of the goods. In this case, the person with the most toys in the end really does 'win' and
retains the most control over the community, for better or worse.
I am not seeking to determine whether the various possible tensions arising from
overabundant prestige items were co-existent or mutually exclusive. What is important is
that ritualized hoarding can reduce any of the pathologies mentioned above by removing
from circulation those valuable objects which are ordinarily expected to be distributed.
Few people will withhold tribute to the gods.
Analogy with Iron Age Hoards
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Levy's and Bradley's work cited here recognizes the ritual behind some Bronze
Age and Iron Age hoards, and Bradley and Champion and his colleagues, working also
from Bronze Age and early (preRoman) Iron Age data, suggest some of the consequences
of abundant status items. I have cited this Bronze Age and early Iron Age information
because of its potential application to other times and places. However, the behavior of
hoarding must be evaluated in its own historical context. In applying the ideas of these
scholars to early medieval Europe, we must ask 1) are late (late Roman and postRoman)
Iron Age hoards ritualistic? 2) were their components the signallers of rank? and 3) were
the hoards deposited to reduce social tensions? Let us turn to the depositional trends of
the Germanic era, the era that also produced a narrative tradition about hoards.
Because this chapter ultimately analyzes traditional Germanic stories, I confine
my review to the archaeology of England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia
generally during the Germanic era, which I define as the period in which northern Europe
was most affected by Germanic tribes: that is, from the second century A.D., when the
tribes began to be widely involved in European affairs, to about the eleventh century
A.D., when Germanic tribes developed into feudal states or were incorporated into them
— an event that we might expect to disrupt a tribal ritual such as hoarding.
Todd (1975, 187) introduces these finds as follows:
The most celebrated cult places of the early Germans are the rich and in many
respects well preserved votive deposits which have been recovered from peatbogs in Denmark and Schleswig. [The four main deposits at Thorsbjerg, Nydam,
Vimose, and Kragehul comprised] ...masses of war equipment both Roman and
German, two complete ships, elaborately decorated personal ornaments, clothing
of outstanding quality, Roman imported goods and hundreds of more humdrum
objects in pottery, wood, and leather.
It must be borne in mind that these archaeological sites are atypical because they have
both survived decomposition and have been discovered in recent times (John R. Cole,
personal communication 1992). Obviously, we know nothing of sites that have not been
discovered, or sites that had been discovered soon after burial, or 500 years after burial,
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and then melted down or traded away. We must work with the only information that has
come to us — these hoards may be typical of all hoards of their period, or they may be
peculiar and unrepresentative of general behavior in the late Iron Age. On such uncertain
grounds do formulations from the archaeological record sometime stand.
Let us start with a precedent to the Germanic Iron Age to illustrate the fact that
Germanic hoarding does not spring fully developed out of some abyss (a point that
Bradley [1990] emphasizes). Hjortspring, in Denmark, is the earliest of the large Iron
Age hoards (200 BC). It comprised a ship with approximately 150 shields, 138 iron
spearheads (31 of bone), 20 mail shirts (truly an exotic and expensive offering!), and 6
swords; also, domestic items were included: dishes, bowls, boxes (ibid, 188-189). Other
hoards of the pre-Roman Iron Age are smaller and confined to weapons (such as
Krogsbølle, with 7 swords, 24 iron spearheads, and 19 spearheads of bone) (ibid).
Weapon hoards decline or disappear during the Roman iron Age in Europe until
the second century AD, when warlike sacrifices are again encountered (ibid). Hoards of
ornaments and ingots are found throughout the Migration and Viking periods. Most of
the hoards date from the fifth and sixth century (Wilson 1970, 53). More specifically,
hoards of jewelry are found in the second and third centuries (Todd 1975, 135ff.; Utrecht
1947, 149). Large deposits of weapons appear in the fourth and fifth centuries: the
Skedemose, Vimose, Nydam, and Thorsbjerg hoards are well known examples (Todd
1975, 189ff.; Engelhardt 1969); Thorsbjerg has a fine range of artifacts, including
weapons, armor, ornaments, clothes, two fine Roman helmets, and agricultural tools
(Todd 1975, 190). Thorsbjerg shows two other defining traits of some hoards: some of
its items were deliberately broken, and the deposits ranged across two centuries, showing
how one site does not necessarily (or even usually) represent one-time depositions.
Often, hoards of the Migration Period consist of several pieces of similar jewelry,
usually neck rings, as exemplified by the Öland, Vastergötland, and Torslunda hoards
(Shetelig and Falk 1937, 232, 234). Exceptions to the trends of these early finds exist,
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however: mixed finds of jewelry, ingots, and coins have been found, such as the fourthcentury Dortmund hoard (ibid.) and the sixth-century find from Tureholm composed
predominantly of ingots (ibid., 235). Varied, 'personalized' hoards are also found (for
example, Johns, Tompson, and Wagstaff 1920, 48; Selkirk and Selkirk 1976, 144).
Similarly, although Viking Age hoards tend to include silver coins and ingots, some
hoards are composed predominantly of ornaments (for example, Graham-Campbell and
Kidd 1980, 34, 48, 158, 162--163). In general, the gold finds (ornaments) predominate in
Denmark during the fifth and sixth centuries (Jensen 1982, 281).
Todd (1975, 194) summarizes the nature of these finds as follows:
... it is clear that sacrifices could be made at the same spot over a considerable
period, as at Thorsbjerg and Vimose, or within a comparatively short space of
time, as at Nydam, Illerup, and Ejsbøl. It is also now widely appreciated, from the
deposits laid down over a lengthy time, that the character of the objects sacrificed
could vary considerably from period to period.
The important points of these archaeological trends are as follows:
1) Broadly speaking, hoards fall into two categories. Many of the pre-Viking Age
hoards tend toward redundant deposition; that is, instead of burying a variety of goods,
the depositors buried a single or small variety of goods repetitiously. The second
category comprises varied hoards, especially those in the bogs of Germany: "The
offerings placed in these rustic deposits are extremely various and not all are easy to
interpret. There is a natural emphasis on fertility, expressed in animal sacrifices, but
other phenomena such human sacrifice and the presence of wooden idols in human shape
are not always easily explained" (Todd 1975, 195-196). Perhaps some better definition
must be established to separate these two kinds of offering (perhaps offerings affecting
economy and status versus offerings for religious purposes).
2) The German and Danish hoards, comprising the great bog finds, tend to be
homogeneous in that they are composed of weapons, primarily (Todd 1975, 193). The
Swedish hoards tend to be more heterogeneous, comprising weapons, rings and other
17
ornaments, and animal remains (ibid). Indeed, food offerings appear to be a feature of
some hoards from the Neolithic to the Iron age, often in the form of animal bones — and,
uncommonly, human remains — and associated ceramic remains may have once held
food; such finds are unlikely to have been considered for recovery (Bradley 1990, 28).
"In all these cases there is circumstantial evidence of formal deposition. Some of these
finds actually occur together with portable artifacts, or in close proximity to such
discoveries" (ibid, 29).
Hoards of jewelry and weapons decline in Scandinavia before the Viking Age
(Randsborg 1980, 133; Wilson 1976, 396) and are balanced by an increase in silver
hoarding, perhaps in response to growing market economies. In general, hoarding
changes over time: at Thorsbjerg, for example, three centuries of deposit varied from a
"peasant milieu to one in which warriors called the tune..." (Todd 1975, 191). Jensen also
reminds us that both military and civil rites seem to be represented by the hoards, and we
cannot interpret them with the same model (1982, 279).
3) An important trend of the votive deposits is that many of them occur in wet
areas (but to state an archaeological caveat: perhaps only the sites in wet areas have been
preserved and discovered in recent times!). In Denmark, weapons were clearly sacrificed,
usually being placed out in an open meadow or bog surfaces or thrown into lakes; the
finds probably do not represent random losses, because some of them were apparently
bundled or marked by poles and wattles (Jensen 1982, 262). The most striking wet-area
examples, of course, are the bog finds of Scandinavia. "The existence of an enormous
number of small votive sites alongside the great peat-bog deposits suggests that
individual communities, clans, or families had their own sacred places, commonly
marshes, pools or springs" (Todd 1975, 195). Swords of the Viking age were sometimes
thrown into rivers, and similar finds occur in European rivers (Wilson 1976, 14). The
practice of such depositions extends from the Bronze Age to about 1000 A.D.
(Champion, et al, 1984, 294; Bradley 1990) and shows an aspect of hoards with very deep
18
roots in European prehistory. The wet-area depositions are perhaps related to the practice
of destroying some of the items. Jensen feels that deliberate destruction of hoard items
indicates rituality (1982, 262). Certainly, destroyed items are harder to recover and use,
which seems akin to their placement in wet areas.
4) Finally, many of the largest votive deposits — Thorsbjerg, Ejsbøl, Nydam, and
Vimose — are related to settlement areas. Quoting Todd (1975, 195): "These central
positions suggest strongly that the cult places held a strong significance for an entire
population group, and not merely for a single ruling family or large community." Bradley
(1990, 94) writes on this topic, "Perhaps the major feature that distinguishes grave goods
from hoard finds is that the artefacts with burials are linked to a specific individual,
whereas those deposited in hoards lack this close identification with one person; thus
Needham describes them as 'community deposits' (1988, 246)." Thus I argue that many
hoards of the migration period — the period described in the Sigurth story and the period
often in the mind of the Beowulf poet — are the remains of important communal rituals
that not surprisingly find literary treatment in two medieval epics.
Hoards and Status Symbols
If communities engaged in hoarding rituals, how do we classify the contents of
hoards? Predominantly, the hoard goods are status symbols, which have immediate
social effect because they are designed to be visible objects that structure the very
workings of social interaction in hierarchical societies. Objects of status are objects of
visual display; they communicate information and so must be visible from a distance
(Wobst 1977, 303-309, 328, 330) and should be unusual from the viewpoint of the culture
in which it is displayed (Binford 1983, 228). Thus exotic items incorporate rare
materials, considerable technical skill and investment of labor, or are only available from
outside the society (Haselgrove 1982, 82). (Consider knick-knacks brought home from
19
remote vacations and set up on our mantle pieces; even something as simple as a shell can
elicit comment from one's visitors and provide the owner with at least conversational
capital.)
Jensen (1982, 264) identifies many of the fifth- and sixth-century gold hoards of
Scandinavia as hoards of status symbols. I extend this possibility to include hoards of
ornaments and weapons from other Germanic territories. The neck and arm rings of the
Germanic hoards fit well the criteria of status goods, as do some items of clothing —
clothing is visibly positioned and can be invested with expensive processes. We should
also include some war gear, especially swords and chain mail, which are quite visible,
sometimes adorned with precious metal (Shetelig and Falk 1937, 232; Graham-Campbell
and Kidd 1980, 113), and always invested with time-consuming processes. Even the
coins of the earlier hoards may be components of status goods because coins were
probably not used for currency in the first half of the millennium, most often being
worked into ornaments at this time (Arnold 1982, 129; Nerman 1931, 13).
Finally, Beowulf itself has something to say on the subject of status. After
Beowulf has slain the dragon and lies dying, he gives his kinsman, Wiglaf, his armor and
hring gyldenne 'golden ring' in what seems to be a passing-on of the tribal leadership (see
Klaeber 1950, Beowulf line 2809; hereafter, all line references to Beowulf are from this
volume). After this point in the narrative, Wiglaf clearly takes command, ordering a
public witnessing of the hoard that Beowulf has won, his burial, the hoard's reburial, and
perhaps punishment for the warriors who fled the dragon fight. The passage does not
necessarily indicate historical truth, but we might understand the passage to be an
idealization of values, how the culture perceived the passing of rank, and the poem
presents a literary paradigm of the conferral of rank.
Were Later Hoards Ritualistic or Run-of-the-Mill?
20
I have supported the notion that hoards often contained status goods; now I ask,
were the depositions of Germanic-era status symbols ritualistic in the sense that Levy
defines?
First of all, we might not include the deposition of craftsman's scraps when we
wish to consider ritualistic hoards (Levy 1979, 51--52). Complete, precious objects or
precious objects showing evidence of ritualistic destruction must be the objects of study
— status symbols. This is the safest approach, but we cannot be certain that scrap and
ingots were not considered useful for votive deposits. Scrap or remelted metals have
been found in burials, cremations, and in rivers in Bronze Age Europe: "For these reasons
it would be wrong to suppose that every collection of damaged pieces was associated with
the activities of smiths. A set quantity of bronze [i.e., an ingot] might have been as
acceptable as the offerings of whole artifacts that characterize Levy's 'ritual' hoards"
(Bradley 1990, 26). Note that deposits at a La Tène-period river-site included ingots (or
currency bars) among finished artifacts and human and animal remains (ibid, 166) and
coins (ibid, 181), and that coins comprised hoards towards the end of the ritual hoard
assemblage in Scandinavia (ibid, 188).
If we do confine our definition of ritual hoards to the burial of status symbols, we
note that their burial or sinking are not directly practical behaviors — not a good 'banking'
behavior — when the recovery of the goods even by the owners is made too difficult or
impossible. When a hoard is hidden in this way, it has an aura of ritual. For example,
many hoards were deposited in wet areas, a trait that may be a characteristic of rituality
(ibid.; and Champion, et al, 1984, 294). On the other hand, the open or public burial of
some hoards is also not a practical thing to do for a person concerned with protecting his
goods. Hoards marked off by poles and wattles were not meant to be lost at all, which
Jensen (1982, 262) sees as an indication of rituality. Perhaps the sacrificed war booty
mentioned by Caesar in The Conquest of Gaul (1982, 142) was this kind of hoard:
21
Among many of the [Gaulish] tribes, high piles of it [war booty] can be seen on
consecrated ground; and it is an almost unknown thing for anyone to dare, in
defiance of religious law, to conceal his booty at home or to remove anything
placed on the piles. Such a crime is punishable by a terrible death under torture.
If marked burials were conceived to be the property of the god(s) to whom the valuables
were sacrificed, then conspicuous deposits may have instilled supernatural and legal
dread in potential thieves, a subject to which I will return. The placement of Beowulf's
hoard in a mound and Fafnir's hoard behind iron doors may be a reflex of these kinds of
'public' burials. Treasures meant to be lost and treasures openly buried are what
Rappaport (1971, 62) might call "noninstrumental" behaviors, or rituals.
The stories also suggest that some hidden valuables were not to be recovered. In
Beowulf, the last survivor of a tribe buries his people's wealth by the sea and leaves it
unused (lines 2247-2266; see, in translation, Donaldson [1974, 70]; see Creed [1989] for
further comments), although he might have used it to establish a retinue (Creed, personal
communication). In the Norse saga of the Rhine gold, the last possessor of the hoard
throws it into a river to discard it forever (see, in translation, Hollander 1986 rpt./1962,
290). And in Egil's Saga, which is a literate, medieval Icelandic composition partly based
on Norse oral tradition, Egil casts his wealth — it does not seem to be a hoard — into a
bog to ensure that his unworthy kin will never have it (see in translation Jones 1960, 239).
The narrative traditions say that wet places are good places to lose things meant to stay
lost. Despite the fact that these people lived in essentially boggy areas, they must have
had other choices for deposition and we must assume that they chose wet areas for a good
reason.
Some objects seem to have been purposely destroyed rather than broken in use
and then used as a sacrifice (perhaps the depositors reasoned that gods do not like cynical
offerings!): for example, twisted sword blades, crushed shield bosses, and slashed clothes
(Todd 1975, 190, 192, 193, 207 n. 22).
22
The passage in Beowulf concerning the dragon hoard is most interesting in the
discussion of rituality. The verses describing the deposition of the hoard seem to be a
formal prayer to accompany the burial, as Creed (1989, 164) writes:
[The words of the person who deposits the hoard] ...begin with what can be best
characterized as an apostrophe, perhaps even an incantation — an address to
hruse, the earth. The Last Survivor [the depositor of the treasure] commands her
(...hruse is feminine) to hold what men can hold no longer. ...These lines suggest
a circle: hold now what long ago you held. We are familiar with such ritual
circles in the burial formula "ashes to ashes, dust to dust." The entire final third of
Beowulf can be characterized as a circling back to the ritual performed near its
beginning by the Last Survivor.
The Germanic Narrative Tradition
The archaeological record shows only part of the hoarding ritual. An analysis of
the story tradition associated with treasure hoards helps fill out the possible linguistic
component of the ritual. Bradley, too, considers the expression of hoarding in literature.
He says that some of the stories about hoarded goods "...evoke some of the interpretations
that have been placed on these strange deposits."
Le Morte D'Arthur suggests a connection between rites of passage and the
deposition of weapons. Even the king's departure in the barge creates a link
between water and death. Sir Bedevere's behaviour is revealing in another way. It
seems that Excalibur had to be consigned to the waters so that its special powers
would be extinguished with Arthur's death. The knight, however, was influenced
by its fine appearance and the presence of precious stones. If the sword had
remained in circulation, it could have brought him wealth and power, and so at
first he hid it.
Kreimhild's treasure [in the Nibelugenlied] was intended as dowry, and
would have played a part in the cycle of gift exchange so characteristic of heroic
society. There was no intention of taking it out of circulation permanently, yet the
story makes the same connection between portable wealth and water, in this case a
major river [the Rhine]. (1990, 4)
This approach is correct in its nature if not in its literary choices; the texts Bradley uses
for illustration are relatively late, certainly postdating the Germanic texts I consider here.
23
The proper beginning of literary study of hoard rituals is with the earliest texts that treat
hoards: Beowulf and the Sigurth lays.*
The Hoard in Beowulf
The Nature of the Treasure
Beowulf is an Anglo-Saxon poem, but the poem concerns events occurring in
Sweden and Denmark, so Beowulf reflects the concerns of the continental Germans and
the main region of hoarding. Chambers remarks that some of the great bog finds occur in
areas occupied by Angles and Jutes or nearby (1963, 345), thus the focus of this AngloSaxon poem on the hoard is appropriate. And the poem describes in a general way the
contents of Germanic-era hoards. Stjerna (1912, 137) approached Beowulf as a poem that
could shed light on the objects retrieved from hoards — his approach was chronological
and sought archaeological counterparts to the 'reality'
* In a personal communication in 1991, Bradley replied that he was aware of the older traditions but
referred to the later stories because his readers might be more familiar with them.
depicted in the poem, although we know now that the veracity of knowledge preserved in
folklore is a complex issue. However, Stjerna was among the first to make general
observations of the relation of the poem to archaeology, which must be noted even if we
have progressed in understanding since his time. Stjerna was also among the first to note
the conflict in the poem between descriptions of the hoard: "On some occasions we have
various objects, such as a standard, rusty swords, animals, etc., included as component
parts of the hoard, and on other occasions it is said to consist exclusively of gold, either in
the mass or in rings, the medium of currency at the time" (p. 143).
Descriptions of the hoard primarily use general terms such as gold 'gold', yrfe
eacencræftig 'huge heritage', longgestreona 'long-accumulated treasure', while specific
24
references to objects — sincfæt 'precious cup', orcas 'cups/pitchers,' helm 'helmets',
earmbeaga 'arm-rings', segn 'sign/banner', discas 'dishes/plates' — form the descriptions
to a lesser degree. As Stjerna (1912, 45) noted early, "The poem sometimes represents
the hoard as an exceptionally large collection of very varied objects, and sometimes
merely as a huge gold-find." Perhaps this is the oral tradition compressing historical
details, because the contents of hoards from the Bronze Age through the Iron Age varied
considerably.
I agree with Stjerna (ibid, 152ff.) that the actual inventory of the hoard may have
not been important as long as the poem made clear that precious goods were deposited:
So varied are the [great bog finds], that it would not have been surprising if one
had been discovered containing the same classes of things as we read of in the
poem. But it was not the poet's object to give us an exact catalogue of the
contents of the moor-find. The age rejoiced in weapons and gold, and here as
elsewhere the less noteworthy implements and household utensils were passed
over without remark.
I believe the tradition was not meant to passively reflect the contents of hoards, but rather
to actively maintain the purpose of the ritual long after the burial. The oral traditions
provided ideological support in an impressive way, for most people are impressed by a
well-told story.
The primary message behind the poetry is this: the deposition of the hoard must
be maintained to prevent the recovery and recirculation of the troublesome goods. Rich
deposits of any kind have always been targets for unbelievers from the earliest times. For
example, one Bronze Age grave had been robbed during the Bronze Age: the forked
'fishing stick' used by the robber was found within the rifled tomb (Harding 1974, 315),
and there are other examples in the archaeological literature. There is evidence that
graves were not robbed simply because of personal greed; Shennan (1982, 31) has studied
social change in Bronze Age Europe and notes that graves were robbed to gain access to
precious metals when the supplies during a certain era were low; perhaps the fluctuating
25
need for wealth in society also caused changes in the attitude toward 'accidentally'
discovered wealth. But whatever the reasons for retrieving buried treasure, hoards would
have suffered as graves would have, and when social attitudes regarded buried treasure as
sacred, the stuff would have been protected, of course, by a curse.
The Nature of the Curses
There are two curses in Beowulf. The first, lines 3051-3057, is stated in a
flashback about the hoard and is evidently the curse that doomed Beowulf. The second,
lines 3069-3075, is stated as the Geats bury Beowulf; it can be taken either as a vague
reference once again to the original curse, or, just as likely, I think, a second curse that
Beowulf's own people place on the reburied hoard, enacting the hoarding ritual in the
narrative present. This possibility seems likely because the curse is inserted just after the
poet speaks of the dragon's defeat beside the treasure he once owned and not long before
the hoard is redeposited after or during Beowulf's funeral. (I have provided both a
popular translation and my own, more literal translation, since arguments about the hoard
passages often turn on the translation of individual words.)
Thonne wæs thæt yrfe eacencræftig
Then was that heritage huge,
Iumonna gold galdre bewunden
men-of-old's gold, [with a] spell wound around
thæt tham hringsele hrinan ne moste
that the ring-hall might not touch
gumena ænig nefne God selfa
any man [=subjective case], unless God himself,
26
sigora soth-cyning sealde tham the he wolde
victorys' truth-king, gave whom he would -He is manna gehyld — hord openian
He is men's protection — to open [the] hoard
efne swa hwylcum manna swa him gemet thuhte.
(line 3051--3057.)
except [to] whichever man as seemed proper to him.
Then that huge heritage, gold of men of old, was wound in a spell, so that no one
of men must touch the ring-hall unless God himself, the True King of Victories-He is men's protection — should grant to whom He wished to open the hoard-whatever man seemed fit to him. (Donaldson 1974, 83)
Clearly this spell bodes ill to the disturber without divine sanction, and if the threat of the
supernatural was not enough to ward off loiterers and thieves, then the threat of actual
punishment may have served:
Swa hit oth domes dæg diope benemdon
So it [the hoard] until dooms day [they] deeply cursed,
theodnas mære tha thæt thær dydon
[the] famous chiefs, those that put [it] there,
thæt se secg wære synnum scildig
that the man would be guilty [of] sins,
hergum geheathod hellbendum fæst
[in] idol-fanes confined, fast [in] hell-bonds,
wommum gewitnad se thone wong strude
[with] evil punished, he [who] plundered that place,
næs he goldhwæte gearwor hæfde
27
he [Beowulf] was not gold-greedy, [he] more certainly had
Agendes est ær gesceawod. (line 3069--3075)
looked upon previously [the] owner's favor.
The great princes who had put it [the treasure] there had laid on it so deep a curse
until doomsday that the man who should plunder the place should be guilty of
sins, punished in idol-shrines, fixed with hell-bonds, punished with evils--unless
the Possessor's favor were first shown the more clearly to him who desired the
gold. (Donaldson 1974, 83-84)
The curse passage has generated some scholarly debate that must be reviewed and
discussed before going further, especially so because this part of my study rests partly on
the existence of a curse to help maintain the hoard ritual. The entire curse passage has
been said to be an interpolation, and even the word 'curse' has been questioned. I discuss
both of these matters below.
Sisam (1958, 130-131; see also 1965, 75, in note 1), and Sievers before him,
thought that lines 3069-3075 are an interpolation. Sisam feels these five lines are
interpolated because "...they have their parallel in formal dedications of property; they
correspond to the usual clause in Anglo-Saxon charters which threatens anybody who
breaks the disposition with damnation, the companionship of Judas, of Ananias and
Sapphira, or the like." In a footnote (1958, 130-131) he even states that the idea of an
interpolation displacing original text saves the trouble of understanding the passage if we
excise lines 3069-3073, which leaves awkward sentence structure otherwise (discussed
below). I cannot imagine a less useful way to understand this passage.
Purely on grounds of the nature of tradition I question this approach to the curse
(see Note 3). Tradition is a paradigm that affects many parts of a society through time.
Quite plausibly, the language of warning — of cursing, if you will — was generally
available in Old English tradition, to be used to protect sacred offerings and legal
contracts. Let us examine the lines more closely.
28
First we note, as Sisam had noted previously, that, once we excise the so-called
'interpolated' lines, the logic and the grammar of lines 3074-3075 are left hanging —
awkwardly connected, if connected at all, to line 3068. The composer of the manuscript
clearly punctuated the passage between periods; no physical marks suggest interpolation
(see Zupitza 1959, 140). Sisam feels that "Sievers' suggestion that the interpolation has
displaced part of the original text saves us further trouble" (1958, 130-131). Sisam goes
on to suggest a way in which we can understand the passage even if some text has been
displaced by the interpolation: "Yet it is possible to make some sense of the last two lines
[3072-3073] if gearwor is taken to be attracted into the comparative in this context:
'Before (the fight) he had not really seen the Dragon's hoard, (?) rich in gold,' i.e. he did
not even know exactly what the treasure was for which he risked and gave his life" (ibid).
This explanation is uncompelling speculation, and we are left with acrobatics rather than
direct motion through this passage. Neither Sievers nor Sisam save us trouble because
we do not know that text has been displaced, nor that the passage is interpolated, and the
easiest explanation is to assume that we have the poet's intended text and that we are at
fault for not understanding his society and tradition.
Note the tone of the passage. Many of the words in these lines are used for the
first and only time in the poem: perhaps these particular uses suggest an interpolation by
another author with other habits? Not necessarily; many words in the poem occur only
once. Some words even form a special diction peculiar to the poem:
A large portion of its [Beowulf's] words is virtually limited to poetic diction,
many of them being no doubt archaisms, while the abundance of compounds
testifies to the creative possibilities of the alliterative style. A good many terms
are nowhere recorded outside of Beowulf, and not a few of these may be
confidently set down as of the poet's own coinage. (Klaeber 1950, lxiii)
The specialty of the vocabulary is thus not a good measure of the passage's origins,
especially so, because cursing (in the magical sense) is not so common that its special
language is readily seen: cursing occurs only twice in the poem.
29
We can also observe the structure of lines. The passage has much 'variation', in
Klaeber's words. One might also call such phrases parallelisms; here is the passage again,
the varied phrases underlined: thæt se secg wære synnum scildig/hergum geheathod
hellbendum fæst/wommum gewitnad se thone wong strude... (lines 3071-3073) "That
the man would be guilty with sins,/confined in idol-fanes, fast in hell-bonds,/punished
with evil, who plundered that place [the dragon's barrow]." The passage offers four
possibilities for the punishment of the hoard thief. Many phrases in the poem are varied
in this way, although usually to the degree of two or three variations — the four
variations in this passage perhaps having the upper limit of repetitions (it is, after all, an
emotional topic, this cursing). But note lines 146 ff., where two sets of variations occur,
one of them extending up to three variations: Wæs seo hwil micel;/twelf wintra tid torn
getholode/wine Scyldinga weana gehwelcne/sidra sorga; "That was a long time,/twelve
winters' tide, endured troubles,/the lord of the Scyldings, every one of the woes,/great
sorrows." The variations in the curse passage are not unusual relative to some other parts
of the poem.
We should also review the formulaic structures. The passage forms five lines, or
10 half-lines, one fifth of which is formulaic expressions shared in other parts of the
poem. The formula mære theoden "famous chief", one half-line in length, occurs in 14
other places in Beowulf. The phrase is also transposed one other time to theodnas mære;
Creed (1990, 204) feels that transposition of two measures of certain half-lines is a
formulaic possibility recognized in the tradition. Another formulaic system may exist,
roughly described by this generic formula: [demonstrative pronoun] + [relative pronoun]
+ [dydon 'did/put'], as in the phrases in the passage "those that put it [the hoard] there."
This formula system occurs again in line 44 (thon tha dydon) and line 1238 (swa hie oft
ær dydon), both occurrences placed in the second half-line of the verse, just as in the
curse passage.
30
Collocations of this phrase with other recurring elements support this phrase's
formulaic nature, collocations in the preceding 'A' half-line. When dydon occurs in the B
half-line, theod and eorla "earls" occur in the A half-line. So in three of the six uses of a
dydon phrase, a leader is associated with the 'doing' part of the clause in the B half-line,
these collocations forming the complete formula. The point of this pedantic analysis is to
show that one fifth of the curse passage uses formulaic language that occurs in other parts
of the poem and perhaps in the Old English tradition itself.
The two curse passages also end similarly with an 'escape clause' ("This curse
does not apply if the thief has God's favor," in effect). The curse texts seem to be a
system with certain required elements — both curses seem linked together, making it
necessary to apply interpolation to both or neither.
And, finally, what if the curse passage, or both, are interpolated? The tradition of
the dragon hoard seems to include a curse, unless we suppose that someone also
interpolated the curse on the Rhine gold in the Norse tradition. If the lines were
interpolated in Beowulf, then they merely filled in a missing aspect of the tradition, or
replaced other words that did supply the curse.
In summary, I find no basis for assuming interpolation in these passages.
Next, the translation of the word benemdon as "cursed," has been called into
question by Doig (1981, 3). He quotes dictionary definitions of the word, which state the
possible meanings to be "to name, appoint, settle, stipulate, declare, asseverate." Doig
further suggests that the curse is a "consequence" rather than an intention of the people
who deposited the hoard (p. 4-5). He sees the consequence as being related to the
heathenness of the hoard, which would taint the Christian soul. I find it remarkable that
the "consequence" of such curses works out so well to doom leaders and tribes in Beowulf
and the Norse sagas, and that once having been tainted by heathen treasure, Beowulf's
people once again taint him with it at his funeral.
31
Translators usually translate the word as "curse," and certainly the events of the
poem unfold according to our modern idea of what a protective spell (I will call it a curse)
should do. But it hardly matters — if the ancient chiefs make arrangements for a hoard to
be left undisturbed, perhaps in a legal, not supernatural, way, then we can credit hoard
burials as having roots in ancient law as well supernatural retribution, law and divine
retribution having, perhaps, close connection in traditional societies (just as a Homeric
king's judgements were seen as having divine inspiration [Maine 1986, 4]). Indeed, the
poet implies that Beowulf paid for the hoard with his death, and also that no one could
profitably win the hoard:
Huru thæt on lande lyt manna thah
mægenagendra mine gefræge,
theah the he dæda gehwæs dystig wære,
thæt he with attorsceathan orethe geræsde,
oththe hringsele hondum styrede,
gif he wæccende weard onfunde
buon on beorge. Biowulfe wearth
dyhtmathma dæl deathe forgolden;
hæfde æghwæther ende gefered
lænan lifes. (lines 2836-2845)
Yet I have heard of no man of might on land, though he was bold of every deed,
whom it should prosper to to rush against the breath of the venomous foe or
disturb with hands the ring-hall, if he found the guard awake who lived in the
barrow. The share of the rich treasures became Beowulf's, paid for by death: each
of the two had journeyed to the end of life's loan. (Donaldson 1974, 80)
I wonder what the difference is between a textbook (one might say 'Hollywood') 'curse'
and the threat "If you touch this treasure, you will somehow pay for it tragically"?
Whether it was from a spell, curse, or broken law, there are consequences for
disturbing the "owner's" (the god's?) hoard. The consequences were evidently not light
ones in traditional thought. The passage above may have been a warning to would-be
plunderers. "Confined in idol-fanes, fast in hell-bonds" seems to be a tantalizing echo of
32
legal language suggesting that apprehended hoard-thieves would be confined in a sacred
place for execution. Although this possibility is based on meager evidence, the wealth of
hoards surely attracted robbers against whom a public punishment was probably useful.
Proper Behavior: Found but Untouched Hoards
Now, back to an analysis of the broader narrative pattern. The curse passages
quoted above warned folk away from hoards. Another passage is a model of behavior
toward accidentally discovered treasure. The tradition says, "Look, but don't touch." In a
previous passage where Beowulf follows Grendel's mother into a lake, Beowulf sees a
pile of treasure in her underwater cave and a magic sword with which he kills her.
Whitbread feels the cave scene resonates with the scene and function of a barrow, thus
the traditional site for buried wealth (1967, 29-30), perhaps of relation to the dragon’s
barrow. In the cave/barrow, Beowulf uses the sword to sever Grendel's head, after which
the blade melts in the monster's blood:
Ne nom he in thæm wicum Weder-Geata leod
mathmæhta ma theh he thær monige geseah,
buton thone hafelan ond tha hilt samod
since fæge sweord ær gemealt,
forbarn brogdenmæl, wæs that blod to thæs hat
ættren ellorgæst, se thaer inne swealt. (lines 1612-1616)
Beowulf did not take from the dwelling, the man of the Weather-Geats, more
treasures — though he saw many there — but only the head and the hilt, bright
with jewels. The sword itself had already melted, its patterned blade burned
away: the blood was too hot for it, the spirit that had died there too poisonous.
(Donaldson 1974, 59)
Beowulf does take from the hoard the hilt of the sword with which he slew the
ogre, but its blade has burned away and effectively remains behind. Beowulf, as the ideal
hero, knows he must not touch any other treasure (that Beowulf later fights the dragon
33
and wins a hoard presents a problem that I will discuss below). But was the monsters'
treasure a hoard, and should this example be used here?
Klaeber (1950, 188), citing Panzer, notes that the treasure in the ogre's cave is a
folk motif. Fisher (1958, 178) reminds us of the parallel with Grettir's Saga, in which a
treasure is found in the ogre's cave and was also left untouched; Grettir comes up instead
with the bones of two men who were earlier killed by the troll (see, in translation, Hight
1965, 170-175). Fisher feels that Beowulf and Grettir have cleansed the haunted abodes
and so need return with nothing else. In religious or mythical terms, Fisher's thought
makes perfect sense. However, the practical world in which the two heroes often travel,
where treasure is useful stuff, requires a better explanation for the untouched treasure.
It seems probable that the tale pattern that informs both of these traditional tales
itself had been formed through generations of votive offerings in Europe. Beowulf is only
one avatar of a general tradition, as are all of our early Germanic tales. I suggest that
Grendel's treasure shares the characteristics of hoards from archaeology and tradition.
The treasure is in a cave beneath the water, and it is guarded by a monster, so two traits
are present: deposition in a wet place, an archaeological trait, and guardianship by a
supernatural creature, a poetic trait. And the fact that the hero retains no other treasure,
seemingly a wise move in the mind of the poet, reminds us of the curse placed on the
dragon's hoard.
What Happens If You Plunder a Hoard?
If a hoard is plundered after all these warnings, the poem uses narrative patterns
that warn of disaster to come for the community. The hoard in Beowulf is plundered by a
servant eager to please a master, and the outraged dragon that is guarding the hoard lays
waste the land. Beowulf intends to avenge his people but also says he will fight to win
the hoard: Nu sceal billes ecg,/hond ond heard sweord ymb hord wigan. (lines 2508-
34
2509); "Now shall the sword's edge, the hand and hard blade, fight for the hoard"
(Donaldson 1974, 74). Beowulf wins the hoard but dies in the fight. Then the poet
foretells a grim future for Beowulf's people. He discusses in horrific passages how the
women will be enslaved in foreign lands, and how the carrion creatures will boast to each
other of fine feasting on the battle-fallen (Donaldson 1974, 83, in translation).
I have wondered if this completed cycle — from earth to earth, from tragedy to
tragedy — is a typifying trait of hoards and their rituals. Hoards are deposited, perhaps,
because of tension in society, as Levy has supposed. Germanic tradition suggests that
recovered and reused hoards generate the same kinds of tragedy. When the dragon
ravages the land, the Beowulf poet tells us that wroht wæs geniwad (line 2285), "strife
was renewed." Strife cannot be renewed if it has not happened before. This phrase, a
formulaic half-line, is used in Beowulf only when a tragic cycle has been repeated, the
prior instance being line 1322, where Grendel's mother has renewed the war against
Heorot, just when the Danes thought Beowulf had ended the long cycle of the hall's
demonic possession. The use of this phrase in the context of the dragon passage may be
telling us that the tradition recalls the nature of the hoard ritual — that strife preceded its
deposition and can be renewed if the treasure is recovered and manipulated in society.
How to Treat a Recovered Hoard: A Crux Revisited
Following the dire consequences of a disturbed hoard, the poem presents a model
of behavior for the treatment of the treasure. After Beowulf's death, Wiglaf will not keep
the dragon's treasure. He orders it to be redeposited in a mound despite Beowulf's wish
that the hoard he has won be given to the people. Here is a conflict, and the clarity of the
narrative breaks down for the modern reader, and perhaps for the ancient listener. Let us
consider the passage:
35
Him tha gegiredan Geata leode
ad on eorthan unwaclicne,
helm[um] behongen, hildebordum,
beorhtum byrnum, swa he bena wæs;
alegdon tha tomiddes mærne theoden
hæleth hiofende, hlaford leofne. (lines 3137-3142) ...
Geworhton tha Weda leode
hl(æw) on [h]lithe, se wæs heah ond brad,
(wæ)glithendum wide g(e)syne,
ond betimbredon on tyn dagum
beadurofes becn, bronda lafe
wealle beworhton, swa hyt weorthlicost
foresnotre men findan mihton.
Hi on beorg dydon beg ond siglu,
eall swylce hyrsta, swylce on horde ær
nithhedige men genumen hæfdon;
forleton eorla gestreon eorthan healdan,
gold on greote, thær hit nu gen lifath
eldum swa unnyt, swa hi(t æro)r wæs. (lines 3156-3168)
Then the people of the Geats made ready for him a funeral pyre on the earth, no
small one, hung with helmets, battle-shields, bright mail-shirts, just as he had
asked. Then in the midst they laid the great prince, lamenting their hero, their
beloved lord. ... [After describing the fire and its effects, the poet continues:] The
people of the Weather-Geats built a mound on the promontory, one that was high
and broad, wide-seen by seafarers, and in ten days completed a monument for the
bold in battle, surrounded the remains of the fire with a wall, the most splendid
that men most skilled might devise. In the barrow they placed rings and jewels,
all such ornaments as troubled men had earlier taken from the hoard. They let the
earth hold the wealth of earls, gold in the ground, where now it still dwells, as
useless to men as it was before. (Donaldson 1974, 85)
The burial contains a funeral treasure of armor burned with the hero, and the
hoard treasure of ornaments that is deposited in the mound after the burning of the pyre.
There is Beowulf's happiness at having won the hoard; there is Wiglaf's repulsion towards
the accursed stuff. And not long before the funeral, the poet had turned his narrative eye
toward the dead dragon to say, "Then it was seen that the act did not profit him who
wrongly kept hidden the handiworks under the wall" (Donaldson 1974, 83). This
statement reflects the Germanic narrative motif of the 'greedy king who does not give
treasure' rather than of the hoard that must be hidden! The poet, who for nearly 3,000
36
lines has composed often with virtuosity, seems confused. He is between traditions: his
own of the present and the older one of the legendary past. Or one might also say, the
poet has collocated two mutually exclusive patterns in one performance, patterns that are
equally legitimate in their own social context*.
This 'crux' in the poem has occupied space in many journals and books. Stjerna
(1912, 139-140) early elucidated the problem:
Among the conflicting descriptions in the poem however there stand out two, one
in which the treasure is stated to be open or bare ...and the other in which it is
described by Beowulf as lying under the grey rock.... Of these two versions the
last may possibly agree with the passages in which a grave-chamber is mentioned.
At the same time it seems fairly incongruous that a large number of valuables
should be deposited open to view, in an empty grave which had not been covered
in. The exposed treasure thus calls for some other explanation...
* Perhaps this confusion results from oral dictation to a scribe, a circumstance that, as Lord (1960) has
observed in the field, allows the poet to richly ornament a song in all of its possible details. But in this case
the Beowulf poet may have succumbed to putting in too many details, too many of the tradition's alternatives
— his virtuosity may not have extended to experience with dictation, where some restraint might be
necessary.
Similarly, Chambers (1963, 353 ff.) finds confusion in the account of Beowulf's
burial with both hoard and funeral ornaments, the funeral offerings being burned, the
hoard being interred.
To begin with; the pyre in Beowulf is represented as hung with helmets, bright
byrnies, and shields ... all the graves that have been opened [by archaeolgists in
England] have so far yielded only one case of a helmet and byrnie being buried
with a warrior, and one other very doubtful case of a helmet without the byrnie.
Abroad, instances are somewhat more common, but still of great rarity. ...Then the
barrow is built, and the vast treasure of the dragon (which included "many a
helmet") placed in it. Now, there are instances of articles which have not been
passed through the fire being placed in or upon or around an urn with the
cremated bones. But is there any instance of the thing being done on this scale—
of a wholesale burning of helmets and byrnies followed by a burial of huge
treasure? If so, one would like to know when, and where. (p. 354-355)
37
Chambers thinks this confusion stems from burials such as the site at Sutton Hoo, in
which rich offerings apparently were deposited without a body (ibid, 513; the body at
Sutton Hoo still remains a mystery: perhaps it decayed entirely, leaving no trace, or
perhaps the site was a cenotaph rather than an interrment; I wonder whether we might
consider Sutton Hoo to be an unusual hoard). Chambers is testing the archaeological
accuracy of the poem, and such burials are not attested in the archaeological record. This
approach tries to reconcile burial customs with hoard burials, but archaeologists now
teach us the two kinds of burial are quite different.
Cramp (1968, 115) writes that the hoard-funeral confusion is an understandable
thing: "When it is a question of pagan customs as described by a Christian poet...it is
obvious that archaeological propriety must be a secondary matter, and specially pagan
practices will be left out."
Another explanation for the strange, dual burial has been offered by Cherniss
(1968), who thinks that Beowulf was buried with the hoard because of the social ideal of
earned status: "...if a warrior dies a natural death, or dies of wounds received in a battle in
which he was victorious, the glory which he has accumulated in his lifetime becomes his
permanent possession, for he can no longer be deprived of that glory in honorable
combat" (ibid, 479). And of course, trophies won in battle are the visible signs of status
and glory. This argument is compelling if we treat Beowulf's final words lightly; the final
words of a dying king would seem important enough to be well tended by poet and
audience. Beowulf states his satisfaction at having won the treasure for his people.
We can say that Beowulf is unwise in seeking the treasure and dies because of
greed or stupidity. However, the poet has not led us in this direction unless we feel that
heroism against great odds — a major theme in Germanic heroic epic — is foolhardy.
But some authors have indeed echoed this idea, such as Leyerle (1965, 101--102), who
writes:
38
A king's unrestrained desire for individual glory was a particular danger in heroic
society...All turns on the figure of Beowulf, a man of magnificence, whose
understandable, almost inevitable pride commits him to individual action
[Beowulf told his retainers to stay behind in the dragon fight] and leads to a
national calamity by leaving his race without mature leadership at a time of
extreme crisis, facing human enemies [the Swedes] much more destructive than
the dragon.
Berger and Leicester (1974) soften somewhat the indictment of the hero; instead,
they indict the society in which Beowulf is a victim of social ideals that raise up
reciprocity and gift-giving, which simultaneously create envy, competition, and the
resulting quest for individual heroism.
Niles (1983, 244) sees no conflict in the deposition of the hoard with Beowulf.
He sees the treasure as something useful because it is funeral treasure that a great king
deserves, and besides which, the hoard find saved the Geats from making a material
sacrifice. Perhaps this explanation comes closest in explaining the odd deposition.
However, this explanation depends upon what is not said in the poem — Beowulf's two
goals were to kill the dragon and win the hoard. Perhaps he was thinking ahead, planning
his funeral ceremony in advance? He expresses pleasure at having won the treasure, and
later asks that a barrow be made for him on the headland, and from this we can neither
prove nor falsify Niles's theory.
Niles also raises this point: "Those who condemn the king for dying seem to
assume that he was going to live forever" (1983, 245). I would add that we may condemn
the hero because we have not looked closely enough at the function of ritual hoards in life
and in lore. Beowulf has been called doomed by society, doomed by heroism, even
doomed because of greediness for the hoard. As for greed, Niles notes that "The winning
of the hoard ceases to appear so problematical when one sees how the exchange of
material things, as part of a general concept of reciprocity, plays a commanding role
throughout much of Beowulf (ibid, 213). ... The hero of Beowulf participates with good
faith in a social system whose materialistic basis is largely sanctioned by the poet, and he
39
does what he can to help his tribe" (ibid, 223). Niles feels that the hoard is the poet's way
to supply Beowulf with funeral treasure even if the hero did not raid to win treasure
during his tenure as king (ibid, 216), and that the Geats were not worthy of the treasure —
only Wiglaf earns something by the tale's end (ibid, 221-222).
Cherniss (1968, 478) writes "A warrior's treasure is the outward representation of
the glory which he has won and is, indeed, the only tangible proof of the honor and
esteem to which his deeds entitle him." These ideas agree with anthropological
understanding of status symbols.
Beowulf's pleasure at having won the dragon hoard, his death, and the burial
accompanying it are neither strange nor criminal when we consider closely the role of
precious objects in the society. Niles reminds us that Beowulf will die; he is mortal and
old. And he is without issue. Only his wisdom and strength have kept foes at bay, and
when he is dead, his tribe is left with a young, inexperienced leader (Wiglaf) and many
foes. If we admit that the hoard could have been buried with the hero because he and no
one else earned it, according to the Germanic custom of status earned through deeds, then
we must also admit that there were other options for the poet, some of them historically
attested. For example, the hoard would be just the thing to send away to patch-up old
feuds, create new tribal alliances, attract proven warriors for retainers, or at the worst, to
buy off enemies as, historically, English leaders did to stave off Viking depredations. All
these things are possibilities within the Germanic social framework. But Wiglaf reburies
the hoard, and does not burn it with Beowulf and his other funeral ornaments, but simply
buries it with the hero after the pyre has burned. This separate treatment of funeral and
hoard goods suggests the memory in folk tradition of the separate functions of these
offerings. Similarly, the work of modern archaeologists suggests that some literary
interpretations of Beowulf's death and the interment of the hoard ignore the direct or
indirect support to ritual that a story pattern can give.
40
The heroic code of the poet's time — or the expectations created through hearing
traditional tales of heroes — says that Beowulf must fight the dragon and kill it, win the
hoard, and distribute the spoils of battle to the people, because misers are unloved in
traditional society and its stories. But an ancient Germanic (perhaps Indo-European)
ritual still called and channeled the poet back into its precepts: a disturbed hoard must be
returned to the place from which it came. The clash of the two themes of the poem
suggests that the poet is separated from the hoarding ritual by both time and another
religion (Beowulf seems to me to reflect a Christianized society not yet entirely integrated
into orthodox Christianity; the poem mentions nothing of Christ — God is the only deity
mentioned — or the Christian canon and little of any other Christian practice), but the
ritual had been important enough to become entrenched in a story pattern despite the
changing times.
41
The Hoard in Sigurth's Saga
Beowulf is an excellent source of information about hoards, but we need not rest
solely on this one poem. The fragments of the story of Sigurth also concern a dragon
hoard and echo some of the themes in Beowulf.
The story of Sigurth comes down to us in two versions. The oldest is preserved in
the Eddic poetry of Iceland, which existed in oral tradition of Scandinavia. Eighteen
poems from the Poetic Edda (also called The Elder Edda) concern Sigurth and his family,
the Volsungs; these poems exist in the Old Icelandic manuscript Codex Regius of the
thirteenth century (Byock 1990, 3). The Codex is missing eight pages, however, and this
part of the Volsung story can be filled in by the second source of these legends, The Saga
of the Volsungs, a literate composition composed between 1200 and 1270 (ibid). The
Saga is mostly prose based upon the mostly poetic lays of the Edda. (In 1200, an
Austrian poet wrote the medieval romance Nibelungenlied, which is based on the Norse
Volsung story but comprises chivalric themes rather than the pagan Germanic themes of
the Old Norse tales [ibid, 3-4]. The Nibelungenlied became the inspiration of the most
popular version of this legend in Wagner's operatic Ring cycle).
But before we study the Sigurth tale, let us consider the confusion that exists
about the 'original' dragon slayer in Norse tradition, since Beowulf does not mention
Sigurth but rather his father. Perhaps the ultimate model is the god Thor, or Thunor, who,
in Germanic mythology, kills the arch foe, the World Serpent, at the doomsday battle but
dies of its poison soon afterward. Beowulf closely follows this pattern. Sigurd is the
primary dragon slayer in Norse and Germanic tradition, but in Beowulf, Sigurth's father,
Sigemund, is said to have killed a dragon and carried off its treasure, evidently surviving
the fight for some uncertain period, for his death is not mentioned. Byock says of this
situation:
42
Earlier sources yield some evidence that Sigurd may not originally have been the
Volsung who slew the dragon. In the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf, the
dragon slaying is attributed not to Sigurd, who goes unmentioned, but to
Sigemund Waelsing (Volsung), the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of Sigurd's father
Sigmund. The poem also mentions Sigemund's nephew Fitela whose name
corresponds to the Scandinavian Sinfjotli, who is Sigmund's son by his sister and
hence also his nephew....Sigmund appears to be the original dragon slayer, and
Sigurd's filial connection with the old hero is probably an expansion of the
legend." (1990, 21-22)
We find that, as in Beowulf, the owner of the hoard in Old Norse lore
(Reginsmal), Andvari, also curses the treasure. He is a dwarf who dwells behind a
waterfall — in effect a supernatural guardian dwelling in a wet place. Here, he curses the
hoard after it is stolen (as I did with the curse passages of Beowulf, I supply my own
literal translation and a popular one):
That skall gull, er Gustr atti
That gold shall, which Gust owned,
brœthrum tveim at bana vertha
[to] brothers two a bane become
ok othlingom atta at rogi:
and [to] princes eight a quarrel:
mun mins fiar mangi niota.
(text after Helgason 1964, 54)
no one will enjoy my treasure.
"The glittering gold which Gust had owned
the bane shall be of brothers twain,
and to eight athelings bring untimely death:
he who holds my hoard shall e'er hapless be."
(Hollander 1986 rpt./1962, stanza 5, 217-218)
Because the curse is central to my discussion, I also want to record its analogue in
the later prose saga. Note that the narrator in the prose saga mentions no spell or curse;
43
the dwarf can be perceived as having prophesied the doom of the gold, as if it is natural
that such unrighteously gained wealth would cause trouble:
Loki saw Andvari's gold. And when Andvari had handed over the gold he kept
one ring back. But Loki took it from him. The dwarf went into the rock and said
that the gold ring would be the death of whoever owned it, and the same applied
to all the gold. (Byock 1990, 58)
The treasure is given by the thieves — some of the Norse gods — to their host as
compensation for the accidental murder of the host's son, but the host, in turn, is killed by
a son who covets the gold. This son, Fafnir, refuses to share the treasure with his brother,
Regin, and turns into a dragon to guard it. Regin enlists the young hero Sigurth to slay
Fafnir. In Fafnirsmal, Sigurth slays the dragon, but not before it warns him about the
hoard:
44
Ræth ek ther nu, Sigurthr, en thu rath nemir
I counsel you now, Sigurth, [if] you but take advice
ok rith heim hethan!
and ride homewards hence!
It gialla gull ok it glothrautha fe,
The yellow gold, and the wealth red-as-embers,
ther vertha their baugar at bana!
the rings become a bane to you!
"Hear thou, Sigurth, and heed it well:
ride thou home from hence:
the glistening gold and the glow-red hoard,
the rings thy bane will be." (Hollander 1986 rpt./1962,
stanza 20, 227)
The curse is made quite clear in this saga. Sigurth and all who covet the hoard
meet sorry ends through war and treachery. In a general way, this pattern is similar to the
theme in Beowulf in which the leader dies and his land is to be torn by war. And, as in
Beowulf, the hoard of the saga is returned to the place from which it came; for the hoard
was found in a wet place (the waterfall), and Gunnar, the last possessor, throws it into the
river Rhine so that Atli, his captor, will not have the gold.
It is interesting to note some possibly realistic themes in the tale. The treasure,
originally found unexpectedly by the Norse gods and taken by force from its owner, may
hide a realism in the accidental finding and use of hoards. The hoard is also used
realistically in society: as wergild (payment made to the family of a murdered person), the
payment of which would have been an occasional necessity in this society. And if Levy is
correct about the the nature of wealth in society, this pattern echoes her conclusions,
because this suddenly gained treasure — an overabundance of it, if you will — causes the
greed and envy that the destroys all who use the Rhinegold.
45
Byock reminds us of the unhappy nature of this hoard and how it is linked with
status rivalry and the breaking of the most important bonds in society. He is writing
about the saga version, but his comments apply equally to the older Eddic version:
...unlike the exploits of such monster slayers as Beowulf and the heroes of
creation epics, Sigurd's dragon slaying and subsequent knowledge [Sigurd gains
knowledge supernaturally after tasting the dragon's heart] do not bring order or
safety to the world. On the contrary, his memorable deed has disastrous
consequences: almost all persons who come in contact with Sigurd or his family
experience tragedy. ...An overriding theme of tension between marriage and
blood bonds runs through the saga. For generation after generation, strife with kin
by marriage brings a series of misfortunes upon the Volsungs. Marriage creates
new kinship alliances, which are vital for survival in societies like the one
pictured in the saga, where there is no effective central order and only a
rudimentary judiciary.... Even though pledges were exchanged between lord and
retainer, the most trustworthy defense lay in the family. Yet villainy often arose
within that social unit, especially at the weak link of the in-law relationship.
...Many of the poems he [the saga writer] drew upon for his prose narrative were
small tragedies that, like the saga, focused on intrafamily rivalry over treasure and
status. (1990, 10-11)
Although the poet of these lays does not preserve for us any sense of a ritualistic
redeposition of the Rhinegold, the general pattern of the lays does make the connection
between status and rivalry, which resonates with both Janet Levy's and Richard Bradley's
anthropological theories of the reasons behind hoarding.
Comparison of the Traditions
Several interesting points should be mentioned in comparing Beowulf and the
Sigurth tale:
1) Hoard History — Both hoards have a history of evil events. The Beowulf hoard
is associated with people swept away in war, and the Rhine gold is the center of a
murderous contention of individuals, before, during, and after the time that the main
heroes are involved in the events. It seems that the traditions presented the reticulated
disasters associated with the manipulation of hoards.
46
2) Supernatural Guardians — Magical guardians watch the caches in each case,
although the guardian in Beowulf, the dragon, is more of a direct part of the magical
retribution than Andvari seems to be in the Norse tale (see Note 4). Beowulf provides a
more fabulous explanation of the results of disturbed hoards than does the Sigurth story
— the Norse tale is socially realistic in the enactment of consequences because magical
creatures perform no retribution, but instead greedy humans enact the curse.
But even if the dragon is appropriately mythical and fit matter for rituals of
prohibition, retribution in Beowulf is also connected with very real political assessments.
The messenger riding back from the dead hero foretells to the people a war with the
Swedes now that their respected leader is dead. Enemies are expected to capitalize on the
death of a strong leader. Thus we have a collocation of a hoard of status symbols and the
death of a high status person with its realistic political repercussions. Similarly in the
Norse tradition, the hoard has its origin in mythology and is invested with magic, but the
manipulation of the hoard in society engenders human ambitions that lead to the murder
of the manipulators.
In summary, the Sigurth story explicates the results of disturbed hoards on the
personal level of murder, while the consequences in Beowulf are enacted upon the
community in general as the threat of intertribal war arises. Both traditions make the
important bridge between magic, ritual, and the consequences in flesh and blood.
3) The Return of the Hoards — In both stories the hoards are returned to the
places from which they were originally taken, an important element of the ritual 'circle'.
However, the nature of the returns differs. Beowulf's hoard is returned in public with
evidence of legal and communal oversight (Creed 1989) (note also a similar pattern in
The Wedding of Smailagic Meho [Parry, Lord, and Bynum 1974, 235], in which the
heroes publicy witness the wicked vizier's hoarded wealth; in general it seems that such
crimes require a public witnessing of suddenly recovered wealth); the Rhinegold has been
secretly thrown into the river by the last possessor to prevent its manipulation by his
47
captor. At this point the Norse saga seems to abandon all pretense at ritual, although the
general cyclic pattern remains. Finally, the hoards of both traditions are returned too late
to avoid any disasters, although it is clear in Beowulf that Wiglaf reburies the hoard
quickly, perhaps to avoid further chaos that Sigurth and peers experience as the Rhine
gold is passed along.
4) The Tending of Rank — This is an appropriate if indirect topic while we are
speaking of hoards of status symbols. Throughout Beowulf, rank, its associated ritual of
humility, and the agricultural wealth that backs up rank, are systematically collocated.
Before the dragon fight Wiglaf, Beowulf's faithful follower, is called a lindwiga "shield
warrior" (line 2603), a title of indeterminate rank. After Beowulf has passed on the tribal
leadership, with his necklace and armor, the poet calls them both eorl "earls" (line 2908),
which is a more definite rank, perhaps higher than before.
With this new rank we also see a ritual of humility. The ritual, in which spoils of
war or gifts are submitted to one's lord before the lord reciprocates with a gift, reminds
me of Turner's observation of status rituals in Africa; in these cases, "...passage from low
to high is through a limbo of statuslessness" (1969, 69). Thus when the characters submit
their gifts or spoils, they are in a sense giving up the materials that lend them status, thus
giving up status at least until the chief reciprocates. This possibility permits us to
understand rituals of humility in Old English epic. When Wiglaf is introduced we learn
of his lineage and how he got his armor — his father Weohstan slew a warrior and took
his gear, and his lord permitted him to keep the gear (presupposing that the gear was first
submitted). Weohstan’s increased status had come only after he had affirmed a
subordinate status to his lord. Similarly, when Beowulf reports back to his lord Hygelac
after the Heorot episodes, he submits his gifts from Hrothgar and Wealhtheo, and then he
receives from Hygelac a gold-hilted sword and 7,000 units of land with a house and
throne (line 2195 ff.). In a flashback telling of Hygelac's raid on the Swedes, the poet
48
mentions that Wulf and Eofor are rewarded for their fight against Ongentheow, from
whom they took spoils:
Thenden reafode rinc otherne,
nam on Ogenthio irenbyrnan,
heard swyrd hilted, ond his helm samod;
hares hyrste Higelace bær.
He th(am) fraetwum feng ond him fægre gehet
leana (mid) leodum, ond gelæste swa;
geald thone guthræs Geata dryhten,
Hrethles eafora, tha he to ham becom,
Iofore ond Wulfe mid ofermathmum,
sealde hiora gehwæthrum hund thusenda
landes ond locenra beaga, — ne thorfte him tha lean othwitan
mon on middangearde, syththa[n] hie tha mærtha geslogon;
ond tha Iofore forgeaf angan dohtor,
hamweorthunge, hyldo to wedde. (lines 2985-2998)
Then one warrior stripped the other, took from Ogentheow his iron-mail, hardhilted sword, and his helmet, too; he bore the arms of the hoary one to Hygelac.
He accepted that treasure and fairly promised him rewards among the people, and
he stood by it thus: the lord of the Geats [Hygelac], the son of Hrethel, when he
came home, repaid Wulf and Eofor for their battle-assault with much treasure,
gave each of them a hundred thousand [units] of land and linked rings: there was
no need for any man on middle-earth to blame him for the rewards, since they had
performed great deeds. And then he gave Eofor his only daughter as a pledge of
friendship--a fair thing for his home. (Donaldson 1974, 82)
In these cases, promotion has come soon after the death and stripping of enemies in war.
This is a logical outcome, given the system of attaining and signalling rank in such a
society.
The poem Widsith shows a non-warlike example of humility-status rituals. The
poet tells about the time he yielded an earned status symbol to his lord, and the lord in
turn gave him a gift:
49
Ond ic wæs mid Eormanrice ealle thrage,
thær me Gotena cyning gode dohte;
se me beag forgeaf, burgwarena fruma,
on tham siex hund wæs smætes goldes
gescyred sceatta scillingrime, -thone ic Eadgilse on æht sealde,
minum hleodryhtne, tha ic to ham bicwom,
leofum to leane, thæs the he me long forgeaf,
mines fæder ethel, frea Myrginga;
ond me tha Ealhhild otherne forgeaf,
dryhtcwen duguthe, dohtor Eadwines.
(Klaeber 1950, lines 88-98)
And I was with Eormanric all the time; then the king of the Goths treated me well;
he, prince of the city-dwellers, gave me a ring in which was reckoned to be six
hundred pieces of pure gold counted by shillings; I gave it into the keeping of
Eadgils, my protecting lord, when I came home, as reward to the dear one because
he, the prince of the Myrgings, gave me land, my father's dwelling-place; and then
Ealhild, daughter of Eadwine, a queen noble in majesty, gave me another.
(Gordon 1976, 69)
Possibly such rituals of humility are associated with the ascribing of a military victory to
the king of the victorious army, which occurs in both Irish annals (Maria Tymoczko,
personal communication 1991) and in the Germanic tradition. In these cases not only
spoils, perhaps, but status is submitted by the followers of the king.
In Judith, however, the overall pattern seems broken (the tale is constrained by its
biblical parent). Here the spoils of war are given to the lord (the biblical Judith) after the
war without reciprocity depicted (Gordon 1976 rpt./1926, 325-326). Since she then
ascribes her victory to God, perhaps the spoils are "submitted" back to God, but this is
only speculation. Similarly, in the Spanish epic, El Cid, booty is submitted to superiors
without reciprocity (see Merwin 1959, 486, 529, in translation), which might be expected
in a feudal state with different kinds of social relationships and more complicated social
and economic institutions.
We see that the pattern of the hoard is associated with the depiction of status
symbols and their own association with the real agricultural wealth that ought to be a
basis for status symbols when the system works properly. For example, when Hygelac
50
awards Beowulf a sword and a large piece of land with a throne, we can view the sword
and throne as status symbols that are backed-up by immense agricultural wealth, which is
the only true measure of a person's ability to get things done in this kind of society (i.e.,
create reciprocal relationships with fellow tribesmen to distribute produce where it is
needed, and to support craftsmen who produce exotic goods that are the symbols of
reciprocal relations and alliances). Therefore Beowulf's authority is well-founded. The
similar pattern of the gift to Wulf and Eofor, cited above, adds weight to this possibility.
It is important to note in this latter case that the poet says Hygelac could not be blamed
for giving the reward, implying that rank in the form of land grants and symbols certainly
must be justified.
In general we note that land and displayable treasure are awarded in sets. As long
as this power backs up its status symbols, all is well. Conversely, when status symbols
unassociated with real power are distributed, the realistic hierarchy of capable,
agriculturally founded elite can become misleading and unpredictable. People who
appear to be able to make important decisions and enter into fundamental relationships
with kin and potential allies really do not have the wealth to back up these actions. When
too many such individuals exist, it is time for the hoarding ritual to take away the goods
that are expected to be distributed to someone (human, spirit, or god), if the possessor is a
good king.
In the Norse tales, the treasure is not collocated with land grants but rather with
the creation of social relationships; perhaps no one survived long enough in Norse sagas
to get around to farming. Be that as it may, the Rhine gold is used first by Sigurth to
marry into the family of the Gjukungs (see The Lay of Fafnir, Hollander 1986 rpt./1962,
231, in translation). Later, Brynhild accuses Gunnar (Sigurth's brother-in-law) of
betraying Sigurth, "who foremost made thee," referring to the wealth of the Rhine gold
(in a fragment of a Sigurth lay [ibid, 246]). The connection of the symbols of rank and
51
the actual power-base of rank — agricultural resources — is not made as clear as it is in
Beowulf.
The concern about rank extends also to Beowulf's fear that he might have
transgressed against ancient law (or be responsible for that transgression as symbol of his
community). V. Turner (1969, 184) observed in a case in Africa that high status men
were thought to have angered the gods or other supernatural powers, at which time their
structural inferiors corrected matters with ritual. Beowulf's worry about having
transgressed an ealde riht 'ancient right' (line 2,330) may remind us of the African belief.
As the hero discourses at the dragon's barrow about his good service to his people,
perhaps he defends his record to the gods and the community, forming a kind of
communitas in narrative by showing his role as a public servant. He will soon become
the ultimate public servant — a sacrifice. His liminal state may be symbolized by the
desertion of his retainers, with Wiglaf as a companion in communitas. Both men will of
course undergo a status change soon. Beowulf goes from life to death but with his status
restored in his fine funeral rites, and Wiglaf becomes the leader of the Geats.
In closing, I note that the subject of status in Old English poetry is almost a tainted
subject in the tradition; why would I not think so, with the obsessive burial of the dragon
hoard and the humility rituals the characters undergo? Perhaps this is because Old
English society was based on warbands lead by charismatic leaders who had to win or
convince followers that they had earned the title of 'chief'. I can imagine predatory groups
of settlers winning land in Britain. The English colonizers may have had some legitimate
chiefs among them, but the outcast, landless, and disinherited folk are the ones most
likely to leave home and start elsewhere. Here a war band is just as likely to be led by a
successful war leader holding rank by prowess rather than by inheritance or land. Such a
basis in leadership is unlikely to lead to good humor about status competition among
peers or inferiors. If so, then Old English literary tradition may evidence a fine
adjustment to the historical events that shaped early English society.
52
5) Dead Heroes, Dead Lineages — Beowulf never married, apparently, or if he
did, had no children. As he dies after the dragon fight, he tells Wiglaf, 'Thu eart endelaf
usses cynnes,/ Wægmundinga; ealle wryd forsweop/mine magas to
metodsceafte,/eorlas on elne; ic him æfter sceal.' (lines 2813-2816); "You are the last
left of our race, of the Waegmundings. Fate has swept away all of my kinsmen, earls in
their strength, to destined death. I have to go after" (Donaldson 1974, 79). The
interesting thing about Wiglaf is that his lineage is unusual. The poet states that the
young man is a Scylfing (a Swede), and then a Waegmund (a Geat), a member of the
family to which Beowulf belongs (Donaldson 1974, 76, n. 6). Similarly, in the Norse
saga, Sigurth married Gudrun, a daughter of the Niflungs, and he also apparently had no
heirs to carry on the family. Both Beowulf and Sigurth are thus the last of the lineages (as
are Cú Chulainn in Irish tradition and Roland in French), if we consider Wiglaf's
confused lineage as a doubtful connection to Beowulf. It is possible that the hoard
pattern associates the reintroduction of cursed treasure with the end of family lineage,
which would be among the greatest of tragedies in a society where lineage is the ultimate
measure of an individual's place in society. Thus, this saga suggests that the adverse
affects of status symbols affect a social unit as small as the family, whereas Beowulf
records this effect and the effects on the larger social unit: the tribal nation.
6) Social Manipulation — I end with a possibility that I think is especially
important, the possibility that the narratives show a fear of the altering of social status
through manipulation of a recovered hoard. Observe that the hoards are initially used by
people of inferior social status in relation to other characters in the tales. The wretched
slave in Beowulf is the first person to discover and use the hoard — he steals a cup to win
back the good will from his master:
mandryhtne bær
fæted wæge, friothowære bæd
hlaford sinne. Tha wæs hord rasod,
onboren beaga hord, bene getithad
53
feasceaftum men; frea sceawode
fira fyrengeweorc forman sithe. (line 2281-2286)
He bore to his master a plated cup, asked his lord for a compact of peace; thus was
the hoard searched, the store of treasures diminished. His requests were granted
the wretched man: the lord for the first time looked on the ancient work of men
[the hoard]. (Donaldson, 1974, 70)
Perhaps the audience of the poem was to infer that the slave tried to buy his freedom and
thus attain greater social status, although this is only speculation. Sigurth, on the other
hand, would seem to be a poor comparison to the slave because that hero is nobly born.
But consider: Sigurth arrives at a foreign court as an outsider who must buy his way into
Gjukung status through marriage to the king's daughter, Guthrun. Meanwhile, the status
of his brother-in-law is also raised as the hoard is manipulated in the family, as already
mentioned.
After the hoards are manipulated to increase social status, chaos breaks out for the
heroes of both traditions. Beowulf's retainers break their oaths as retainers and flee from
the dragon fight, for which the faithful Wiglaf foretells their ostracism (although Beowulf
did ask them to remain behind). Oath-breaking also follows among Sigurth and his new
kin as murder and suspicion worsen the relationships begun with the Rhinegold. Thus the
attempts to create social relationships with the hoards actually break social bonds
represented in oaths of allegiance (to Beowulf) and blood oaths (with Sigurth).
The emphasis on war and murder is quite appropriate in the context of a recovered
hoard. Levy suggested that conspicuous wealth can breed envy in the less fortunate
members of the community. According to Champion, inflated wealth diminishes the
status to be gained by precious objects. It is easy to imagine how envy can lead to unrest
in a community, and unrest to internal rebellion or a simple reduction in communal
feeling, especially when there are enough bearers of failing status-symbols to obscure
central authority. In turn, a group can become weak from within and subject to attack
54
from without. These are the most plausible consequences; other penalties involving the
wrath of gods may have played a part but are difficult for a scientist to evaluate.
It is suggestive that Wiglaf seems to have gained status at the end of Beowulf both
by accepting the objects of status from his dying leader (the armor and necklace) and by
reburying the captured hoard goods in what may be a model for the hoarding ceremony.
Wiglaf is the only person who quickly rids himself of the treasure, and he is the only
person who survives the taint of the cursed hoard.
The tragedy of the hoard's story is a shadowy model of the tragedy that must have
stricken real communities. Social systems are not exact computers that flash
unambiguous warnings when limits are about to be reached. Society needs both
distribution and hoarding of wealth at different points in its history. The hard part is
knowing when either ritual must begin. Beowulf did not know the consequence of
discovering and using dragon treasure until it was too late — the dragon reacted quickly,
destroying material possessions (hall and throne) in return for stolen materials. Nor
would real communities know it was time to seal away treasure until the cumulative
effects of overabundant status goods hurt somebody.
Archaeology and Poetry: A Marriage?
Perhaps not a marriage, but at least an affectionate relationship. The envy of
wealth that Levy suggests as the basis of Bronze Age hoarding is generally reflected in
the narrative traditions; the poets often grumble about chiefs who sit on their treasure
chests like chainmailed Scrooges. More specifically, I have suggested that Wiglaf is the
model for the hoarding personality in Germanic tradition, the ideal person who quickly
makes a public viewing of unrightfully acquired wealth, and then oversees a public
redeposition (Gunnar is a far worse model, because he secretly discarded the Rhine gold
not out of public trust but rather to spite his enemy; this is almost a parody of the hoard
55
ritual). Yet, the poems do not offer a realistic explication (to the audience) of the reasons
why a hoard must be hidden. That is to say, the poems function without the voices of
protest from the envious have-nots in society; Levy's theory about social envy is not
evident in the poems if we consider only envy at this level. Indeed, we rarely see people
of humble origins in epic poetry. Where we do see envy at work is between the nobles in
the tales of the Rhine gold, nobles who are monitoring their position in society relative to
other nobles.
This is not to say that wealth tensions did not exist between the wealthy and the
poor folk, or that hoards were not deposited to mitigate the tensions, or that Levy's theory
does not operate in conjunction with the narratives. I do suggest that a narrative tradition
performed at one time in royal halls, and sometimes patronized by wealthy people (see
the Old English poem Deor, for example), would be unlikely to mention a population
discontented with its greedy leaders, something that is saved for villainous kings such as
Eormanric in the Old English poems Deor and Widsith. Heroic poetry is not inclined to
show villains who see their faults and change their ways.
Thus it is probable that the tradition lost the details of an historic reality of social
discontent by either not mentioning it when portraying the hoarding ritual (as in Beowulf)
or by rationalizing it as greed between high-born individuals (as in the Norse lays). In
this way the elite's distributive duty to the community (or its distributive ideology) is not
put to embarrassing questions, but at the same time the stories can support the ritual of
hoarding.
Sigurth's saga does show us envy working between nobles, and perhaps this is the
most fertile area for envy to grow. The powerless are not in a good position to mobilize
widespread disorder, but a jealous noble is in a perfect position to do so. The diverting of
wealth to the gods may have been just as important to avoid the envy of fellow richfolk as
it was to earn the respect of the less wealthy.
56
If Levy's 'envy-syndrome,' as I call it, is not evident in the lore, then, similarly, the
other pathology of status symbols is not evident-- reduction in status-giving value of
prestige goods through overabundance. In Beowulf, Wiglaf hastens to publicly display
and rebury the hoard at once, but he states no reason for doing so. In the Norse texts, the
only person who disposes of the hoard has done so out of greed and spite, as mentioned
above; this motif exists also in Egil's Saga of Iceland's late medieval period, in which
Egil casts his wealth into a bog to prevent his unworthy kin from getting it (see Jones
1960).
The only indication that the Germanic literary tradition represented the pathology
of overabundant status symbols is in this narrative pattern: a social inferior (the wretched
slave who becomes the hoard-thief in Beowulf, and Sigurth in the Norse sagas)
manipulates a treasure hoard that he has personally discovered — i.e., his good luck is not
communally witnessed nor approved — to attain higher status, which results eventually in
tragedy. This pattern suggests that 'upward mobility' that is either unsanctioned or
undeserved by deeds is the beginning of social chaos (recall that Beowulf does not touch
the treasure in the underwater cave of the ogres; he is indeed an honest hero, since he
observed society's rules in a place where no witnesses could have observed a theft!).
Here I call attention to other points I have made. In Beowulf, at least, we see that heroes
who have won rich possessions in battle first submit them to their lords before their lords
give them something in return. It is as if the chiefs must be allowed to analyze the social,
hierarchical circumstances before distributing wealth and creating powerful individuals
(see Note 2).
But we should not lose confidence in the poems' connection to the ritual. I bring
the reader back to my earlier discussion of tradition and history: we are simply seeing the
poems function in the best possible way — to impress audiences through suggestion,
nuance, and broad emotional appeal, not through lecturing, bookish prescriptions of
behavior and consequence.
57
We should not lose confidence in the poems even when confronted by the paradox
in Beowulf, where Beowulf exults at capturing the dragon hoard but Wiglaf rushes to
rebury it. Conflicts are inherent in life — traditions give a place of dishonor for greedy
kings, but the larger workings of society dictate that ritualized hoarding is sometimes a
better, practical answer to social woes. It would be no wonder if the problem mystified
them as much as it may mystify us, and a good paradox occupies our modern story tellers
as much as it may have done in old, traditional stories.
*
*
*
Ritualized hoarding tapered off after the fifth century A.D., and certainly the great
majority of the hoards thereafter seem to represent the hiding of personal valuables and
craftsmen's scraps of precious metals. The reasons for the reduction of ritualized
hoarding may have included the changing nature of status display, the change of the
religious underpinnings of Europe, and the reduction of wealth flowing from the
Mediterranean after the fall of Rome.
Exotic goods have most significance when they are worn by a visible elite — an
elite whose physical and social distance from the community is minimal, or in other
words, an elite that is more consistently visible to the local public relative to the elite of
more complex societies (the public of distant parts of the group may rarely if ever see
their ultimate leaders). As an extreme example, because of the social and physical
distances involved, how often can an American expect to see and converse meaningfully
with the president, or the governor of the state, or even the town mayor? What they wear
and own is less important to us as a symbol of their rank than the physical adornment of
tribal chiefs in communities that could expect to see their chief often.
Rituals involving the creation and submission of rank, and/or the symbols of rank,
are probably most effective within a small community hierarchy in which the public is
highly aware of who displays symbols of rank and who yields them in ritual offerings.
Moreover, a sufficient quantity of public witnesses must be able to congregate to confirm
58
a ritual when radio, television, photography, and even writing are not present as proxy
witnesses to the event and spreaders of the news. After all, the hoard ceremony exists to
reduce the visible inequality of status and wealth between the ruler and the ruled. These
conditions imply that the offering ritual is most effective when it is performed within a
relatively small community whose elite are not overly shielded by physical distance and
protocol.
Such a hierarchy exists in a chiefdom, where ritual certainly exists between ruler
and ruled, but the possibility of seeing the chief by the villagers is quite high. (Note that
the only barrier between Hrothgar and his visitors is Wulfgar in one episode and Unferth
in another, both of whom are spokesmen.) However, chiefdoms did not long survive into
the medieval period as they became assimilated into states or themselves became states.
As part of the ritual of chiefdoms, treasure hoards could no longer mitigate tensions as the
increasingly complex societies used different methods of maintaining rank (such as legal
documents) and reducing conflict (with coercion).
The rise of the church probably had the greatest effect on the hoarding ritual,
which was pagan. The church affected the way in which secular rank was maintained.
The early church may have been "...an expression of power and prestige, an investment in
an alternative belief system" (Arnold 1982, 128). Furthermore, Scandinavian rulers of the
tenth century "...were converted and baptized in western Europe, after careers as Viking
leaders, and then returned to Norway with enhanced reputations and great wealth. They
had discovered what great advantages Christianity could confer on kings, and only that
can explain the extraordinary ferocity with which they evangelized" (Sawyer 1982, 139).*
The rise of literacy is another, perhaps subtle, factor to consider. Literacy can be
used as a sign of rank (Bauml 1986, 408). This is especially true when most of a society
is not literate. The awe caused by written communications may have given literacy
considerable power as a status symbol. Rank holders need not have been literate
themselves; access to a literate subordinate, through patronage of a cleric, for instance,
59
would have also been sufficient (ibid). The combined effects of change in social
structure, religion, and methods of rank display destroyed the context for hoarding rituals;
perhaps this is why the Sigurth saga, later than Beowulf, is vaguer about the hoard pattern
than Beowulf seems to be.
* Christianity did offer a ritual of redistribution — the communion, in which a wafer and a sip of wine are
distributed by the church 'chief'. This ritual gave no nutrition or wealth, however, and was a shadow of
redistribution. The church was rather more successful at creating new kinds of 'hoards' in the form of
untouchable church artifacts (John R. Cole, personal communication 1992). A good line of future research
would be to analyze the flow of wealth into the early churches and hypothesize its effect on status
maintenance by both secular and church leaders.
Conclusion: Hoards and Funerals
The ritual of treasure hoards and its linguistic component in oral tradition played
important roles in the reduction of conflict in some chiefdom societies of Northern
Europe. The specificity of the poets' concern with the hoards is particularly interesting
because rich funeral depositions also occurred in the Germanic era but seem to find
treatment more often in short descriptive passages rather than in more encompassing
narrative patterns such as the dragon hoard pattern. In some cases, goods once deposited
in burials might in another period be confined to hoards (Bradley 1990, 102). One
wonders if the oral tradition was specific enough to reflect a time when hoarding was at
peak and rich burials at a low point. Earle (1987, 291), in speaking of stratification as a
characteristic of chiefdoms, writes "With expanding economies and flexible social
hierarchies in northern Europe, active competition for advantage was manifest in large
offerings in burials; however, during periods of economic contraction, competition was
less manifest and burials were not as differentiated in wealth."
For example, evidence suggests that, beginning around 300 AD, Denmark
experienced a period of economic contraction, a time when rituals of "communion" were
stressed over those of lavish funerals (Randsborg, 1980, 45). Randsborg also relates that,
60
Altogether, the warm periods of expansion of settlements saw wealthy graves,
while the intermittent phases of colder weather conditions and a contracting
settlement had less conspicuous interments in spite of a continuation of the sociopolitical milieu...There are no indications that the ranking systems broke down
during the periods without wealthy graves. (Randsborg 1982, 135)
It appears that these periods were a regular feature of European social development,
where the ranked societies of the Bronze and Iron age
...underwent successive periods of expansion and contraction of the settlements. ...
golden artifacts from both graves, offerings and treasure hoards...are, in fact, more
common in the recession periods, which see harder weather conditions but also
some intensification of the subsistence that enabled the population to survive,
although under stricter patterns of control and inheritance of resources.
[Randsborg was earlier writing about how individual farmsteads gave way to
estates in which large landowners embraced servants who did not have access to
land, which gives control into hands of the wealthy landowners]. (ibid, 138)
In a footnote, Randsborg adds, "The offerings [i.e., hoards] are interesting for their lack
of direction towards a specific (earthly) person, and may seem, although falsely, to be
more 'collective' in character than, for instance, the interment of a wealthy magnate. And
yet, the offerings too required the support of the wealthy echelons to be carried out"
(ibid). I would add that the traits of social contraction in Denmark — larger estates,
fewer families owning land, and the interment of status symbols in hoards — do not
indicate a change in society to the extent that ranking is lost as a concept, as Randsborg
(1982, 135) noted above, but I do argue that these are behaviors of centralization in which
society becomes organized under fewer (but more powerful?) leaders, perhaps to regulate
society closely in difficult times. One might call this centralization "communion," as
Randsborg did above. Possibly, we see a reflex of communalization in Beowulf when
Wiglaf exiles Beowulf's retainers, who hid themselves when the dragon fight began.
Essentially, Wiglaf remains as one of the few ranking people left (legally) in Beowulf's
community. He also remains, perhaps, as one of the few with wealthy status goods. The
community buries Beowulf not only with the cursed hoard but also with additional
61
funeral goods, whereas Beowulf has left Wiglaf his armor, necklace, and inheritance of
social position. Note also the association of inheritance with the pattern of hoarding in
the poem, which correlates with Randsborg's data about stronger lines of inheritance
during times of economic recession and ritual social communion.
Hoarding is a ritual of communion because the yielder of precious goods is made
to appear more like an ordinary member of the community (as in Levy's theory);
alternatively, the community in general is reduced in status goods and thus made to
appear more equal than before, in terms of material goods. (Interestingly, the general use
of language in Beowulf may indicate the 'communal' orientation on the dragon hoard
episode because the individualizing proper nouns occur with less frequency in this
passage relative to other parts of the poem [see Note 5]).
Conversely, rich burials proclaim status (separating rather than joining the
community) by associating sumptuary goods with an individual and in turn with a family;
rich funeral deposits can mean that families are competing for status by lavishing goods
openly during funerals (Pearson 1984), not trying to reduce evident status; Pearson
summarizes his ideas thus:
(1) The symbolism of ritual communication does not necessarily refer to the actual
relations of power but to an idealized expression of those relations. (2) Relations
between living groups must be seen as relations of influence and inequality where
deceased individuals may be manipulated for purposes of status aggrandisement
between those groups. Ideology as manifested in mortuary practices may mystify
or naturalise those relations of inequality between groups or classes through the
use of the past to legitimise the present. ... (4) Social advertisement in death ritual
may be expressly overt where changing relations of domination result in status reordering and consolidation of new social positions.
I speculate that during times of "contraction" — including times of bad weather,
poor crop production, famine, disease, and war — ritual offerings to gain supernatural aid
would have occurred. (It is telling that the 'Lay of the Last Survivor' in Beowulf describes
the deposition of the hoard after the depositor has survived the calamities of warfare.)
Rituals of sacrifice, when they included status symbols, would 1) appease the
62
community's need to 'do something', 2) reduce envies arising from overprivileged elite (if
such tensions existed at the time), and 3) leave the community with a more 'linear' social
hierarchy — more centralized, with reduced variety of leaders, to react better to life's
challenges through agrarian intensification or warfare. At the same time the ritual
permits leaders to compete with each other for status, leaving the most powerful in
position. The ritual of communion is rather like a broad-base antibiotic, which cures the
disease that the patient has overtly, and cures any other disease that has not yet been
recognized. In a chiefdom, rank positions as supported by material wealth have such
wide importance that any ritual controlling material wealth is likely to have wide effect.
One interesting parallel to funeral and hoard behaviors is found in a historical
record of Alaric the Goth's invasion of Italy in the fifth century. Alaric sought to invade
Africa to cut off Italy's food supply, and his ships were wrecked in a storm, forcing him to
try to collect a fleet at Naples, but he died at Consentia in A.D. 410 before he could do so.
As a historical source indicates: "...his followers buried him in the Basentus, and diverted
its waters into another channel, that his body might never be desecrated. It is related that
the men who were employed on the work were all massacred, that the secret might not be
divulged" (Bury 1958, 184-185; see Note 6). History or legend, the interesting elements
in this event are the burial in a wet place to avoid desecration, and the massacre of
workers to keep the secret. Such events remind us both of hoard burial and of the bog
sacrifices in which cult devotees were evidently sacrificed and placed in a wet place.
Clearly, garbled history or patterns of belief actually followed to some degree by
historical people reflect some aspects of burial behaviors that were followed in Germanic
culture at least as far as the Migration Period, and preserved in narrative long after that.
I am not claiming that the poems I have discussed were composed in 300 A.D., or
even during the Migration Period, the peak of the hoarding ritual. But because of the
conservatism in tradition, the poems possibly preserve traditional patterns from several
hundred years past — patterns that may have lost some of their original function in
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"rituals of communion" but remained as good stories for the expression of tragedy and the
heroic code. The 'hoard pattern' was (and still is, if modern readers apply its lesson) a
powerful, linguistic adaptive mechanism that could survive some loss of function.
There are difficulties in correlation between a specific archaeological period and
the composition of an epic poem; few such hypotheses seem testable. But I hope that I
have shown that the narrative traditions continue to yield important information for the
folklorist and archaeologist, not simply a general reflection of the archaeological record
that tempts us to make cut-and-dried solutions that state, for example, that the poems
resonate with Sutton Hoo. Moreover, the models of ritual that the narratives preserve
remind us of the poems' participation in ritual. These Germanic traditions deserve study
as active mechanisms that helped communities to survive problems specific to their
history and social organization.
Notes to Chapter 4
1 — This chapter began in the following papers:
"Buried Treasure and Adaptive Mechanisms." The Seventeenth Annual
Conference for Medieval Archaeology. The Center for Medieval and Early
Renaissance Studies, State University of New York, Binghampton, NY. October
22, 1983.
"In Memory of Beowulf: The Function and Poetry of Treasure Hoards." The Ninth
Medieval Forum. Plymouth State College, Plymouth, NH. April 16, 1988.
"The Hoarding Ritual in Germanic Epic Tradition." The Journal of Folklore
Research 26:2, 1989, 99-121.  1989 by The Journal of Folklore Research, Inc.
Thanks to H. Martin Wobst for reading an early draft of the published version of these
papers.
This chapter is an extensive revision of my article, "The Hoarding Ritual in
Germanic Epic Tradition," cited above. Permission to reprint this article, in whole or
revised form in a publication comprising only the author's work, is granted through
contract by The Journal of Folklore Research, Inc.
2 — A tempting line of exploration is to consider in this way the weapon sacrifices seen
in the archaeological record and in accounts by classical writers about both the Celts and
the Germans; here is an extract from Caesar's The Conquest of Gaul (1982, 142):
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When they [the Gauls] have decided to fight a battle they generally vow to Mars
the booty that they hope to take, and after a victory they sacrifice the captured
animals and collect the rest of the spoil in one spot. Among many of the tribes,
high piles of it can be seen on consecrated ground; and it is an almost unknown
thing for anyone to dare, in defiance of religious law, to conceal his booty at home
or to remove anything placed on the piles. Such a crime is punishable by a
terrible death under torture.
The profusion of booty following major military victories would certainly redefine tribal
status unless the victors (or their chiefs) closely controlled the distribution (or lack of it)
of precious booty. The chiefs might have chosen this time to scrutinize the status
structure to see if they or their communities would benefit from objects distributed to
people or to gods.
I am not the first to consider this topic. Stjerna remarked:
...modern investigations [for Stjerna, modern meant 'turn of the century'] of the
moor-finds has brought to light an important agreement between them and the
statements in Beowulf. The great hoard was first put together after a destructive
battle, and its contents had belonged to champions — to chiefs and their followers
— who died in fight. The same view with respect to the origin of the actual moorfinds is now shared by all Northern archaeologists. Beyond that, however, we
have in the poem a statement that the articles were deposited by the comrades of
the slain (vv. 3069,70). This conflicts with the current opinion about the moorfinds, which is that they were remains of trophies of victory, offered to the gods,
and were thus entirely due to the victors for their existence. (1912, 153)
Stjerna states in a footnote that he once observed that the hoard objects were presents to
the fallen warriors so that they could continue their profession in the afterlife.
3 — I acknowledge the helpful comments of my medieval-history teacher, Professor
Dean Ware, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who heard my hoard paper at the
Plymouth State College Medieval Forum in April 1988 and questioned me about my
views on Sisam's and Sievers' claims of interpolation. The discussion presented here has
been extracted from my written response to Professor Ware dated May 1988.
4 — Like Andvari (the dwarf or ogre figure), and Regin and Fafnir (called 'etins' or of the
race of giants), Grendel and his mother in Beowulf are ogres, of the race of giants; their
hoard, like Andvari's, is beneath the water. There are then two patterns associated with
hoards: the ogre/giant pattern, and the pattern of the dragon. Beowulf incorporates some
form of both patterns, but in the ogre-type, when he descends into Grendel's mere, the
hero acts properly, perhaps avoiding the kind of retribution that Sigurth and his friends
experience after the manipulation of Andvari's original treasure.
The two possible kinds of hoards might also be seen in this way: ogres in general
own treasure and dragons in general find treasure. Ogres, as part of the 'otherworld',
living across or beneath water, deal out punishment in the form of a curse; the dragons are
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a part of the curse. Alas! We do not have more traditional tales to flesh out this
speculation!
5 — I suggest such a trait as a result of a computerized analysis. I began a computerized,
content-analysis of Beowulf that I have not applied to the other texts. My original
approach was inspired by Colby, Collier, and Postal (1963), but surely others have done
content analysis of narratives since this early publication. My own use of the approach is
tentative and may not extend further because of the massive amounts of time and money
involved.
Two friends, Richard Senghas and Kenneth Shores, were offered (and accepted)
insultingly low wages to design computer codes at my specification to statistically
analyze the occurrence of concepts in Beowulf. The Scop Program (named for the
Anglo-Saxon scop, the performer of narrative tradition), written in Pascal computer
language, is designed to run on the University of Massachusett's Cyber mainframe
computer in its ca. 1983 configuration (the program may no longer operate: the NOS VE
operating system was replaced ca. 1986, with which my program integrated).
Basically, I entered each word of the poem into a computer file, assigning codes to
each word describing part of speech, one or more codes describing semantic content, and
the line number or numbers at which the word occurs. For example, the word "sword" is
coded as a noun, as a weapon, and it occurs in many lines, each of which is listed (the
data entry looks like this: /SWORD NOU W 127, 290, 384...etc.). I followed Klaeber's
glossary in Beowulf , since the tremendous work he did gave me a head start on data
collection — he defines each word of the poem and gives the line numbers where each
word occurs, except for frequent words of low information content, such as the verb "to
be." This lack of information does not affect my research because I am not concerned
with that type of verb; however, if Klaeber made errors in his other entries, such as
missing line numbers for some entries, then these errors made their way into my data
base.
I should note that you could perform this kind of a content analysis without a
computer, simply by coding the words in Klaeber's glossary (that is, by identifying in
some way the concept categories you are tabulating, such as 'leader', or 'proper noun', etc.)
and then using the glossary with its line-number references to discover where such
concepts occurred in the poem. For certain restricted uses, this method might not be
much more difficult than designing a computer program, encoding the text, and entering
the data. However, for repeated analyses, and for any other text without such a
convenient glossary, the computerized approach is unrivaled.
The Scop Program can perform different kinds of searches and produce the
respective reports. I might want to know how many times the concept of weapon (code
W) occurs in the entire poem; the computer performs the search and prints out a report of
the results, including number of occurrences and a list of all the words it found with code
W. I can also constrain the search to certain portions of the poem — between lines 2200
and 3182, for instance; in this way I can note if certain concepts occur in greater
frequency in certain areas. Of course, such statistical data mean nothing unless used as a
way to test specific hypotheses.
Note that the definition of the concept of a word can be arbitrary. A sword is
certainly a weapon, but it can also be a status symbol, or an object of iron, or coded
generically as an artifact. A king can be a man or a leader or both. And how does one
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code concepts rather than objects? The old question "What is love?" takes on an
unclíchéd importance here! Is it simply an emotion of attachment? Friendship? Sexual
attraction? Economic necessity?
However, users are free to accept or reject the conceptual categories, and to
interpret the categories for their own use if rejected. This freedom comes from the ability
of the program to print out the words it found during the scan; if a word is coded as
weapon, then the scholar can review the list and decide whether or not the conceptual
categories are useful for her own or anyone's purposes. Categories can be changed; a few
buttons pressed, and the computer changes an entire data base in seconds, changing, for
example, a sword coded as weapon for a sword coded as status symbol. (Of course,
scholars are also free to interpret a code and supply their own meaning). The Scop
program tolerates multiple codings, such that 'sword' can be placed in more than one
category. Thus two searches, one for weapons and one for status symbols, will list each
occurrence of the word 'sword' in each report.
I scanned the hoard passage of the dragon hoard to compare frequencies of
communal concepts with other parts of the hoard. I divided the poem into thirds, which
approximates the major narrative divisions of the poem. The hoard episode begins at line
2200 and extends to 3182, which is about 116 lines or nine percent less than a true third
of the poem. I accepted this slight skewing of the data search to delineate clearly the part
of the poem under study. The resulting word frequencies may be about 9 percent less
than they would be if the poem divided neatly into thirds.
To divide the remainder, I set the program to scan from lines 1 to 1099, and from
1100 to 2199. The first of these divisions falls within transitional narrative between the
Grendel and Grendel's Mother episodes; the last division is at the start of the dragon
passage as noted.
My hypothesis for the analysis assumes 1) that rituals are socializing behaviors
that integrate groups, and 2) that the reflection of communal rituals in narrative tradition
will reflect community over individual. Specifically, I posit that, if the hoard pattern was
a description of or participant in the actual hoarding ritual, then the pattern, like the ritual,
would be designed to stress communion rather than individualism. Thus, generic terms
of groups represented by proper nouns would hold equal or greater frequency in this
passage while the frequency of individual names would drop.
The results of the scan are printed in Note 7 at the end of this chapter. This is the
summary of results:
Proper nouns (code PPN)
First Third
Second Third
Last Third
233
228
152 (-9%)
Personal Names (code PRSNM)
138
140
94 (-9%)
(words for personal names may be replaced by general terms for leader, i.e., king, prince,
protector, which rise in the last third:)
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Concept of Leader (code LH)
67
78
108 (-9%)
Family names (code FAMNM)
22
20
7 (-9%)
Tribal Groups (code BNDNM)
60
53
41 (-9%)
The scan shows that proper nouns decline in frequency in the hoard passage,
although the specific proper nouns of tribal names hardly decline at all, perhaps because
political groups are the least 'individual' of all the proper nouns denoting people, and so
not out of place in communal rituals. In summary, these results support my hypothesis
and lend support to the notion that the dragon hoard episode was well-adjusted to
participate in a ritual of communion.
6 — Professor Dean Ware suggested an analogy between the burial of hoards in wet
places and the historical record of Alaric's burial.
7 — Scop Program Print-out of Categorized Words: The program lists once each word
that has been identified by a category code. The definitions and each occurrence of the
words in the edition of Beowulf manuscript can be found in Klaeber's (1950) glossary.
The tally of the concept search appears at the end of each word list.
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Scop Program Report
69
Scop Program Report (continued)
70
Scop Program Report (continued)
71
Scop Program Report (continued)
72
Scop Program Report (continued)
73
Scop Program Report (continued)
74
Scop Program Report (continued)
75
Scop Program Report (continued)
76
Scop Program Report (continued)
77
Scop Program Report (continued)