How Heavy Our Words Were
Shane Frana AxenthowesTexas, 2009
Si quis homo super reliquiis sanctorum falsum sacramentum iuraverit, ad partem regis weregildum suum componat, et alio weregildo manum suam redimat; de coniuratoribus eius unusquisque weregildum suum persolvat.
If a man swears a false oath on the relics, he pays to the king his wergeld and he redeems his hand with another wergeld; each one of his oath-helpers pays his wergeld. -- Lex Frisionum1
The above is from the law codes of the Frisians, recorded after the defeat of the Frisian king Radbod. It is a testimony to the power of a man's word that not only is he accountable for his oaths but others are accountable for it as well. This creates an uniquely binding relationship between a man and his oath-helpers. The oath-helpers are pledging their honor to the support of the claims of the individual and that individual in turn is pledging his honor in his own oath and in soliciting the oaths of his friends. In the customary law of the Germanic tribes there existed three primary means of demonstrating liability: compurgation2, ordeal, and duel. The success of resorting to oath-helpers is dependent upon the number of oath-helpers and their honor, or social standing, within the community. The individual, either the accused or the claimant, with the most oath-helpers or with oath-helpers of the highest social standing will be the victor. While this may seem simple enough on the surface, what is really being wagered here is power and honor in a society that glorified power and honor. When considered in this light the success of the accused or claimant is not based upon guilt or innocence, but upon the ability to enforce the power of their words through the social status of their oath helpers. The implicit logic is of course that men are known by their deeds and men of worth can easily acquire oath-helpers while the less-than-worthy would have a hard time gaining the support of the requisite number of helpers. This, of course, is but one example from the customary laws of the Frisians as set down in the latter part of the 8th century CE. There exists many other examples of the sanctity of the oath in Germanic lore. It is precisely this sanctity, this power, held in the words spoken between a man and his companions that I wish to discuss. It is my contention that there exists no more powerful or binding element in the immediate day-to-day socioreligious sphere of the historic heathen, and by way of reconstruction the modern heathen, than those created by words and sealed by drink.
The significance of the oaths and bonds spoken by men and gods alike is stressed in Völuspá, st. 26, where we are told that Thor rages and seldom sits quietly while oaths and bonds are broken.3 Likewise, in Sigrdrífomál, st. 23, we are told that a grim fate follows a broken oath.4 But what is the reasoning behind this? In The Well and the Tree: World and Time in Early Germanic Culture, Paul C. Bauschatz5 posits that this is because words spoken over the horn are immediately laid into the well of wyrd by way of associating the cup with Urth's Well. He further states that symbel is centered upon drinking, pledging, and swearing oaths so that the participants associate themselves, directly and literally, with the flow of events thereby holding themselves responsible for forthcoming actions. Bauschatz also asserts that symbel “does not seem to be an occasion upon which men's affairs are related to those of the gods.” He further states that, “Rather than trying to control the flow of wyrd, an idea whose time will not come till well after the Christianization of the Germanic world, the Germanic drinker-speaker controls only himself, directing his own actions to place them almost advantageously within that flow." In contrast to this Vilhelm Grönbech, in The Culture of the Teutons, states that the words spoken over the horn seal the vow in the gods making it a future, a fate6 and that the divine presence was believed to be immediately perceivable there as long as the drinking was in progress.7 He also states that, “This power over the future is the principle of the vow's worth as an act of worship, it can create that joy which is the answer to the blot.” These are bold contradictions by two scholars who have become highly respected among modern heathens.
Ritualized drinking played so important a role in Germanic life that it has led one scholar to assert that “every beginning was, among the Germanic peoples, to be hallowed with beer drinking” and “mead has always been associated among the Germanic peoples with a certain feeling for ceremonial and religious tradition."8 Ritualized drinking marked every occasion from births, marriages, and funerals to truces, inheritance, and recognizing new members into families and gilds. These ceremonies were marked by solemnity and formality likely characterized by religious emotion and awe respective of participation in ceremony shared by both gods and men and revolving around the consumption of a drink with supernatural origins. From the Old Norse source material we are informed that symbel involved raising a horn to the gods, as well as to heroes and ancestors and a round, or multiple rounds, for boasts, oaths, and poetry. We also know that during these rituals gifts were exchanged in a traditional manner, another ritual with both immediate social and sacral significance. It would be difficult to think that even if these ritualized drinking ceremonies did not directly invoke the gods that they were not understood to be attentive of ceremonies of such a solemn and holy nature. This becomes all the more apparent when we consider that symbel served to reinforce the social hierarchy and mead was used to describe the obligations of a man to his lord – both of which the gods were a part. To deny them their position in this hierarchy and traditional custom would be foolish.
This social ritual invariably took place in the hall, the idealized world of Germanic culture. In The Ruin, l. 23, we hear of "meoduheall monig mondreama full" (many a mead-hall filled with the joys of men) illustrating the Germanic vision of what the hall was meant to be. The activities that take place in the hall are known as seledreamas, hall joys, and connotes the warmth, brightness and fellowship experienced in the feasting, drinking, boasting, distribution of gifts and songs of the poet. This association with the wholeness and health of the hall and that of the people was so pervasive that Stephen S. Evans, in Lords of Battle, notes regarding Heorot in Beowulf, “The fortunes and ultimate fate of both the hall and its warriors are bound together and their rise and fall, their health and vitality, were one and the same in the eyes of the poet and, consequently, in the eyes of his audience.”9 According to Hugh Magennis, “the hall is the material realization of the social values of heroic civilization, and the feast is where the relationships which bind society together are acted out.”10 The hall made true the ideals and hopes of Germanic heathens, as well as signifying the heill of the folk.
So far we have looked at the setting and atmosphere in which these words would be spoken. Now it is time to look at the nature of the words themselves and how they were perceived by Germanic heathens. Germanic heathens relished patterned behavior, from time-honored tradition to the reliability of their kith and kin. These were things that were shaped through the efforts and success of individuals for the benefit of their people. This is the nature of the boast to demonstrate the reliability and power of the individual for his glory and the glory of his family or lord. According to Robert E. Bjork11, the human essence is to be found in the artificial, the works of men's hands, and in the triumph of the ordering intellect over disordered, anarchic nature. Susanne Weil reaches a similar conclusion regarding the hand-wundor, “words for 'hand' carried a certain intensifying significance for the Anglo-Saxons, an emphasis on the ability of man to act, to destroy or create.”12 She goes on to state that the Anglo-Saxons “knew that they bore responsibility for their own actions, and the credit by way of reputation, whether foreknown by God or forecast by fate.” But this is only one side of the significance of the words themselves. In a setting and atmosphere that is dependent upon hierarchical social rankings a man must prove his worth before his fellow men, his lord, and the gods. His boasts and vows are his statements that he deserves to be seated upon the mead-bench along side his companions and that he is willing to continue to earn that seat. The boasts and oaths become inseparable from the deeds that fulfill them in demonstrating the worth of the heathen man and marking his reputation for the future which was as integral to his fate as the time and place of his death.
It is now time to return to the question of the reasoning behind Völuspá and Sigrdrífomál. What is the significance of the above to the words spoken by men and sealed by drink? When we consider the above information the significance of those words should become apparent. The words themselves hold the power of men to shape the world around them and to affect their fates. They are spoken as part of the traditional customs of a people within the hall, the physical representation of the pre-Christian Germanic ideal. They are spoken over the cup or horn, containing the supernatural drink, in ritualized drinking ceremonies of a sacral nature that reinforce the social orders established in history by the gods and ancestors of those present. The oaths and boasts made at such times bear the full weight of all of these elements critical to the existence of the Germanic heathen world and life. When spoken in the hall, in the presence of the folk and according to the thew established by gods and ancestors, the oaths and boasts become part of the heil, the wholeness, health and luck, of the tribe. Failure to make true the words spoken over the horn threatens the life of the tribe and risks the disfavor of the gods.
Notes
1http://www.keesn.nl/lex/lex_en2.htm#Testibus ↑
2Compurgation is the means in tribal law of demonstrating one's innocence or non-liability in response to accusations. This involved swearing an oath and then having a prescribed number of witness swear an oath to the veracity of the accused's oath. ↑
3Bellows, The Poetic Edda: The Mythological Poems (2004), 12:
In swelling rage then rose up Thor,
Seldom he sits when he such things hears,
And the oaths were broken, the words and bonds,
The mighty pledges between them made. ↑
4Bellows, The Poetic Edda: The Heroic Poems (2007), 145:
Then second I rede thee, to swear no oath
If true thou knowest it not;
Bitter the fate of the breaker of troth,
And poor is the wolf of his word. ↑
5See the section on “Rituals and Everyday Life”: http://www.questia.com/library/book/the-well-and-the-tree-world-and-time-in-early-germanic-culture-by-paul-c-bauschatz.jsp ↑
6 Grönbech, Culture of the Teutons, vol. II (1931), 194. ↑
8 Henry Winfred Splitter, The Relation of Germanic Folk Custom and Ritual to Ealuscerwen (Beowulf 769). ↑
9 Evans, Lords of Battle (1997), 101 ↑
10 Hugh Magennis, Images of Community in Old English Poetry (1996), 50. ↑
11 Robert E. Bjork, Speech as Gift in Beowulf (1994). ↑
12 Susanne Weil, Grace under Pressure: "Hand-Words," "Wyrd," and Free Will in "Beowulf" (1989). ↑
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