The Hoarding Ritual in Germanic Epic Tradition

The Hoarding Ritual in Germanic Epic TraditionAuthor(s): Wade TarziaSource: Journal of Folklore Research, Vol. 26, No. 2 (May - Aug., 1989), pp. 99-121Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3814237Accessed: 05-10-2016 14:38 UTC

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Wade Tarzia

The Hoarding Ritual in Germanic Epic Tradition

Hoards of valuable objects appear in Europe's archaeological record from the Bronze Age through the medieval period. Archaeologists have often suggested that these caches are votive offerings or attempts to safe- guard valuables from marauders. These general explanations are logical but only tell us that people made sacrifices or feared plundering expedi- tions. However, Janet Levy (1979,1982) offers another explanation for Bronze Age finds, an approach that I will apply to the Iron Age. Levy correlates the existence of certain internal tensions of a society 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. Epics have sometimes been expected to verify archaeological reconstructions of past cultures. But ancient stories can themselves retain information that the trowel and transit cannot yield. Levy suggests ways in which treasure hoards were part of an adaptive mechanism for reducing social tensions; I will examine how hoarding and poetry were complementary components of this mechanism.

The functions of hoarding 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 sup- ported the rituals of hoards.

My theory is based on 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

Journal of Folklore Research, Vol. 26, No. 2, 1989 Copyright © 1989 by the Folklore Institute, Indiana University 0737-7037


particular guidelines seem to have dictated the deposition of some hoards, as Levy has discovered. 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 at length:

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. (1982:45)

Besides reducing conflicts associated with the envy of conspicuous wealth, the ritualistic deposition of hoards also may have 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, Haselgrove 1982, Halstead and O'Shea 1982) and in regard to the value of status symbols (Champion, Gamble, Shennan, and Whittle 1984). I am interested in Champion's and his colleagues' concept of inflation, which seems appli- cable to eras beyond 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. (294)

Finally, inflation could affect the position of entire groups in relation to other groups. Haselgrove suggests that groups monopolizing trade in

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THE HOARDING RITUAL IN GERMANIC EPIC TRADITION

prestige goods were able to exchange the goods in return for tribute (1982:81). Extrapolating the 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.

I am not seeking to determine if the various possible tensions arising from overabundant prestige items were co-existent or mutually exclu- sive. 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 Janet Levy's work cited here recognizes the ritual behind some Bronze

Age hoards, and Champion and his colleagues, working also from Bronze Age data, suggest some of the consequences of abundant status items. I have cited this Bronze 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 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 paper ultimately analyzes traditional Germanic stories, I confine my review to the archaeology of England, Germany, Denmark, 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.

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: 189ff.; Engelhardt 1969). Often, hoards of the Migration period consist of several pieces of similar jewelry, usually neck rings, as exemplified by the Oland, Vastergotland, and Torslunda hoards (She-

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telig and Falk 1937:232,234). Exceptions to the trends of these early finds exist, however: mixed finds of jewelry, ingots, and coins have been found, such as the fourth-century Dortmund hoard (Shetelig and Falk 1937: 232,234) and the sixth-century find from Tureholm composed predominantly of ingots (Shetelig and Falk 1937:235). 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 1980:34,48,158,162-63).

Todd summarizes the nature of these finds as follows:

.. [I]t is clear that sacrifices could be made at the same spot over a considerable period, as at Thorsbjerg and Vimose, or within a compara- tively short space of time, as at Nydam, Illerup, and Ejsbol. 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. (194)

The important points of these archaeological trends are as follows. First, the contents of most 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. Second, hoards of jewelry and weapons (votive deposits) decline in Scandinavia before the Viking Age (Randsborg 1980:133; Wilson 1976:396) and are balanced by an increase in silver hoarding in response to growing market economies. An important third trend of the votive deposits is that many of them occur in wet areas. The most striking examples, of course, are the bog finds of Scandinavia. 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) and shows an aspect of hoards with very deep roots in European prehistory. Finally, some of the largest votive deposits-Thorsbjerg, Ejsbol, Nydam, and Vimose-are related to settlement areas. Quoting Todd: "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" (195). I would thus argue that many hoards of the migration period-the period of the Sigurth story and 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.

And what do entire communities and tribes need to hoard? Status symbols, which have immediate social effect because they are designed to

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be visible objects that structure the very workings of social interaction in hierarchical societies. Jensen identifies many of the fifth- and sixth- century gold hoards of Scandinavia as hoards of status symbols (1982:264). I extend this possibility to include hoards of ornaments and weapons from other Germanic territories. Objects of status are objects of visual display; they communicate information that must be visible from a distance (Wobst 1977:303-309,328,330) and should be unusual from the viewpoint of the culture in which they are 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:82). The neck and arm rings of the Germanic hoards fit well the criteria of status goods, and even some items of clothing, being visibly positioned and 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:232; Graham- Campbell and Kidd: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 millenium, most often being worked into ornaments at this time (Arnold 1982:129; Nerman 1931:13).

Finally, Beowulf 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 "golden ring" in what seems to be a passing-on of the tribal leadership (the original phrase is hring gyldenne, in Klaeber 1950:line 2809). After this point in the narrative, Wiglaf clearly takes command, ordering a 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 idealiza- tion of values, how the culture perceived the passing of rank, and the poem may present a literary paradigm of the conferral of rank.

Now the question is this: were the depositions of Germanic-era status symbols ritualistic in the sense that Levy defines? First of all, we should 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.

The burial of status symbols is not a directly practical behavior-is 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 (Levy 1979:51-52; Champion, et al. 1984:294). On the other hand, the

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Wade Tarzia

open or public burial of some hoards also is not a practical thing to do for persons concerned with protecting their goods. Hoards marked off by poles and wattles were not meant to be lost at all, which Jensen sees as an indication of rituality (262). 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 might call "noninstru- mental" behaviors, or rituals (1971:62).

The literary traditions 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 (see in translation Raffel 1963:lines 2231-70; see Creed, in press, for further comments), although he might have used it to establish a retinue (Creed, personal communica- tion). 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 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.

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 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 Old English word used in the prayer], 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. (in press)

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

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out the possible linguistic component of the ritual. I operate on two main assumptions, the first being that there existed a Germanic tradition of storytelling that allows us to fruitfully move between Beowulf and the Sigurth lays, in agreement with Lehmann, who argues that "all poems written in the Germanic languages until the twelfth century belong to a single tradition-although there are differences within that tradition..." (1956:35). But the Old Norse and Old English sub-traditions, if I may call them that, are not necessarily contemporaneous. Lonnroth feels that the late Icelandic prosimetrum style of the Eddic poems is an evolution from the stichic style of the Old English poems (1971:20).

My second assumption is that the narrative traditions of Beowulf and Sigurth have come down to us through a manuscript tradition but represent story patterns and perhaps some of the smaller units of the narrative-passages and verses-that probably were once performed orally before a predominantly nonliterate audience. Of course, there is controversy over the oral nature of the texts. A literary school reminds us, not unreasonably, that the poems come down to us in written form and it is an oralist's responsibility to prove the poems were orally composed according to oral-formulaic method. On the other hand, there is an oral poetry school that reminds us, also not unreasonably, that the poems are composed with a striking similarity to the style of oral poetry recorded by ethnographers in the field.

Here, I take the cowardly but safe approach of seeking neutral terri- tory. I think many scholars from both schools of thought would agree that Beowulf and the Sigurth story represent a significant amount of native-Germanic subject matter-at one time orally composed anew at each performance or read aloud as a static text from a manuscript-and that the poems were indeed performed orally for an audience, not hoarded for a few individual readers. Finally, most scholars would agree that Europe did have some kind of oral tradition predating Beowulf and the Sigurth lays, probably informing the composition of these poems, in whatever way they were composed. We may then proceed by recognizing that the story patterns preserved for us may go back to the traditional past, a time when a folklore tradition was certainly teaching an audience communal values, some of which pertained to treasure hoards. Certainly some of the poems themselves recall an oral past, as Creed writes (1962:52).'

Another serious controversy is the dating of the poems. One can use an array of arguments to place Beowulf between the seventh and eleventh centuries, and most of the tests used to do so seem unreliable (for example, Amos 1980:167ff.). As for the Norse heroic poems, evidence suggests a late date in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (Clover and Lindow: 101).

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Lonnroth's belief that the Eddic poetry evolved from the Old English style further places the poems in relation to each other. Furthermore, because it is difficult to date hoards and currently impossible to say when ritual hoards ceased entirely in Germanic Europe, we must admit to a separation of the poems from the times they describe, with the Eddic poems having more separation than Beowulf. This problem is at its greatest when we try to use oral tradition as a history text complete with reliable dates and detailed exegesis of past customs-which I am not trying to do.

Talk of dates leads to the relation of history and narrative tradition. Lord writes that themes in oral tradition will vary over the course of time and will not preserve historical facts (1971:90). One can also note how history is compressed in an epic collected in the field. In singing The Wedding of Smailagic Meho, a tale that takes place in the sixteenth century, the early twentieth-century singer includes a steamboat (Parry, Lord, and Bynum 1974:243). We should expect historical facts to be conglomerated and people and events to be polarized as the process of storytelling molds reality. But in this study I am indeed interested in storytelling. The ritual process of burying a hoard is not to be verified and explicated through poetry, but accompanied by the poetry to support the ritual, either when some version of the poetry was recited at the burying of the hoard or was to support the ritual through the very existence of the story pattern in the tradition. We avoid most of the risks of comparing traditions to excavations when the stories are not used to verify the facts that archaeologists are better equipped to study.

The hoard in Beowulf

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. And the poem describes in a general way the contents of Germanic era hoards. General terms such as "treasure" and "gold" predominate, while specific references to objects-pitchers, cups, dishes, armor, and rings-form the descriptions to a lesser degree. As Stjerna 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" (1912: 145). Perhaps this characteristic 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 that the actual inven- tory of the hoard may have not been important as long as the poem made clear that precious goods were deposited (152ff.). I believe the tradition served not to passively reflect the contents of hoards, but rather to actively

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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, a 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. Hoards would have likewise suffered. They were protected, of course, by a curse (the following English translations are my own; words in brackets are added for clarity or where inflections in the Old English require them):

ponne waes paet yrfe eacencraeftig, iumonna gold galdre bewunden, paet 6am hringsele hrinan ne moste gumena anig, nefne God sylfa, sigora S66cyning sealde pam 6e he wolde - he is manna gehyld - hord openian, efne swa hwylcum manna, swa him gemet 6uhte.

Then was that heritage huge, men-of-old's gold, [with a] spell wound around that the ring-hall might not touch any man, unless God himself, victory's truth-king, gave him [to] whom he would-

He is men's protection-to open [the] hoard except to whichever man as seemed proper to him.

-transliteration after Klaeber: lines 3051-57

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 o6 d6mes daeg diope benemdon peodnas maere, pa 6aet paer dydon, paet se secg ware synnum scildig, hergum gehea6erod, hellbendum faest. wommum gewltnad, se6one wong strude, naefne goldhwaete gearwor haefde Agendes est .r gesceawod.

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So it [the hoard] until dooms day [they] deeply cursed, [the] famous chiefs, those that put [it] there, that the man would be guilty [of] sins, [in] idol-fanes confined, fast [in] hell-bonds, [with] evil punished, he [who] plundered that place, he [Beowulf] was not gold-greedy, [he] more certainly had looked upon previously [the] owner's favor.

-Klaeber: lines 3069-75

The translation of the word "benemdon" as "cursed" has been called

into question by Doig (1981). He quotes dictionary definitions of the word, which state the possible meanings to be "to name, appoint, settle, stipulate, declare, asseverate." 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 as supernatural retribution, law and divine retribution having, perhaps, close connection in traditional societies.

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 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.

The 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. He also uses the sword to cut off Grendel's head, after which the blade melts in the blood of the monster:

Ne n6m he in paem wicum, Weder-Geata leod, maemihta mS, pEh hE par monige geseah, buton pone hafelan ond pa hilt somod since fage; sweord ar gemealt, forbarn br6denma,l; waes paet bl6d t6 paes hat, aettren ellorgaest, se paEr inne swealt.

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He did not take in those places, [the] Weather-Geat's lord, more of exotic properties, though he saw many there, except the head [of Grendel] and the hilt together, [with] jewels decorated; [the] sword previously melted, [the] braided-sword [damascened sword?] burned up, that blood was so hot, [the] poisonous alien-ghost, which died in there.

-Klaeber: lines 1612-16

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 and wins a hoard is a conflict that I will discuss below.) But was the monster's treasure a hoard and should this example be used here? I suggest that the attributes it shares with other treasures of archaeology and poetry support the notion that it is a hoard. 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, seem- ingly a wise move in the mind of the poet, reminds us of the curse placed on the dragon's 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 and kills its great leader. Then the poet foretells a grim future for Beowulf's people. He discusses in horrific passages how the women shall be en- slaved in foreign lands and how the carrion creatures will boast to each other of fine feasting on the battle-fallen (Raffel:lines 3015-27).

Following the dire consequences of a disturbed hoard, the poem pre- sents a model of behavior for the treatment of the treasure. After Beo-

wulf'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. Funeral treasure of armor is burned with the hero, and hoard treasure of ornaments 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 repul- sion towards the accursed stuff. The poet, who for nearly 3,000 lines has composed often with virtuosity, is now confused. He is between traditions: his own of the present and the older one of the legendary past.

This "crux" in the poem has occupied space in many journals and books. For example, Chambers finds confusion in the account of Beo-

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wulf's burial with both hoard and funeral ornaments, the funeral offerings being burned, the hoard being interred (1963:353ff.). He 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 that the two kinds of burial are quite different.

Another explanation for the strange, dual burial has been offered by Cherniss, 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 posses- sion, for he can no longer be deprived of that glory in honorable combat" (1968:479). 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, but 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. Some authors have indeed echoed this idea, such as Leyerle, who writes:

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 magnifi- cence, 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. (1965:101-102)

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 raises a fine point here: "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

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how the exchange of material things, as part of a general concept of reciprocity, plays a commanding role throughout much of Beowulf" (213). And Cherniss 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" (478). 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 closely consider 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; he 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 behind Beowulf's death and the interment of the hoard ignore the direct or indirect support to ritual that a story pattern can give.

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 given bad press in traditional society and its stories. But an ancient Germanic (perhaps 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), but the ritual had been important enough to become entrenched in a story pattern despite the changing times.

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The hoard in the Sigurth saga Beowulf is an excellent source of information, 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. We find, for example, that the owner of the hoard in Old Norse lore 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:

pat skal gull, er Gustr atti, broe<6>rom tve<i>m

at bana ver6a,

ok 9Qlingom atta at r6gi; mun mins fiar

mangi ni6ta.

That gold shall, which Gust owned, [to] brothers two a bane become and [to] princes eight a quarrel: no one will enjoy my treasure.

-transliteration after Helgason 1964:54

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. Sigurth slays the dragon, but not before it warns him about the hoard:

Rae6 ek per nu, Sigur6r, en pu rai nemir ok r1o heim heban!

it gialla gull ok it gl6orau6a fe, per ver6a peir baugar

at bana!

I counsel you now, Sigurth, [if] you but take advice and ride homewards hence!

The yellow gold, and the wealth red-as-embers, the rings become a bane to you!

-Helgason 1964:54

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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.

Comparison of the traditions Several interesting points should be mentioned in comparing Beowulf

and the Sigurth tale: 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. It seems that the

traditions presented the reticulated disasters associated with the manipulation of hoards.

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.2 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 effects of disturbed hoards on the personal level of murder, while Beowulf demonstrates the effects on the community level of intertribal war. Both traditions make the important bridge between magic, ritual, and flesh-and-blood consequences.

The return of the hoards. In both stories the hoards are returned to the place where they were originally found, 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 over-

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sight (Creed, in press); the Rhine gold has been secretly thrown into the river by the last possessor to keep it from his 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 the further chaos that Sigurth and peers experience as the Rhine gold is passed along.

The tending of rank. This indirect topic is appropriate while we are speaking of hoards of status symbols. Throughout Beowulf rank is carefully tended. Before the dragon fight, Wiglaf, Beowulf's faithful follower, is called a "shield warrior" (lindwiga, Klaeber:line 2603), a title of undefined rank, but after Beowulf has passed on the tribal leadership, with his necklace and armor, the poet calls them both "earls" (eorl, Klaeber:line 2908), a more definite rank, perhaps higher than before. When Wiglaf is introduced we learn of his lineage and how he got his armor: having slain a warrior and taken his gear, he had submitted them to his lord, who later gave them back. Wiglaf'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 in turn receives a gold-hilted sword and 7,000 units of land with a house and throne (Klaeber:line 2195ff.). These concepts of rank are consistently collocated. In a flashback during the dragon fight we are told that Hygelac had once rewarded two warriors with rings and 100,000 units of land, and the poet says Hygelac could not be blamed for that, 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. This associa- tion is logical: rank is really a function of agricultural and pastoral resources, and as long as this power backs up its status symbols, all is well. When status symbols unassociated with real power are distributed, the realistic hierarchy of capable elite can become confused-that is, it is time for the hoarding ritual to take away the symbols that are expected to go somewhere if the possessor is a good king.

As for 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:231). Later Brynhild accuses Gunnar of betraying Sigurth, "who foremost made thee," refer- ring to the wealth of the Rhine gold (in a fragment of a Sigurth lay, Hollander:246). The connection of the symbols of rank and the actual power-base of rank-agricultural resources-is not made as clear as it is in Beowulf.

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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. Note 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 (Klaeber:line 2216ff.). 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 the 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 Rhine gold. Thus the attempts to create social relationships with the hoards actually break social bonds represented in oaths of allegiance (to Beo- wulf) and blood oaths (with Sigurth).

The emphasis on war and murder is quite appropriate in the context of a recovered hoard. According to Levy's theory, 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 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.

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Archaeology and poetry: a marriage? Perhaps not a marriage, but at least an affectionate relationship. The

envy of wealth that Levy suggests is 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 ritual.) This does not mean that the poems 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 have-nots in society; Levy's theory about social envy is not evident in the poems. Indeed, we rarely see people of humble origins in epic poetry. Where we do see the 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.

To say that the have-nots do not appear in epic poetry is not to say that wealth tensions did not exist between the wealthy and the unwealthy 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 storytelling tradition that was performed at one time in royal halls and was sometimes patronized by wealthy people (see the Old English poem Deor, for example) would be unlikely to mention a dis- contented population, something that is saved for villainous kings like 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 leveled an historic reality of social discontent and either did not mention it when portraying the hoarding ritual (as in Beowulf) or rationalized envy as greed between high-born individuals (as in the Norse lays). In this way the elite's distributive duty to the community is not put to embarrassing questions, but at the same time the stories can support the ritual of hoarding.

If Levy's "envy-syndrome," as I call it, is not evident in the lore, neither is the other pathology of status symbols-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. 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

116 Wade Tarzia



wealth into a bog to prevent his unworthy kin from getting it (see Jones 1960).

The only indication that the tradition represented the pathology of overabundant status symbols is in the connection that I identified above: the representation of social inferiors manipulating a treasure hoard to attain higher status. This pattern suggests that unsanctioned "upward mobility" is the beginning of social chaos. 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 circumstances before distributing wealth and creating powerful individuals.3

But in no way should we 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 the audience through suggestion, nuance, and broad emotional appeal, not with mechanistic, text-book details. 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 answer to social woes. It would be no wonder if the problem mystified them as much as it mystifies us, and a good paradox occupies our modern "epic" media as it may have done in traditional stories.

Conclusion

The ritual of treasure hoards and its linguistic component in oral tradition played important roles in the reduction of conflict in ranked society. The specificity of the poets' concern with the hoards is particu- larly interesting because rich funeral depositions also occurred in the Germanic era but seem to find treatment more in short descriptive passages than in encompassing narrative patterns such as the dragon hoard pattern. One wonders if the oral tradition was specific enough to reflect a time when hoarding was at its peak and rich burials at a low point. Earle, 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" (1987:291). For example, evidence suggests that Denmark of 300 A.D. was a period of economic contraction, a time when rituals of

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"communion" were stressed over those of lavish funerals (Randsborg 1980:45). Hoarding is a ritual of communion because during the ritual the yielder of precious goods is made to appear more like an ordinary member of the community. Conversely, rich burials proclaim status 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.

No, I am not claiming that the poems I have discussed were composed in 300A.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 a few hundred years past-patterns that may have lost their original function in "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 archaeol- ogist, not simply a general reflection of the archaeological record that tempts cut-and-dry solutions that say, for example, that the poems reson- ate with Sutton Hoo. Moreover, the models of ritual that the narratives preserve remind us of the poems' participation in ritual. The poetic traditions deserve study as primary, active mechanisms that helped communities to survive.

University of Massachusetts Amherst

NOTES

Robert P. Creed encouraged this study at every step; I offer up this hoard of ideas with gratitude. I first considered the "inflationary" hypothesis of hoards in discussions with H. Martin Wobst, but I accept full responsibility for my development of the inflationary hypothesis in this paper. My appreciation also to Janet Levy, Catherine Hilton, and Genevieve Fisher for reading early drafts of this paper.

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1. See also the following works: Albert Bates Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), sets out the basis for the oral formulaic theory; John M. Foley, The Theory of Oral Composition (Blooming- ton: Indiana University Press, 1988), surveys oral formulaic studies in many traditions; John Miles Foley, "The Oral Theory in Context" in Oral Traditional Literature: A Festschrift forA lbert Bates Lord, edited by John Miles Foley, 27-122 (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers, 1981) and Alexandra Hennessey Olsen, "Oral-Formulaic Research in Old English Studies: I." Oral Tradition 1/3(1986):548-608, and "Oral-Formulaic Research in Old English Studies: II." Oral Tradition 3/1-2(1988):138-90 are survey studies both for and against an oral basis for Old English poetry; Joseph Harris, "Eddic Poetry as Oral Poetry: The Evidence of Parallel Passages in the Helgi Poems for Questions of Composition and Performance," in Edda: A Collection of Essays, edited by Robert J. Glendin- ning and Haraldur Bessason, 210-42 (Manitoba: University of Manitoba Press, 1983); Paul B. Taylor, "The Structure of Volundarkvitha," Neophilologus 47 (1963):228-36; Lonnroth 1971; and Clover and Lindow 1985 (especially Harris's article, 69-156), all treat the relationship of oral theory to Eddic poetry and sagas.

2. 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 Grendel's mare, 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 a part of the curse. Alas, for not having more traditional tales to flesh out this speculation!

3. 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. The profusion of booty following major military victories would certainly redefine tribal status unless the victors closely controlled the distribution (or lack of it) of precious booty.

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The Hoarding Ritual in Germanic Epic Tradition

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