Heorot (

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...

'hart, stag') is a mead-hall and major point of focus in the

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened wit ...

poem ''

Beowulf ''Beowulf'' (; ang, Bēowulf ) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. ...

''. The hall serves as a seat of rule for King Hrothgar, a

legendary Danish king The legendary kings of Denmark are the predecessors of Gorm the Old, a king who reigned ca. 930s to 950s and is the earliest reliably attested Danish ruler. Historicity of the earlier legendary kings are thus half legend and half history. The acc ...

. After the monster

Grendel Grendel is a character in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem '' Beowulf'' (700–1000). He is one of the poem's three antagonists (along with his mother and the dragon), all aligned in opposition against the protagonist Beowulf. Grendel is feared by ...

slaughters the inhabitants of the hall, the Geatish hero

defends the royal hall before subsequently defeating him. Later Grendel's mother attacks the inhabitants of the hall, and she too is subsequently defeated by Beowulf.

Name

The name ''Heorot'' is the Old English word for a stag. Its use may stem from an association between royalty and stags in

Germanic paganism Germanic paganism or Germanic religion refers to the traditional, culturally significant religion of the Germanic peoples. With a chronological range of at least one thousand years in an area covering Scandinavia, the British Isles, modern Germ ...

. Archaeologists have unearthed a variety of Anglo-Saxon finds associating stags with royalty. For example, a sceptre or whetstone discovered in mound I of the Anglo-Saxon burial site

Sutton Hoo Sutton Hoo is the site of two early medieval cemeteries dating from the 6th to 7th centuries near the English town of Woodbridge. Archaeologists have been excavating the area since 1938, when a previously undisturbed ship burial containing ...

prominently features a standing stag at its top.For general discussion, see Fulk, Bjork, & Niles (2008:119–120). For images and details regarding the sceptre or whetstone, see the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

'
collection entry for the object here
In a wider Germanic context, stags appear associated with royalty with some frequency. For example, in

Norse mythology Norse, Nordic, or Scandinavian mythology is the body of myths belonging to the North Germanic peoples, stemming from Old Norse religion and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia, and into the Nordic folklore of the modern per ...

—the mythology of the closely related North Germanic peoples—the royal god Freyr (Old Norse: "Lord") wields an antler as a weapon. An alternative name for Freyr is ''Ing'', and the Anglo-Saxons were closely associated with this deity in a variety of contexts (they are, for example, counted among the Ingvaeones, a Latinized Proto-Germanic term meaning "friends of Ing", in Roman senator

Tacitus Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars. The surviving portions of his two major works—the ...

's first century CE ''

Germania Germania ( ; ), also called Magna Germania (English: ''Great Germania''), Germania Libera (English: ''Free Germania''), or Germanic Barbaricum to distinguish it from the Roman province of the same name, was a large historical region in north-c ...

'' and, in ''Beowulf'', the term ''ingwine'', Old English for "friend of Ing", is repeatedly invoked in association with Hrothgar, ruler of Heorot).See discussion in, for example, Chaney (1999

970 Year 970 ( CMLXX) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar, the 970th year of the Common Era (CE) and ''Anno Domini'' designations, the 970th year of the 1st millennium, the 70th year ...

130–132). According to historian William Chaney:

Whatever the association with the stag or hart with fertility and the new year, with Frey, with dedicated deaths, or with primitive animal-gods cannot now be determined with any certainty. What is certain, however, is that the two stags most prominent from Anglo-Saxon times are both connected with kings, the emblem surmounting the unique 'standard' in the royal cenotaph of Sutton Hoo and the great hall of Heorot in ''Beowulf''.Chaney (1999
970 Year 970 ( CMLXX) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar, the 970th year of the Common Era (CE) and ''Anno Domini'' designations, the 970th year of the 1st millennium, the 70th year ...
132).

Description

The

anonymous Anonymous may refer to: * Anonymity, the state of an individual's identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown ** Anonymous work, a work of art or literature that has an unnamed or unknown creator or author * Anony ...

author of ''Beowulf'' praises Heorot as large enough to allow Hrothgar to present Beowulf with a gift of eight horses, each with gold-plate headgear. It functions both as a seat of government and as a residence for the king's thanes (warriors). Heorot symbolizes human civilization and culture, as well as the might of the Danish kings—essentially, all the good things in the world of ''Beowulf''. Its brightness, warmth, and joy contrasts with the darkness of the swamp waters inhabited by

.Niles, John D.
"Beowulf's Great Hall"
''

History Today ''History Today'' is an illustrated history magazine. Published monthly in London since January 1951, it presents serious and authoritative history to as wide a public as possible. The magazine covers all periods and geographical regions and pub ...

'', October 2006, 56 (10), pp. 40–44

Location

Harty, Kent

Though Heorot is widely considered a literary construction, a theory proposed in 1998 by the archaeologist Paul Wilkinson has suggested that it was based on a hall at Harty on the

Isle of Sheppey The Isle of Sheppey is an island off the northern coast of Kent, England, neighbouring the Thames Estuary, centred from central London. It has an area of . The island forms part of the local government district of Swale. ''Sheppey'' is deriv ...

, which would have been familiar to the anonymous Anglo-Saxon author; Harty was indeed named Heorot in Saxon times. He suggests that the steep shining sea-cliffs of ''Beowulf'' would match the pale cliffs of

Sheerness Sheerness () is a town and civil parish beside the mouth of the River Medway on the north-west corner of the Isle of Sheppey in north Kent, England. With a population of 11,938, it is the second largest town on the island after the nearby tow ...

on that island, its name meaning "bright headland". An inlet near Harty is named "Land's End", like Beowulf's landing-place on the way to Heorot. The sea-journey from the

Rhine ), Surselva, Graubünden, Switzerland , source1_coordinates= , source1_elevation = , source2 = Rein Posteriur/Hinterrhein , source2_location = Paradies Glacier, Graubünden, Switzerland , source2_coordinates= , source ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

could take the day and a half mentioned in the poem. The road to Heorot is described as a ''straet'', a

Roman Road Roman roads ( la, viae Romanae ; singular: ; meaning "Roman way") were physical infrastructure vital to the maintenance and development of the Roman state, and were built from about 300 BC through the expansion and consolidation of the Roman Re ...

, of which there are none in Scandinavia, but one leads across the Isle of Harty to a Roman settlement, possibly a villa. The toponymist Margaret Gelling observed that the description in ''Beowulf'' of Heorot as having a ''fagne flor'', a shining or coloured floor, could "denote the paved or tessellated floor of a Roman building". Finally, the surrounding area was named '' Schrawynghop'' in the Middle Ages, ''schrawa'' meaning "demons" and ''hop'' meaning "land enclosed by marshes", suggestive of

's lonely fens in the poem. The archaeologist Paul Budden acknowledged "the story appealed" to him as a Kentish man, but felt that (as Wilkinson conceded) the subject was "mythology, not archaeology or science".

Lejre, Zealand

An alternative theory sees Heorot as the accurate, but Anglicised, iteration of a historic hall in the village of Lejre, near

Roskilde Roskilde ( , ) is a city west of Copenhagen on the Danish island of Zealand. With a population of 51,916 (), the city is a business and educational centre for the region and the 10th largest city in Denmark. It is governed by the administrative ...

. Though Heorot does not appear in Scandinavian sources, King Hroðulf's (Hrólfr Kraki) hall is mentioned in Hrólf Kraki's saga as Hleiðargarðr, and located in Lejre. The medieval chroniclers Saxo Grammaticus and Sven Aggesen already suggested that Lejre was the chief residence of the

Skjöldung Old English Scylding (plural Scyldingas) and Old Norse Skjǫldung (plural Skjǫldungar), meaning in both languages "children of Scyld/Skjǫldr" are the members of a legendary royal family of Danes, especially kings. The name is explained in ma ...

clan (called “Scylding” in the poem). The remains of a

Viking Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and se ...

hall In architecture, a hall is a relatively large space enclosed by a roof and walls. In the Iron Age and early Middle Ages in northern Europe, a mead hall was where a lord and his retainers ate and also slept. Later in the Middle Ages, the gre ...

complex was uncovered southwest of Lejre in 1986–1988 by Tom Christensen of the Roskilde Museum. Wood from the foundation was

radiocarbon Carbon-14, C-14, or radiocarbon, is a radioactive isotope of carbon with an atomic nucleus containing 6 protons and 8 neutrons. Its presence in organic materials is the basis of the radiocarbon dating method pioneered by Willard Libby and c ...

-dated to about 880. It was later found that this hall was built over an older hall which has been dated to 680. In 2004–2005, Christensen excavated a third hall located just north of the other two. This hall was built in the mid-6th century, all three halls were about 50 meters long. Fred C. Robinson is also attracted to this identification: "Hrothgar (and later Hrothulf) ruled from a royal settlement whose present location can with fair confidence be fixed as the modern Danish village of Leire, the actual location of Heorot." The role of Lejre in ''Beowulf'' is discussed by John Niles and Marijane Osborn in their 2007 ''Beowulf and Lejre''.

Modern popular culture

J. R. R. Tolkien, who compared Heorot to

Camelot Camelot is a castle and court associated with the legendary King Arthur. Absent in the early Arthurian material, Camelot first appeared in 12th-century French romances and, since the Lancelot-Grail cycle, eventually came to be described as th ...

for its mix of legendary and historical associations, used it as the basis for the Golden Hall of King Théoden, Meduseld, in the land of Rohan. '' The Legacy of Heorot'' is a

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

novel by American writers Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and

Steven Barnes Steven Barnes (born March 1, 1952) is an American science fiction, fantasy, and mystery writer. He has written novels, short fiction, screen plays for television, scripts for comic books, animation, newspaper copy, and magazine articles. Car ...

, first published in 1987. "Heorot" is a short story in ''

The Dresden Files ''The Dresden Files'' is a series of contemporary fantasy/ mystery novels written by American author Jim Butcher. The first novel, '' Storm Front''—which was also Butcher's writing debut—was published in 2000 by Roc Books. The books are wr ...

'' short story collection '' Side Jobs''.

Notes and citations

References

* Chaney, William A. 1999

''The Cult of Kingship in Anglo-Saxon England: The Transition from Paganism to Christianity''.

Manchester University Press Manchester University Press is the university press of the University of Manchester, England and a publisher of academic books and journals. Manchester University Press has developed into an international publisher. It maintains its links with t ...

. *Fulk, R.D.; Bjork, E. Robert; & Niles, John D. 2008. ''Klaeber's Beowulf''. Fourth edition.

University of Toronto Press The University of Toronto Press is a Canadian university press founded in 1901. Although it was founded in 1901, the press did not actually publish any books until 1911. The press originally printed only examination books and the university cale ...

. {{Beowulf Beowulf