Exploring Gaming, Storytelling, & Worldbuilding

Beowulf & World-Building

From the pages of a classic literary work, Beowulf, we have an intimate glimpse into the lives of pre-feudal Europeans and some cool fodder for fantasy world-building…

After defeating the terrible monster, Grendel, and Grendel’s demonic mother, Beowulf returned to his homeland, where he was given a real hero’s welcome.

What is interesting about Beowulf’s return is a small detail, often overlooked by most readers that highlights the important relationships pre-feudal kings had with their retainers. Moreover, the socio-political and economic bonds that build these relationships are key to understanding pre-feudal and feudal societies in Europe.

Kings of the pre-feudal and feudal eras had a very different role than those absolute, divine right monarchs of the early modern period. They were like a CEO of a corporation. Yes, they had titles and some powers, but their power was not like those wacky early modern monarchs we know about from history. These men gained honor and status as leaders by being able to support as many retainers as was humanly possible. Retainers would join their kings, or, really, warlords, in battle, in drink, and in special meals as his guests. The king’s largess provided gifts to his retainers, giving them status and positions within the group of retainers. Special status might be given to a retainer the king or warlord favored. This special status was expressed in several interesting ways. Expensive gives, having a close seat to the king or warlord, and so on, showed a retainer’s status within this pre-modern society.

What would we call this relationship?

It is not feudalism, as some scholars have tried to describe the relationship above. There is enough evidence to suggest feudalism, as a concept, is something that originated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to contextualize medieval political and legal relationships. Reality is far more complicated and less forgiving of such generalizations. It is possible that a form of feudal arrangements existed as a response to external pressures on kingdoms such as the Carolingian Empire, where the Muslim Berbers pushed from the south, the Magyars from the east, and the Vikings from the north.

In this context, feudalism was an economic and military system, with kings enlisting the help of armed men and their retainers to defend vital pieces of real estate, serve as a bulwark against external forces, and maintain law and order. In other words, feudalism was an arrangement of investing public power in private hands, especially at a time when crises loomed.

Feudalism, compared to pre-feudal relationships, was more formal, with a stricter legal agreement between two individuals. The relationship between the leaders and their retainers in Beowulf, a story assumed to have taken place during the pre-feudal or early feudal era of the Middle Ages, was less formal. The relationship in this context mirrors the patron-client relationships seen during the height of the Roman Republic: Powerful men bestowed gifts, status, and other largess on their retainers (i.e., clients). Large contingents of clients or retainers reflected the patron’s power and prestige within the political system.

Pre-feudal relationships are less formal. The patron and the client have the same legal standing. They are peers, and they do not have a lord-subject relationship. This means both the retainers and their leaders are on equal footing, meaning they are social equals. As we see at the end of Beowulf’s successful quest against Grendel, this relationship allowed individuals to make names for themselves, which, in turn, allowed them to gain status, wealth, and even political power.

When Beowulf returns home, he is showered with gifts, status, and power. He is given a special ornate sword, not exactly cheap, considering the number of man-hours needed to create something like it. Beowulf was also given something that is pretty mind-boggling for the modern reader. His king gave him 7,000 hides of land, a hall, and a throne. Essentially, Beowulf is made a king, but I think the poet here uses the word earl to describe the powerful retainers of Beowulf’s king.

What exactly is a hide of land?

This measurement of land has since fallen out of favor in the modern world, but we can find the exact size to be somewhere between sixty (60) and a hundred and twenty (120) acres of land. That means Beowulf’s land comes out to be around 420,000 to 840,000 acres. To make it easier for the readers to understand the sheer size of the land itself, it is good to see the square mileage of Beowulf’s piece of real estate. (This is done by multiplying acres by 0.0015625.) Therefore, we find that Beowulf’s piece of real estate ends up being around 656.25 square miles to 1312.5 square miles in size. That means Beowulf’s 7,000 hides of land was the size of a small county in West Virginia, such as Preston or Hampshire counties (both under 700 square miles). Beowulf’s land could have been larger than Greenbrier County of West Virginia, which is a tad bit larger than 1,000 square miles.

Why was land so important before and during the Middle Ages? This is easy to understand if you know a bit about medieval history. The fighting classes seen in pre-feudal Europe, and after, depended on incomes generated from their landholdings. Without the land, these classes would not have existed. These landholdings allowed fighting men to be in the field longer. Their incomes helped in the purchase of warhorses, weapons, armor, and provisions for military campaigns. Incomes were generated from several sources. These sources included the fruits of the land— the landholders had rights over the usus fructus (use of the fruits) of their landholdings—, business investments, tolls and fines, and rents from tenants living on the land.

During the height of feudalism in Europe, the privileged fighting classes were barred from performing manual labor and could lose their status for performing such tasks. This of course has burned the image of medieval nobility being fat aristocrats, who lived luxuriously off the toil of the downtrodden peasants of Europe. Although the feudal system, later on, would become bloated, utterly useless, and bordering on dangerously parasitic, that was not the case in its formative years. Feudalism arose out of a need for a more effective defensive system that could resist external forces. Those in the fighting class of early feudal Europe spent much of their lives training and fighting, and not much else.

What can we learn from Beowulf’s story? It pays to be able to rip a dreaded creature’s arm off and kill him. It also pays to kill said creature’s mother. Kidding aside, Beowulf’s tale lends insight into pre-feudal (and feudal) Europe, where warlordism was prime and being someone’s prized retainer paid well. Beowulf’s Europe was not feudal, per se, but mimicked Rome’s patron-client social-economic and political system. This system allowed individuals to rise through society’s ranks. The system in question also created opportunities for individuals to create wealth and gain power in a political-economic system we find very alien in the modern world. We now live in a world where we increasingly select our leaders by ballot, own land by purchasing or inheriting it, and a world where we have standing armies, with soldiers who are very different from the warriors of pre-feudal and feudal Europe.

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