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40 The Viking Age in Denmark

‘landmand’, a vassal-titlc, or a royal bailiff) ‘the most generous with food’, and a bonde (‘farmer’, or rathcr magnate), whose monument contains a curse against anyone dcstroying it.³³ In addition we have the thegn from the northern edge of the wcst sub-clustcr, the ‘first of thegns’.³⁴ Other surnames, indicating high rank, go w^rith the bonde, ‘the sharp’ and one of the three thegns, ‘the far-seeing’.³⁵ God is asked to help the soul of two men: ‘they are lying (i.e. are buried) in London’.³⁶

To the east in the south Skanc cluster we have in sum a group of high-ranking persons whose position and property is inherited through the normal family channels and who apparently own their land without restrictions. Only the bomand, if he is in fact a bailiff, speaks of direct obligations.

Like the drengs, the thegns and the bonde have the apposition ‘vcry good’; one thegn, however, is ‘first’. The bomand is ‘best’, perhaps an alliteration on bomand (the follow^ring linę of the text is ‘wad’ (food) mildest). Furthermore, the landmand w^re meet below^r is ‘good’.³⁷ The positions of direct subordinates like managers of land (landhyrde), agents (bryde), craftsmen (smed), ships’ captains (skippers) (of lords) and housecarls (literally ‘home-taken’) are, on the other hand, never ‘good’. It is elear that the ‘good‘ apposition, and related ones, only refer to masters, to the king’s ‘good men’, his dependants or morę probably his vassals. ‘Good’ denotes a close but rather equal re-lationship, as when it occurs in connection with relatives. The ‘good’ thegns, drengs, etc., are of high rank, but so are many other persons without the ‘good’ apposition, and its absence does not, in itself, denote a lower standing. The ‘faeller’, for example, are never ‘good\

The other cluster in Skkie, perhaps the oldest, is around the city of Lund, King Knud’s Scandinavian Capital, and is founded in the same decades shortly before 1000 (Figs 7 B and 8 C). In the city itself we have only two stones: one is raised over two brothers and ‘good’ landmen, while the other mentions the building of a church.³⁸ The cluster has an even spread of dead brothers (eight in all), a single małe relative who is neither a father nor a brother and fathers (four), and also a single husband; due south a single son occurs. An interesting group of brothers comes from the Hallestad stones.³⁹ The first monument was set up by Eskil for Toke, the son ot Gorm, his gracious lord who did not flee at Uppsala; drengs raised the stone for their brother - ‘they went the closest to Gorm’s Toke’. In this case we meet a lord w^rhose father carried a royal name (perhaps as a grandson of King Gorm, and a brother or cousin of King Sven, the son of Harald). The lord is also a ‘brother’ of the drengs, but obviously not a kin brother. The second stone of the group is for a brother who was Toke’s housecarl, and the third raised by a housecarl ofToke for Toke, his brother. In these cases, particularly the last, ‘brother’ may mean brother-in-arms. In the first case Toke may be the leader of a unit in

the fleet and the drengs his captains; in the second we may see a brotherhood of housecarls and their lord, probably the same Toke. But there is no indication that housecarls and drengs are synonymous.

Another interesting aspect of the western brothers (around Lund) is their connection with the expression ‘he died’ followed by a geo-graphical specification, indicating a death far away from home like the Toke of the Hallestad stones and a couple of possible cases from Southern Skane.⁴⁰ In addition we have seven dead ‘fadler’ in the Lund cluster, three of whom are also drengs, and a person who ‘had ship* together with the erector of the monument, whose brother, inci-dcntally, ‘died farther north in viking’.⁴¹ ‘In viking\ i.e. on an armed cxpedition, were also a couple of the drengs-faeller.⁴² An interesting stone is set up by a son for his father along with the faelle of the father.⁴³ With the results of the western part of the Southern cluster in mind, we may view this stone as a verification of the idea that the persons of the set brother-dreng-faellc (the drengs connecting the other two terms) might in fact have been married, though the family at large did not inherit the property. It may also demonstrate a change towards the usual family inheritance occurring concurrently with a lapse of the warrior-duties. The other father-stones in the cluster may be seen in the same light (or as normal vassals with family-inhcritance). It is perhaps significant too that the west cluster in Skane has morę faeller and morę deaths abroad than the apparently later Southern stones, where brothers dominate. Apart from the two landmen in Lund, the only title and position held by seniors is a solitary bonde from Dalby (a bishop-seat sonie time during the eleventh century);⁴⁴ no thegns are known from the cluster around the city of Lund.

To summarise sonie of the typical combinations of titles and family terms, we should notę that the thegns, fathers and husbands are conccntrated to the east in the Southern Skane cluster. To the west in the Southern cluster we havc drengs who are brothers, while the drengs in the Lund cluster occur as ‘faeller’ only. Furthermore, the brothers at Lund often died abroad. The number of observations is smali, but interestingly enough the same sets of expressions appear on the ‘AfterJelling’ stones injylland.

From Fledeby we have at first a stone raised by one of King Sven’s housecarls for his faelle Erik, who died ‘when drengs sat round Hedeby’ (were laying siege to the city); moreover Erik is noted as having been a steersman (captain of a warship) and a ‘very good’ dreng (Fig. 8 B).⁴⁵ Another monument was set up by King Sven for one of his housecarls, who had been to the west but had died at Hedeby.⁴⁶ The last text is for someone who died abroad and was buried in England.⁴⁷ As in the Lund cluster, so in this urban context, we have the title dreng connected with faelle and notions of deaths abroad, or far from home. Taken as a whole the solitary Hedeby texts strongly resemble the information on the Hallestad monuments, King Sven