See Falk, 91-103; Baldwin Brown, III, 241.
The Hall
It may perhaps be the fact that in the church of Sta. Maria de Naranco, in the north of Spain, we have the hall of a Visigothic king driven north by the Mohammedan invasion. But, even if this surmise[[787]] be correct, the structure of a stone hall of about 750 A.D. gives us little information as to the wooden halls of early Anglo-Saxon times. Heorot is clearly built of timber, held together by iron clamps[[788]]. These halls were oblong, and a famous passage in Bede[[789]] makes it clear that, at any rate at the time of the Conversion, the hall had a door at both ends, and the fire burnt in the middle. (The smoke escaped through a hole in the roof, through which probably most of the light came, for windows were few or none.) The Finnsburg Fragment also implies two doors. Further indications can be drawn from references to the halls of Norse chiefs. The Scandinavian hall was divided by rows of wooden pillars into a central nave and side aisles. The pillars in the centre were known as the "high-seat pillars." Rows of seats ran down the length of the hall on each side. The central position, facing the high-seat pillars and the fire, was the most honourable. The place of honour for the chief guest was opposite: and it is quite clear that in Beowulf also the guest did not sit next his host[[790]].
Other points we may note about Heorot, are the tapestry with which its walls are draped[[791]], and the paved and variegated floor[[792]]. Unlike so
many later halls, Heorot has a floor little, if anything, raised above the ground: horses can be brought in[[793]].
In later times, in Iceland, the arrangement of the hall was changed, and the house consisted of many rooms; but these were formed, not by partitioning the hall, but by building several such halls side by side: the stufa or hall proper, the skáli or sleeping hall, etc.
See M. Heyne, Ueber die Lage und Construction der Halle Heorot, Paderborn, 1864, where the scanty information about Heorot is collected, and supplemented with some information about Anglo-Saxon building. For the Icelandic hall see Valtyr Guðmundsson, Privatboligen på Island i Sagatiden, København, 1889. This has been summarized, in a more popular form, in a chapter on Den islandske Bolig i Fristatstiden, contributed by Guðmundsson to Rosenberg's Træk af Livet paa Island i Fristatstiden, 1894 (pp. 251-74). Here occurs the picture of an Icelandic hall which has been so often reproduced—by Olrik, Holthausen, and in Beowulf-translations. But it is a conjectural picture, and we can by no means assume all its details for Heorot. Rhamm's colossal work is only for the initiated, but is useful for consultation on special points (Ethnographische Beiträge zur Germanischslawischen Altertumskunde, von K. Rhamm, 1905-8. I. Die Grosshufen der Nordgermanen; II. Urzeitliche Bauernhöfe). For various details see Hoops' Reallexikon, s.v. flett; Neckel in P.B.B. XLI, 1916, 163-70 (under edoras); Meiringer in I.F., especially XVIII, 257 (under eoderas); Kaufmann in Z.f.d.Ph. XXXIX, 282-92.
Ships
In a tumulus near Snape in Suffolk, opened in 1862, there were discovered, with burnt bones and remains thought to be of Anglo-Saxon date, a large number of rivets which, from the positions in which they were found, seemed to give evidence of a boat 48 feet long by over nine feet wide[[794]]. A boat, similar in dimensions, but better preserved, was unearthed near Bruges in 1899, and the ribs, mast and rudder removed to the Gruuthuuse Museum[[795]].
Three boats were discovered in the peat-moss at Nydam in Schleswig in 1863, by Engelhardt. The most important is the "Nydam boat," clinker-built (i.e. with overlapping planks), of oak, 77 feet [23.5 m.] long, by some 11 [3.4 m.] broad, with rowlocks for fourteen oars down each side. There was no trace of any mast. Planks and framework had been held together, partly by iron bolts, and partly by ropes of bast. The boat had fallen to pieces, and had to be laboriously put together in the museum at Flensborg. Another boat was quite fragmentary, but a third boat, of fir, was found tolerably complete. Then the war of 1864 ended Engelhardt's labours at Nydam.