[[halls]] # Anglo-Saxon Halls • Scop (""shaper" or "maker" meaning a minstrel) would recite tales of legendary or ancestral heroes • Warriors would make a beot ("boast") of future deeds • King/Queen had separate chambers • Mead benches: • Each person had a certain spot • Warriors slept in the hall, pulling out bedding from beneath the benches • Fixed to the ground • Symbols of security (so in Beowulf the subjugation of a neighboring people is described as "depriving them of their mead benches") • Symbolized man's life: "Your Majesty, when we compare the present life of man with that time of which we have no knowledge, it seems to me like the swift flight of a lone sparrow through the banqueting-hall where you sit in the winter months to dine with your thanes and counsellors. Inside there is a comforting fire to warm the room; outside, the wintry storms of snow and rain are raging. This sparrow flies swiftly in through one door of the hall, and out through another. While he is inside, he is safe from the winter storms; but after a few moments of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the darkness from whence he came." (HE, II, 13; pp.124-5) Said by one of King Edwin's pagan nobles when the Northumbrian court was debating whether to convert to Christianity. Outside the hall is harm, in Beowulf there are "monsters and elves and specters, also giants"