Text|Thorndike's Ru
Edited | Thorndike's Ru
To examine how the understanding of the universe and the worship of "gods-ancestors" were integrated into the practical operational level in the traditional Scandinavian society of the Viking Age, it is necessary to explore a specimen with social structural characteristics in the society at that time.
As a condensation of the Scandinavian power structure and its operating mechanism in the Viking Age, the "hall" is the best choice to examine the structure and attributes of traditional Scandinavian society at that time.
The Scandinavian Viking Age hall was the center of social life in the Scandinavian Iron Age (circa 1st to mid-6th centuries AD) as the residence of tribal chieftains and large buildings with multiple functions.
Definition of hall
Most scholars believe that the hall dates back to the late Roman Iron Age in Scandinavia (around the 3rd-5th centuries AD). Etymological point of view, the word "hall" is probably a loanword from Proto-Germanic ), and another Old Norse word "salr" may be the true Scandinavian ancient form of "hall".
This theory also explains many of the native Scandinavian place names, such as Gamla Uppsala ("old northern hall") and "schilingsal" ("golden hall"). The origin of the hall is still controversial in Western academic circles.
Some scholars believe that the reason why Scandinavia appeared in the Iron Age such architectural form as halls was influenced by the architectural style of rectangular synagogues in the Roman Empire; Other scholars believe that the hall is a further development of the traditional Nordic longhouse architectural style.
But regardless of its origins, its location, structure, and function all reveal the same message: it is one of the iconic things that reflects the cosmology and social structure of the Scandinavian Viking Age. Therefore, the author takes the hall as a model of the social power structure of Scandinavia in the Viking Age, combined with the ideas of the indigenous Nordic religions, to examine and analyze the power operation mechanism of the society at that time.
The research process of its definition in Western academic circles can be roughly divided into three stages. The relationship between these three stages is closely linked, and there are no subversive conclusions, but the former is modified, supplemented and refined on the basis of the original results combined with the latest archaeological findings. Therefore, the development of the hall definition also has a theoretical and concluding continuity.
The first stage: mid-19th century to the 80s of the 20th century
From the mid-19th century, the Edda, regarded as a classic text of ancient Norse mythology, began to be translated into English and published, allowing Norse mythology to be widely disseminated around the world. At that time, scholars have always believed that there was a special place of religious activity in pre-Christian Scandinavian society.
In Old Norse texts, rituals often involved a place called "hof (or hov)", so scholars at the time equated the meaning of "hof" with "temple" (temple), and regarded it as an independent, sacred building with the function of a ceremonial place.
Thus, in early English translations, "hof" was often translated as "pagantemple" (pagan temple), corresponding to Christian churches, thus limiting it to purely religious sites. This concept persisted for an entire century.
In 1966, the Danish scholar Olaf Heymann Olsen (1928-2015) published Altars, Halls and Churches: A Study of History and Archaeology of the Viking Age based on his doctoral dissertation.
Through a series of investigations, analyses and summaries of artifacts and relics, he proposed a different view from treating "hof" as a "pagan temple", arguing that there was not an insurmountable boundary between sacred faith and secular life in Viking Age (circa late 8th to early 11th century AD), and that there was no need to build separate ceremonial houses for purely religious purposes.
He believes that "hof" is: "a farm, a collective place where the inhabitants of the farm and the people hold their daily worship ceremonies." ”
It can be seen that although Olson integrated "HOF" with farms with production and residential functions into a unified spatial concept, he did not abandon the previous academic definition of "HOF" as having a ritual function, but only modified and innovated on this basis and proposed the basic outline of the hall concept.
Limited by the lack of archaeological discoveries at the time, he did not examine the concept of "HOF" in the overall context of Scandinavia. However, his proposition breaks the previous academic definition of this kind of building a priori, and gives the relationship between "HOF" and the farm space and significance for academic discussion.
The second stage: the 80s and 90s of the 20th century
In the 80s of the 20th century, archaeologists excavated the remains of the Navia Iron Age in the Gummer-Lundberg area of the island of Fyin, Denmark, and the results promoted the development of the "central region theory" in the Nordic academic community, which in turn prompted scholars to further think.
The "central region theory" is an archaeological theory that was born in the 30s of the 20th century. Through the analysis of archaeological findings, it seeks to reveal a network of social organization structures scattered among human settlements, centered on the source of power.
During archaeological excavations in the Gummer-Lundberg area, scholars discovered several large structures within the settlement activity, and many elaborate gold and silver ornaments and utensils were unearthed from the remains of two of the buildings in close proximity, indicating that these two buildings were probably the centers of power and ritual in the local settlement.
Such a unique and versatile large-scale building has once again aroused the enthusiasm for the application and development of the central area theory in the Nordic region. How to reasonably define these special buildings through archaeological discoveries has become a topic for scholars to think about in the future.
Among them, the research results of archaeologist Flanders Heshende of Uppsala University were the most authoritative and were widely recognized by the academic community at that time. Since the 90s of the 20th century, Washander has carried out a systematic in-depth study of the structure and function of Iron Age houses.
He defined these huge buildings as "halls", which originated from the multi-functional rooms of ancient Scandinavian longhouses, and belonged to the nobles and royal families who held economic and military power in the area in the 5th century, and summarized the various elements of the definition of halls as follows:
(1) The halls are located in the large farm; (2) The hall was originally composed of a room with a certain number of columns; (3) In the farm, the location of the hall is independent; (4) The fire in the hall is not used for cooking or making handicrafts; (5) Different utensils were excavated from the living space of the main house of the hall and the farm.
Washend's definition inherits Olsen's construction of the relationship between "HOF" and the farm, and outlines the spatial outline and some characteristics of the hall, which was regarded as a classic by scholars in the 90s of the 20th century. But it is still limited by the archaeological findings of the time, and there are certain shortcomings.
Most notably, he failed to summarize the scale of buildings that are considered halls, and the size of buildings is often proportional to the resources available to their owners.
According to Hirshend's definition, a relatively wealthy farmer who was not at the center of settlement power could also have a private space in his longhouse with the above characteristics, the only difference compared to the huge buildings was the size.
In this way, the definition of the hall is infinitely generalized, and at the same time, the hall loses its significance as a support point for the "central area theory" of the Scandinavian Iron Age.
The third stage: the 90s of the 20th century to the present
Since the 90s of last century, the academic community has successively carried out excavation work on the remains of many Iron Age hall buildings, and the discovery of many huge buildings with special functions has further broadened the research horizon of the academic community.
One of the most important points is that the space of the hall is no longer limited to a unique room in the building, but extends to the whole of the building and its ancillary facilities, and the definition and characteristics of the hall are further enriched.
Among the many insights in the academic community, Lydia Carstens, a scholar at the Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeological Center, has further supplemented and refined the characteristics of the hall on the basis of inheriting the definition of the Heshend's classics. In addition, Carstens found that neither the quality of the cultivated land nor the location of the buildings seemed to be important factors in the location of the hall.
This shows from one side that the symbolic significance of the hall is much greater than its practical significance.
By combing through the development of the concept of the hall, we can come up with a general definition: the hall is the center of power activity in the Scandinavian Viking Age human settlement complex, it is located in a special geographical location, and the scale is large, and it is a building with multiple social functions, including the holding of sacrificial ceremonies.
In addition, since there was no written writing system in society at that time, a majestic hall could play an important symbolic and commemorative meaning in a wordless society, and could be passed down orally as a symbol of power and wealth in daily language communication.
Therefore, we can say that the hall, like the Niven Stone, is a tall monument in itself. Whether for members of society or visitors from a foreign land, the towering hall is a kind of strength.
This power is high, a powerful force that can see the mountains and small mountains. And this sense of power will also be transmitted to the image of the hall owner through the shaping of the sense of space in the hall and various internal sacred rituals, so as to achieve the effect of C.
bibliography
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[3] John S. R. McNeill, William S. H. McNeill, The Web of Humanity: A Bird's Eye View of World History [M], translated by Wang Jinxin et al., Peking University Press, 2011.