There is a sense in which this story-world of the late Iron Age depended for its vitality on the stage set of the dwelling, the wavering circle of light around the hearth—whether in a farmer’s longhouse or in the epic space of the hall. Indoors was the closeness of tellers and listeners, and outside, the dark. In the greatest early medieval poem of all, Beowulf, a famous building of this kind is almost a central character. Here, the hall is civilisation, light, fame, honour, memory, history, and joy—beyond its doors, and in the poem literally smashing through them, are the monsters of chaos
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