Mead Hall In The Seafarer

The mead hall was an essential part of Anglo-Saxon culture. Kin groups would meet there to celebrate and feast with one another, but it was also a symbol of fierce loyalty and deep bonds of kinship. These ties of loyalty ruled their culture and affect literally everything that did—men would literally die while honoring their ties and promises of loyalty to their lords. So, back to the mead hall, these were places to celebrate those deep bonds. Even though men wanted to leave to seek honor for themselves and for their lords, when they were separated from the mead hall, it was like a part of them was missing. One place where this is evident is in 'The Seafarer'. The narrator is out at sea and is lamenting being out at sea and away from his kinsmen and his lord. He writes, “He who lives most prosperously on land does not understand how I, careworn and cut off from my kinsmen, have as an exile endured a winter on the icy sea…”. I think, first, it is important to point out that he has chosen to go on this journey and actually longs to go out to see foreign lands and foreign people, but it doesn’t change the fact that he is lamenting being away from his lord and his kinsmen he has sworn his loyalty to. Even with his desire to be on this journey, he still likens being away from the one he …show more content…
He uses phrases like “my feet were afflicted by cold, fettered in frost, frozen chains…” to describe his experience of the ocean, whereas, when talking about those in the mead hall he says things like “he who is used to the comforts of life and, proud and flushed with wine, suffers little hardship living in the city…”. Again, even though part of him wants to be on this journey, he still seems to desire the warmth and community of the mead