Hrothgar’s acceptance of Beowulf’s offer to fight the monster for him comes quickly and easily. For, it turns out, long ago he did a big favor for Beowulf’s father. Ecgtheow had killed the prince Heatholaf while he was living among the Wylfing tribe. No more detail is given, and it’s not suggested that Ecgtheow was either right or wrong. It may have been an accident, or it may have been the result of a quarrel. They didn’t hold it against a man that he had killed someone. But the Wylfings would require Ecgtheow’s life for Heatholaf’s life, again just as a matter of procedure as much as of grief.
And so Ecgtheow fled to another tribe, the Weder Danes, for refuge. But the Wylfings made it clear that they would attack the Weders to exact their price. The Weders told Ecgtheow to leave, and he came then to the Scyldings. Hrothgar tells how his older brother had just died, leaving a baby son, and so brother Hrothgar had become the king. This was not treason, as it would later be considered; it was a tragedy for any nation to be ruled by a child. The Council would have met and elected Hrothgar to succeed his brother.
Hrothgar had enough wealth at hand to settle the feud. The Wylfings would accept blood-payment instead of more blood; this had always been the second option among Germanic tribes. By Anglo-Saxon times “weregild,” the sum of money that a man’s or woman’s life was worth, had been standardized by legislation. All of the Anglo-Saxon kings pushed people to accept weregild instead of actual blood. Because Hrothgar settled Ecgtheow’s feud for him, it is right that the family of Ecgtheow would offer help now.
With help offered and accepted, there had to be a feast. Kings expected to host large meals for their men; the feasting system was a linchpin of loyalty. As soon as the visitors had arrived, someone would have set in motion the mechanism of a feast. By now some sheep have been slaughtered and women are working to get sufficient round, flat bread loaves into production. It would take longer than this to be ready, though.
But to start off the feast, all that is needed is to make room to seat the Geats in the hall. They used benches, not chairs, around their tables. It says that they cleared a bench for the Geats. Since we have already been told that the mead-hall is empty these days, it seems unlikely that they had to tell people to leave. Maybe they got a bench from where it was stored by the wall. Halls like this were lined with storage chests and stacks of other things.
The feast begins with a ceremonial drink of ale to pledge “Waes thu hal!” to them. Eventually, the drink used to welcome guests became known in English as “wassail” for that reason. And then the king’s poet steps out to sing heroic stories for their entertainment. As Liuzza’s translation puts it, “The scop sang/brightly in Heorot — there was joy of heroes,/no small gathering of Danes and Geats.”
The word “scop” is worth looking before moving on. It’s pronounced like “shop,” and other “sh” words are spelled like it: scip, scield, sceap (both “sheep” and “shape”) and scoh (our “shoe”). “Scop” is formed by the verb “sciepan,” to create. Of course, our modern form is “shape.” The Germanic strong verbs used a changing middle vowel to show tense; the “o” vowel generally went with the past or already completed meaning. The scop has shaped something; he can sing because he made it already, and now you will hear it.