Summary: And to begin with, lets do a thought experiment. Imagine, if you will, an Anglo Saxon feasting hall. If you have the chance, pause this and write down a quick description of what it looks like, what people were doing, what was going on, whose feast it was, and who was attending. For bonus points, write down why it was being held. We’re going to spend a few episodes chatting about the culture of feasting and at the end, you can look back and see how close you were. It might be fun. And today, lets have a brief overview of feasts and why they might be held. With that in mind, it might be helpful to think about the Feast, and actually Anglo Saxon culture in general, in terms of community. Why do people form communities? It’s a near universal human experience, so why do we do it? Well, we are social creatures (which is probably why we get along with dogs so well, since they are too) and as a result most of us seem to be hard wired to feel loneliness quite keenly. So the need for socialization might be part of why we form communities, since they insulate against that loneliness.
