How much does a life cost?

[intertext]

I appeal to the collective knowledge of the flist.

Today, while teaching Beowulf, I pointed out the bit that always amuses me about Grendel, where they say that not only is he a horrible monster and eats our warriors but he doesn't even have the decency to pay weregild!

A hand popped up, and one student asked the very sensible question - what would weregild consist of? In other words, what was the going rate for a warrior's life in those days? I had to confess that I didn't have the foggiest but would endeavour to find out. If necessary, I'll do some research (or at least try Googling it), but I figured that one of my esteemed flist might just already know, so... any takers?

Comments

[sjkasabi.livejournal.com]

Hmm, here's some likely-looking stuff:

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/medieval/saxlaw.htm

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/560-975dooms.html

Working through laws about wergild used to go down a treat with first years in my teaching days (we generally used the laws of the Salian Franks, though).