I'm a total noob on the mead world and it have been really hard for me to find a good source about the history of mead and it's role on the Viking society, some says that it was a drink only for the kings, some say that it was like our beer is for us, so I really don't know who is right... Any help leading me to the right direction would be really appreciated.
It is true that the mead was relatively well-known in Viking Age Scandinavia, but it was also likely that it was somewhat socially prestigious one, though perhaps not solely reserved for kings only.
Famous Óðinn (Odin) was also a god of poetry, and one of his famous episodes in the 13th century Icelandic manuscript is that he seduced Gunnlöd, a daughter of Giant Suttung to get the mead of poetry that the father giant had guarded firmly and refused Óðinn to let it taste (Hávamál (the words of the High One=Óðinn), Sts. 104-110).
So, the mead was sometimes compared as a knowledge as well as a poetry by the Viking poets and their descendants. Unless the mead itself was highly appreciated, they would not often employed this kind of metaphor.
The mead and its drinking culture, sometimes tied with the social prestige, was also wide-spread in Early Medieval North-Western Europe. You can find some examples in the British Isles in one of my previous comments.
Scandinavian elites, including the kings, also often keep bees in their estates to got honey as well as to brew mead especially in its Eastern part (Sweden and Finland) well into the end of the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age, and several authors observed this tradition.
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