The Nordic Beowulf 9781802700237

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MEDIEVAL MEDIA AND CULTURE Further Information and Publications www.arc-humanities.org/our-series/arc/mmc/

THE NORDIC BEOWULF by

BO GRÄSLUND Translated from Swedish by

MARTIN NAYLOR

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CONTENTS

List of Illustrations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Prefaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

Chapter 1. Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter 2. The Origins of the Poem

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Chapter 3. Some Unproven Premises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Chapter 4. Dating of the Poem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Chapter 5. Archaeological Delimination

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

27

Chapter 6. Results of Primary Analysis, Step 1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Chapter 7. The Name Geatas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Chapter 8. Other Links to Eastern Sweden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Chapter 9. Elements of Non-Christian Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Chapter 10. Poetry in Scandinavia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Chapter 11. The Oral Structure of the Poem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Chapter 12. Results of Primary Analysis, Step 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Chapter 13. Gotland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

vi

Contents

Chapter 14. Heorot. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Chapter 15. Swedes and Gutes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Chapter 16. The Horsemen around Beowulf’s Grave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Chapter 17. Some Linguistic Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Chapter 18. From Scandinavia to England . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 Chapter 19. Transmission and Writing Down in England . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 Chapter 20. Allegorical Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 Chapter 21. Beowulf and Guta saga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 Chapter 22. Chronology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 Chapter 23. Retrospective Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1. My interpretation of the link between the Beowulf poem and the Bandlund Bay in the island of Gotland with the approximate sixth-century shoreline. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 Figure 2. On his voyage from Gotland to Heorot, Beowulf probably followed the south coast of Scania straight towards the Stevns peninsula in Zealand before turning south towards Præstø Fjord and landing close to Broskov. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 Figure 3. Stevns in eastern Zealand, with its fifteen-kilometre-long and 41-metre-high white chalk cliffs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Figure 4. Broskov, just inland from Præstø Fjord in south-eastern Zealand. . . . . . . . 125 Figure 5. The unique “Roman” stone-paved road at Broskov which Beowulf and his men may have marched along. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 Figure 6. Hypothetical reconstruction of the route of the Gutes’ attack on King Ongentheow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 Figure 7. The natural route between East Anglia and Uppsala would have crossed the Schleswig isthmus, making use of the rivers Eider, Treene and Rheider Au, and the Schlei inlet. . . . . . . . . . 170 Figure 8. The gigantic Torsburgen hill-fort with its two-kilometre-long collapsed stone wall and an inner area of one hundred and twenty hectares. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212

In memory of

John M. Coles

PREFACES From the Swedish Edition

My interest in Beowulf goes back a long way, but it was only with advancing years that I really got to grips with the subject. It has now kept me occupied for a good many years, albeit alongside a host of other things. The only deadline I have had is the one which nature, uninvited, sets before us. The list of colleagues and friends I have pestered with questions and requests to review manuscripts at various stages of incompleteness, and who have generously shared constructive criticism, information, ideas, suggestions for further reading, helpful advice, general assistance, and encouragement, is a long one: Magnus Alkarp, Anders Andrén, Birgit Arrhenius, Ylva Bäckström, Stefan Brink, Göran Burenhult, Bryony Coles, François-Xavier Dillmann, Rune Edberg, Torsten Edgren, Kristina Ekero Eriksson, Lennart Elmevik, Johan Engström, Lotta Fernstål, Per Frölund, Hans Göthberg, Anne-Sofie Gräslund, Elisabeth Gräslund Berg, Pekka Hakamies, Hans Helander, Frands Herschend, Helena Hulth, Peter Jackson, Magnus Källström, Lars-Gunnar Larsson, Thomas Lindkvist, Jonathan Lindström, John Ljungkvist, Tomas Matsson, Lotta Mejsholm, Jan Mispelaere, Håkan Möller, Agneta Ney, Jenny Nygren, Neil Price, Thure Stenström, Anneli Sundkvist, Olle Sundqvist, Gustav Svedjemo, Rolf Torstendahl, Gustaf Trotzig, Lisa Wahlbom, Per Widerström, Per-Axel Wiktorsson, Jonas Wikborg, Henrik Williams, Torun Zachrisson, and Arne Zettersten. Should any names unfortunately have been omitted, I reserve my warmest thanks for the individuals concerned. An academic lone wolf like myself is no more than a sheep in wolf’s clothing. Without the support of the rest of the flock, ewes as well as rams, I would never have made it to my destination. The fact that, for want of good sense, I have not always followed your advice does not detract in any way from your contribution. Special and heartfelt thanks go to Lennart Elmevik. Without his generous and patient help and guidance in the final phase of the work, I would never have escaped the claws of Germanic ablaut and been able to knock Chapter 7 and Appendix 2 into some sort of shape. The fixed base for my work has been the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala University, along with Uppsala University Library and its Karin Boye branch, all in the most pleasant symbiosis with the Fågelsången Café. My sincere thanks to them all, management and staff alike. I am also very grateful to Maj Reinhammar for her patient editing of this book and to John Wilkinson for taking care of the technical aspects of its production. The Berit Wallenberg Foundation, the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy for Swedish Folk Culture and the Viking Phenomenon research project have generously assisted with funding for publication, and the Gustavus Adolphus Academy also with travel funds on two occasions. My warmest thanks to them for this. Finally, I wish to thank Neil Price and Lars-Erik Edlund, who accepted my work for joint publication by the Department of Archaeology and the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy. Uppsala, March 2018 Bo Gräslund

x

Prefaces

Preface to the Present Edition Apart from the fact that a large part of Chapter 1, which was mainly intended for Swedish readers unfamiliar with Beowulf, as well as the three appendices on folk-names have been omitted, only minor corrections and additions have been made for the English translation. I would like to extend a warm thank you to Martin Naylor for his patient work in translating the book and for his many valuable remarks in this connection. I would also like to extend a special thanks to Robert Bjork for his kindness in recommending the book for publication and for his generous help with the manuscript. Grants for the translation of this book have been provided by Torsten Söderbergs Stiftelse, Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademien för Svensk Folkkultur, Konung Gustav VI Adolfs Fond för Svensk Kultur, Magnus Bergvalls Stiftelse, and Sällskapet De Badande Wännernas Stiftelse. Grants for the publication of this book have also been provided by the Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien. For all this generous support, I would like to express my sincere thanks.

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION My aim in writing this book has been to try to answer the question of the provenance

of Beowulf, that is to say, where and when the poem was originally composed. Such an undertaking may seem superfluous, given that there is not the slightest disagreement on this point and that the poem has been the subject of two hundred years of intensive research. In the end, though, a view that has no basis in either a thorough primary investigation or a recurring discussion of the subject is a challenge that is impossible to resist. The one existing manuscript of Beowulf very narrowly escaped the devastating fire that ravaged the Cotton Library at Ashburnham House in Westminster, London, on 23 October 1731, apparently by being thrown out of a window at the last minute. As the wall behind the bookcase in which the manuscript was kept had started to burn, most of its leaves are badly scorched along their outer edges. The manuscript has been very fragile ever since, and has been restored on several occasions since the middle of the nineteenth century, one of them very recent (Harrison 2009). After the fire it was transferred to the British Museum, but it has now belonged for many years to the British Library. The precarious history of the only preserved manuscript of the poem gives us cause for reflection: If the Beowulf manuscript had been destroyed […] no one could guess that a poem of such a quality had once existed. There could be no compelling reason to believe that any Germanic people had developed the art of secular heroic poetry to epic proportions, or if it had, that such an epic would deviate so sharply from the classical tradition as well as from most current aesthetic norms. (Niles 1983a, 249)

Today, Beowulf may seem to be one of a kind, but in the world in which it was once created, it might perhaps have been no more unique than a star in the heavens. The metre of the poem corresponds to an archaic, common Germanic fornyrðislag. Roughly the same metre is found in the Heliand and the Hildebrandslied and in early eddic poetry, and can be made out in some Scandinavian runic inscriptions from the Migration Period. The basic story of the poem is well known. It consists of three main parts, the first of which is linked to the second, which is in turn linked to the third. Beowulf, the nephew of King Hygelac of the Geats, has heard that a monster is terrorizing the Danish king Hrothgar’s hall of Heorot (meaning “hart, stag”), probably so named after the antlers adorning the outside, or possibly the inside, of its end walls. The hall is expressly referred to as a “horned” building, hornreċed.1 Beowulf fits out a ship and travels with thirteen companions across the sea to offer Hrothgar help, which the king gratefully accepts. 1  704.

2

Chapter 1

On their very first night at Heorot, the monster Grendel bursts in, seizes one of Beowulf’s men, and devours him on the spot. Beowulf grabs hold of the monster’s arm which, after a fierce struggle, is torn off at the shoulder. Mortally wounded, Grendel flees into the night, back to his watery dwelling. The next day, everyone celebrates Beowulf’s victory and he is richly rewarded by King Hrothgar. But the very same evening the hall is attacked again, this time by Grendel’s mother, intent on avenging her son. She seizes Æschere, Hrothgar’s confidant, and carries him off into the night. The following day an entire troop marches to the fen where the monsters have their lair. Beowulf dives in in full battle gear, engages in a terrible fight with Grendel’s mother in an enclosed space under the water and, after a great struggle, manages to kill her. Finally, he decapitates Grendel, who is lying there dying. Beowulf and his men then return to Heorot in triumph, carrying Grendel’s enormous head between them. Once again, Beowulf is richly rewarded by Hrothgar. The next morning, he and his men journey home with all their gifts and are received at the royal seat of King Hygelac, where Beowulf tells the assembled company of his adventures. In the next part of the poem we are at the end of Beowulf’s life, when he has been king of the Geats for many years. An enormous, murderous serpent has taken up residence in an old cairn full of magnificent treasure, from which the fire-breathing creature makes violent sorties, burning down the settlements of the Geats far around, including Beowulf’s hall. Once again, Beowulf takes responsibility and sets out with eleven thanes against the beast. Once he arrives, though, he realizes he will have to carry out his mission alone. The Serpent is a terrible adversary, against whom Beowulf’s ancestral sword is to no avail. At the eleventh hour his young kinsman Wiglaf comes to his aid, and between them they slay the Serpent. But Beowulf is badly wounded, and he dies shortly afterwards. The poem ends with Beowulf being ceremoniously cremated with sumptuous weapons and armor, and buried in a magnificent barrow that can be seen far out at sea. The third and shortest main theme of the poem concerns battles between the Geats and the Swedes.2 In connection with Beowulf’s fight with the Serpent and before his funeral, recollections are shared of several wars between these peoples, which ultimately resulted in the subjugation of the Geats. Twisting tendril-like throughout the poem are several other subsidiary accounts of earlier events linked to the families of Hygelac, Beowulf, and Hrothgar and to the history of the Danes. These include the passages on Hygelac and Beowulf’s military expedition to the mouth of the Rhine in the Frankish kingdom, and on a fateful battle at Finnsburg in southern Jutland. There are also brief references to figures from continental Germanic folk tradition, such as Sigemund/Sigurd the dragon-slayer; Modthryth, whose real name, however, appears to be Fremu (Kock 1920, 103; Fulk 2004), and her husband Offa, a king of the Anglians before they emigrated to England. 2  That is, the Svear. To avoid awkward constructions in English, the tribe spoken of in Beowulf as Swēon (Old Norse Svíar, Old Swedish Swēar, Latin Suiones) will in general be referred to here as the Swedes, with Swedish as the corresponding adjective. Their homeland (Beowulf’s Swīorīċe), however, will be referred to as Svealand, the name Sweden being reserved for a wider area corresponding in general to the territory of the modern-day country.



Introduction

3

Over the past century, the poem has received little attention as a source for early Scandinavian history. From an early date, a strict school of source criticism branded old Scandinavian historical sources as so unreliable that many scholars have taken care not to be caught in such dubious company. Beowulf is very much a case in point, having generally been viewed as a largely free literary creation. Rigid disciplinary boundaries within academia, meanwhile, have discouraged any engagement with the kind of cross-disciplinary research challenges which the poem presents. As an archaeologist myself, I lack philological training, and many a linguistically-schooled Beowulf expert has similar limitations when it comes to the real world in which the poem is set. The question is whether any Beowulf scholar has ever acquired the multidisciplinary skill set that the subject would benefit from. But when our academic world is so dysfunctionally organized, and we know from experience that interdisciplinary collaboration can rarely do more than scratch the surface of such shortcomings, the research community has no choice but to try to handle the dilemma of individual scholars working in a pluralist disciplinary perspective as constructively as possible. Otherwise, the ripe fruit of Beowulfiana would soon be reduced to a sadly shrivelled state. To avoid having to hear it from someone else, I would metaphorically describe myself here as an old mongrel picking up the scents of all the other dogs in the neighbourhood before retiring to the safety of its basket to pronounce its unabashed verdict. Regarding the meaning of the text, it is not possible to rely on individual translations, however excellent they may be, or even a handful of them. In my work on this book, I have made use of some forty different renderings, primarily into modern English, Swedish, Danish, German, and a few other languages. It is always necessary, though, to consult the original Old English text. Where there has been the slightest doubt, I have myself—with the help of grammars, dictionaries and glossaries—analysed the original text as presented in the fourth edition of Frederick Klaeber’s Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, edited by Robert D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles (Fulk et al. 2009), but with the occasional side glance at the text editions of Jack (1994), Wrenn and Bolton (1996) and Alexander (2005). The original Old English text of Beowulf contains much that is unclear, owing to damage to the manuscript or to misunderstandings, losses, omissions, or additions in connection with the oral or written transmission of the poem in centuries past. The fact that the manuscript is largely devoid of punctuation can also make for ambiguity. In modernday editions, more than 5 percent of all the words in the poem are usually emended in some way—albeit often credibly—with reference to such circumstances. In Beowulf: A Glossed Text, Michael Alexander presents an explanatory list of all such changes in his own version of the text (Alexander 2005, xix f., 219–29). In addition to all this, there are gaps in our understanding of the cultural and ideological frames of reference of the time and in our knowledge of the Old English language. Yet another problem is that the poem is known from only one manuscript. All these things combined mean that creating a modern-language version of the Old English text involves a significant element of interpretation. No translation, however good, can ever be regarded as definitive. Some remarks on terminology. Owing to the negative connotations frequently associated with words like “pagan” or “heathen” in early Christian texts, the term “pre-

4

Chapter 1

Christian” is now often used. But as there is nothing pejorative about the scholarly term “pagan,” and as a suggested alternative such as “Norse polytheism” (Sturtevant 2012) does not come with a manageable adjective, I will follow the tradition in Beowulf scholarship of not regarding this as a problem and will use “pagan” and “pre-Christian” as synonyms. I must also confess to my unhistorical use of the term “Scandinavian” as a synonym of “Norse” or “Nordic.” On the other hand, this has had official sanction since as early as 1946, when a certain Nordic airline was established, and it is also widely used internationally. The term “Anno Domini” (ad) is now often replaced with the religiously neutral “Common Era” (ce). But as this innovation seems to me to be completely lacking in semantic logic, I stubbornly persist in using the traditional terminology. The expression “Middle Iron Age” is used here to bracket together what Scandinavian archaeologists refer to as the Roman Iron Age (ad 1–375) and the Migration Period (375–550), while the “Late Iron Age” covers the Merovingian/Vendel (550–750) and Viking periods (750–1050). References to the original text are given in footnotes in the form of line numbers based on the edition of Fulk et al. (2009). I use the expression “the Christian voice” to refer, not to some imagined Christian author of the poem, but to what I regard as the end result of a Christian reworking of the Beowulf tradition. Nor is the phrase to be confused with Stanley Greenfield’s broader concept of “the authenticating voice” (Greenfield 1976). The results of this study are presented as a three-stage argument, based on a qualitative assessment of the source material in relation to the purpose of the work, which is to try to assess where, when, and how Beowulf was created as a poem. The crucial step in that process is to date the historical, archaeological, and linguistic content of the poem and to characterize its material world (Chapters 3–6). As a second stage in my primary analysis, I investigate the ideological, geographical, and topographical setting of the story, the family relations between its protagonists, the composition of the narrative, and more besides (Chapters 7–12). Based on the results of this primary examination, I go on to undertake a wide-ranging analysis of its implications, which, in places, but not throughout, is more hypothetical in character (Chapters 13–22). The conclusion about the origins of the poem that is drawn from the primary analysis, it should be noted, is entirely independent of the subsequent consideration of the implications of that analysis.

Chapter 2

THE ORIGINS OF THE POEM Research into other early European epic poetry, such as the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Nibelungenlied, was long marked by a controversy between “Unitarians,” who primarily regarded these works as composed by great poets, and “Analysts,” who viewed them chiefly as the result of a long oral poetic tradition. In the case of Beowulf, that controversy was relatively short-lived. While Thorkelí�n (1815) and Ettmüller (1840) took it virtually for granted that the poem was a direct translation into Old English from ancient Norse oral tradition, as early a writer as Grundtvig believed it to be the work of an Old English poet (Grundtvig 1820). One of the last scholars to argue, chiefly on linguistic grounds, that the poem essentially reflected a Scandinavian oral tradition was Gregor Sarrazin (1888, 1897). For a long time, then, Beowulf has generally been considered to have been composed in writing by an Old English Christian poet, working on the basis of Scandinavian narrative traditions he had come into contact with in some unknown way (Chadwick 1912; Chambers 1932; Magoun 1953; Farrell 1972; Bruce-Mitford 1974, 1975, 1986; Sorrel 1992; Newton 1993; Hill 2002; North 2007; Fulk et al. 2009, clxxxi–clxxxiii). This premise is generally considered so self-evident, however, that it is rarely put into words. An evaluative survey of two hundred years of Beowulf scholarship (Fulk et al. 2009) reports no modern-day research expressing a fundamentally different opinion. The same view prevails in Scandinavia. The Swedish Nationalencyklopedin is in no doubt at all: “The poem was composed by an unknown Old English poet” (Frykman 1990). Opinions on the subject are not entirely uniform, however: It is likely that the poem’s composition had more than one oral stage and more than one written stage. The poem has a decided unity, but the argument from design does not prove the existence of a single designer. Although it is by no means required that we renounce the idea of a single author, to talk of “the Beowulf-poet” is to oversimplify […] much of the poem may have been available in oral verse tradition before a monk dipped his quill in ink. (Alexander 2005, xi)

As one of several possibilities, Kenneth Sisam has suggested that the poem was originally composed orally in England and recited orally for a time, before being written down (Sisam 1965, 67). John D. Niles, for his part, speaks of a complex background of oral poetry and various scenarios for the poem’s preservation in writing (Niles 1997). With the exception of Edward B. Irving (1989), however, few more recent scholars appear to regard Beowulf as essentially an oral tradition that has been written down. And whatever hybrid oral/written background is assumed, it is difficult to find any Beowulf scholar who argues that the poem represents what from the outset was a coherent Scandinavian oral tradition. Some Scandinavian archaeologists though, such as Gad Rausing (1985) and Lotte Hedeager (2011, 182), seem—based on the way the poem clearly reflects Migration Period Scandinavia—to tacitly assume an underlying Scandinavian oral tradition.

6

Chapter 2

A good many scholars have identified East Anglia during the Sutton Hoo period in the early seventh century, or later, as a likely point of entry for the Scandinavian traditions that must in some way be behind the poem. The basic reason why Beowulf is considered to have been written by an Old English poet is of course that it has been preserved in Old English in a manuscript in England, and that it contains a number of clear Christian elements and sentiments. That might seem reason enough. But no proposition is so compelling as to be exempt from the need for closer examination, something which in this case has hardly been attempted since the days of Raymond Chambers (Chambers 1932). Since then, many a seagull has circled over the waves of the North Sea. Once the idea that the poem had been composed by an Old English poet had taken hold in the late nineteenth century, it soon became an axiom. We search in vain in modern times for any coherent scholarly reasoning in favour of the proposition. When, once in a while, a factual argument is actually put forward, it is usually done in passing, as part of a survey of earlier research. Apart from the fact that the poem is preserved in Old English and contains certain Christian elements, the only arguments of any weight seem to be along the lines of “the style and sentiments of Scandinavian verse are very far from those of Beowulf,” or the extant Scandinavian material is so much later, its most ancient ingredients, if truly ancient, so fragmentary, that no valid view can be formed of the nature of Scandinavian, presumably East Norse heroic poetry of the eighth, ninth or tenth centuries. (Stanley 1994, 13)

The comparison should not, though, primarily be with late Old Norse poetry, but with Scandinavian tradition with roots in the Middle Iron Age, such as certain legendary sagas (fornaldarsǫgur) and early eddic poems, which if anything have greater similarities to Beowulf than to late Old Norse poetry. And as for that argument, there is no early Old English work of poetry with an Anglo-Saxon storyline that is the least bit comparable to Beowulf.

The Legacy of Tolkien

The fact that, despite certain Christian elements, the poem reflects what is clearly a pagan world was long considered embarrassing to the theory of a Christian poet composing for Christian readers and audiences. One critical school also laid a good many factual contradictions and other literary “weaknesses” at the door of the poem’s author. But after J. R. R. Tolkien had given his famous lecture on Beowulf to the British Academy on 25 November 1936, everything changed. Tolkien argued that the poem was a carefully considered and well-balanced work of poetry by a great author and thinker, which should primarily be assessed as a poem and not subjected to antiquarian, philological, and mythological dissection with a view to elucidating its origins. The fact that the story unfolds in a past age in a remote, pagan Scandinavia was thus not a contradiction, but could be seen as a deliberate device, used by a great author to achieve an effective poetic dynamic (Tolkien 1936).



The Origins of the Poem

7

Beowulf is full of contradictory features large and small, which often used to be held against the poet as evidence of poor authorship, but which, following Tolkien, are now frequently viewed as carefully thought-out literary devices. Not until Beowulf scholarship had recovered from the Second World War did the reaction come, but when it did, it came with a vengeance. Although Tolkien did not hide the fact that his view sprang mostly from an artistic feeling, his contribution was welcomed as cutting the Gordian knot that had long fettered the theory of an Old English Christian author. The effect was dramatic. Rarely has the expression “paradigm shift” been more apt. At a single elegant stroke, Tolkien had consigned the whole question of critical scrutiny of the poem’s origins to the academic scrapheap. There it cowers to this day, discarded and despised: Tolkien’s achievement was to salvage Beowulf from the hand of critics who were blind to the factor that made the poem great. It is hard to imagine, but Beowulf was once studied either as Scandinavian history, a repository of artefacts for archaeologists or as an archive of Old English linguistic features and grammatical forms. In his own day Tolkien helped to rescue the poem for posterity. (Tolley 2007, 48)

And yet, since that time, Tolkien’s thesis has not been backed up with scholarly evidence any more than he himself did, which is to say, basically not at all. Tolkien did not assess Beowulf primarily as an expert in the Old English language, but as the empathetic writer, mythologist, and mystic he is also remembered as. In Tolkien’s footsteps, a significant branch of Beowulf scholarship has developed a sophisticated psychology of literature that interprets practically everything in the poem as evidence of the assumed author’s literary and ideological intentions and cultural background. If we add together everything that has been attributed to that author, we end up with a literary genius unique in the Germanic world of his (or her) day. In 1953 Francis Magoun Jr. threw a fistful of grit in the wheels with his analysis of the formulaic language of the poem, based on Milman Parry and Albert Lord’s interpretations of Homeric and late South Slavic oral epic. Magoun claimed that the poem had emerged as a result of several different oral traditions about the figure of Beowulf being woven together secondarily into a larger work of poetry (Magoun 1953; cf. 1959 and 1963), an analysis which Albert Lord himself found convincing: The formulaic character of the Old English Beowulf has been proved beyond any doubt by a series of analyses beginning with my own in 1949 […], which Professor Magoun improved and elaborated in 1953 […] and which Professor Creed has carried to its ultimate detailed conclusion. […] The documentation is complete, thorough, and accurate. This exhaustive analysis is in itself sufficient to prove that Beowulf was composed orally. (Lord 1960, 198)

Magoun did not say so in so many words, but reading between the lines of several of his works we get the impression that he believed the story to be chiefly Scandinavian in origin. His analysis certainly rocked the boat, but with its somewhat uncritical application of Lord and Parry’s interpretive model, it did not have a lasting impact on the general view that the poem had been composed independently and in writing by an Old English poet.

8

Chapter 2

In these end times, however, Tolkien’s proposition about the poem having a carefully considered literary structure has once again begun to be questioned. Tom Shippey, for instance, after noting certain Scandinavian features in the names occurring in the poem, has highlighted a number of compositional deficiencies that seem incompatible with the idea of an Old English author, while also cautiously resuscitating the question of a possible oral background to the poem (Shippey 2014). Nevertheless, by far the dominant interpretation has long been that Beowulf is an independent and uniform work of poetry, written by a learned, Christian Old English poet on the basis of scattered remnants of Scandinavian and broader Germanic traditions: Beowulf is the work of a great artist, a work carefully planned and organized, excellent in form and structure, and composed with a sense of style unique in the poet’s age […] I regard the work as composed in writing, and the author as trained in the art of the scop and educated as a clerk. In him the best of pagan antiquity and of the Christian culture of his time had fused; and we have in his work an achievement unequaled in English poetry before Chaucer. (Brodeur 1959, viii) The poet composed, I believe, at court; he surely was well educated, sophisticated and aristocratic. He knew the old heroic legends and traditions; he was a man of the world as well as of the court; he was a Christian. (Brady 1983, 202)

If he was a monk or other professional religious—which is a reasonable hypothesis—he obviously had a great affection for the things and values of the secular world […] If he was a chieftain or court poet or itinerant singer wandering, like the fictional bard Widsith, from court to court—another possible hypothesis, though possibly a less likely one—he certainly had a deep vein of spirituality. (Ringler 2007, xcvii)

Despite being on the international scholarly wanted list for two hundred years, this supposed poet remains so shadowy and elusive that Homer seems almost of flesh and blood by comparison. That the author of a major opus such as Beowulf should have remained anonymous, while lesser poets such as Cædmon and Cynewulf are known to posterity by name, may of course be due to the indiscriminate gnawing of the tooth of time. But the fact that most other Old English and early Germanic literary works are equally anonymous does nonetheless raise the question whether what we are looking for is indeed an author in the proper sense of that word. Naturally, a narrative tradition is stripped of all historical credibility as it passes through the literary peristalsis of a creative mind. And the axiom of an Old English poet has certainly robbed Beowulf of any legitimacy as a historical document (see for example Gahrn 1986; Søby Christensen 2005; DickHarrison 2009)—so much so that in Scandinavia it is scarcely considered meaningful even to subject it to source-critical scrutiny. The legacy of Tolkien weighs heavily on the poem. A very long time ago, Bernhard ten Brink claimed that the striking “grace” (Behagen), “clarity” (Klarheit), “gentleness” (Milde), and “refinement” (Verfeinung) of Beowulf ruled out the possibility of any other Germanic setting for its origins than Anglo-Saxon England (ten Brink 1888, 181). But few today would probably subscribe to such an idyllization of the work. On the other hand, it is sometimes pointed out that it deviates so much in style and spirit from later Scandinavian poetry that an early Norse original is out of the question. But then we also need to ask ourselves why the poem differs so



The Origins of the Poem

9

much from all other known Old English poetry, and why there is no comparable Old English heroic epic on an Old English theme. And anyway, it shows significant similarities to some of the Norse legendary sagas and eddic poems that reflect events from the same Migration Period as Beowulf. The Old English of the manuscript is the southern English dialect known as Late West Saxon. At the same time, though, the text is full of traces of older Anglian dialects from eastern and central England. This contradictory picture points us now in one, now in another direction, in a way which for a long time made agreement on when, how, and where Beowulf was composed impossible. It has consequently been suggested that, to create the right archaic mood, the author may have deliberately garnished the poem with outdated linguistic features from different dialect areas. But such a notion of an erudite philologist gone astray is something most scholars seem to recoil from. Usually, they are more inclined to believe that the author deliberately made use of a common, archaic poetic language, a kind of Old English koine (as outlined in Fulk et al. 2009, clxv– clxvii), an idea that has also come in for criticism, however (Megginson 1992).

Aim and Starting Point of the Study

After two hundred years of research, one might imagine that there would be little left to say about Beowulf. The reason I nonetheless attempt a more comprehensive study here of the question of the poem’s origins, however, is that this particular field has long lain fallow. Critical light has not been shed on it for a very long time, if indeed it ever has. My aim is to see whether it is not after all possible to arrive at a more evidence-based assessment of a question that has to be considered crucial to any interpretation of the poem. Only after this problem has been more fully investigated will there be a basis for an in-depth literary analysis of the meaning, aims and background of Beowulf. The Scandinavian “analogues” or “parallels” to the poem that have often been highlighted (Chambers 1932, 129–95, 451–85, 491–503; Garmondsway et al. 1980; Theodore Andersson 1997, 129–34, 146–48; Fulk et al. 2009, 294–307, 313–15) are of course of interest to Beowulfian scholarship. But after a very long period of transmission, they are so watered down and full of contradictions that they tend to obscure rather than illuminate the central question of the poem’s origins. In this work, therefore, they will only be taken into account in exceptional cases and secondarily. But it is a crucial fact that such traditions are preserved only in Scandinavia. Nor can consideration be given to parallels in Celtic, classical, or other literary traditions, which have sometimes been held up as sources of inspiration for the Beowulf poet. Such parallels only become relevant if it can be established that the poem was indeed composed independently by an Old English poet. The question of its origins should thus primarily be assessed in the light of the poem’s own testimony and other reasonably contemporary and relevant linguistic, historical, and archaeological sources. The language of Beowulf is Old English and the poem contains certain Christian elements. And yet there is not a trace of Anglo-Saxon tradition in the narrative. The geographical and historical context is purely Scandinavian and the society depicted is fundamentally pagan. Although such a contradiction virtually cries out for attention,

10

Chapter 2

it is one of the least discussed of all the problems surrounding the poem. It is as if the question is considered to have been settled once and for all. In fact, it has never been thoroughly investigated. Ever since the idea that Beowulf was composed by an Old English poet took root in the late nineteenth century, it has persisted undisturbed, with no detailed argument put forward either for or against it. Any appreciable discussion of what elements in the poem could draw on Scandinavian tradition and what aspects of its content, apart from its Christian features, could reflect the mindset of an Old English poet is equally hard to find. The time is now ripe to turn the question round the other way and ask: Is there any source material that offers scholarly support for the view that Beowulf was composed in England?

Chapter 3

SOME UNPROVEN PREMISES After a lifetime’s work on the poem, the leading light of Beowulf research, Frederick Klaeber, took the view that its basic themes were drawn entirely from Scandinavian tradition: That the themes of the main story, i.e. the contest with the Grendel race and the fight with the dragon, are of direct Scandinavian provenience, may be regarded as practically certain. The same origin is to be assigned to the distinctly historical episodes of the SwedishGeatish wars of which no other traces can be found in England. (Klaeber 1950, cxiv and cf. cxv)

As these themes provide a good summary of the main storyline of the poem, Klaeber clearly believed that the Old English author had not contributed anything at all to the basic elements of the narrative. The reason no one, to my knowledge, has argued against Klaeber’s view, or even commented on it, could of course be that it is a hot potato. But it would seem, rather, that the question has simply gone stone-cold, and Klaeber himself never pursued it any further. Nearly a dozen of the rulers and princes of the Danes and Swedes who appear in the poem also figure in various Scandinavian sources, and the Geatish king Hygelac turns up in continental sources. Most of these individuals can thus be regarded with reasonable confidence as historical figures of the late fifth and the first half of the sixth century, the end of the Migration Period. In parallel with this, the poem reads almost as a handbook on the material and ideological world of Scandinavia at that time. Beowulf represents a clearly demarcated historical and archaeological framework of considerable credibility. The question that then has to be asked, but hardly ever is, is this: how did an Old English author get hold of this information about historical, material, and other conditions in Scandinavia? I will leave aside here the possibility of the pious monk who is usually identified as the author of Beowulf having made a study trip to the pagans of eastern Scandinavia to collect traditional material for his epic. Nor, to my knowledge, has such a highly improbable scenario ever been suggested. And the only option that then remains is to assume that it was in England that the imagined poet learned of Scandinavian oral traditions about events and settings in eastern Scandinavia in the first half of the sixth century. Very rarely, though, do we see this premise expressed in so many words. The problem is that there is very little trace of such traditions in other AngloSaxon writings—including early Anglo-Saxon literature in Latin—which after all, taken together, are almost ten times more extensive than Beowulf.1 1  Here I disregard the short, independent Finnsburg Fragment, which deals with the same theme as the Finn Episode in Beowulf. It does not touch on the main theme of the poem, and the two texts also clearly reflect independent traditions concerning the same event (Amodio 2014, 323–26).

12

Chapter 3

The surviving Old English poem Widsith consists mainly of unsorted lists of European peoples and rulers which Widsith, “the widely travelled one,” claims to have visited, despite a time span of several hundred years. Widsith boasts of his acquaintance with famous princes from very different periods all over Europe. As with most other Old English poetry, the language of Widsith is Late West Saxon, with older remnants of Anglian dialect, and the manuscript is from the tenth century. Orthography, choice of words and word forms, however, suggest that Widsith as a text was shaped comparatively early, no later than the eighth century (Malone 1962; Neidorf 2014c). What is more, many of the names Widsith recites, which are quite unknown to us today, are hardly tribal names in the real sense, but eponymous designations given after well-known princes, rather like the Helmings, Hrethlings, and Wægmundings of Beowulf, designations that were far too short-lived to have left any trace in other extant written sources. Widsith has a clear northwest continental and southern Scandinavian centre of gravity, consistent with Widsith’s claim to belong to the people of the Myrgings, who lived somewhere in northwestern Germany. Mention is also made here of the Danish kings Hrothgar and Hrothulf, the Danes’ great hall of Heorot, the Swedish kings Ongentheow (Egil) and Eadgils (Adils), and peoples such as the Swedes, Geats, Danes, and Heathoreams, all of them spoken of in Beowulf. But just as in Beowulf, there is nothing Anglo-Saxon in Widsith. When the Angles are mentioned, it is under the legendary Offa, long before their emigration to England. All the indications are that Widsith is a northwest continental and southern Scandinavian chronicle that was transferred to England and memorized fairly mechanically there before being committed to writing. One report in Widsith, though, can be linked to Beowulf, namely the account of how Hrothulf and Hrothgar long kept peace together, uncle and nephew, after they had driven away the race of Vikings and smashed to pieces the Heathobard army of Ingeld at Heorot. But while Widsith talks here about a victory for the Danes, in Beowulf it is claimed that the Heathobards burned down Heorot. It would seem that Widsith records a Myrging tradition about the Heathobards suffering a defeat, and Beowulf a Scandinavian tradition about them burning down Heorot. One does not rule out the other. Apart from this, Widsith contains no information about the various historical contexts that fill Beowulf, other than the fact that Ongentheow led the Swedes and Helm the Wulfings. Just like Beowulf, the historical content of Widsith ends in the transition between the Middle and the Late Scandinavian Iron Age. Nothing in Widsith can be referred to a later period than the middle of the sixth century, the time of the great famine disaster in northern Europe and the beginning of the dark transition from late antiquity to the Early Middle Ages in Europe. There is thus significant agreement between Beowulf and Widsith in terms of their chronology and geography, and the tribes and rulers referred to. In the case of Widsith, too, it is meaningless to speak of an author in the ordinary sense of the word. Widsith is primarily a continental, northwest Germanic oral chronicle of the thula type that was transferred to England and there continued to be transmitted orally in Old English, with limited reworking, before it was written down.



Some Unproven Premises

13

Kemp Malone assumes that the tradition behind Widsith arose in the northwest corner of continental Europe. The first of its three thulas, he argues, could have come into being on Funen (Fyn) in Denmark and later been transferred to England via Angles in northwestern Germany (Malone 1962). Lotte Hedeager takes the view that the entire traditional core of Widsith could originate from Gudme on Funen (Hedeager 2011), which is a perfectly reasonable idea. In my opinion, it cannot even be ruled out that the tradition behind Widsith may have reached England along similar routes to those outlined here for Beowulf, possibly even through the same tradition bearers, and been transferred into Old English and given its slight Christian colouring in a similar way. An Old English author, then, could not possibly have composed Beowulf on the basis of Widsith or any other Old English text. In Hrólfs saga kraka, Grettis Saga, Harðarsaga, Gullþóris saga, Þiðrekssaga af Bern, and the work of Saxo Grammaticus, on the other hand, there are figures and events that tie in with Beowulf, including what are generally regarded as possible reflexes of Beowulf himself. The fact that such material has only been preserved in Scandinavia, with its late literate culture, and not at all in England, with its much older literate tradition, is in itself a clear indication that the poem was composed in Scandinavia and not in England. It is surprising how rarely the questions raised by the premise of Scandinavian traditional material in England are actually asked. How and when did this material reach England and how extensive was it? Did the poet come into contact with it in Old English or an early form of Norse, and in a spoken or written form? One of the few scholars in modern times who have taken the problem of the traditional background to the poem seriously is Sam Newton. But when he claims, in his very readable book The Origins of Beowulf and the Pre-Viking Kingdom of East Anglia, that it is only in England that the Old English poet can have learnt of people and events in the poem that are not mentioned in Scandinavian sources (Newton 1993, 20–26), his argument is undermined by the fact that there are no traces of those individuals and occurrences in Anglo-Saxon sources either, and also by the fact that it is based on what was to be proved, namely that the poem was composed in England. No scholarly argument can be stronger than its weakest link. But when it comes to the assumption that Beowulf was written by an Old English poet who had access to Scandinavian traditions, there are no links at all.

An English Material Setting

It is perhaps an awareness of this deficiency that has sometimes prompted scholars to assume that the poet used his own Anglo-Saxon world as a pattern for the material world of the poem. But as the following chapters will show, that is not possible. Major elements of the material and hence also the ideological setting of the poem were simply not accessible to a poet in England during the Anglo-Saxon period (see Chapters 3–5).

14

Chapter 3

Composed in Writing From the first line to the last, Beowulf is packed full of features typical of oral literature in verse form (see Chapter 11). Much has been said about the relationship between oral and written culture in Anglo-Saxon times generally, but I have been unable to track down any study showing that Beowulf cannot have been composed orally but must have come into being in writing. Had such a study been carried out, there would have been countless references to it. At best, this sharp contradiction could be attributed to the poet having written the work making systematic use of the entire arsenal of literary devices at the disposal of oral epic. And when the “narrator” of the poem several times speaks as if to an audience, this is attributed to the poet deliberately using the literary device of expressing himself as if addressing an audience or expecting his work to be read aloud to one. Quite clearly, though, other explanations are conceivable. It seems extremely improbable that a writer during the period in question, which is dated on philological grounds to around ad 685–725, could have pulled off so advanced a literary project so consistently and on such a large scale. I am not aware of any other major contemporary work of Germanic poetry that can be said for certain to have been composed in writing in the manner assumed for Beowulf. And as far as other Old English literature is concerned, little, if any, can be said with certainty to be the result of a process of written composition. As long as the law of gravity prevails and up is up and down is down, it makes no sense to regard an abundance of traces of oral literature as a manifestation of written composition. It seems far more reasonable to me to conclude that, in all essentials, the Beowulf tradition was originally composed and transmitted orally, and only secondarily shaped into a written work.

A Christian Composition

When the pagan content of the poem is considered in relation to its Christian elements, as is attempted here (see Chapter 9), the latter strike us not only as superficial, but also as having been added secondarily, and in a contradictory manner, to what is clearly a pagan core.

Conclusion

The assumption that Beowulf was composed independently by an Old English poet presupposes that the poet had access to a not insignificant supply of relevant oral Scandinavian traditions. That premise fails because there are no traces of such traditions in the rest of the rich body of writings in Old English. The idea that the markedly oral character of the poem reflects a process of written composition lacks support in any comparable literary sources. As will be seen in the following, moreover, an Old English poet cannot have depicted the material culture of the poem on the basis of the world in which he himself lived and moved.



Some Unproven Premises

15

These three premises, which are completely crucial to the theory of an Old English author, thus seem to be no more than assumptions. The fourth premise, that Beowulf is a Christian composition, can only be upheld by ignoring the clear pagan core of the poem. It has to be asked, therefore, how the proposition that Beowulf was composed in writing by a Christian poet in England could become so firmly established. Why is it not assumed that the poem was composed orally in a secular Anglo-Saxon setting, based on Scandinavian pagan traditions, and that the Christian elements were added secondarily in the course of oral transmission or when the poem was written down or copied? One answer could be that the idea would then inevitably suggest itself that the Scandinavian tradition behind the poem in fact consisted of a coherent oral Scandinavian poem that was secondarily transferred into Old English. So, if one wishes to avoid that conclusion, it has to be assumed that the poem was composed in writing. And since, in early Anglo-Saxon times, fluency in writing was almost exclusively confined to Christian settings, there is nothing for it but to claim that the poem was composed by a Christian poet. One thing implies the other.

Chapter 4

DATING OF THE POEM The question of Beowulf’s origins is usually addressed in a comparative philological and literary perspective, and only rarely from a historical and archaeological point of view. But as a comparative literary study presupposes what first has to be proved, namely that the poem was written by an Old English author, such an approach cannot be considered before the problem of the origins of the work has been thoroughly investigated. Our next step, then, must be to consider what the linguistic, historical, and archaeological source material relating to the poem has to tell us. Manuscript

The only preserved manuscript, written in Anglo-Saxon minuscule, is generally—and chiefly on palaeographic grounds—considered to have been produced by two scribes, some time around 1000–1010 (Fulk et al. 2009, xxv ff.). There have been countless discussions about possible earlier manuscripts. For a long time, there has been significant agreement that the surviving manuscript was preceded by at least one older one. A view now embraced by many scholars, based on lexical, orthographic, palaeographic, and other criteria, is that the preserved text shows traces of at least one earlier manuscript from the period just before or after ad 700 (Neidorf 2014a).

Linguistic Dating

Given the premise that Beowulf was written by an Old English poet, efforts to date it have quite naturally focused on philological evidence. The language of the poem is primarily Late West Saxon, the southern English dialect that was the leading literary language of England from the later part of the ninth century onwards. As has been mentioned, though, there are also archaic dialectal features that point back in time to the Anglian areas of Northumbria, Mercia, and East Anglia. A long-standing consensus that the poem was created in the eighth century, or just before or after that, evaporated at a conference in Toronto in 1980 (Chase 1981), marking the start of a long period in which many scholars, not least on literary grounds, advocated a later dating, often placing the poem in the late Viking Age (Davis 2006; North 2007; Frank 2007; Damico 2015). Beowulf has thus been dated to anything from 600 to 1100 (Drout et al. 2014). Mention should also be made of an agnostic school, now almost extinct, which took a pessimistic view of ever being able to date the poem: I readily confess that I should be at a loss to tell when, where, by whom, and under what circumstances, this greatest of all early-Germanic epics was composed. (Renoir 1986, 68)

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Chapter 4

I now consider it axiomatic that the problem of the poem’s date is insoluble. (Earl 1994, 16–17) The embarrassment, even the scandal of Old English scholarship is not merely that we have no accepted date for Beowulf but that we cannot even agree on a century. (Howe 1997, 216) Until new facts surface, all we can say with assurance when asked when, by whom and for whom the poem was composed is that we are not sure. (Bjork and Obermeier 1997, 33)

most problems, from the existence of God to the dating of Beowulf, are just too hard for us, involving propositions that we can neither prove nor refute. (Frank 2007, 863)

As already noted, however, the pendulum has now swung back—with a vengeance—to an earlier dating. The shift began with Robert D. Fulk’s authoritative A History of Old English Meter (Fulk 1992), which highlighted a number of archaic linguistic and poetic features in Beowulf, especially its strict metrical use of vowel endings in accordance with “Kaluza’s law” (Kaluza 1909; cf. Neidorf and Pasqual 2014). Fulk drew the conclusion that the poem could not have been composed later than 825 if it was Northumbrian in origin, and not later than 725 if Mercian in origin, which in his view was the likelier alternative. In recent years, based on an overall assessment of various features of the poem, Fulk himself (2014) and scholars such as Leonard Neidorf (2013a, 2013b, 2014b, 2014c, 2015), Tom Shippey (2014), Megan Hartman (2014), Thomas Bredehoft (2014), George Clark (2014), and Aaron Ecay and Susan Pintzuk (2016) have concluded that it was circulating in England no later than some time between 685 and 725. Crucially, this conclusion, unlike many earlier ones, is not based on individual elements, but on an overall appraisal of a great many archaic metrical, lexical, semantic, syntactic, onomastic,1 orthographic, and palaeographic features, in other words, on a whole series of mutually largely independent factors, whose cumulative testimony seems difficult to ignore. For the first time in two hundred years, the dating of the text of Beowulf appears to stand on comparatively firm ground, cut free from a tangle of contradictory arguments based on individual factors and intuitive impressions. It is understandable, therefore, if Leonard Neidorf (2015) bristles when such weighty documentation is brushed aside in favour of loose allegories of socio-political conditions in England that allegedly place the poem after 1040 (Damico 2015). Here, though, an important point must be added. The conclusion that can be drawn from this is not that the story of Beowulf was composed in the late seventh or early eighth century, only that it was circulating in England at that time. This is because, given the lack of early Old English texts for comparison, it would be impossible to trace the poem further back in time using linguistic evidence, even if the story were older. In such circumstances, there is nothing for it but to go back to square one—and the neglected business of assessing the historical and archaeological content of the poem.

1  More specifically, misspelt personal names.



Historical Dating

Dating of the Poem

19

The only textual points of reference for a more precise historical dating of the events of Beowulf, noted by as early a scholar as Grundtvig (1820), are two Frankish sources, the Libri historiarum decem and the Liber historiae Francorum, which tie in with the poem’s account of King Hygelac’s death in Frisia. At the end of the poem, as Beowulf looks back on his life, there are several references to how, after some initial successes on a raid against Frisia, Hygelac was killed, how Beowulf himself slew the man who killed Hygelac, and how he finally managed to make his way home across the sea.2 The Libri historiarum decem (ed. Krusch and Levison 1951; Gregory of Tours, ed. Buchner 1956) was the work of Gregory of Tours, who lived from 539 to 594. The section of interest here (book 3, chap. 3), probably written in 573–575 (Gregory of Tours, ed. Buchner 1956, xxi), reads: His ita gestis, Dani cum rege suo nomen Chlochilaichum evectu navale per mare Gallias appetunt. Egressique ad terras, pagum unum de regno Theudorici devastant atque captivant, oneratisque navibus tam de captivis quam de reliquis spoliis, reverti ad patriam cupiunt; sed rex eorum in litus resedebat, donec navis alto mare conprae- henderent, ipse deinceps secuturus. Quod cum Theudorico nuntiatum fuisset, quod scilicet regio eius fuerit ab extraneis devastata, Theudobertum, filium suum, in illis partibus cum valido exercitu ac magnum armorum apparatu direxit. Qui, interfectu rege, hostibus navali proelio superatis oppraemit omnemque rapinam terrae restituit. (ed. Krusch and Levison 1951, 99)

After these events, the Danes with their king Chlochilaich sailed with a fleet across the sea to Gaul. After they had landed, they plundered part of Theuderic’s kingdom and took prisoners. When they had loaded their ships with prisoners and other spoils, they prepared to return to their native land. But their king remained on the shore while waiting for the ships to reach deep water, intending then to follow them. When Theuderic heard that his country had been ravaged by foreigners, he sent his son Theudebert with a large, well-equipped army. He killed the king and subsequently beat the enemies, defeating them in a naval battle and returning all the booty to the land. The Liber historiae Francorum is an anonymous text from around 727, written in halting Latin and, as far as the section in question (19) is concerned, based mainly on Gregory, though with minor additions: In illo tempore Dani cum rege suo Chochilaico cum navale hoste per alto mare Gallias appetent, Theuderico paygo Attoarios vel alios devastantes atque captivantes, plenas naves de captivis alto mare intrantens rex eorum ad litus maris resednes. Quod cum Theuderico nuntiatum fuisset Theudobertum, ilium suum, cum magno exercitu in illis partibus dirigens. Qui consequens eos, pugnavit cum eis caede magna atque prostravit, regem eorem interficit, preda tullit et in terra sua restituit. (ed. Krusch 1888)

At that time, the Danes, with their king Chochilaic, came with a large hostile fleet across the sea to Gaul, where they laid waste and took prisoners in the land of the Attoarii and other parts of Theuderic’s kingdom. After they had filled their ships with prisoners and plunder they headed out onto the open sea, while their king remained on the shore. When this was reported to Theuderic, he sent his son Theudebert to the area with a

2  2355–69, 2500–10, 2910–22.

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Chapter 4

large army. Having pursued them, he fought with them in a great and bloody battle and overwhelmed them, killed their king, took back all the booty and returned it to the land where it belonged.

A point to be noted here is that the tribe of the Attoarii referred to in the passage, who lived just upstream of the mouth of the Rhine, would appear to correspond to the Hetware mentioned in Beowulf in connection with Hygelac’s death.3 This is consistent with the chronicles’ accounts of the event taking place in the Austrasian part of the Frankish realm where Theuderic was king. It should also be mentioned that Dæghrefn, the name of the man who, according to the poem4, takes Hygelac’s life and is then himself killed by Beowulf, is a typically Frankish and not an Old English name, a fact which, according to Klaeber, lends a note of authenticity to the poem’s account of Hygelac’s raid on the Hetware (Klaeber 1950, 215). Beowulf also refers several times to the Frisians as Hygelac’s enemies.5 Remains of a number of defensive works along the coasts of northwestern Gaul and southern England from the first half of the first millennium (Higham and Ryan 2013, 34–36) suggest that Hygelac’s raid was not the first seaborne plundering expedition by a North Germanic tribe in this area. According to the poem, after Beowulf’s death the Geats can expect enmity from mere wīo ingasmilts, an expression that is usually transcribed as merewīonges(as)6 and generally interpreted as “the Merovingian/ Merovingians.” Linguistically, that conclusion is perhaps not entirely compelling (Stanley 1997, 201), but it is consistent with the chronicles’ references to Hygelac doing battle with Theudebert, who was of the Merovingian dynasty, and with the tribal name Hūgas in the poem,7 which can scarcely refer to anyone other than the Franks (Goffart, Walter 1981. Hetware and Hugas; Datable anachronisms in Beowulf. In: Chase 1981, pp. 83–100; Fulk et al. 2009, 310). According to the Liber monstrorum de diversis generibus (book 1, chap. 2) from around 700 or at any rate 650–750 (Lapidge 1982), which is extant in several ninth- and tenth-century manuscripts, the gigantic skeleton of a king Higlac[us] of the tribe of the “Getae,” who had died in a raid in the area, is preserved at the mouth of the Rhine: De Hyglaco Getorum rege. Et fiunt (monstra) mirae magnitudinis, ut rex Higlacus, qui imperavit Getis et a Francis occisus est, quem equus a duodecimo aetatis anno portare non potuit; cuius ossa in Rheni fluminis insula, ubi in Oceanum prorumpit, reservata sunt et de longinquo venientibus pro miraculo ostenduntur. (Lapidge 1982, 176–77)

Of Hygelac, King of the Geats. And there are [monsters] of enormous size, such as King Hygelac who ruled over the Geats and who was killed by the Franks, and whom, when he was twelve years old, no horse had the strength to carry. His bones are preserved on an island at the mouth of the river Rhine, where they are shown as a wonder to visitors from afar. 3  2363, 2916

4  2501.

5  1207, 2912, 2915. 6  2921.

7  2502, 2914.



Dating of the Poem

21

There seems to be a consensus that, for linguistic, geographical, and other reasons, the expression Higlacus, qui imperavit Getis cannot refer to the Getae, a people of the lower Danube just to the west of the Black Sea, but—as indicated in the translation above—to the Geats. Another point of agreement between the Liber monstrorum and Beowulf is that both sources state that many Geats were killed in these battles and that Hygelac’s body remained in the country of the Franks. Gregory’s reference to Hygelac as the king of the Danes is only seemingly problematic. Hygelac could scarcely have embarked on a plundering expedition against Frisia without collaboration with, and perhaps even some involvement on the part of, the Danes. Presumably, moreover, both the Frisians and the Franks had past experience of Danes as uninvited guests along their coasts. When Hygelac is referred to in the Liber monstrorum as king of the “Getae,” the reference, as noted, is very probably to the Geats. The assumption made by Magoun (1954b) and Lapidge (1982), that the account in the Liber monstrorum was influenced to some extent by the Old English Beowulf tradition, has been dismissed by Augustine Thompson, who firmly puts the case for an influence from Frisian tradition (Thompson 2001). His argument is supported by Timothy Burbery’s conclusion that the enormous bones which according to the Liber monstrorum were the long-preserved remains of Hygelac, shown to visitors as a remarkable curiosity, were in all likelihood bones of a woolly mammoth from the last ice age, which have been found in large quantities in the area in question. Certain parts of a mammoth’s skeleton are also surprisingly similar to human bones (Burbery 2015). Nothing is said in the poem or in Frankish sources about Hygelac having been a particularly large man. The striking links between Beowulf and the Frankish chronicles, and the lack of any evidence of mutual dependence between these sources, mean that there are few sceptical voices regarding their credibility on the subject of Hygelac’s military expeditions. One scholar with a more critical view, however, is the historian Arne Søby Christensen. He argues that the spelling of the name Chlochilaicus varies so widely that it is debatable whether it has anything to do with Hygelac/Hugleikr (Søby Christensen 2005). According to philologists, though, the variation is within reasonable bounds: Chlochilaicus, Chlochilaico, Chlochilaicho, Chochilaico, Chochilaco, Chrochilaico and Hrodolaicum in Gregory of Tours, and Chochilaico, Chochelaico, Chochilago, Hlodilago, Chodilaico, Chrodilaico, Chlochilaico and Chodilaico in the Liber historiae Francorum (Fulk et al. 2009, 310). As Klaeber observes, spellings such as Chlochilaicus and Chochilaicus differ only insignificantly “from the true form which we should expect *Chogilaicus” (Klaeber 1950, xli n1). Phonologically, in other words, Chochilaich is generally considered to correspond to Old Norse (ON) Hugleikr and the poem’s Old English (OE) form Hyġelāc. Even if it cannot be considered proven that Chlochilaicus and Chochilaicus are the same person as the Hygelac of the poem, it is highly likely that they are. Little weight should be attached, moreover, to the argument that information in the Liber historiae Francorum that is not found in Gregory, such as the reference to the Attoarii, must have been invented, as there are no other sources to confirm it (Søby Christensen 2005). Such information could of course go back to both written and oral traditions that have not been preserved.

22

Chapter 4

Another of Søby Christensen’s arguments is that we cannot give credence to Beowulf’s story of Hygelac in Frisia, since the rest of the poem is full of fantastical and supernatural elements. One objection that can be raised to that view is that the stories of Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the Serpent neither relate to the historical content of the poem nor “rub off” on its description of material and ideological settings. What is more, as I will show later, these “mythical” elements are probably not all that mythical, but can be traced to a use of metaphor typical of the time, which in the course of transmission came to be understood as intended literally. In the same way, the obscure accounts of Beowulf’s return from Frisia, swimming with the armor of thirty men over his arm, may be assumed to have originally reflected a real-life sea crossing in an oared ship (see Chapter 20). Based on the narrative sequence in Gregory, Hygelac’s death was previously dated to the years 510–515, but is now usually considered to have occurred in 521–526 (Storms 1970; Farrell 1982, 189–90, 210; Fulk et al. 2009, 311). After carefully weighing the sources, however, as early a writer as Chambers concluded that Hygelac may have died closer to 530 (Chambers 1932, 381–87). The same view is made clear by the title of Francis Magoun’s article “The Geography of Hygelac’s Raid on the Lands of the West Frisians and the Haettware, ca 530 a.d.,” although Magoun does not set out the arguments for it in his text (Magoun 1954a). Søby Christensen, too, has proposed a date in the late 520s, with a preference for 530. He refers for example to the fact that, judging from Gregory, Theuderic (who reigned from 511 to 534) does not appear to have entrusted his son Theudebert with any other missions as a military commander until the later part of his reign (Søby Christensen 2005, 65). I can find only one other such reference in Gregory, which notes that Theudebert was put in charge of waging war against the Visigoths in Spain around 532 (Gregory, book 3, chap. 21). Little is known about the years of birth of these Merovingians. Theudebert is often considered to have been born some time around 505, sometimes as late as 512. His mother Eustere tends to be assigned birth dates between 488 and 496. Only the earliest of these dates is compatible with as early a year of birth for Theudebert as 505. That he may have been born later is also suggested by the fact that he was only engaged (to Wisigard) and became a father in 530 and that he was not married (to Deuteria) until 533 (Gregory of Tours, book 3, chaps. 20 and 22). Even if the precocious Frankish kingsto-be of the time may have been given formal responsibility for wars at a young age, it is probably safe to assume that their voices would at least have broken before they were personally put in command of large armies. The little we know about Theudebert’s early life, then, gives us good reason to assume that Hygelac’s death in Frisia did not occur until around 530, plus or minus a couple of years. In Chapter 22 I argue that the main events of the poem take place within twenty to twenty-five years of Hygelac’s death. Alongside Hygelac (Hugleik(r)), the Danish kings Healfdene (Hálfdan(r)), Halga (Helgi/Helghe), Hrothgar (Hróarr/Ro), and Hrothulf (Hrólfr/Rolf), and the Swedish kings Ongentheo(w) (Angantýr/Egil), Ohthere (Ó� ttarr/Ottar), Onela (Á� li/Ale), and Eadgils (Aðils/Adils) can also reasonably confidently be regarded, based on other his-



Dating of the Poem

23

torical sources, as historical figures from the late Migration Period (Klaeber 1950, xxx– xlv; Chadwick and Chadwick 1932, 135ff.; Malone 1962, 126–216). The fact that Eadgils may have been a king of the Swedes some years into the early Vendel Period is immaterial in this context, as Beowulf only follows him up to the time he comes to power. The information in the poem about two parallel royal dynasties among the Danes (the Scyldings, or Skjǫldungs) and the Swedes (the Scilfings/Scylfings, or Skilfings)8 during the second half of the Migration Period seems quite plausible in historical terms. The name-giving practices found in Beowulf for the royal dynasties of the Geats, Danes, and Swedes are based on alliteration and variation of the same kind as we come across in many other Germanic ruling families of the Migration Period (Nerman 1913, 1931; Flom 1917; Wessén 1927b, 14–64; Woolf 1939). As this practice also occurs during the Late Iron Age, it cannot be used for dating purposes in this context, but is nevertheless perfectly compatible with a dating of the events of the poem to the Migration Period. This is further supported by the fact that several personal names, such as Ongentheow, Wealhtheow, Ecgtheow, Eadgils, Onela, and Hrothulf, point back to the time before the Germanic Sound Shift.

Archaeological Dating

Early on, Knut Stjerna drew attention to a group of archaeologically identifiable elements in the poem—such as swords, especially ring swords, helmets, in particular those with boar crests, shirts of mail, funeral rites, and notions of death—as typical of the late Migration and early Merovingian/Vendel periods in Scandinavia (Stjerna 1903, 1905, 1912). The archaeological picture has since been added to by scholars such as Birger Nerman (1948), Sune Lindqvist (1948a, 1948b), Rosemary Cramp (1957), Rupert Bruce-Mitford (1974, 1975), Hilda Ellis Davidson (1980), Catherine Hills (1997), and Leslie Webster (1998). It should be noted, however, that all of these scholars have primarily emphasized elements in the poem for which there is archaeological evidence in Scandinavia or England from the time in which Beowulf is considered to have originated, but failed to note what has not been found from different periods in these areas. In the late Roman Iron Age and the Migration Period, we find an unparalleled wealth of gold in Scandinavia, resulting from large Roman tribute payments, plunder, and payments of soldiers’ wages in late Roman times and the early part of the Migration Period (Herschend 1980; Fischer 2005). With the fall of the Roman Empire, however, the influx of this precious metal largely petered out. As the Scandinavians deposited large quantities of gold in the ground during the late Migration Period, the ensuing Merovingian/ Vendel Period is marked, in archaeological terms, by a relative paucity of it. From that period there are virtually no finds of solid gold artefacts anywhere in the Nordic region.

8  The variant spellings of these (and other) names will be used interchangeably, depending on whether the context is primarily English or Scandinavian.

24

Chapter 4

The poem also uses expressions directly suggesting solid gold, such as bēagas ond brād gold,9 “rings and thick gold,” wundnan golde,10 “twisted gold,” and bēahwriðan,11 expressions that can scarcely refer to anything other than rings of solid gold. A similar argument can be advanced regarding rings as such. Neck and arm rings occur in large numbers in Scandinavian finds from late Roman times and the Migration Period (Lund Hansen 2001), but, it should be noted, they are exclusively of gold. By the early Merovingian/Vendel Period that followed, neck and arm rings, of any metal, have as good as vanished from the archaeological record throughout the Nordic region. This is in complete contrast to the Migration Period. I myself know of only one neck ring of bronze from the late Vendel Period, from House 08 at Eketorp on Ö� land. Should any other isolated examples to the contrary have escaped my notice, they remain exceptions that prove the rule. A small number of linked amulet rings of iron from the later Vendel Period (Hållans Stenholm 2011) represent something different altogether. As a recurring theme throughout the poem, there is talk of rings—bēag, bēah, and compounds of these words,12 and hrinġ13—and of princes generously dispensing them. In several cases, there are express references to neck rings.14 This makes it abundantly clear that the main events described take place in the period before about 550. All the talk in Beowulf about gold in abundance—especially in the form of rings, generally of gold and often of solid gold—places the material setting of the poem firmly in that period. King Hrothgar’s hall, Heorot, is referred to in the text as goldfāh,15 “sparkling with gold.” Its ceiling is said to be golde fāhne,16 “shining with gold,” and the mead benches, medubenċ moniġ, are golde ġereġnad, “adorned with gold.”17 Four times, Heorot is spoken of as a goldsele, “gold hall,”18 although this could also possibly—but only possibly— refer to the fact that gold was dispensed there. It certainly does not go without saying that this is a matter of poetic convention, poetic exaggeration, or mythical understanding. In halls from this period at Gudme on Funen, Borg in the Lofoten Islands, Slöinge in Halland, Helgö in Lake Mälaren, and other sites, melted gold has been found in postholes, which has been taken to mean that the posts of the buildings were adorned in some way with gold (Petersen 1994, 6; Herschend 1995, 222ff.; Herschend 1998, 49; Holmqvist 1979, 56ff., 64–65; Arrhenius 2011; Lundqvist 2000). Finds of gold-foil fig9  3105.

10  1382.

11  2018.

12  35, 80, 352, 523, 894, 921, 1102, 1163, 1177, 1195; 1211, 1216, 1487, 1657, 1719, 1750, 2018, 2041, 2172, 2176, 2284, 2370, 2635, 2763, 2812, 2826, 2995, 3009, 3014, 3105, 3163, 105. 13  1091, 1195, 1202, 1507, 1970, 2010, 2245, 2345, 2809, 3017, 3034, 3053. 14  1195, 2172, 2809, 3017. 15  308. 16  927.

17  776–77.

18  715, 1253, 1639, 2083.



Dating of the Poem

25

ures in the cultic building at Uppåkra have been interpreted in the same way (Larsson and Lenntorp 2004, 42; Larsson 2006). These archaeological observations provide a real-world background to the poem’s description of Heorot as goldsele gumena ġearwost wisse fǣttum fāhne,19 “the warriors’ gold hall with glistening plates.” Gold-foil figures have also been found in several other halls in Scandinavia from the Middle Iron Age, such as those at Slöinge and Helgö. When the Swedish king Ongentheow/Egil is attacked by the Geats, he retreats to what is referred to as a fæsten,20 an expression which in another context21 is compared to an eorðweard. This can only really be understood to mean that he sought refuge in what would today be called a hill fort. If my interpretation of the hrēosna beorh in the land of the Geats is correct, that expression too refers to such a fortification. The use of hill forts in Iron Age Sweden coincides to a large extent with the deposition of solid gold. Forts were established, extended, and in general use in the middle and second half of the Roman Iron Age and during the Migration Period. There are no known examples from the early Vendel Period. Traces of existing hill forts being used during that period are also extremely rare (Olausson 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2011d). A similar situation appears to have existed in central Norway, for example (Ystgard 2014, 175–214). It is difficult not to link this state of affairs to the fact that the early Merovingian/Vendel Period—the phase immediately following the disaster years of 536–550 (Gräslund 2007; Gräslund and Price 2012; Price and Gräslund 2014; see also Chapter 20)—was primarily a time of peaceful economic, social, and demographic recovery, with conditions conducive to an internal re-expansion of human settlement. Another example of a detail in the poem that could be regarded as fanciful, but more likely reflects a prehistoric reality, is the description of Heorot as innan ond ūtan īrenbendum,22 “[bound] inside and out with iron bands,” and īrenbendum fæst,23 “secured with iron bands.” This is usually taken to mean that the building was held together with iron bands. But such a building technique was neither necessary nor practically feasible, nor is there any archaeological evidence of it. As Fulk et al. (2009, 162) have pointed out, the wording Duru sōna onarn fӯrbendum fæst24 concerning the door of Heorot, which Grendel tears open, suggests that it was adorned with iron mounts in the same way as medieval Scandinavian church doors. The phrase can best be translated as meaning that Grendel “opened the door that was fitted with forged bands.” This interpretation is confirmed by finds of a large number of flat iron bars forming spirals and other shapes that once adorned the wide double doors of the palatial hall on the Kungsgården (“Royal Manor”) plateau at Old Uppsala, built in the early Vendel Period and only a little more recent than Heorot (Hedlund 1993; Karlsson 2011; Ljung19  715–16.

20  2950.

21  2334–35. 22  774. 23  998.

24  721–22.

26

Chapter 4

kvist and Frölund 2015). The words innan ond ūtan in the poem also become comprehensible in the light of the iron mounts for an interior door that have been found in the same hall building (John Ljungkvist, personal communication October 2017). Expressions such as “bound” and “secured” should be understood metaphorically in this context, the magical, fire-forged iron “binding” in the sense of securing the house and offering protection to its occupants.

Conclusions

Surviving textual sources clearly show that the main narrative of Beowulf plays out over the course of a few decades leading up to the middle of the sixth century, that is, the closing decades of the Migration Period. An appreciable number of the members of Danish and Swedish royal dynasties mentioned in the poem can be regarded, on the evidence of other sources, as reasonably well-attested historical figures from this time. A few objects of definite types spoken of in the poem, such as ring swords, boarcrested helmets and mail shirts, can be associated with both the Migration and the early Merovingian/Vendel Period. Crucially, though, there are no references in the poem to archaeological artefacts unknown from the Migration Period or to objects known only from Merovingian/Vendel times. This, combined with the considerable focus on rings and, to some extent, solid gold, firmly links the main events and material settings of the poem to the time before 550, that is, to the late Migration Period. The archaeological dating of the material settings of Beowulf, in other words, tallies well with the historical dating of its events. It should also be noted in this connection that archaeological chronology is independent of historical dating based on written sources. The historical and archaeological sources relied on here are completely independent of each other. Taken together, the historical and archaeological evidence places the main events and the material culture of the poem firmly in the late Migration Period, in the decades leading up to 550. Such a narrow archaeological demarcation of a Scandinavian historical tradition of this age, preserved in writing, is something quite unique. It seems extremely improbable that a lettered Old English Christian poet could have composed this distinct and credible historical and archaeological picture of a world so remote from him in time, geography, and culture.

Chapter 5

ARCHAEOLOGICAL DELIMINATION This chapter will

to some extent repeat what has been said before, but as its aim is different and the question is crucial to our interpretation of the poem, this is unavoidable. The archaeological references in Beowulf are often described in fairly general terms, and almost always for purposes other than my present one. A clearer archaeological picture will emerge if we note not only what specific material culture the poem represents, but also what elements are not known from Scandinavia and England during the period in which its events unfold.

Neck and Arm Rings

As we have already noted, a thread running through Beowulf is all the talk of rings and of princes who generously distribute them, or at least ought to do so. Rings are spoken of no fewer than forty-four times, in most cases as bēag or bēah,1 but also as hrinġ.2 In four cases at least, there are explicit references to neck rings.3 Hilda Ellis Davidson has suggested that healsbēaga mǣst,4 “the greatest of neck rings,” which Queen Wealhtheow presents to Beowulf, is a reference to the brēostġewǣde mentioned a little later in the text,5 which in that case should be interpreted as a chest adornment rather than a mail shirt. Davidson is reminded of the large Swedish gold collars from the Migration Period, from Möne, Å� lleberg, and Färjestad, made up of seven, five, and three gold rings respectively, covered with filigree (Pesch 2015a), and serving as large chest ornaments (Davidson 1980, 358). The suggestion is interesting, but the connection made is hardly incontrovertible. Neck and arm rings occur in large numbers in Scandinavian finds from the late Roman and Migration periods. Significantly, they are only ever made from gold. Similarly, Beowulf makes no mention of any other metal than gold being used for rings. Equally noteworthy is the fact that there is not a single definite find anywhere in the Nordic region of a true neck or arm ring of gold from the early Migration/Vendel Period that followed, and hardly any of such rings made from any other metal either.6 1  35, 80, 352, 523, 894, 921, 1102, 1163, 1177, 1195, 1211, 1216, 1487, 1657, 1719, 1750, 2018, 2041, 2172, 2176, 2284, 2370, 2635, 2763, 2812, 2826, 2995, 3009, 3014, 3105, 3163, 105. 2  1091, 1195, 1202, 1507, 1970, 2010, 2245, 2345, 2809, 3017, 3034, 3053. 3  1195, 2172, 2809, 3017. 4  1195. 5  1210.

6  I disregard here a number of simple spiral arm rings of flat bronze band, of the type found in a building from the Vendel Period (House Ö� ) at Eketorp fort on Ö� land (Iversen and Näsman

28

Chapter 5

What, then, of the gold collars just mentioned? From the West Mound at Old Uppsala there is a small face mask of gold filigree that is almost identical to those on the collar from Möne in Västergötland (Pesch 2015b, 263, 283). This mound was admittedly constructed in the late sixth or early seventh century (Ljungkvist 2005), but in elite circles at Old Uppsala, Valsgärde, and Vendel old luxury objects were often used as grave goods. The West Mound contained late Roman ivory gaming pieces and cameos that were a couple of hundred years old when they were placed in the grave. There are good arguments for dating the Möne collar to no later than the mid-sixth century (Pesch 2015c, 511–15). So, if the small filigree figure from the West Mound belonged to a gold collar, it does not mean that such objects were being made or were in general circulation in the early Vendel Period. And since collars, like neck rings, are unknown as grave goods, it equally cannot be ruled out that the small face mask belonged to some other type of artefact of earlier origin. As already noted, Scandinavia in the late Roman Iron Age and the Migration Period exhibits an unparalleled wealth of gold, ultimately arising from direct and indirect influxes from the Roman Empire via central and eastern Europe, influxes that declined with the fall of the empire, but continued to some extent through dealings with Byzantium and the Huns (Herschend 1980; Fischer 2005; Kent Andersson 2011, 90–92). Towards the end of the Migration Period, the Scandinavians appear to have deposited large quantities of gold in the ground, with the result that the following period seems to be marked by a relative paucity of the metal. To make the best possible use of what remained, craftsmen perfected a technique of mounting cut precious stones in a thin gold frame, with a background of thin gold sheet, a method which still gave the impression of sumptuous, gleaming luxury. Through such technical thrift, the working of precious metals was renewed across much of the Germanic world in the early Merovingian Period, resulting in an incomparable mastery of the art. In elite settings in Scandinavia during the Migration Period, the concept of a ring seems to be synonymous with gold. Expressions in Beowulf such as bēahwriðan7 and wundnan golde8, “twisted gold,” in other words, can scarcely refer to anything other than solid gold in the form of twisted neck or arm rings. In Old Norse literature, the word baugr in the sense of “ring” also appears to refer specifically to gold rings (Nerman 1960). The expression brād gold, “thick gold,” used in connection with a ring, suggests the same conclusion.9 In the phrase bēagas ond brād gold,10 the latter may reasonably be assumed to refer to solid gold, perhaps in the form of ingots of the kind included in the unique hoards from Tureholm in Södermanland and Timboholm in Västergötland, comprising 12 kg and 7 kg of pure gold, respectively (Kent Andersson 2011, 80–84).

1978). A neck ring of unknown date was found in House 08, Eketorp (Frands Herschend, personal communication). 7  2018.

8  1382. 9  3105.

10  3105.



Archaeological Delimination

29

Andreas Haarder translates the expression as “barrer” (“bars, ingots”), while Collinder opts for “råguld” (“raw gold”) and Alexander “thick gold.” An interpretation of brād here as “broad” is inconsistent with the fact that particularly broad gold objects are not known from the Migration Period. The poem rarely mentions what all these rings are made of, but when it does they are always described as being of gold. In my view, this silence only makes sense if the Beowulf tradition arose in an elite Migration Period setting in Scandinavia, where everyone knew that rings were always made of gold. The magical aura surrounding the concept of rings must have been beyond the grasp of an Old English poet. Solid neck and arm rings, of whatever metal, are completely absent from England from the end of Roman times to at least the beginning of the Viking Age, i.e., much of the Anglo-Saxon period. The only known examples of rings seem to be a gold finger ring from Norwich in Norfolk, a few hollow crescent-shaped rings of other materials found in children’s graves, a simple neck ring made from a brass bar from West Hesterton in Yorkshire (Pollington et al. 2010, 298–300), and half a dozen simple finger rings with twisted ends, of silver and copper (Høilund Nielsen 2013). Magnificent princely burials, like those at Sutton Hoo in East Anglia, Prittlewell in Essex, and Taplow in Buckinghamshire, do not deviate from this pattern. The absence of neck and arm rings in the rich Staffordshire hoard, with its profusion of high-status gold objects (Leahy and Bland 2014), could admittedly be due to its very special composition (Gareth Williams 2014), but other hoards also lack rings. Occasional finds of ring swords of a common-Germanic type do not change the picture. This absence of solid gold rings and paucity of solid gold generally in England coincides with a very limited influx of gold solidi after the Romans had left the country around ad 410. The overall picture would not be appreciably altered by isolated finds there of large gold rings. The poem’s many references to rings fit in all the better, though, with conditions in Scandinavia at the time of its events, the end of the Migration Period. The almost manic fixation on rings as a manifestation of princely power and social prestige that characterizes Beowulf, then, cannot possibly reflect royal settings in early Anglo-Saxon England. Words such as bēag and hrinġ do figure in certain other early Old English texts as well, but only in a few instances and mostly in passing and in contexts reflecting continental European rather than Anglo-Saxon traditions, as in Waldere (I: 29) and Widsith (65, 73, 74, 90). The examples, moreover, are vanishingly few in comparison with Beowulf, even though the latter represents only a tenth of all Old English literature. Certain references to rings in late texts such as Maldon, The Exeter Maxim 5, and The Seafarer can be attributed to their having come into existence in the late Viking Age, when old Germanic ring traditions had to some extent been revived in England as a result of close contact with Scandinavians.

Mail Shirts

Shirts of mail were the bullet-proof vests of their time. The almost magical power ascribed to them is illustrated in the poem by the scene in which Grendel’s mother

30

Chapter 5

attempts to stab Beowulf to death with a large knife, but is prevented from doing so by his mail shirt.11 Throughout the poem, shirts of iron mail, or “byrnies,” appear in the same prestigious contexts as helmets. This is not surprising. Only the highest social elite could afford a tailor-made protective garment composed of twenty to thirty thousand small iron rings skilfully joined together with copper or iron rivets. It would cost a man a small fortune to acquire one. Appearing in public wearing a mail shirt and helmet, brandishing a sword and shield glistening with gold and garnets, and surrounded by a well-armed band of retainers could be compared, in modern-day terms, to cruising along in a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud with a liveried chauffeur and an escort of police motorcycle outriders. Using various words and combinations of words, the poem mentions mail shirts as many as seventy-seven times at a liberal estimate, and thirty-nine at a conservative one (Scheman 1882, 25–27).12 The commonest word is byrne, followed by syrċe/serċe and hrinġ, these last-mentioned alternatives, on their own or in compounds, often as kennings for byrne. In addition, there are occasional examples of net and hræġl (Brady 1979, 110–28; Morini 2013). There is archaeological evidence of mail shirts from Sweden, Denmark, and Norway from the whole of the Middle and Late Iron Age, i.e., the Roman Iron Age, Migration Period, Merovingian/Vendel Period and Viking Age, and from both inhumation and cremation burials (Fredman 1992). In many grave finds, there are too few iron rings for a shirt of mail, and they may have been part of the neck guard of a helmet. Mail shirts from Scandinavia during the Roman Iron Age were presumably of Roman manufacture, but domestic production is assumed to have begun in the Migration and Merovingian/ Vendel periods (Arwidsson 1939; Fredman 1992). A good example of a byrnie is the 8 kg mass of rings from Vendel Grave XI in Uppland, from the early Vendel Period. Images of such garments are also found from late Migration and early Vendel times, on figured helmet foils of a Scandinavian type from Vendel Grave XIV, and in a bronze die from Björnhovda in Torslunda, Ö� land, used to make foils of that type. All the evidence suggests, then, that mail shirts were part of the parade dress of a warrior in princely circles in the Swīorīċe of the poem. Apart from the large ship burial at Sutton Hoo in East Anglia, from around 625, there is not a single known find of a shirt of mail in England from the whole of the period 400–1000 (Morini 2006, 2013; Pollington 2008, 42; Owen-Crocker 2011, 226). Nor are such garments depicted in the silver-gilt decorative frieze, probably for a helmet, found in the magnificent Staffordshire hoard (Pitts 2015). As the example in the Sutton Hoo burial was placed there together with a helmet and a shield that are generally considered to have been made in eastern Sweden, or possibly in East Anglia by eastern Swedish craftsmen or under some other influence from that part of Sweden, the mail shirt too 11  1541–56.

12  All depending on how we interpret expressions that could also represent the whole of a person’s battle gear, but which in most cases probably refer to mail shirts: fyrd-searo (232, 2618), gūð-searo (8215, 328), gūð-gewǣde (227, 2617, 2623, 2730, 2851, 2871), heaðo-rēaf (401), heaðowǣd (39), here-wǣd (1897) and hilde-ġeatwe (674, 2362).



Archaeological Delimination

31

has often been viewed as being of probable Scandinavian origin (Bruce-Mitford 1974, 1978; Morini 2006, 2013). This seems particularly likely, given that helmet, shield, and mail shirt represent a known combination of protective equipment for a Scandinavian prince of this period. There is good reason to assume that the shirt of mail at Sutton Hoo came to East Anglia from Scandinavia. The absence of mail shirts in early Anglo-Saxon England cannot be due to a lack of technical capacity, as the mail neck guards of the helmets from Benty Grange (BruceMitford and Luscombe 1974) and Coppergate in York (Tweddle 1984) make clear, although both are admittedly from the eighth century. Nor is it likely to be a result of special burial practices in England. If mail shirts had been worn by the Anglo-Saxon elite, this should have emerged clearly from the huge number of excavated cremation burials from the fifth and sixth centuries and inhumation burials down to the middle of the seventh. Their absence can hardly be attributed, either, to the fact that only certain men were buried with weapons and only some of these with a mail shirt. That was the case in Scandinavia, too. The many weapon burials from the early Anglo-Saxon period tell us a very different story. As Leslie Alcock has argued, it seems that the Anglo-Saxons quite simply preferred to fight in light, flexible leather cuirasses (Alcock 1987, 298–99). In fact, a warrior who is not weighed down by heavy mail can develop far more of the agility, speed and staying power that are so crucial in battle. What is more, in Scandinavia too, the majority of warriors probably fought without a mail shirt. When all is said and done, these costly garments were chiefly designed to show that you belonged to the very highest stratum of society. Perhaps they were in fact primarily reserved for duel-like combat between princes? The Italian linguist Carla Morini has made an inventory of all the written evidence of shirts of mail in Old English poetry and prose, and in laws and wills, and found that they are either consistently associated with foreigners or date from the late Viking Age at the earliest. She has also shown that the oldest native English images of mail shirts are from the eleventh century, entirely in keeping with the archaeological picture (Morini 2006, 2013). For my own part, I would add here that in Old English texts in which shirts of mail are mentioned and the action is set in the early Anglo-Saxon period, such as The Wanderer (94), Waldere (I: 17, II: 17), Elene (II: 100), and the separate Finnsburg Fragment (The Fight at Finnsburg, 44), the physical setting described is not Anglo-Saxon, but continental European. Significantly, moreover, the only chronological exception I know of to Morini’s finding regarding images, the mail-clad warrior on the Franks Casket, probably a Northumbrian work from the first half of the eighth century, illustrates a continental Germanic narrative tradition, namely that represented in Vǫlsunga saga. Morini also observes: The almost complete absence of any surviving example in the material culture of the fifth to seventh centuries in England is all the more unusual when the evidence for the use and manufacture of ring mail in the areas of the Continent closely linked with England in the fifth and sixth century is considered. One can only assume that the first Anglo-Saxon settlers either lacked the relevant manufacturing techniques, or failed to hand them down

32

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as they settled in an alien land. […] It seems that the adoption of chain-mail coat as a component of war gear in Anglo-Saxon warrior society came about only through the influence of Scandinavian battle fashion, experienced presumably in the Viking raiding and latterly via the Scandinavian settlement of England in the Late Anglo-Saxon period. (Morini 2006, 166; cf. 2013)

I would note in addition that, of all the words in Beowulf that clearly refer to a mail shirt, at least sixteen are not found in other Old English texts, although all but one of these form part of a compound. Four of the compounds in question are with byrne, six with serċe/syrċe, two with hræġl, two with net(t) and one each with īren, scrud, gewǣde, hom, searo, pād, sceorp and þrēat. Even then, I have not included a good many words and expressions that could denote a shirt of mail, but which may also describe the whole of a person’s battle gear.13 Nine of the compounds not found elsewhere, moreover, have final elements unique to Beowulf: -īren, -net, -scrud, -gewǣde, -hom, -searo, -pād, -sceorp and -þrēat.14 Only four of the basic words for a mail shirt, byrne, net, hræġl and hrinġ, also occur in other texts in Old English. When Beowulf and his thirteen companions come ashore in the land of the Danes and march up to Heorot, we are told of the clinking sound of their mail shirts, syrċan hrysedon.15 As they continue on their way, we read:16 Gūðbyrne scān heard hondlocen; hrinġīren scīr song in searwum […]  […] gangan cwōmon

The war byrnie shone, hard and linked by hand. The shiny iron rings of their armour sang […]  […] as they came walking

The same vivid visual image is conjured up when Beowulf enters the hall a short time later:17 on him byrne scān, searonet seowed smiþes orþancum

on him a mail coat gleamed, a battle net woven by the skill of a smith 13  gūð-byrne (321), here-byrne (1443), īren-byrne (2986), īsern-byrne (671), syrċe (226, 334, 1111), here-syrċe (1511), beadu-serċe (2755), hioro-serċe (2539), leoðo-syrċe (1505, 1890), līċsyrċe (550), beado-hræġl (552), fyrd-hræġl (1527), hrinġ-īren (322), here-net (1553), hrinġ-net(t) (1889, 2754), beadu-scrud (453, 2660), brēost-gewǣde (1211), fyrd-hom (1504), fyrd-searo (232, 2618), here-pād (2258), hilde-sceorp (2155), īren-þrēat (330).

14  35, 80, 352, 523, 894, 921, 1102, 1163, 1177, 1195, 1211, 1216, 1487, 1657, 1719, 1750, 2018, 2041, 2172, 2176, 2284, 2370, 2635, 2763, 2812, 2826, 2995, 3009, 3014, 3105, 3163, 105. 15  226.

16  321–23. 17  405–6.



Archaeological Delimination

33

It is hardly a coincidence that it has been suggested that the Germanic word byrnie/ byrne can be traced to a word meaning “shine, gleam” (Morini 2006, 2013). Whoever composed these lines must surely themselves have heard the bright sound of mail shirts on marching men and seen them glistening in the sunshine and the glow of a fire, and must also have been able to appreciate the difficult art of linking innumerable small rings of iron to form a functional whole. That person can scarcely have been based in England.

Cremation and Type of Grave

The poem’s accounts of the cremations of Hnæf and Beowulf are often assumed to derive from an awareness on the part of the supposed Old English poet that, back in pagan times, his ancestors had used this form of burial. But as Hilda Ellis Davidson (1980, 361) has pointed out, neither such a superficial background knowledge nor foreign literary models would have provided a sufficient basis for the poem’s very tangible descriptions of cremations. During the Migration Period in Scandinavia, cremation was far and away the dominant funerary practice, although a few inhumation burials did occur towards the end of that period and in early Merovingian/Vendel times. What, then, was the situation in England during the period in which the poet is assumed to have composed Beowulf? The numerous excavated burials from early Anglo-Saxon times have recently been systematically assessed using correspondence analysis and very detailed radiocarbon dating. The overall picture is clear. In England, the practice of cremating the dead declined dramatically as early as ad 560–570. By around 600 it had virtually ceased and inhumation had become almost universal, especially in Anglian areas (Bayliss and Hines 2013; Bayliss et al. 2013; Hines 2013, 2015; Scull 2013, 2015). Cremation had thus been abandoned at least a century before the Beowulf poet is assumed to have written the poem. The descriptions of Beowulf’s and Hnæf’s cremations (see Chapter 9) bear witness to intact pagan conceptions of death and the soul. The exceptional realism in the depiction of sumptuous furnishings on the pyre, the crackling of the fire, the sound of skulls and bodies bursting open, blood pouring out, the roaring draught of wind, smoke spiralling into the sky, the lighting of the pyre, selected wood brought from far away, and other ceremonies virtually presupposes personal experience of a princely cremation, far beyond anything that would have been accessible to an Old English Christian poet. After Beowulf has been cremated, a magnificent barrow is constructed as a monument to him. There is no mention, though, of such a memorial to Hnæf and those who died with him at Finnsburg. After his cremation, the company go their separate ways and not a word is wasted on the building of a mortuary structure. Contrasting as it does with the detailed account of the cremation itself at Finnsburg and with the careful construction of Beowulf’s barrow, this silence is significant. All the indications are that Finnsburg can be placed in southwest Jutland (Herschend 1997b, 319–24), and the picture the poem conveys does indeed agree with a common funerary practice in that area at the time, which involved leaving the cremated bones and artefacts on the ground

34

Chapter 5

as a monument in their own right, which then gradually became overgrown (Herschend 2009, 37, and personal communication). The poem’s very graphic descriptions of Beowulf’s cremation and the construction of a monument to him, and of Hnæf’s cremation, cannot spring from the personal experience of a scholarly Christian Old English poet, and scarcely from Anglo-Saxon antiquarian tradition either. In all essentials, they reflect a Scandinavian reality typical of the Migration Period.

Conclusions

A fundamental feature of the Scandinavian princely society that we encounter in Beowulf is a strong social fixation on costly, prestigious objects such as mail shirts, neck and arm rings, and solid gold. Gold is the only metal mentioned in connection with rings, which is entirely consistent with the fact that all known neck and arm rings from Migration Period Scandinavia are of gold. From the ensuing Merovingian/Vendel Period, there is hardly a single known find of gold neck and arm rings from anywhere in the Nordic region. Such objects are also entirely absent from England throughout the early Anglo-Saxon period, corresponding to the Migration and Merovingian/Vendel periods in Scandinavia. During this phase, other artefacts of solid gold are also comparatively rare. In addition, early Old English poetry referring to rings of a prestigious character consistently seems either to go back to a continental tradition or to be from the Viking Age. Old English literature in general, moreover, contains nothing even approximating to the picture of a culture of ritualized ring-giving that pervades Beowulf. Similarly, there are no finds of mail shirts in England that can definitely be said to be Anglo-Saxon. The only one known to us, from the large ship burial at Sutton Hoo, forms part of a clearly Scandinavian context that makes it reasonable to assume that it, too, is of Scandinavian origin, especially as shirts of mail are conspicuous by their absence in early Anglo-Saxon texts and images. It is extremely unlikely that an author in a country where mail shirts were not among the normal accoutrements of the elite would have peppered his epic with them, providing what is clearly an eyewitness account of such garments that is both vivid and marked by considerable linguistic variation. Morini’s conclusion that Beowulf cannot have been composed in England until the late Viking Age, when mail shirts begin to appear owing to a Scandinavian influence (Morini 2006, 2013), is contradicted, however, by the fact that numerous archaic lexical, metrical, semantic, and onomastic features of the poem and orthographic and palaeographic features of the manuscript clearly show that the story had by then already been in circulation in England for several hundred years. The idea of the poem having been created in England as a result of contact with Scandinavians in the Viking Age is also contradicted by the fact that, by that time, the Beowulf tradition would scarcely have survived in Scandinavia in a sufficiently original form to explain the poem’s distinct and concrete historical and archaeological references to the Migration Period, which go far beyond any to be found in Old Norse or other Old English literature with themes from that period (apart from the short Finnsburg Fragment).



Archaeological Delimination

35

Three times in the poem, King Hrothgar’s Danes are referred to as Hrinġ-Dene,18 “Ring-Danes.” Some scholars suggest that hrinġ here refers metaphorically to shirts of mail, others that it refers to rings; both interpretations are possible. But whichever is correct, such a choice of expression can only have occurred to someone who had themselves experienced the magical gleam of such high-status objects in princely settings in Migration Period Scandinavia. The same is true of the poem’s descriptions of cremations and burials. Their detailed realism can scarcely spring from the personal experience of an Old English poet, least of all that of a pious Christian in the Anglian area of England, in the late seventh or the eighth century. Beowulf is informed from start to finish by an elitist social ideology, reflected in phenomena such as mail shirts, neck and arm rings, solid gold, and magnificent cremations. The material and ideological picture of Scandinavian princely settings in the first half of the sixth century which the poem correctly and very expressively conveys was something an Old English poet would have had neither contemporary nor antiquarian references for. Nor do rings and solid gold seem to have figured in the Scandinavia of the poet’s day. So sharp is the contrast that the picture would not change appreciably if the odd conflicting archaeological find were to emerge in either England or Scandinavia.

18  116, 1279, 1769.

Chapter 6

RESULTS OF PRIMARY ANALYSIS, STEP 1 Historical dating places the events of Beowulf in the late Migration Period,

the decades leading up to the middle of the sixth century, entirely in keeping with the archaeological assessment of the material setting of the poem. Numerous and wide-ranging linguistic elements combined with orthographic and palaeographic features of the manuscript show that the story was circulating in England no later than just before or after ad 700, most probably in Anglian territory. The poem is considered to have been created by an Old English poet on the basis of traditions circulating in England about the hero Beowulf and about events and individuals in eastern Scandinavia during the sixth century. This assumption is contradicted by the fact that no such traditions are known in Old English sources, despite a rich body of texts apart from Beowulf. They can, though, be found in Old Norse and other Scandinavian sources, a clear indication that the poem was conceived in Scandinavia. From the first line to the last, Beowulf exhibits an abundance of features typical of oral literature, on a scale that is difficult to reconcile with the idea that the poem was composed in writing. Nor is any other major early Germanic poetic work that was indisputably composed in written form known to us. The abundance of neck and arm rings, other objects of solid gold, and shirts of mail, which was characteristic of Scandinavian elite circles in the Migration Period and which lends a particular ideological charge to Beowulf, was not to be found in England in the early Anglo-Saxon period. An Old English poet cannot possibly have painted this picture on the basis of his own contemporary environment or Anglo-Saxon antiquarian tradition. The conventional view that the large ship burial in Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo in East Anglia, from around ad 625, and the Staffordshire hoard, from later in the seventh century, reflect the material setting of Beowulf is incorrect. Chronologically and in other important respects, it is directly misleading. In earlier Beowulf literature, the material world of the poem has often not been satisfactorily delineated, with the result that the poem has frequently been illustrated in a misleading way, with motifs drawn from the Merovingian/Vendel and Viking periods. The aim of this first part of my analysis has been to assess whether it would have been possible for an Old English poet to compose Beowulf. My conclusion is that it would not. The historically and archaeologically clearly defined time frame of the poem and its very specific Scandinavian princely setting in material and ideological terms can scarcely have been recorded in any other area or period than Scandinavia in the middle of the sixth century. The possible time frame for the Beowulf tradition’s arrival in England can thus be limited to the period up to around ad 700. With that, we can move on to the second stage of my argument, which will be set out in Chapters 7–12.

Chapter 7

THE NAME GEATAS A reader with an interest in geography finds meagre pickings in Beowulf. Swīorīċe for “the realm or dominion of the Swedes,” Swēoðēod1 for “the people or land of the Swedes,” and Scedenīġ and Scedeland2 for “Skåne” (Scania) are the only Scandinavian geographical references that can be regarded as unambiguous. But that does not get us very far. Heorot primarily refers to King Hrothgar’s actual hall, but could also secondarily represent his royal seat and, in certain contexts, the whole of the Danish realm. Designations such as Earna næs,3 “Eagle Point,” and Hrones næs(s)4 may in my view derive from real names. Names like hrefnes holt and hrefna wudu5 are more likely descriptions of natural features than actual names. They are often interpreted as “Raven’s Wood,” but in the contexts in which they occur they could just as easily be poetic expressions for “the dark wood,” i.e., “the great wood,” comparable for example with Myrkvið in Hlǫðskviða (8), meaning “Dark Wood” (Lönnroth 2016, 456) or simply “the dark wood.” Nor is hrēosna beorh necessarily a name; it could equally well be a simple description of a place. At the heart of the poem are the tribal groups Ġēatas (usually translated as “Geats”), Dene “Danes” and Swēon “Swedes.” On the periphery, we find groups such as Ēotan “Jutes,”6 Frēsan/Frӯsan “Frisians,”7 Francan “Franks,”8 Hetware “Hetware,”9 Hūgas “Frankish Hugas,”10 Heaðo-Beardan,11 Ġifðas,12 Wendlas,13 Brondingas,14 Finnas,15 and Heaþo-Rǣmas.16 Most of them are easy to distinguish geographically, with the possible exception of the last five, although these groups play marginal roles in the poem. 1  2383, 2495 and 2922.

2  1686, 19. 3  3031.

4  2805, 3136. 5  2935, 2925.

6  902, 1072, 1088, 1141, 1145.

7  1093, 1104, 1207, 2503, 2912, 2915; cf. Frēslond 2357.

8  1210, 2912. 9  2363, 2916.

10  2502, 2914.

11  2032, 2037, 2067. 12  2494. 13  348. 14  521. 15  580. 16  519.

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Quite rightly, it is now generally regarded as incompatible with the geographical logic of Beowulf to regard Ġēatas as synonymous with Jutes or Goths. What is more, the poem explicitly refers to Jutes as Ēotan.17 The suggestion that Ġēatas refers to the Getae (Leake 1967), a people living to the west of the Black Sea, has met with justified scepticism on both linguistic and extralinguistic grounds. In the poem, Beowulf’s people are spoken of as Ġēatas no fewer than seventy-two times. The word occurs sixty-four times as a simplex,18 including once with the plural form Ġēotena.19 As part of a compound, it appears four times in Weder-Ġēatas,20 twice in Sǣ-Ġēatas,21 and twice in Ġēatmæcgum/Ġēatmecga, “the Geatish man/men.”22 On the basis of late apocryphal accounts of ancient battles between Swedes and Gauts (ON gautar, Sw. götar) (Skáldskaparmál, 41, 55; Ynglinga saga, 29; Skjǫldunga saga, 12), the Geats have for a long time generally been regarded as Gauts living on the Swedish mainland, an interpretation that is natural in purely linguistic terms. But detailed extralinguistic analysis proceeding from the text of the poem is difficult to find. Based on the idea that, to the poem’s Old English author, the Geats were simply a mythical tribe in distant Scandinavia, further inquiry into the matter tends to be considered futile. Not uncommonly, the Geats are placed geographically in the middle of the southern Swedish highlands, with the implication that they could have lived more or less anywhere in what is today called Götaland. But the name Götaland for all areas of Sweden south of Svealand is a modern-day administrative extension of an originally much narrower concept of “Götar.” All the evidence suggests that, towards the end of the Iron Age and in the Early Middle Ages, the tribal name Gauts referred only to people living in central Västergötland and western and central Ö� stergötland, possibly extending at times to parts of Närke (Ståhl 1970, 130ff.; Gahrn 1986; cf. Strid 2013). In those early times, areas such as Bohuslän, Halland, Småland, Skåne, Blekinge, and Ö� land do not appear to have been regarded as home to the Gauts or as part of a specific Gautish kingdom. As historically conceivable alternatives for the tribal name Ġēatas, we are thus left with the West Gauts (västgötar) of Västergötland, the East Gauts (östgötar) of Ö� stergötland, and the Gutes (gutar) of Gotland. However, as Ö� land has sometimes been suggested as well, I will also discuss that possibility.

17  902, 1072, 1088, 1141, 1145.

18  195, 205, 260, 362, 374, 378, 491, 601, 625, 640, 676, 829, 1171, 1173, 1191, 1202, 1551, 1213, 1301, 1432, 1484, 1538, 1551, 1642, 1785, 1792, 1831, 1836, 1850, 1856, 1856, 1911, 1986, 1930, 2184, 2192, 2318, 2327, 2356, 2390, 2402, 2419, 2472, 2483, 2560, 2576, 2584, 2623, 2658, 2901, 2927, 2946, 2991, 3137, 3150, 3178. 19  443.

20  1492, 1612, 2379, 2551. 21  1850, 1986. 22  491, 829.

The Name Geatas

41

Västergötland

Västergötland has always been regarded as the main alternative as the homeland of the Geats. This is no doubt due in large part to the region’s geographical proximity to Zealand (Sjælland) and England, and to the fact that earlier scholars linked the Geats’ battles with the Swedes described in the poem to references in Old Icelandic tradition to battles on the ice of Lake Vänern between the Swedish king Aðils (Adils, Eadgils) and Á� li hinn Upplenzki (Ale the Opplander, Onela), in which Aðils is said to have been victorious and Á� li to have perished (Ynglinga saga, 29; Skáldskaparmál, 44). It is not claimed in any source, however, that this Á� li is a West Gaut or indeed a Gaut of any description. As many scholars have shown, the tradition of Á� li hinn Upplenzki is based on a misunderstanding by Snorri Sturluson or his sources, more specifically Skjǫldunga saga. The decisive consideration here must be what Beowulf itself has to say on the subject. According to the poem, Onela, king of the Swedes, is in conflict with his nephews Eadgils and Eanmund, who seek refuge among the Geats. Onela pursues them “across the sea” to the land of the Geats, where Eanmund is killed. Later, in a reversal of fortunes, the Swedish prince Eadgils is helped by Beowulf to defeat and kill Onela. Here, the appreciably older and more matter-of-fact Beowulf is of much greater value as a source than the meagre and obscure references in the late Ynglinga saga, although Snorri may to some extent have worked on the basis of earlier skaldic poetry. While Snorri assumes Á� li to have been a Norwegian king, Beowulf identifies Onela as a king of the Swedes and Eadgils’ uncle. In Ynglingatal it is stated that Á� li dies in battle against Aðils, while in Beowulf Onela is killed in battle with the combined forces of Eadgils and Beowulf. A possible link between Beowulf on the one hand and Ynglinga saga and Skáldskaparmál on the other is that, according to Beowulf, Onela is defeated “in cold circumstances,” “on cold journeys fraught with sorrow,” ċealdum ċearsīðum,23 an obscure expression that has been interpreted in a host of different ways, while Ynglinga saga speaks of a battle on the ice of Lake Vänern. But neither Ynglingatal nor Ynglinga saga gives any hint of a war between Swedes and Gauts, and Beowulf is very clear about it being a matter of a civil war between two factions of a Swedish royal dynasty (see Chapter 15). In Beowulf it is clearly stated that the royal seat of the Geatish king Hygelac is situated close to the sea. But the countryside round the mouth of the Göta älv seems very unlikely as the central settlement area of the West Gauts, both in view of the rocky, unproductive character of the landscape and because it is doubtful whether the inhabitants of that area were in fact referred to in earlier times as Gauts. And even if the Geats did in fact live here, the distance by sea to the territory of the Swedes would be too great for the poem’s recurring military confrontations across the sea between Geats and Swedes to be plausible. Historically, the main settlement area of the West Gauts consisted of the fertile farmland of central Västergötland. And as Hygelac’s royal seat must be assumed to have been in a productive agricultural region with a rich hinterland, only central Västergötland 23  2396.

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Chapter 7

can be considered a possibility for its location. But that, on the other hand, would be in direct conflict with the reference to his residence being close to the coast, with the Geats being associated with the sea no fewer than forty-two times in the poem, and with the fact that they repeatedly wage war against the Swedes after journeys in one direction or the other “across the sea” and “over the wide water.” The large Lake Vänern has often been suggested as the “sea” linking the Swedes and the Geats. But neither the archaeological record, historical sources, nor place-names indicate that the area round the northern shore of Vänern was controlled by Swedes during the Migration Period. According to Ynglinga saga, Värmland became of some interest to the Swedes when Ó� láfr Trételgja (Olof Trätälja) settled there temporarily with a breakaway group, but he did so in direct opposition to the Swedish kingdom and presumably not until the seventh century. And in one case at least the water linking the Swedes and the Geats is spoken of as a hæf,24 a word referring in general to a body of salt water. Nor is there anything to suggest that the Scandinavians ever viewed Lake Vänern as a sea or did not distinguish between fresh and salt waters.

Östergötland

Sea journeys between the territories of the Swedes and the East Gauts (östgötar), by contrast, seem far more natural. On the other hand, such journeys would largely have passed through inshore waters, rarely crossing the “wide sea” and the “wide water” expressly referred to in Beowulf. What is more, the economic and population centre of Ö� stergötland has never been in its undulating eastern coastlands, but in the rich arable areas of the west and centre of the province. Since the poem is very clear about the royal hall of the Geats being directly adjacent to the sea, therefore, the only possible location for it would be the area just inland of the long and narrow Bråviken inlet. But then the distance by sea to Zealand would be a bit too far in relation to the journey times stated in the poem. A strong argument against Ö� stergötland as the Geats’ homeland, moreover, is the internal logic of the poem itself. On Beowulf’s visit to Hrothgar, the latter recalls that Beowulf’s father Ecgtheow had married the only daughter of the Geatish king Hrethel,25 and he also mentions that, after slaying Heatholaf of the Wulfings, Ecgtheow fled to Hrothgar because the Geats did not dare receive him for fear of war.26 The Wulfings are usually regarded as identical to the tribe of the same name in Widsith, who, according to that source, have a ruler called Helm. Hrothgar’s wife, Wealhtheow is referred to in Beowulf as a Helming and is assumed to be a descendant of the said Helm and hence to belong to the Wulfings. This could explain why Ecgtheow turns to Hrothgar for assistance and why the latter reaches an amicable settlement with Ecgtheow’s enemies, who would of course in that case be his wife’s kinsmen. A point to be noted here is that, in Skáldskaparmál, Hyndluljóð, Vǫlsunga saga, Sǫgubrot, Norna-Gests þáttr, and Heim24  2477.

25  372–75. 26  459–64.

The Name Geatas

43

skringla, the Wulfings are identified with the East Gauts. So, if, having made himself an enemy of the East Gauts, Ecgtheow had initially considered fleeing to the Geats, then the latter of course cannot themselves be East Gauts. Another circumstance also tells against the options of Ö� stergötland and Västergötland. Had the Geats had their home in either of these areas, one might have expected this to be indicated occasionally by distinguishing epithets such as “West” and “East,” in the same way as the poem refers to “South,” “North,” “West” and “East Danes,” and just as Jordanes speaks during the same period of the Gauthigoth, Ostrogothae, and Vagoth. This never happens. Instead, the Geats are several times defined by the epithet weder, in expressions such as Weder-Ġēatas and Wederas. As the above makes clear, a close reading of Beowulf from physical-geographical, topographical, historical, and archaeological points of view provides a good many arguments against the idea that the Geats are Gauts, and none in favour of it. In fact, no scholar has been able to point to a single detail in the text of the poem that shows that the Geats are Gauts living in either Västergötland or Ö� stergötland. Evidently, the old postulate of an Old English author with an unclear grasp of Scandinavian geography has provided absolution from the requirement of source criticism on this question.

Öland

On the basis that the homeland of the Geats is spoken of as an ēalond, an island, Knut Stjerna concluded that it must be Ö� land. He also pointed out that Wulfstan, in the ninth century, referred to Ö� land as Eowland (Bately 2009, 15). In addition, Stjerna argued that the information given in the poem about the duration of Beowulf’s voyage to the land of the Danes is compatible with the distance from Ö� land, that the Ö� landers would primarily have chosen to travel by sea to the Swedes, and that the topography of the island could fit in with certain other details in the poem (Stjerna 1912). Thus far, Ö� land appears to be a reasonable alternative. It also seems obvious that, from the vantage point of the mainland, Ö� land would once have been referred to as “the island or island area” (OSw. øland(et)), an expression that gradually evolved into a fullyfledged name (Nyman 2002; Vikstrand 2007, 23–24). On the other hand, the first elements of øland and ēalond have different linguistic origins, OSw. ø (ON ey, PrN *aujō) meaning “island” and OE ēa “water.” However, there is another, quite decisive argument against placing the home of the Geats on Ö� land. There is not the slightest suggestion in any source that, in early times, the Ö� landers ever called themselves Gauts or anything similar, or were so called by others. The only known early tribal name for the people of Ö� land seems to be önningar (Brink 2008), a name possibly reflected in Widsith, which, alongside several other Scandinavian personal and tribal names, mentions that Oswine weold Eowum (Widsith, 26), “Oswin ruled the islanders.” Ö� land, in other words, is out of the question.

44

Gotland

Chapter 7

A Maritime People Over twenty-five years ago, I developed on Gad Rausing’s idea that Beowulf had his home on Gotland by putting considerable emphasis on what the poem has to say about the Geats’ battles with the Swedes being associated with journeys across the sea, ofer heafo,27 and on how expressions such as ofer sǣ sīde28 and ofer (w)īd wœter29 surely have to be interpreted as “across the wide sea,” and not as referring to journeys across a large lake. Above all, I drew attention to Sune Lindqvist’s translation of the epithet weder for the Geats as “ram, wether,” pointing out that the ram was the official national symbol of the Gotlanders in the thirteenth century and probably also, judging from Guta saga, in the early eleventh century (Gräslund 1993). Hygelac’s royal seat is expressly said to be situated a short walking distance from the sea. The references to its proximity to the coast are numerous, consistent, and unequivocal.30 In addition, there are constantly repeated mentions of sea voyages to and from the homeland of the Geats. Twice, the latter are spoken of as sǣmanna/sǣmannum,31 and on one occasion, in connection with his attack on the Swedes, King Hæthcyn is called a brimwīsan “sea prince.”32 The sea is mentioned no fewer than forty-two times in connection with the Geats, in a way that rules out any chance of this being a coincidence. Often, the poem uses words that can denote both seas and lakes, such as sǣ, holm, lagu, brim and mere, but in most cases, it is clear from the context that the reference is to the sea. Sometimes, moreover, words referring only to bodies of salt water are employed, such as ġeofon33 and hœf.34 Virtually all the examples relate to the Geats’ contacts either with the royal seat of the Danes or with the Swedes and Swīorīċe: sǣ,35 sǣcyning “sea king,”36 Sǣ-Ġēatas “Sea Geats,”37 sǣrinċ “sea warrior,”38 sǣbāt “ship,”39 sǣwudu “ship,”40 sǣgenġa “sea-goer, ship,”41 sǣġēap “spacious (for use on the sea),”42 sǣmēþe “sea27  2477.

28  2394.

29  2472b.

30  194–216; 1914–25, 2241–43, 2335, 2411–12, 2802–8, 3132–33, 3136, 3155–38. 31  329, 2954. 32  2930. 33  362.

34  1862, 2477. 35  2380, 2394. 36  2382.

37  1850, 1986. 38  690. 39  633. 40  226.

41  1882, 1908. 42  1896.

The Name Geatas

45

weary,”43 sǣwong “sea plain, shore,”44 sǣwylm “billow, welling of the sea,”45 holm “sea,”46 holmclif “sea cliff,”47 holmwylm “surge of the sea,”48 wœter,49 wœterӯð “wave of the sea,”50 wǣgholm “rolling sea,”51 wēġlīðende “seafarer,”52 swanrād “riding path across the sea,”53 lagucrœftiġ “experienced as a sailor,”54 lagustrǣt “sea road,”55 lagustrēam “sea current,”56 brim,57 brimclif “sea cliff,”58 brīmlād “sea passage, voyage,”59 brimstrēam “sea current,”60 brimwīsan “sea leader, king,”61 merehrœġl “sea garment, sail,”62 merelīdende “seafarers.”63 Twice64 the Geats are referred to as sǣmanna, “the men from the sea.” And when they hear of something from the outside, the tidings are conveyed to them by seafarers.65 It is no contradiction that the Swedes are also described at one point as sǣmanna, despite their living on the mainland, and that the Swedish king Onela is once spoken of as þone sēlestan sǣcyninga þāra ðe in Swīorīċe sinċ brytnade,66 “the most celebrated of sea kings who dispensed treasure in the realm of the Swedes,” as they come sailing across the sea to the Geats with their battle fleets. In the Middle Iron Age, moreover, the Swedish heartland around what is now Uppsala was directly adjacent to the inner reaches of an inlet of the Baltic Sea. A good many place-names in sæ-, such as Sätuna near Uppsala, were formed in the area at a time when the places concerned were close to a coastal inlet. But when it comes to expressions linking them to the sea, there is 43  325.

44  1964. 45  393.

46  240, 632, 1914.

47  230, 1421, 1635. 48  2411.

49  1904, 1989, 2473. 50  2242. 51  217.

52  3158. 53  200. 54  209. 55  239. 56  297.

57  2803. 58  222.

59  1051. 60  1910. 61  2930. 62  1905. 63  255.

64  329, 2954. 65  409b–10.

66  2382–83.

46

Chapter 7

nevertheless a huge difference between the Geats on the one hand and the Swedes and Danes on the other. These references to the Geats living by, journeying over, and receiving visitors from across the sea are so numerous, so consistent, and so unequivocal that decisive importance has to be attached to them. And since, in addition, there is nothing in the poem to identify mainland Sweden as the home of the Geats, it is reasonable to conclude that they live on an island. In fact, this is confirmed by the very text of the poem. Ealond utan

When, at the end of Beowulf, the Serpent discovers that its treasure is gone, it is filled with fury and destroys the whole area with fire, including the royal residence and the great stronghold of the Geatish people:67 Hæfde līġdraca lēoda fæsten, ēalond ūtan, eorðweard ðone glēdum forgrunden.

The fire-dragon had in fire completely destroyed the fortress of the people on the island out there.

The Old English word ēalond/ēaland is a compound of ēa “water” and lond “land,” and thus means “water land,” in the sense of “island.”68 In the West Saxon dialect of the poem, the word means “island” and nothing else. In the late ninth-century Old English translation of Bede’s Latin Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, ēalond is only used in that sense. It should also be noted here that the Beowulf manuscript is very clear at this point (see Kiernan 2015, line 2335) and that the reading ēalond has never been questioned. Island names such as Öland, Gotland, Åland, Sjælland, Lolland, and Langeland clearly show that -land was a natural suffix in earlier times for large islands in the Baltic Sea area. The same goes for the island of Saaremaa, whose Estonian name, Finnish name Saarenmaa,and Old Norse name Eysýsla all mean “the island territory” and are thus synonymous with the Swedish Öland. The correct translation of the expression ēalond ūtan is thus “the island out there,” seen from the vantage point of the Serpent’s den. In the first generation of translations of the poem, moreover, there is no hesitation about this. Ēalond ūtan is translated as “das Eiland draussen” (Leo 1839; Ettmüller 1840, 160), “øen derude” (Schaldemose 1847, 109), “Insel” (Heyne 1863 and 1868) and “ön utanför” (Wickberg 1889). This is still often the case at the beginning of the twentieth century, with examples such as “das Eiland von aussen her” (Trautmann 1904, 130–31), “on its island without” (Child 1904, 64), and “l’î�le” (Pierquin 1912). The first to have suggested a different interpretation seems to have been Sophus Bugge. Based on his view that the Geats were Jutes living on the Jutland peninsula, he was tempted to reinterpret ēalond as “ein vom Wasser an den meisten Seiten umgege67  2334–35.

68  Through the influence of Old French isle, an s later displaced the a of Old English, turning ēaland into island.

The Name Geatas

47

benes Land” (Bugge 1869, 68) or as “Land am Meere” (Bugge 1887, 5). This set the ball rolling. Bugge’s interpretation was soon picked up by others, who were keen to link the Geats to mainland Sweden, which is also a large peninsula. Heyne, for example, abandoned his original interpretation of “Insel” and began now to talk of a “wasserreiches Land” and “Land am Meere” (Heyne 1898, 168). After that, the floodgates really opened. Gering (1906) joined in with “alle Gebiete am Ufer des Meeres,” Gummere (1909) with “the stronghold all washed by waves,” and Wyatt and Chambers (1920) with “land that is bordered by water.” Björkman’s “vattensköljda fäste” (“water-washed stronghold”) continued on the same theme (Björkman 1902). In his second, revised edition, Wickberg (1914) retained “ön utanför,” but added, with apparent reluctance, a footnote mentioning the alternative “kuststräckan” (“the stretch of coast”). In his recently published translation from 1926, Tolkien follows the same pattern, suggesting “from without that sea-bordered land” (Tolkien 2014, 81). Rytter (1929) has “havlandet” (“the sea country”), Klaeber (1950) “seaboard,” Kennedy (1940) and Morgan (1952) “the sea-bound land,” and Collinder (1954) “bygden längs stranden” (“the settled country along the shore”). Today, variations on this theme completely dominate the scene: “the land along the sea” (Donaldson 1975), “all the coastline” (Garmondsway et al. 1980), “a la orilla del mar” (Lerate and Lerate 1986), “coastal land” (Jack 1994; Alexander 2005), “from the seaboard to the interior” (Swanton 1997), “the coastal region” (Heaney 1999), “the coast beyond” (Alexander 2005; Chickering 2006), “the land by the sea” (Crossley-Holland 1999), “l’esplanade jusqu’à la mer” (Crépin 2007), “the entire coastline” (Ringler 2007), “das Land an der See” (Lehnert 2008), “seaboard” (Fulk et al. 2009), “all the region surrounding” (Fulk 2010), “the sea’s headland” (Williamson 2011; Kiernan 2015) and “das Land an der Küste” (Frey 2013). Even more creative are interpretations such as “inland fortresses and coastal strongholds” (Greenfield 1982), “entirely and from without” (Liuzza 1999), and “the tribal stronghold on the sea-coast” (Hudson 2007). Sune Lindqvist and Andreas Haarder are among the few exceptions. Although Lindqvist places the Geats in Västergötland and Haarder places them somewhere on the Swedish mainland, they translate ēalond ūtan literally, the first as “ölandet där ute” (“the island out there,” Lindqvist 1958), the second as “ølandet udefra” (“the island from without,” Haarder 2001). None of these many departures from the basic meaning have any linguistic justification, nor are any of them convincing from a purely philological point of view. As noted by Fulk et al. (2009, 242), moreover, many scholars seem to have deviated from the etymological straight and narrow “reluctantly, for lack of unambiguous parallels.” An understandable reluctance, given that no other obvious meaning of ēalond than “island” is known. Nor is there any support in the rest of the text for this reinterpretation of the word. Nothing is said in the poem about the Serpent specifically venting its wrath on a coastal region, only that it devastates large areas.69 69  2315–33.

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Chapter 7

The idea that geographical precision about a distant Scandinavia cannot be demanded of an Old English author, combined with a lack of awareness of Gotland’s position as a power centreduring the Iron Age, has thus led countless scholars to turn a blind eye to the correct meaning of a word which, linguistically, is entirely unambiguous. It would have made more sense to observe that neither Västergötland nor Ö� stergötland is an island and that they are therefore out of the question in this context. Since the Geats’ dealings across the sea are exclusively with Danes and Swedes, their island ought to be somewhere between Zealand and eastern Svealand, in other words, in the southern or central Baltic Sea. And as the inhabitants of Bornholm, Ö� land, Å� land, and Saaremaa have never been referred to as anything even resembling Geats, we are left only with Gotland, the largest and wealthiest island in the Baltic, situated midway between the territories of the Danes and the Swedes. As we shall see in the following, Gotland is also the only island of significant size in the area with a population who, with their name gutar, can live up to the original meaning of the name Geatas, that is, “pourers” or “founders.” The epithet weder

A constantly recurring epithet for the Geats, as noted earlier, is weder. On its own, in compounds and in various inflected forms, the designation occurs no fewer than twenty-two times—more specifically, five times as Wederas/Wedera,70 four times in the compound Weder-Ġēatas,71 six times in the phrase Wedera lēod,72 four times in Wedera þīoden,73 twice in Wedra helm,74 and once in the compound Wedermearc.75 In Beowulf glossaries and in most translations, weder is generally said to mean “weather,” “wind,” or occasionally “storm.” Strangely, though, the plural forms Wederas/ Wedera are never translated, whatever the language, although the reader is not told why. As far as I can understand, this is because those concerned do after all sense that “the Winds,” “the Weathers,” or “the Storms” do not work as tribal epithets. In practice, many translators often have recourse to expressions which reveal that they are unhappy with their own interpretation, for example adding a noun to create expressions with tangible meanings, such as “weather men,” “weather dwellers,” or “weather land dwellers.” Another approach is to refer dutifully at the beginning of the poem to “Storm-Ġ� ēatas” or “storm-loving Geats,” before quickly moving on to various circumlocutions (CrossleyHolland 1999 and others). Yet another way of avoiding the issue is not to translate Wederas at all, but to let it serve as an epithet with a hidden meaning: “the Wederas,” “the Weders,” “die Wederas,” “les Wederas” and so on. Collinder (1954) strays particularly far from the original text, adding the word mark to the Wedera, Wedera þīod etc. of the Old 70  423, 461, 498, 2120, 2186.

71  1492, 1612, 2379, 2551.

72  225, 341, 697, 1894, 2900, 3156. 73  2336, 2656, 2786, 3037. 74  2462, 2705. 75  298.

The Name Geatas

49

English text no fewer than fourteen times, even though the expression Wedermearc only occurs once in the entire poem. It is not unusual, either, for Wederas to be systematically translated as “gøter” (Haarder 1975, 2001), “Geats” (Alexander 2005) or “Gauts” (Ringler 2007), as if the word was not even present in the text. A point to be noted here is that there is nothing in the poem to suggest that the Geatish homeland is afflicted with particularly bad or stormy weather. That there is not the slightest sign of a kenning on this theme is revealing. Twice in the poem, weder is indeed used in the sense of “weather,” but significantly this is not with reference to the Geats. In one case, it refers to the winter weather of the Finn Episode in the far south of Jutland,76 in the other, to the bad weather during one of Beowulf’s mythical sea journeys far from home.77 Inspired by the idea that the Geats may have lived on the Väderöarna islands and by Väderöfjorden in northern Bohuslän, in August 1985 Gillian Overing and Marijane Osborn conducted the laudable experiment of sailing from Gothenburg to Lejre in northern Zealand. They concluded that the time taken for the journey was reasonably consistent with that indicated in the poem. The brimclifu blīcan which Beowulf encounters on his arrival, they argued, corresponded to white chalk cliffs at the entrance to Roskildefjorden (Overing 1988; Overing and Osborn 1994, 1–37). Leaving aside the fact that this area does not have a great deal to offer in the way of white cliffs, and that there is nothing to suggest that Beowulf’s destination was Lejre (see Chapter 14), another objection is that väder is not attested in place-names on the Bohuslän mainland, with the exception of Väderöfjorden, which is named after the small, remote Väderöarna. Nor is there any indication whatsoever that the inhabitants of northern Bohuslän were once called either götar or anything resembling väder (“weather”) or vädur (“ram”). It is also out of the question, whatever the meaning of the word, that the small, windswept, and barren Väderöarna, far out at sea, could have given their name to a powerful tribal group. The same goes for Väderö in Halland, further to the south. In purely geographical terms, then, the interpretation “weather” is highly improbable. Powerful princely owners of halls such as Hygelac and Beowulf no doubt lived in central, prosperous agricultural areas that would scarcely have been more exposed to rough weather than any other part of southern Sweden. Such a semi-abstract concept as “weather,” moreover, is simply unlikely as a tribal epithet. Many different principles have guided the naming of ethnic groups, but often the starting point has been some genuinely or supposedly characteristic feature of a more tangible nature. The meagre linguistic record when it comes to many early tribal names leaves considerable room for speculation, but as far as I am aware, weather terms as tribal epithets are entirely absent from the rich stock of old Germanic names (Rübekeil 2006; Springer 2006). The traditional interpretation of weder as “weather,” in other words, seems completely without foundation. 76  1136.

77  546.

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Chapter 7

The only Beowulf expert I know of who interprets the word differently is Sune Lindqvist, who consistently renders weder as “vädur,” i.e., “ram, wether.” On the last line of the final page of his Beowulf dissectus, under the heading “Unusual words and meanings,” he notes, as the most natural thing in the world (Lindqvist 1958, 144): Väder: “vädur, gumse, bagge” [‘wether, ram, tup’]. In the plural vädrar, a common designation—with no overtone of contempt – for the Gauts.

In Old English, the word for “ram” is written as weðer, but occasionally the word for “weather” can have the same spelling (Bosworth and Toller 1972). In both Old Swedish (OSw.) and Old Gutnish (OGutn.), the word for “ram” is spelt weþer. This can be compared with old Gutnish dialects, in which, in compounds, the word for “weather” often had the form vädur and black thunderclouds could be referred to as vädurbockar (Herbert Gustavsson 1941–1945, 1197–98). The pronunciations of the words for “ram” and “weather” were probably so close to one another in Proto-Norse, Old Gutnish, and Old English that a Scandinavian word for “ram,” originally pronounced with a lisping sound, could very well, after a long period of recitation, writing down and copying in Old English, have ended up being rendered as weder. If we remove the stumbling block of thinking that Beowulf was the work of an Old English poet and proceed from the assumption that it was composed orally in Scandinavia, the question appears in a very different light. It needs to be borne in mind here that Lindqvist, in his translation, did not use the plural form vädurar but, perhaps sometimes for metrical reasons, the archaic vädrar, in compounds such as vädrafursten, vädramännen, and so on. Undoubtedly, this would partly explain why few readers have understood his form vädrar as meaning “rams.” Lindqvist’s radically different interpretation seems to have escaped most Swedish readers. Vädur represents a classic type of tribal epithet, and there is much to suggest that Wederas/Wedera78 in Beowulf means “rams, wethers.” What the poem is in all probability talking about is thus the Rams, the Ram Gutes, the Ram Prince, the Ram People, and the Land of the Rams (or “Wethermark”). Lindqvist himself did not discuss what his väd[u]rar could refer to, presumably because he was so attached to the idea that the Geats had their home in Västergötland. That Rausing did not do so, despite his view that the Geats were Gotlanders, can only be because he had failed to observe Lindqvist’s discreetly presented interpretation. If the Geats are consistently referred to in the poem as “rams,” this notion should also emerge from other sources. And so it does. To those acquainted with medieval Sweden, the word vädur strikes a familiar chord. Rausing Points to Gotland

As mentioned earlier, Gad Rausing, in 1985, identified the homeland of the Ġēatas as Gotland, primarily based on the frequent mention in the poem of their dealings with Danes and Swedes across the sea, and on the fact that the time which Beowulf’s voy78  2900, 3156, 2462, 2656, 2705, 2786, 3037.

The Name Geatas

51

age to King Hrothgar is said to take fits well with the distance from Gotland to eastern Zealand. Rausing also took note of two place-names and a reference to a topographical feature in the land of the Geats. Earna nœs,79 the place where Beowulf dies, could, he suggested, be the Arnkull (Nabbu) peninsula in the parish of När in southeast Gotland, just north of the Bandlundviken Bay. Hrones næs(s),80 where Beowulf is cremated, he interpreted as “Ronesnäs,” which could be the name of what at the time was a headland north of Ronehamn in Rone parish, that is, immediately to the south of the Bandlundviken Bay, not far south of Arnkull. Rausing also believed that the clif which is the first thing Beowulf and his men see as they approach their native country could be the 37-metrehigh Hoburgen cliff at the southern tip of Gotland, which is visible far out at sea (Rausing 1985). A few years after reading Rausing, I came to share his view that Beowulf’s home was Gotland, though not on the evidence of these place-names, but based on Sune Lindqvist’s interpretation of weder as “ram” and the fact that, according to medieval seals, the ram served as the official symbol of the Gotlanders. I also drew attention to information in Guta saga suggesting that in the early eleventh century the ram had had a fundamental symbolic significance for the Gutnish people (Gräslund 1993).81 As I have shown above, moreover, Beowulf’s homeland is spoken of in the poem as an island. The Ram as a Gutnish Symbol around 1030

According to Guta saga, the Norwegian king Olaf Haraldsson, helgi Olafr kunungr, moored his ships for a time at Å� kergarn in northeastern Gotland, presumably on his journey to Novgorod in 1029 or on his return from there in 1030 (Holmbäck and Wessén 1943, 304–11). Olaf’s visit appears to have caused alarm on the island. According to Guta saga, a delegation of “powerful men” led by Ormika of Hejnum called on him and presented him with tolf veþru miþ andrum klenatum, “twelve rams along with other valuables” (Guta saga, chap. 2, ed. Peel 1999, 8). It is striking how the rams are not only mentioned first here, but are in fact the only part of the gift whose character and number are specified. Clearly, the tradition represented in Guta saga regards them as more important than the other gifts, which are nevertheless spoken of as klenatum, a word which at the time can scarcely have referred to anything other than treasures made from silver. If the rams had only been intended to feed Olaf’s crews, they would hardly have been given such prominence, and ewes and lambs would have done just as well. The animals presented must have had a different significance. 79  3031.

80  2805, 3136.

81  With reference to Lindqvist, and independently of me, Tore Gannholm has made the same connection (1992, 28). In other respects, however, his views on Beowulf are more reminiscent of local patriotic drum-beating.

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Chapter 7

We can suspect here that the respects paid to King Olaf were prompted largely by a fear of his well-known and brutal missionary zeal. In real life, Olaf was not famous for saintly behavior, so the pagan Gotlanders had every reason to show him humble respect. I therefore regard their visit to the Norwegian king primarily as a deferential gesture towards their notorious guest, with the twelve rams and the “powerful” men to be seen as representatives of the whole of the Gutnish people. They can be compared with the twelve horsemen around Beowulf’s grave (see Chapter 16) and seen in the light of Å� ke Hyenstrand’s hypothesis, based on archaeological and onomastic evidence, of an old subdivision of Gotland into twelve districts (Hyenstrand 1989, 1996). For a large island like Gotland, with its unchanging size and natural boundaries, a regional subdivision of its territory during the Iron Age seems far more likely than for most other political groupings of the time. Ormika could possibly be the lawman of the Gotlanders’ assembly, or alþing, and the other men local lawmen or magnates. The name Ormika is also known from a short Gotland inscription from the time in question, and has been assumed by Thorgunn Snædal to refer to this particular man (Snædal 2005). It may be added that, according to Guta saga, Olaf managed—without resorting to violence—to persuade Ormika and the Gotlanders of the benefits of embracing the Christian faith. As I see it, it is only when we are aware that “Geats” in Beowulf refers to Gutes or Gotlanders, and that the epithet weder stands for “ram,” that this account in Guta saga makes sense. The story also shows that the epithet “ram” as a national symbol of the Gutnish people was still very much alive half a millennium after the events described in Beowulf. The Ram in Early Ecclesiastical Art on Gotland A good many churches across the whole of Gotland, including those at Atlingbo, Eskelhem, Fröjel, Garde, Guldrupe, Hejde, Källunge, Linde, Mästerby, Ö� ja, Sanda, Stenkyrka, Träkumla, Vamlingbo, and Väte, have limestone fonts from the second half of the twelfth century in the style of a sculptor or workshop referred to as “Byzantios.” On one side they are decorated with a sculpted ram’s head with large, curved horns. That these are earthly rams, despite the Christian context, is confirmed by the fact that the fonts at Atlingbo and Vamlingbo, on the opposite side, have the carved head of an Agnus Dei, a hornless lamb with a halo, carrying a cross and banner (Lundquist 2012, 23, 42). The great majority of these fonts, however, feature only an earthly ram, underscoring the firmly established position of the animal as a symbol of the Gotland people. Nils Lithberg, interpreting the sheep on the thirteenth-century seal of the native population of Gotland as a ram, cited as further examples of official Gutnish symbolism on this theme a carved ram on the tympanum above the vestry door of Tingstäde Church, from around 1190, and a carved ram’s head on a pier capital in the nave of the same church. As Tingstäde was one of the island’s three sanctuary churches and the place where the assembly of the northern treding (third) of the island met, Lithberg viewed these rams, too, as reflecting an official symbol of Gotland (Lithberg 1936, 13). The existence of a few early fonts on the mainland with rams’ heads of this kind, for example in Landeryd Church in Ö� stergötland, Vetlanda Church in Småland, Lund Cathe-

The Name Geatas

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dral, and a few churches in eastern Skåne, does not rule out this being an old symbol of Gutnish society. For one thing, there are relatively few of them, and for another, the ecclesiastical art of Gotland exerted a strong influence, especially in southeastern Sweden. Together with the twelve rams which Guta saga tells us the Gotlanders presented to Olaf Haraldsson around 1030, the many rams found in early Gotland church art are a clear indication that, as late as the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the ram was still a powerful symbol of the Gutnish people. Seals from Medieval Gotland

The seal of the rural population of Gotland is known from a copper matrix82 from the period 1225–1250, but also from wax impressions on various charters between 1280 and the end of the sixteenth century (Lithberg 1936; Siltberg 2005; Stobaeus 2016). Before 1288, this seal was also used by the Gutnish inhabitants of Visby. A special seal for the residents of Visby from the period 1288–1340 is very similar (Lithberg 1936, 6–7). Later, King Magnus Eriksson decreed that the Gotlandic and German populations of Visby were to have a common seal, mentioned in 1347 and known from impressions from 1385 onwards (Lithberg 1936, 8). The seal of the rural population of Gotland shows a proud horned sheep bearing a fluttering, cross-adorned banner of victory. Running round the edge is the following inscription in leonine hexameter: Gutenses signo, Christus signato in agno, which is commonly interpreted as: “I [the ram] represent the Gutes, Christ is represented by the lamb.” At Fole on Gotland, half of a copper seal matrix in a somewhat smaller format has been found, with an image of a ram almost identical to that found in the seal of the island’s rural population. The original lettering, however, has been worn away (af Ugglas 1938; Siltberg 2005, 300). The question is complicated somewhat by the fact that, in Old Gutnish, a sheep is referred to as a lamm and its offspring as a lammunge. What the animal on the seal of the rural population represents, moreover, is a question that has been discussed for hundreds of years. Nils Lithberg takes the view that, from the second half of the fourteenth century, this earthly ram symbolizing the Gutes on Gotland seals gradually evolved into a haloed Agnus Dei with non-existent or stunted horns (Lithberg 1936, 7, 11, 14–17). I myself would argue that this change is already clearly discernible in the thirteenth-century seal. It has also been suggested that the inscription on the seal of the rural population of Gotland is to be read as “The Gutes are represented by the seal (the banner), Christ by the lamb” (Siltberg 2005, 291–92). Per Stobaeus offers a similar interpretation: “I (= the seal) represent the Gutes, Christ is represented by a lamb” (Stobaeus 2016, 117). This view is contradicted, however, by a later charter seal from 1341, where the sheep has stunted horns and a halo. The inscription reads: Hoc Wisbycenses agno designo gutenses, that is, “With this sheep/lamb of the people of Visby I represent the Gutes” (Lithberg 82  SHM (National Historical Museums of Sweden), inv. no. 26.

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1936, 7–8; Siltberg 2005, 337). Here, it is admittedly the seal itself that is “speaking,” but at the same time it confirms with its own words that it is the sheep that represents the Gutes. The parallel, backward-leaning horns of the sheep on the seal of the rural population are not sturdy enough for a ram, nor do they resemble those of a ewe of the Gute breed. Nor is this a lamb. Horned ewes probably occurred in more primitive breeds of sheep on Gotland, but all the indications are that they were fairly uncommon (Hallander 1989). That the horns of Gotland rams might have looked like this prior to more recent interbreeding is also contradicted by the classic large, curved horns of the worldly rams’ heads on the fonts mentioned above. One possibility, of course, is that the sheep on the seal is a stylized ram, whose character and sex are primarily signalled by its proud pose. I would argue, though, that it is not a matter of either–or, and that this image quite deliberately represents both an earthly ram and a Christian lamb. Here the fonts at Atlingbo and Vamlingbo offer some guidance. On one side they have a vigorously carved ram’s head, on the other an Agnus Dei. Here, in other words, an earthly ram and a Christian lamb appear independently of one another, but still together in a clearly Christian context. I see these two fonts as a precursor of the seal of the rural population, where the ram and the Agnus Dei have been merged, perhaps for lack of space, into a single hybrid figure that is at once both a ram and a lamb. Per Stobaeus comments that it resembles a “ram lamb” (Stobaeus 2016, 117), and in my opinion that is precisely the point of the seal. In the light of Gutnish ram imagery stretching back far beyond the sixth century, probably right back to the Bronze Age, I consider it reasonable to conclude that the thirteenth-century seal, with its single image, sums up the ancient secular identity of the Gutes as rams and their new-found Christian identity symbolized by the lamb of God. If that is the case, the seal’s inscription, Gutenses signo, Christus signato in agno, could be interpreted as follows: “As a ram I represent the Gutes, as a lamb I stand for Christ.” The Ram as an Ancient Gutnish Totem

At this point, it could perhaps be objected that sheep farming has been carried on everywhere, and not just on Gotland. It certainly has, but hardly under such favourable conditions as there. This is primarily because large predatory species such as the brown bear, wolf, and lynx did not exist on Gotland during the Iron Age, and probably never have (Ahlgren 2011), a circumstance that has greatly reduced losses to wild animals and the associated cost to shepherds. Of our larger domesticated species, sheep are by far the most susceptible to predators. In addition, competition from wild grazing species was limited, in that elk (moose), red deer, roe deer, and wild boar were also absent from the island (Ahlgren 2011). Sheep rearing has, quite simply, always been unusually profitable on Gotland. With the opinion of Olaus Magnus in mind—that the rams of Gotland were larger, heavier, and bolder than those elsewhere (Olaus Magnus, book 17, chap. 1)—it is easy to understand how, in the absence of powerful wild animals, the Gotlanders could identify with the ram, with its impressive posture, aggressive attitude, and leadership quali-

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ties. An angry ram is not to be trifled with. In my view, there is good reason to consider the possibility of the ram having been something of a totem of the Gutes ever since the Proto-Germanic Bronze Age. Animal symbolism comparable to that of the ram is probably to be found in the tribal name Svear (Swedes), which several scholars believe could reflect a tradition, going back as far as the Bronze Age, of central Swedish princes identifying with the wild boar as a totem (this is discussed further in Appendix 2 of Gräslund 2018). The Final Element -mearc in Wedermearc

The basic meaning of the word mark in Scandinavian and other Germanic languages is unequivocally “mark or march, boundary.” As forests often form natural boundaries between settled areas, mark also came to mean “boundary woodland, boundary area” and, by extension, to refer to forests in general. Quite often, -mark is combined with tribal names. It is commonly believed, moreover, that boundary woodlands on the Jutland isthmus are behind the name Denmark (Wessén 1984; Thorsten Andersson 2001; Gazzoli 2011). However, since mark has also been used in a transferred sense to refer to areas just beyond a border (Hardt 2001; Thorsten Andersson 2001), it may in addition have the more neutral geographical meaning of the “land” of a particular people, as in Denmark, Telemark, Finnmark, and Lappmark. In view of this, it is difficult to see any contradiction in the poem’s use of the name Wedermearc for the island of the Gutes, which in any case has a good deal of woodland. An apt translation would probably be “Wethermark,” or “Land of the Rams.” Can the Geatas Be Linked Linguistically to the Gutes?

It has long been the general view that the word Ġēatas in Beowulf refers to the Gauts (ON gautar, Sw. götar). It is difficult to find any very detailed discussion of the question, however. Usually, it is simply noted that Ġēatas corresponds linguistically to Gauts and thus also refers to that tribal group. The reason that Ġēatas is not normally considered to refer to the Hreid-Goths at the mouth of the Vistula (Wisła)—the only Goths who could still have been in the vicinity in the time of Beowulf—is probably that the context as a whole is so Scandinavian. In addition, the Hreid-Goths are never spoken of without the initial element hreið-, although they are occasionally referred to simply as Hreið (Ebel 2000; Thorsten Andersson 2008). The word götar, ON gautar, Proto-Germanic (PrGmc) *gautōz (sing. *gautaz), is formed from the singular preterite stem of the verb PrGmc *geutan “pour, pour out.” The names Gutes (Sw. gutar) and Goths (Sw. goter), on the other hand, go back to a PrGmc *gutaniz, containing the preterite participle stem of *geutan (Wessén 1972 and, with extensive references, Thorsten Andersson 1996a, 1998a, 1998b, 2008, 2015). The background to the different ablaut forms *gautōz and *gutaniz is unclear. In the light of an observation by Elias Wessén (1924, 113ff.; 1969, 22–23), however, Thorsten Andersson pointed out that “according to an old word formation pattern, an-stems in the weak grade,” as in *gutaniz, “occur as final elements of words” (Thorsten Andersson 2003; see also 1996b). My conclusion in this chapter that the tribal name Weder-Ġēatas

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in Beowulf refers to Gotlanders also confirms that, in early times, the tribal name Gutes/ gutar occurred as a final element. In view of this, Hreið- with reference to the Goths of the Vistula region could originally have served as an epithet distinguishing them from both the Gutes of Gotland and the Goths of the Black Sea area. All three tribal names—Gauts, Gutes, and Goths—would thus ultimately be formed from one and the same verb, the PrGmc *geutan mentioned above. This is consistent with the fact that the Gauts, Gutes, and, further back in time, Goths were close neighbors. There is reason to assume that these tribal names, as well as Jutes, originally meaning “pourer (out),” go back to the Bronze Age and refer to the Scandinavians special predilection for and mastery of the art of casting or founding of metals. This is discussed more fully in the Swedish edition (Gräslund 2018, Appendix 2). The tribal names Gutes, Goths, and Gauts are thus closely related linguistically, though with the difference that, in Proto-Germanic, the words for “Gutes” and “Goths” contained a short u-vowel, whereas the word for “Gauts” and the corresponding “Ġ� ēatas” had an au-diphthong. This difference may seem like an argument against the Ġēatas of the poem being a reference to Gutes. Such a conclusion, however, would be in direct conflict to the finding earlier in this chapter that the territory inhabited by the Geats cannot have been either Väster- or Ö� stergötland, being spoken of as an island which several circumstances clearly identify as Gotland. One such circumstance is the epithet weder “ram” attached to Ġēatas, a reference to an animal which even in late Viking and early medieval times was still an official symbol of the Gotlanders. There is no evidence of a corresponding connection between rams and the Gauts or any other relevant Germanic tribal group. In the poem, this epithet weder appears four times as the first element of a compound containing the name Ġēatas, i.e., Weder-Ġēatas. It also occurs six times in the compound form Wedera lēod “the ram people,” four times in Wedera þīoden “ram prince,” twice in Wedra helm “ram prince,” and once in Wedermearc “land of the rams.” In addition, the epithet occurs five times in plural forms of the simplex, Wederas/Wedera, “rams.” The fact that weder is used so consistently and with such variation in the poem suggests that it was well known on the eastern Scandinavian scene where the story of Beowulf unfolds. It is only when we bear in mind the basic meaning of “someone who pours (out), someone who founds” that the functional significance of the designation weder becomes clear. Its primary function must surely have been to distinguish the “Ram Founders” from the large group of “founders” on the Scandinavian mainland, comprising the “West Founders” (West Gauts) and “East Founders” (East Gauts). That leaves only one known group of “founders” who could correspond to the Weder-Ġēatas of the poem, namely the Gutes of Gotland. The byname “Ram Founders” for the Gotlanders may thus be assumed to have been well known in eastern Scandinavia, just as WederĠēatas clearly is in Beowulf. The information to be found in Beowulf itself, various historical and geographical circumstances, the epithet weder, and medieval seals show very clearly, then, that the Ġēatas of the poem are Gotlanders. This evidence carries such weight that it has to take precedence over the idea that Ġēatas cannot refer to Gutes because the latter name contains an old short u-vowel.

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My earlier conclusion that the main narrative of the poem can scarcely have been composed in England, but must be assumed to have arisen in Scandinavia, been transferred to England early on, and transmitted there in Old English over a long period of time, opens up new possibilities when it comes to understanding the name form Ġēatas. Above all, it frees us from the shackles of having to believe that there was an Old English poet who used the word Ġēatas to identify a particular Scandinavian people. It also makes clear that we are concerned here with two very different time frames. The original Scandinavian story came into being in the sixth century and was probably transferred to England as early as 600 (see Chapter 18), whereas the name Ġēatas appears in an Old English manuscript four hundred years later. The question is what happened in the meantime. Apart from appearing in Beowulf, the tribal name Ġēatas is known only from the Old English poem Widsith (57–58), in which it figures in quite a general Scandinavian context. In that case, too, there is a considerable difference in time between an original North Germanic oral tradition and the final Old English manuscript. Even if people in England had initially understood that the “Ram Founders” of Beowulf referred to Gotlanders—which is unlikely, as Gotland is not mentioned by name in the poem—it is improbable that that knowledge could have survived four hundred years of transmission in different Old English dialect areas and through several strata of manuscripts. A short u in an eastern Scandinavian name for Gutes could gradually, in the course of transmission, have been replaced with a diphthong going back to PrGmc au, owing to a belief that the name referred to the Gauts, who the people of England had become well aware of from their Viking Age dealings with Scandinavians. Support of a very different kind for the idea that, despite the stem vowel, Ġēatas refers to Gutes can, I believe, be found in the following discussion by Elias Wessén (1969, 24; cf. 1972). Proceeding from observations made by Alexander Bugge, Wessén points out that name forms referring to Goths in Western Europe in the sixth century and to Gutes in England and Norway in the Middle Ages not uncommonly have an audiphthong. Finally he says: “It is of course self-evident that the man’s name Gautr means “a man from Gautland, a Gaut”. But could it also mean “a man from Gotland, a Gute”?” Wessén does not seem to rule out this possibility. He writes (1969, 22–23): The tribal names gutar–göter and götar are in a regular ablaut relationship to each other: PrGmc *gutonez (n-stem) and *gautoz (a-stem). The root form of the stem syllable shows a regular association with morphology: a strong root form (*gaut-) presupposes a-stem inflection, a weak root form (*gut-) n-stem inflection. Thus, it may be a matter of two formal variants, two different stem and ablaut forms, of the same name. Perhaps the weak form (*gutonez) was initially used in compounds denoting branches of the large tribe, such as Austro-, Vesigotæ, Icel. Hreiðgotar, Eygotar etc. The first element could be superfluous, and gutar could be used on its own, where there was a degree of contrast to gautar.

Later on in his discussion, Wessén argues (1969, 28):

Etymologically, the three tribal names götar, gutar, and goter cannot be distinguished from one another. At any rate, they must originally have had a shared sense and meaning. The question has been much discussed, but remains in dispute. Most likely they were originally appellatives, agent nouns from the verb gjuta (Icel. gióta) [‘pour’], with the general meaning “men.” It is difficult to imagine that, during the Proto-Germanic and

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Proto-Norse periods, when ablaut was much more alive than it is now, it was possible to shake off the etymological and semantic link with the strong verb and interpret the name differently.

The gist of Wessén’s argument appears to be that, at the time Beowulf came into existence, people were so aware of the close connection between the names Gutes and Gauts that sometimes, at least if the speakers were not themselves Gutes, it could have been natural to use *gautōz with reference to Gutes as well (cf. also Wessén 1924, 81–119). The very close similarity in pronunciation between the names Gauts and Gutes as late as Proto-Germanic times is also borne out by the fact that Beowulf’s distinguishing epithet weder- in Weder-Ġēatas would otherwise have been superfluous. Another illustration of the similarity in pronunciation is the expression lēadgota for “lead founder” in an Anglo-Saxon law text (Clark Hall 2000, 213), in which the word for “pourer, founder” is rendered with a short stem vowel rather than a diphthong. Several philologists also take the view that Gothic and Gutnish have a common linguistic origin, or even that the Goths may originally have come from Gotland (Thorsten Andersson 2003, 2008, 2015 and elsewhere; Strid 2008). Referring to a number of Gotland place-names such as Gaut, Gautalver, Gute, and Gutenviks, moreover, Ingemar Olsson argues that, on Gotland, both *gaut- and *gutwere used for outpourings or discharges of various kinds. Clearly following in Wessén’s footsteps (the latter’s essay is included in his list of references), Olsson points to the possibility of Gutes and Gauts “quite simply [being] two different forms of the same name,” and that with “this interpretation, gutar [would be] gautar, götar living on Gotland” (Olsson 1996, 13–19). Here I also wish to mention a possibility which Thorsten Andersson (2003) has considered on linguistic grounds, namely that a group of Gauts moved across to Gotland. Another point to be borne in mind is that the Beowulf tradition need not necessarily have been transferred to England directly from Gotland. More likely, the transfer would have taken place via Svealand (see Chapter 18). In a world in which skalds wandered from one princely court to another offering their services, it cannot even be ruled out that the tradition could have been passed on by a native of Väster- or Ö� stergötland. The bard who passed on the Beowulf tradition to England in an oral form may very well have been someone who naturally pronounced the name for the Gotlanders with an audiphthong. These perspectives thus clear the way for another explanation for the name Ġēatas (with ēa corresponding to PrGmc au), namely that the Beowulf tradition’s Proto-Norse form of Gutes was not transferred to England with a short u as its stem vowel, but with an au-diphthong. Vagoth

In his Getica, written in Latin, Jordanes—a descendant of the Goths—describes the Scandinavian peninsula on the basis of lost works by, among others, Cassiodorus, magister officiorum of Theodoric the Great in Ravenna. Beginning in the north of Sweden, he refers to the Screrefennae “Sami,” Suehans “Swedes,” and Theusti. After that he mentions the Vagoth people (Getica, 21–22).

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The Theusti are now regarded by most scholars as residents of Tjust on the coast of northeastern Småland, an interpretation supported by a rune stone at Västerljung in eastern Södermanland, raised in memory of a man who had died a þiusti “in Tjust” (Jansson 1960, 109–10; Thorsten Andersson 2005a, 594; Thorsten Andersson 2009; Brink 2008, 92; Fridell 2011). The question then remains of the meaning of Vagoth. Since Jordanes’ account proceeds along the east coast of Sweden, the word has sometimes been taken to refer to the East Gauts. This does not fit, though, with the first element Va- or with the fact that the East Gauts should surely be the Ostrogothae mentioned by Jordanes. Quite naturally, Vagoth has also been interpreted as “Gutes.” Sophus Bugge regarded Vagoth as a possible corruption of euagothi, “ON øy-gotar [Island Gauts],” suggesting that it referred to the Gutes (Bugge 1907). Eygotaland as a designation for Gotland also occurs in certain West Norse sources (Wessén 1924, 114; Wessén 1969, 23; Thorsten Andersson 2003), but mostly, it would seem, as an appellative designation intended to distinguish the Gutes from mainland Gauts or from the Hreid-Goths at the mouth of the Vistula. L. F. Läffler, meanwhile, based his interpretation on OSw. vagher, meaning “wave, sea,” and understood Vagoth as vág-gotar, “Wave Gauts, Sea Gutes,” which he took to mean “Gutes” (Läffler 1907). Bugge’s and Läffler’s suggestions have struggled to gain acceptance, however— understandably, given that there is no evidence of “Island Gauts” as a name for the Gotlanders in eastern Scandinavian tradition, and as the interpretation “Wave Gauts” as a proper name for them is not attested in any tradition at all. I leave aside here the fact that, in Beowulf, the Gutes are twice referred to as Sǣ-Ġēatas, since the first element sǣis just one of many poetically motivated epithets for the Gutes in the poem, completely subordinate to the strong identity-bearer weder. Josef Svennung, for his part, worked on the basis of another meaning of OSw. vagher, namely “bay,” and placed the Vagoth in Skälderviken Bay in western Skåne. The weak historical support for this proposal, however, is demonstrated by Svennung himself when, for it to make sense, he is forced to deport a whole group of West Gauts to Skåne (Svennung 1967, 54–57). An alternative that fits better with known Gautish areas and with Jordanes’ geographical sequence is Thorsten Andersson’s suggestion of the inner part of the long Valdemarsviken inlet, on the boundary between Tjust and Ö� stergötland, where the first element of the village name Vammar (j Wagmare 1383) can be interpreted as OSw. vagher in the sense of “bay” (Thorsten Andersson 2009). In my view, though, the tribal name Vagoth needs to be seen in a broader perspective. Etymologically, the second element -goth is cognate with the words for “pourers, founders” in the tribal names Gauts and Gutes. And given that historical tradition knows of only three “founder” peoples in the immediate vicinity, neither more nor less—West Gauts, East Gauts, and Gutes—and as Jordanes refers to the first two as Gauthigoth and Ostrogothae, only one known group of “founders” in eastern Sweden remains as a possible candidate, namely the Gutes. As I see it, we simply cannot ignore, without argument, this unanimous etymological, historical, and geographical identification of the Vagoth with the Gutes. Nor, con-

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sequently, do I see any need to conjure up from Jordanes’ Vagoth new tribal names for Gauts and Gutes that are entirely unknown to historical tradition. Earlier in this chapter I have shown that, in Jordanes’ time, a word corresponding to Beowulf’s weder, “ram,” was probably well known in eastern Scandinavia, both as a separate name for the Gutes and as the epithetic first element of a compound with the tribal name gutar, originally with the basic meaning “Ram Founders.” As a word cognate with weder is the only East Scandinavian prefixed epithet to the name gutar that is known, and as its initial syllable, moreover, has a certain similarity to the first element of Vagoth, it is such a word that we should primarily have in mind as we attempt to interpret the Va- of Vagoth. As far as I can understand, a Proto-Norse form corresponding to OE weder, OGutn. weþer, and OSw. wæþur would hardly have resembled any word in Latin or Greek, the languages of Jordanes and Cassiodorus. It is not unreasonable to assume, therefore that, in the course of oral and written transmission in these and perhaps other languages, the Proto-Norse word for “ram,” as an incomprehensible prefix to a well-known tribal name Goth, would gradually have been compressed into a simple Va- in Greek. Jordanes begins his geographical account in Getica (17) with the observation that Scandza “lies opposite the river Vistula.” What is in fact opposite the mouth of the Vistula is the large island of Gotland, whose dealings with the Roman and Byzantine Empires crucially depended on that river. Given the key role played by the Vistula, the mouth of which was long controlled by the Hreid-Goths, as a communication route between the world of late antiquity and Scandinavia, it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that Jordanes or his sources knew of the Gotlanders. The same perspective also explains why Denmark appears to be largely beyond Jordanes’ horizon. The conclusion that Jordanes’ Vagoth is a reference to the Gutes fills a perplexing gap in his otherwise remarkably good geographical knowledge of Scandinavia. If there is any tribal group in eastern Scandinavia who, judging from the archaeological record, should have been known at the Ostrogothic court in Ravenna and among the Eastern Roman elite of Byzantium, it is the Gutes.

Conclusions

Historically and geographically, the Ġēatas of Beowulf can refer to one of only two tribal groups: the Gauts or the Gutes. Based on obscure references in late Scandinavian sources to Swedes and Gauts in a remote past, the homeland of the Geats has traditionally been placed in Götaland in general, primarily in Västergötland or alternatively in Ö� stergötland. Yet no one has been able to point to anything in Beowulf that is characteristic of these particular areas. The poem is clear about the Geats having their home in a setting that is close to the sea. Their native land is explicitly referred to as an island, ēalond, and judging from the geographical context of the poem that island was probably situated in the southern or central Baltic Sea. As the inhabitants of Ö� land have never been called Gauts, that leaves only Gotland. There is much to suggest that the expression Weder-Ġēatas in the poem goes back to an East Scandinavian designation for “Ram Founders,” in which the epithet referring

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to rams originally served to distinguish the bearers of this name from other “founders” in the vicinity, i.e., the East and West Gauts. Ecclesiastical sculpture on Gotland, references in Guta saga,and the seal of the Gotlanders, with its accompanying inscription, also clearly show that, in the period 1000–1300, the ram still served as an official symbol of the Gutnish people. As “ram” is not known as a tribal epithet for any other relevant ethnic group in northern Europe, least of all the West Gauts (västgötar), East Gauts (östgötar), or Ö� landers, and as other geographical information in the poem also points specifically to Gotland, the only possible conclusion would seem to be that the Weder-Ġēatas “Ram Gauts” and Wederas “Rams” of Beowulf refer to the Gutes. The way weder is used throughout the poem as an epithet for the Ġēatas without further explanation or any geographical reference—not just by the Geats themselves, but also by Danes and the “narrator” of the poem—and the fact that the poem does not explicitly inform us where the Geats have their home, suggests that it was obvious to the story’s original audiences that Ġēatas and Wederas stood for the Gutes and Wedermearc for Gotland. Even if, unlikely as it seems, this had been known to an Old English author, it can hardly have been known to that author’s audiences or to subsequent generations of scribes and readers. The completely uncorroborated assumption that the poem was composed by an Old English poet has thus forced generations of scholars to deliberately misinterpret a word such as ēalond and unconsciously misconstrue a word such as weder, both of which clearly identify the Geats as Gutes. The same unfounded premise has hindered their understanding of indications of place such as sǣwealle neah, Hrones naes(s), beorge, and hrēosna beorh, which fit in well with this interpretation (see Chapter 13). The archaeological record shows that, in the Roman Iron Age and the Migration Period, Gotland was an integral part not only of a southern and central European, but also a western European cultural sphere. During that period, the large island of Gotland exhibits an unusual material wealth, bearing witness to an extensive international network of contacts and a cultural and political significance in the north of Europe surpassing that of both Väster- and Ö� stergötland. The river route across the narrow Jutland isthmus also offered a considerably shorter and safer means of travel between Western Europe and Gotland than the long and dangerous passage across the Skagerrak, Kattegat, and North Sea. The Gotlanders did not have a longer journey to Western Europe than the people of Väster- and Ö� stergötland, and had a shorter one than the Swedes. If the question of the stem vowel of Ġēatas is considered from a strictly etymological point of view, working on the assumption that the poem was composed by an Old English poet, it brings us into direct conflict with the poem’s own testimony. If, on the other hand, the matter is viewed in the light of the poem having a Scandinavian background and, in the spirit of Elias Wessén, against the backdrop of a complex prehistoric reality, several linguistic possibilities open up that enable us to interpret the name Ġēatas as “Gutes.” Based on this conclusion, it is also natural to interpret the tribal name Vagoth in Jordanes as “Ram Founders.”

Chapter 8

OTHER LINKS TO EASTERN SWEDEN The conclusions that

King Hrothgar’s hall of Heorot is in southeastern Zealand and that the Geats are the Gutes of Gotland give Beowulf a markedly eastern Scandinavian centre of gravity, further underlined by the battles of the Swedes with the Gutes in the later part of the poem. The connection with eastern Svealand can be brought out even more clearly, however.

Swiorice and Sweoðeod

The word Swīorīċe, “the realm or dominion of the Swedes,” occurs twice in Beowulf, once with reference to the homeland of the Swedish king Onela (Ale)1 and once in a more neutral context.2 In addition, the poem speaks once of Swēoðēod,3 “the Swedish people” or, in a transferred sense, “the land of the Swedes.” These designations are unknown in other early Old English texts. Swēoðēod only appears in such sources with the advent of Scandinavian influence in the late Viking Age. As Gösta Langenfelt has noted, moreover, the ending -rīċe as a political-geographical designation is conspicuous by its absence in other texts in Old English. As in the West Norse area, the ending used is always -land (Langenfelt 1932). Since the poem so clearly represents an eastern Scandinavian context from the late Migration Period, with not the slightest involvement of later traditions, what we have here are quite evidently the earliest definite recorded occurrences of the names Svearike and Svethiudh. Another indirect attestation of Svethiudh is to be found in Jordanes’ Getica from the same period, in which the Swedes are first spoken of as Suehans, with a Gothic ending, and a little later as Suetidi (Getica, 20), which can be seen as a Latinisation of Svethiudh (Svennung 1967, 33). That Svearike and Svethiudh were in use as eastern Swedish designations at least from the Migration Period onwards is entirely in line with Thorsten Andersson’s philologically-based view that Svethiudh as a power centre of the Swedish kings goes back at least to that time (Thorsten Andersson 2004, 2005b).

The Epithet Scilfing

The poem uses the epithet Scilfing (or Scylfing) a total of eight times for four different kings or princes of the Swedes: Ongentheow/Egil, Onela/Ale, Ohthere/Ottar, and Wiglaf. As is shown in the next chapter, this epithet may be connected to the Swedish rulers’ practice of placing their halls on an artificially raised plateau, OSw. skialf, like the gods Odin, Freyr, and Freyja. It should also be noted here that the king of the Swedes was con1  2383.

2  2495. 3  2922.

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sidered to descend from the gods Freyr and Odin, that Odin himself is called Skilfingr, that his dwelling is known as Valaskjálf and his high seat Hliðskjálf, that Freyr sits on Hliðskjálf, and that the goddess Freyja has the byname Skjálf. The epithet Scilfing can thus, it seems, be linked to deities such as Odin, Freyr, and Freyja and their supposed royal descendants of the Yngling dynasty at Uppsala. Outside Beowulf, only two instances of this epithet are known. One refers to King Egil (Ongentheow) and is, once again, preserved in eastern Swedish tradition, in Ynglingatal (14), where Egil is described as skilfinga nið, “scion of the Skilfings.” The other is an allusion in the Poetic Edda (Hyndluljóð, 11) to Swedish kings in general. There is no example of Skilfing being used to speak of anyone other than a Swedish king during the Migration Period, and the epithet does not occur in other Old English texts. As it is not known in West Norse tradition either, where the term Yngling is used instead, it was suggested by as early a scholar as Adolf Noreen that Skilfing was a specifically eastern Swedish expression for the kings of Uppsala (Noreen 1892, 224). Unlike Yngling, then, Scilfing/Skilfing is not a dynastic designation, but an epithet with the implied meaning, roughly, of “god-begotten prince of the Swedes.” It can thus be traced to an eastern Swedish royal tradition, and one associated exclusively with the Migration Period.

Beowulf of Swedish Royal Descent

That Beowulf himself speaks of his father Ecgtheow as a “noble commander,” “known” and “well remembered […] by all” and “by wise men everywhere,”4 is one thing. But referring to the hero of the poem as many as sixteen times as “the son of Ecgtheow” goes far beyond its need for stock epithets and clearly highlights his father’s elevated social standing. Ecgtheow’s high position in society is also confirmed by the fact that he was able to marry King Hrethel’s daughter and that King Hrothgar had previously given strong support to his cause. All the indications are that Ecgtheow was of royal descent. It is noted no fewer than five times in the poem—and once indirectly—that Beowulf and Wiglaf are close kinsmen.5 Given that Wiglaf is explicitly referred to as a Scylfing,6 that his father Weohstan is mentioned in another context as a kinsman of King Onela,7 and that the designation Scilfing/Skilfing is known only as an epithet for Swedish kings, the overall conclusion must be that Ecgtheow and his son Beowulf are closely related to the kings of the Swedes.8 This in turn ties in with our earlier conclusion that Ecgtheow can be neither a Gute nor an East Gaut. It is also noteworthy that the name Ecgtheow alliterates with the names of the Yngling kings. So, too, incidentally, does Ælfhere (see Chapter 21), and likewise the names Wiglaf, Weohstan, and Wægmund, which begin with a vocalic w. 4  262–66.

5  2600–5, 2675–76, 2707, 2813–14, 2876. 6  2602–3.

7  2615–19. 8  2813–15.



Other Links to Eastern Sweden

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“You are the last survivor of our lineage, the Wægmundings; fate has swept away all of my kinsmen, earls in their courage,” says the dying Beowulf to Wiglaf (Liuzza 1999, 139).9 Wægmund could possibly be Beowulf’s paternal grandfather. Before this, Wiglaf recalls a favour which Beowulf had done him by granting him wīċstede weliġne, the “rich landed estate” of the Wægmundings, and folcrihta ġehwylċ, “all the rights among the people,” which his father, i.e., Ecgtheow, had possessed.10 Evidently, Beowulf, who dies without issue, leaves the land he has inherited in Svealand to his young relative Wiglaf. Significantly, Beowulf fights the Serpent using a sword with the epithet inċġelāf.11 This expression has eluded all attempts to find a generally accepted interpretation (Fulk et al. 2009, 251). Sune Lindqvist, however, suggests the meaning “Inge inheritance” (1958, 60), apparently with the implied sense of “royal inheritance from the Swedes.” This fits in well with Lars Hellberg’s study of Inge- as the first element of personal and place-names in Germanic areas. He argues that, during the Iron Age, the designation Inge was virtually synonymous with “king of the Swedes,” “Yngling” (Hellberg 1979, 2013, 2014). The two references in the poem to the Danes as Ingwine/Ingwina “friends of Ing”12 could in that case reflect the tradition of the central Swedish origins of the Danish dynasty. Erin Shaul has recently summed up the often quite speculative discussion about the family relationships between these individuals, a discussion which, incidentally, has often proceeded from the assumption of an Old English author. Referring to a custom in Anglo-Saxon princely circles of giving brothers names with the same endings, Shaul argues that the final element of the name Ecgtheow suggests that he could be the brother of Ongentheow and that Beowulf would thus be Ongentheow’s nephew (Shaul 2017). However, there is no other indication of this. As a marker of a chosen royal servant of the gods in Swī�orī�ċe, though, the name ending -þēow does confirm Ecgtheow’s close relationship to the Swedish kings.

Other Possible Ties of Kinship

Hygelac is referred to in the poem as nefa Swertinges13 and, at another point, as nefan Hererīċes.14 Nefa is usually interpreted here as “nephew,” in which case Hereric and Swerting would be Hygelac’s uncles. On the other hand, nefa need not mean anything other than “descendant” in general, in which case Hereric and Swerting could be almost any close older relatives. Unless, of course, as Norman Eliasson has suggested, hererīċ is not a name at all, but a descriptive epithet, “commander,” and the expression nefan hererīċes refers to the 9  2811–16.

10  2605–10.

11  2577.

12  1044, 1319. 13  1203. 14  2206.

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nephews of the Swedish king Onela (Eliason 1978, 101), i.e., Eadgils (Adils) and Eanmund. It is really only possible here to establish that Swerting and Hereric, if the latter in fact existed, were among Beowulf’s somewhat older relatives, whose precise relationships to him are unknown to us. As regards Wægmund,15 all we can say is that he is an older relative of Beowulf and Wiglaf, perhaps the paternal grandfather of them both. In that case, the two would be cousins.

Conclusions

The designations Scilfing, Swīorīċe, and Swēoðēod are not known from other relevant Old English texts, but all three are remarkably closely linked to eastern Scandinavia. Scilfing/Skilfing is only known as an epithet for Swedish kings of the Migration Period. The poem makes it clear that, on his father’s side, Beowulf is of Swedish royal descent, closely related to the Scilfings. This circumstance, which is often passed over in silence, lends greater depth to the whole story. As we shall see in the following, there is also a clear link with eastern Sweden in the accounts of the death of King Ongentheow/Egil that we find in Beowulf and Ynglingatal (see Chapter 15), and at least a likely connection between the poem and Guta saga regarding the peace between the Swedes and the Gutes (Chapter 21).

15  2607, 2814.

Chapter 9

ELEMENTS OF NON-CHRISTIAN THINKING Apart from the fact that the language of Beowulf is Old English, only one objec-

tive basis for the view that it was written by an Old English author remains, namely the presence of a number of Christian elements in the text. Let us therefore examine the nature of these, how they stand out from the picture of society and outlook on life that inform the rest of the poem, and how the pagan elements in the poem relate to the Christian ones. For much of the nineteenth century, many scholars believed that they could discern in Beowulf an original pagan core overlaid secondarily with Christian elements. Perhaps the most explicit proponent of that view was Blackburn (1897), who was the first of many to talk about the “Christian colouring” of the poem. That expression was also used by Frederick Klaeber, despite his opinion that the poem had been created by a Christian poet (Klaeber 1950, xlviii–li). Over a hundred years ago, Klaeber catalogued what he regarded as a series of distinct Christian elements in Beowulf (Klaeber 1911 and 1912). Others have claimed to have detected hidden reflections of and allusions to Anglo-Saxon patristics, liturgy, and homiletics. It has also long been a common view that the poem was composed by a Christian poet who gave it a clear Christian content from the very outset, particularly since, in purely literary terms, the Christian dimension appears to be well integrated into the poem (Fulk et al. 2009: lxvii–lxxix). According to that school, the Christian poet incorporated pagan features in the poem from the start to give it a credible archaic character. Opinions on the subject in fact differ widely. Many scholars have regarded the Christian element as limited and superficial. It should also be noted that there is a clear imbalance here as far as sources are concerned, in that we have an extensive frame of reference for the Christian, Anglo-Saxon tradition of the time, but know relatively little about the pagan Germanic thinking of the same period. Hidden Christian allusions may therefore easily be read into the text where they do not exist. In pagan times, the spiritual dimension and its practices—referred to in the Christian age as forn siðr or heiðinn siðr (“the old way of life” or “the pagan way of life”; Sundqvist 2005b)—were an integral part of existence which people never felt any need to justify. As there was no formal belief system either, and no notions of future salvation and hence no ambition to save, the religious aspect of existence naturally took up very little space in heroic narrative, legendary sagas with subjects from the Middle Iron Age, or other early Germanic traditions, such as the Nibelungenlied. That there is little reference at all in Beowulf to the world of the pagan gods is therefore not surprising. One possibility, of course, is that pagan ideas were originally somewhat more prominent in the Beowulf tradition, but were later toned down as it was passed on in a Christian Anglo-Saxon setting—although if so, it can only have been to a certain extent. On the whole, what I call the “Christian voice” in the poem contents itself with pious sighs about

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the Lord God and expressions of regret about people not knowing any better than to cling to their pagan beliefs and cremate their dead. No serious attempts are made in the poem to transform the highly pagan funerals of Hnæf, Beowulf, and Scyld into Christian observances. Once in the poem the Danes are referred to as “heathens,” hǣþen,1 and twice Grendel is similarly spoken of as hǣðen/hǣþen.2 As Kenneth Sisam has observed, this is done in a highly pejorative tone (Sisam 1965, 73), using the word almost as an epithet for forces of evil. Rather than viewing this as a deliberate literary device deployed by a Christian author, I would see it as a natural reflection of the negative attitudes of AngloSaxon Christian bards to pagan beliefs. On two occasions, the old gold hoard of the Serpent/Dragon is also described as hǣðen,3 but here the sense is most likely “very old.”

Materialistic Values

Running like a thread through Beowulf is a strong fixation on gold and other material luxury as a yardstick of social value. Interest in worldly possessions admittedly thrives in Christian societies as well, but the unfeigned delight and pride in material wealth that inform the poem, as if it were the highest purpose in life, are still far removed from the theoretical Christian values of the monastic setting with which the author of the poem is generally associated. Just as striking is the great esteem for generosity with material goods—between princes and their followers, among princes, and among people in general—that characterizes the poem. During the Iron Age, the notion of a king’s goodness is expressed very much in terms of material liberality, alongside qualities such as courage, reliability, loyalty, and faithfulness, the last-mentioned not least towards one’s kin (Raw 1992; Herschend 1998). In Beowulf, material generosity, bonds of loyalty and the ethos of kinship, including the blood feud, emerge as much more important a social glue than the Christian faith ever does. To a pagan way of thinking, Grendel’s mother had a very legitimate motive for attacking Heorot, to avenge a dead son. The poem has a pessimistic and deterministic mood and view of life, worlds apart from the Christian hope of future salvation. Life is fragile, with little else to look forward to than a dignified funeral and the chance of leaving behind a respected name in the narrative tradition. This is how Beowulf consoles King Hrothgar on the loss of his friend Æschere,4 killed by Grendel’s mother: It is always better to avenge one’s friend than to mourn overmuch. Each of us shall abide the end of this world’s life; let him who can bring about fame before death—that is best for the unliving man after he is gone. (Liuzza 1999, 96)

1  179.

2  852, 986.

3  2216, 2276. 4  1384–89.



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Based on such general considerations alone, a good many scholars find it difficult to view the poem as Christian in a strict sense. As examples, I can cite W. W. Lawrence, Arthur G. Brodeur, Kenneth Sisam, Charles Moorman, William Whallon, and Michael Cherniss: But, though ever present, the Christianity is all on the surface […] The real vitality of the epic lies in its paganism. (Lawrence 1928, 9)

Although Beowulf was composed by a devout Christian, it is not a religious poem. The Christian concepts expressed in it are almost altogether restricted to God, heaven, hell, devil, and judgment; and the words which clothe these concepts are relatively few and simple. In the religious poems, on the other hand, the specifically Christian appellations are numerous and highly developed. Even the most pious sentiments placed in the mouths of Hrothgar and Beowulf are scarcely comparable with those uttered by Juliana, Elene, Andreas, or Guðlac. (Brodeur 1959, 31) there is little in Beowulf that is distinctively Christian in the strict sense. The words and conduct of the ideal characters are for the most part designed to show qualities such as courage, loyalty, generosity, and wisdom, which are admired by good men of any creed. Other characteristics, such as determination to exact vengeance, are not in accord with Christian doctrine […] (Sisam 1965, 79)

the whole of Beowulf, despite its Christian elements, is strongly and most un-Christianly pessimistic in its view of life and history […] the unmitigated pessimism, the doctrine of an unyielding fate, the poet’s insistence upon the code of the comites and upon the obligations of kinship and the vendetta, the praise of worldly heroism, and the glorification of prowess and courage for their own sakes […] point toward a deep-seated pagan tradition of thought and action which the Christianity of the poem has managed to colour, but not to erase or disguise […] The stern ethical code which stems from family loyalty and its effects on society are far more central […] than is the Christian code of conduct, which not only forbids family feuds and acts of revenge no matter how well justified, but in fact demands that all family relationships be put aside if necessary so that the Christian ideal of forgiveness and mercy may be followed […] The pessimism of Nordic mythology finally overshadows whatever brighter Christian colours the poem had in its conception displayed. (Moorman 1967, 5, 7–8, 11, 18) What cannot be accepted is the prevailing opinion that the epic shows signs of thoroughgoing indebtedness to Scripture and liturgy; for the religious elements are actually those of a barely reformed Germanic heathenism. (Whallon 1969, 117–18)

Heroic ideals […] pervade the poem […] The concepts […] embody essentially secular values and have nothing apparent to do with Germanic religion. They are “pre-Christian,” “Germanic,” and “heroic,” but not “pagan” or “heathen” […] Beowulf appears to be a Christianized heroic poem, in which Christianity is pervasive but superficial […] The poet (or poets) has inserted Christian comments and pious exclamations into his poem because he considers them necessary and appropriate […] The Christian piety of these exclamations is all on the surface. (Cherniss 1972, 125, 133ff.)

So much for the superficially Christian and genuinely pagan spirit of the poem. But its pagan elements go far beyond that.

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The Web of Fate References to the inevitability of fate are characteristic of a pagan Germanic view of life (Ström 1985; North 1994). The assumption that the frequent talk in the poem of wyrd, used eleven times in the sense of “fate,” “what is to come,” reflects a Scandinavian fatalism finds some support in the following lines of the poem:5 Ac him dryhten forġeaf wīġspēda ġewiofu, Wedera lēodum, frōfor ond fultum, þæt hīe fēond heora ðurh ānes cræft ealle ofercōmon

But the Lord gave them a web of victory, the people of the Weders, comfort and support, so that they completely, through one man’s craft, overcame their enemy. (Liuzza 1999, 74)

As several writers have pointed out (Wormald 1978, 40; Robinson 1985, 46–47; Mitchell and Robinson 1998, 71; cf. Bek-Pedersen 2011, 142), the expression wīġspēda ġewiofu, “web of victory,” alludes directly to pre-Christian notions of a Norn (Urðr) weaving the web of fate. This reinforces the assumption that the dryhten who is here said to be behind the victory, and who somewhat later is apostrophized as God, originally referred to Odin, the god of military victory. As Karen Bek-Pedersen has persuasively argued, the idea of a woven fabric as a metaphor for the predetermined lot of an individual has to do with the fact that the choice of warp inevitably shapes the resulting pattern. The warp has thus naturally come to represent a person’s overall destiny and the weft of the fabric the balance of individual life choices (Bek-Pedersen 2009). With the life of a human being thus essentially preordained by fate, it is not even in the hands of the gods. We are far removed here from the Christian notion of the Lord God listening to prayer and helping people in distress. As far as wyrd is concerned, it should be noted that pagan concepts from antiquity corresponding to it lived on in late ancient Christian philosophy, expressed in the Latin words Fortuna and Fata (Weber 1969; Frakes 1988, 83–100). In his translation of Boethius’ De consolatione philosphiae (ed. Moreschini 2005), King Alfred of Wessex rendered these concepts as OE wyrd, which corresponds directly to ON urðr. But the fact that, in Beowulf, wyrd is consistently mentioned with no reference to Christian reasoning, and in at least one instance6 appears to have the characteristics of a personified fate (Fulk et al 2009, 244), seems to me to indicate that in many cases in the poem the expression reflects a pre-Christian outlook on life. We get the impression that the “Christian voice” of the poem regards wyrd as ideologically inoffensive and therefore leaves it alone.

5  696–99.

6  2574.



Omens

Elements of Non-Christian Thinking

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Prior to Beowulf’s challenging journey to Heorot, it is said that the Geats hǣl scēawedon.7 The expression is generally translated in terms of one variant or another of augury: for example, they “observed the omens’ (Chickering 2006), “sought good portents” (Wickberg 1914), “took lucky omens” (Haarder 2001), or “looked out for omens” (Collinder 1954)—in other words, they sought to establish whether or not relevant omens gave the go-ahead for a successful voyage. As Klaeber himself notes, what we have here is quite clearly a pagan practice (Klaeber 1950, xlviii and 136–37; cf. Fulk et al. 2009, 130).

Burial Practices and Beliefs about the Soul

Perhaps the most genuinely pagan aspect of Beowulf is its accounts of the funerals of Scyld, Hnæf, and Beowulf. The possibility that “The Lay of the Last Survivor” is a corrupt description of yet another funeral (Owen-Crocker 2000, 61–84), however, is doubtful in my opinion. Here I reproduce in somewhat simplified prose the poem’s descriptions of the cremations of Beowulf and Hnæf, beginning with an account of that of Beowulf in roughly the logical order in which Sune Lindqvist has drawn together the scattered reports on this event. “Geats” is rendered here as Gutes: Then the son of Weohstan […] urged free-born heroes to bring wood from afar for the good man’s pyre.8 Then the Gutes prepared a splendid pyre upon the earth for Beowulf, hung with helmets, shields and bright byrnies as he had requested. […] Then the lamenting heroes laid their dear lord in the middle of the pyre. With heavy spirits they mourned the death of their lord. And a woman [possibly with hair bound up] sang a sorrowful song. She said that she dreaded hard days ahead, times of slaughter, the host’s terror, harm, and captivity.9

Then the wise son of Weohstan summoned from the host the best of the king’s thanes, seven altogether. As the eighth warrior he went before them towards the pyre with a flaming torch in his hands.10

Then the twelve offspring of noblemen rode around the pyre. They praised their king and bewailed their sorrow in an artful song about the man and his deeds, as it is fitting that one should praise one’s beloved lord when he must be led forth from his body.11 Now the dark flames must grow and the fire devour the ruler of warriors […]12

Then the warriors kindled the greatest of pyres and black smoke rose from the wood. The roaring fire was mingled with weeping. The wind lay still when the bones had been 7  204.

8  3110–14.

9  3137–55a.

10  3120–25.

11  3169–77a. 12  3114–15.

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broken by the heat. With heavy spirits, the warriors mourned the death of their lord […] Heaven swallowed the smoke.13 Then the Gutes built a barrow on the headland, high and broad and visible from afar to seafarers. It took them ten days to build the hero’s grave. Skilful men built a wall as they could best devise it around the ashes of the flames.14 The old man [Beowulf] asked me [Wiglaf] to bid you build a splendid barrow in the place of his pyre, as a sign of his fame.15

Taken together, these passages provide a detailed account of a pagan princely cremation in Scandinavia during the Migration Period. First, suitable fuel was gathered and a pyre was built to ensure an effective cremation. Then the deceased was placed on top of it with magnificent battle gear and the pyre was ceremoniously lit, while the onlookers reverently witnessed the dramatic spectacle. When the fire had burnt down, a majestic monument was built directly on the site of the cremation, over the burnt bones and the grave gifts. The only thing that may seem to deviate from the norm here is a concluding passage that could be taken to imply that the Serpent’s treasure was placed in the grave unburnt: In the barrow they placed rings and brooches, all the trappings they had previously taken from the hoard; they left the treasures in the earth and the gold in the ground, where it still lies, as useless to men as it was before.16

The archaeological anomaly which this additional deposition of treasure in Beowulf’s grave represents could of course, as Richard Bradley has pointed out, be a reflection of very special traditions in connection with princely burials (Bradley 2009). But finds from princely cremations in Scandinavia do not usually diverge from the general pattern, which is that, in that region, high-status objects were never placed unburnt in cremation graves—even those of kings—during the Iron Age. The exceptions amount to fractions of one in a thousand. And in any case, it is not explicitly stated that the Serpent’s treasure is unburnt. The moralizing reflection on the transience of material wealth, as typically Christian as it is untypically pagan, also suggests that this passage was somehow rearranged secondarily in the course of its transmission in Christian England. The fact that large rings were never placed in graves in Migration Period Scandinavia points in the same direction. The crucial thing in this context is that Beowulf’s personal equipment is burnt on the pyre in accordance with pagan practice. Let us turn now to the account of how Hnæf was cremated together with others killed in the battle at Finnsburg:17 […] and ancient gold was brought from the hoard; the Battle-Scyldings’ best fighting-man was ready for the fire. It was easy to see upon that pyre the bloodstained battle-shirt, the

13  3143–56.

14  3157–62. 15  3095–97. 16  3165–69.

17  1107–24. Finnsburg is not mentioned in Beowulf, only in the separate Finnsburg Fragment (36). Fulk et al. 2009: 283–85.



Elements of Non-Christian Thinking

gilded swine, iron-hard boar-images, the noblemen with fatal wounds—so many felled by war! Then Hildeburh commanded at Hnæf’s pyre that her own son be consigned to the flames to be burnt, flesh and bone, placed on the pyre at his uncle’s shoulder; the lady sang a sad lament. The warrior ascended; to the clouds coiled the mighty funeral fire, and roared before their mound; their heads melted, their gashes burst open and spurted blood, the deadly body-bites. The flame devoured, most greedy spirit, those whom war destroyed of both peoples—their glory departed. (Liuzza 1999, 87)

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Such a realistic on-the-spot account can only have been composed by someone who had themselves witnessed pagan cremations at close quarters. What is also very striking here is the indirect evidence which these two descriptions of cremations provide of the complex conceptions of the soul characterizing archaic, pre-Christian agrarian societies. Contrary to what the “Christian voice” of the poem seems to believe, notions of a continued existence after death were at least as strong in pagan as in Christian thinking. The distinction lies at quite a different level. In most technologically primitive agrarian societies outside the circle of the “high” religions, people seem to have envisaged the soul as having several different functions, sometimes a whole set of them. As far as death and burial are concerned, however, the picture is fairly uniform. The function of the soul that represents the actual life force— what could be termed the “functional soul”—departs from the body at the moment of death, with a person’s last breath. The function representing the person’s personality, on the other hand, is only liberated when the body is broken down by decomposition or cremation. For the deceased to be able to figuratively take their equipment with them to the other side, that equipment has to be present with the “personality soul” when it is set free, i.e., in the grave in the case of an inhumation or on the pyre at a cremation. And indeed, in keeping with this, normally only uncremated grave gifts are found in inhumation graves and only cremated grave gifts in cremation graves—never the other way round. The extraordinary consistency with which this logical principle was applied in burials in Scandinavia and most other parts of Europe in prehistoric times testifies better than anything else to how deeply rooted the complex concept of the soul was in preChristian society (Gräslund 1994). When Beowulf and Hnæf are placed on their pyres with magnificent battle gear, when it is foretold that Beowulf will depart from his body on the pyre, when Wiglaf urges those present to destroy the body of the deceased by means of fire, and when chosen men ride around Beowulf’s grave as they wait for him to “be led forth from his body”—these are all clear manifestations of a complex pagan conception of the soul, according to which its personality-bearing component lingers in the body and is only released by the action of fire. This is in marked contrast to Christian and Muslim ideas of a single soul, representing both life force and personality, that leaves the body at the actual moment of death, with a person’s last breath. With such an understanding, grave gifts for the afterlife are in most cases meaningless, as they come too late to accompany the deceased on his or her journey. It is this idea, then, of a personality-bearing soul lingering in the body for a time after death that is behind the pagan custom of rich grave gifts. That, in a nutshell, is the

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background to the striking contrast in Europe between often richly furnished pagan prehistoric graves and the non-existent or meagre grave goods of historical and Christian times. With this in mind, there is no reason to read any contradiction into the following lines:18 Þæt wæs þām gomelan ġinġæste word brēostġehyġdum, ǣr hē bǣl cure, hāte heaðowylmas; him of hræðre ġewāt sāwol sēċean sōðfæstra dōm.

This has sometimes been taken to mean that Beowulf utters his last words, after which, in keeping with Christian ideas, his soul departs his body to meet its rightful judgment. But even if that reading is possible in purely linguistic terms, it is clear from the account as a whole that this is a secondary addition by the “Christian voice.” Many translators, moreover, believe that it makes just as much sense linguistically to understand the passage as follows: That was the last word of the old warrior before he was consigned to the fire with its hot surging flames and before his soul left his body for its just reward.

This insight into pagan beliefs about the soul also helps us to understand the reaction of Hrothgar and the Danes to Æschere’s fate as he is carried off, killed, and then dumped in open country by Grendel’s mother. When Beowulf later speaks of this calamity, he bewails the fact that the Danes never had the chance to cremate their comrade.19 For Æschere, this was a greater tragedy than losing his life, because without this final service he risked being deprived of a continued existence after death. The accounts of Beowulf ’s and Hnæf ’s cremations bear witness to intact pagan conceptions of death and the soul. The exceptional realism with which the crackling fire, the sound of skulls and bodies bursting open, the blood pouring out, the roaring draught of wind, and the smoke spiralling into the sky are depicted, all combined with the magnificent furnishings on the pyre, virtually presupposes personal experience of pagan princely cremations, which, since the end of the sixth century, would have been far beyond anything accessible to a scholarly Christian Old English poet. This is also confirmed by the lack of understanding in the comment by the “Christian voice” of the poem about the wretched fate awaiting pagans who were cremated:20 they did not know the Maker, the Judge of deeds, they did not know the Lord God, or even how to praise the heavenly Protector, Wielder of glory. Woe unto him who must thrust his soul through wicked force in the fire’s embrace, expect no comfort, no way to change at all! It shall be well for him who can seek the Lord after his deathday and find security in the Father’s embrace. (Liuzza 1999, 59)

Early medieval Christians saw inhumation as the surest basis for physical resurrection, and quite clearly the “Christian voice” views cremation as a one-way ticket to hell. There 18  2817–20.

19  2124–29. 20  178–88.



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is no understanding here of the pagan beliefs about death and the soul that are clearly expressed in the poem, according to which the purpose of cremation was precisely to guarantee continued existence in another world. A striking detail in the description of preparations for Beowulf’s funeral pyre is that “they brought wood for the pyre from afar,” þæt hīe bǣlwudu feorran feredon.21 This can only imply a wish to use wood that would burn with certain properties, perhaps producing a fragrance or smoke with special symbolic or magical meaning. Simply to make up a good fire, it would hardly have been necessary. As far as I can tell, this detail, too, reflects a genuinely pagan idea, beyond the comprehension of a Christian poet who does not even understand the thinking behind cremation. The poem’s accounts of pre-Christian burial practices and notions of death and the soul stand out as almost overly obvious traces of a primary, underlying pagan tradition which the “Christian voice” misunderstands, disapproves of, or passes only cautious comment on. This alone is sufficient to question the whole proposition that Beowulf is the work of a Christian, and hence an Old English, author.

Scyld’s Departure

We turn now to the poem’s account of how the dead Scyld is placed, with magnificent battle gear and other treasures, on a ship that is pushed out to drift away across the sea:22 In the harbor stood a ring-prowed ship, icy, outbound, a nobleman’s vessel; there they laid down their dear lord, dispenser of rings, in the bosom of the ship, glorious, by the mast. There were many treasures loaded there, adornments from distant lands; I have never heard of a more lovely ship bedecked with battle-weapons and war-gear, blades and byrnies. In its bosom lay many treasures, which were to travel far with him into the keeping of the flood. […] Then they set a golden ensign high over his head, and let the waves have him […] (Liuzza 1999, 54)

Funerals of this kind on a ship pushed out to sea, without cremation as in Scyld’s case or with cremation on board as in the myth of Balder, were hardly common, if indeed they ever actually happened. After all, the ship bearing Scyld’s remains risked running aground on a foreign shore, hardly a desirable journey’s end for a celebrated prince, and a fate that also ruled out any possibility of later generations expressing ritual reverence at an ancestor’s grave. A burning vessel like Balder’s would soon have sunk, carrying the half-cremated remains of the deceased to the seabed, that too a completely unknown destination for the afterlife of a prince in Scandinavian tradition. And yet this image of a ship is entirely comprehensible. From the Middle Bronze Age at least and throughout the Iron Age, a seagoing vessel was seen as a natural means of travelling to an existence in the hereafter. The notion may very well stem from the fact that, at the horizon, the open sea appears to meet the heavens in a way suggestive of the idea that, by sailing far enough, it is possible to reach the celestial dwellings. It is thus easy to understand the notion of a ship and a sea voyage as a metaphorical means for the 21  3112–13.

22  34–49.

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deceased to proceed to higher spheres. I am firmly of the view that the stories of Scyld and Balder being laid on a richly outfitted ship that sails across the sea to a far-off destination are to be read as poetic metaphors for the journey to a distant realm of the dead, regardless of whether the body is cremated as with Balder, or not as in the case of Scyld, and regardless of whether the burial takes place in a ship on the sea, or a stone setting in the shape of one, on land. This metaphor of a journey by boat to the other side must have been as incomprehensible to a Christian audience in England as it was self-evident to a pagan Scandinavian way of thinking. In England, ship burials only occurred in a few cases in East Anglia over a very short period in the early seventh century, and under a clear Scandinavian influence at that. The story of Scyld’s funeral cannot possibly have been created by a Christian author as ignorant of pagan beliefs about death as the “Christian voice” of Beowulf.

Pagan Sacrifices in Cultic Buildings

The poem’s pre-Christian background is made clear in other ways as well. The “Christian voice” describes with a note of distaste how wise men at the court of Hrothgar made sacrifices at sacred sites to put an end to Grendel’s depredations:23 Hwīlum hīe ġehēton æt hærgtrafum wīġweorþunga, wordum bǣdon þæt him gāstbona ġeoce ġefremede wið þēodþrēaum. Swylċ wæs þēaw hyra, hǣþenra hyht.

At times they offered honour to idols at pagan temples, prayed aloud that the soul-slayer might offer assistance in the country’s distress. Such was their custom, the hope of heathens […] (Liuzza 1999, 58–59)

The word hærg- here appears to be a direct counterpart to ON hǫrgr, which is well attested from various cultic contexts in Scandinavia (Sundqvist 2007, 143–63). OE træf usually refers to a tent or other simple construction (Clark Hall 2000). Sune Lindqvist interprets hærgtrafum as “at the posts of the harg” (1958, 19), and in a comment talks about a “pagan place of sacrifice with raised posts,” comparing the expression to the words stafgar thar in Gutalagen (Lindqvist 1958, 144; Gutalagen, chap. 4). There is clear archaeological evidence in Scandinavia of separate “sacrificial” or “cultic” buildings, roughly contemporary with the events of Beowulf, such as the remarkable cultic building at Uppåkra in Skåne (Larsson and Lenntorp 2004), which is just half a day’s journey from Heorot and may very well have been part of King Hrothgar’s realm. Other examples are Gudme on Funen (Nielsen et al. 1994), Tissø on Zealand (Lars Jørgensen 2010), Järrestad in Skåne (Bengt Söderberg 2006), Slöinge in Halland (Lundqvist 2000), Borg near Norrköping (Nielsen 2006), Lunda in Södermanland (Skyllberg 2008), 23  175–78.



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and, it would appear, Helgö in Lake Mälaren (Arrhenius 2011; cf. Zachrisson 2004 concerning other arrangements resembling sacrificial sites on Helgö). The idea that a Christian author would have made up this story of bloody pagan offerings in cultic buildings simply to have an opportunity to express his repugnance at such practices is taking modern literary interpretation a mite too far. More likely, what we have here is one of several passages in Beowulf where the “Christian voice” dutifully reproduces the pagan tradition of the poem, but not without a critical concluding comment. It is evident from the context that this clearly pagan sacrificial cult (cf. Sundqvist 2002, 2016) was carried out on Hrothgar’s instructions or directly under his auspices. Hrothgar is thus clearly described as a pagan king with the position of the highest cultic practitioner. All the evidence suggests that the story originally portrayed Hrothgar as a pagan ruler and that the phrases with a Christian colouring which he utters in certain other contexts were put in his mouth secondarily by Christian bards as the poem was passed on in Old English.

Raven, Eagle, Wolf, and Boar

The morning after Beowulf has killed Grendel’s mother, a raven welcomes the sun and the new day. And when King Hrethel is mourning his son Herebeald, killed accidentally by his brother Hæthcyn, it is noted that the raven does not get a corpse to feast on, as the king cannot bring himself to punish his own son with death.24 When it is foretold in the poem how misfortunes of war will befall Beowulf’s people after his death, the following picture is conjured up:25 nor shall the sound of the harp rouse the warriors, but the dark raven, greedy for carrion, shall speak a great deal, ask the eagle how he fared at his feast when he plundered corpses with the wolf. (Liuzza 1999, 145)

As carrion feeders, the raven, eagle, and wolf are the special companions of the war god Odin (Nordberg 2003, 137–50). Admittedly, they also figure in Old English Christian poems such as Elene and Andreas, although hardly as Christian ideas in the strict sense, but rather as a survival of folk imagery. A prominent place is also occupied by boars, swīn,26 and eofer,27 both referring here to boars as helmet ornaments, just like the expressions swīnlīċ28 and eoforlīċ29 “figure of a boar.” In this sense, swīn and eofer are unknown in other Old English texts. Based on Scandinavian written sources and archaeological evidence—and given that Jofur occurs a dozen times as a runic name in the province of Uppland but is unknown in the rest of 24  2445–49.

25  3024–27.

26  1111, 1286. 27  1112, 1328. 28  1453. 29  303.

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Scandinavia, and that boars had something of a connection to gods such as Freyr and Freyja, who in turn were close to the Swedish kings—several scholars have argued that, in early times, the wild boar was a totem of the kings of the Swedes (Harding 1941; Kovárová 2011; Beck 1965; see Appendix 2 of Gräslund 2018 for further discussion). It is also evident that swine were often viewed with scepticism in early Christian contexts.

Odin the Father of All—God the Father of All

In all written and archaeological sources put together, Odin emerges as the supreme Norse deity, on a par with Zeus and Jupiter in antiquity. It can be discussed whether or not Odin is depicted on gold bracteates contemporary with the events of Beowulf, and whether the worship of Odin reflects an influence from the Mithras cult (Kaliff and Sundqvist 2004) or from Hunnic shamanism (Hedeager 2011). Whatever the case, Odin worship is now generally believed to be of considerable age (Hultgård 2017). So when we find several references in the poem to alw(e)alda,30 “the Almighty,” or fæder alwalda,31 “the almighty Father,” it cannot be ruled out that an original Scandinavian tradition was referring here to Odin, who in several Old Norse sources is called Al(l)faðir, Alfǫðr (Falk 1924, 3; Price 2002). In Landnámabók (ed. Benediktsson, 140), Odin (or possibly Thor) is spoken of as hinn almáttki áss, and while Christian usage may possibly be behind this, it clearly shows that the designation “Father of All” was more widely used. The word alw(e)alda in the poem could perhaps reflect a Christian influence, but that can hardly be true of Aldafǫðr “the Old God, the Father of Man” in the eddic poem Vafþrúðnismál (4 and 53), or Alfǫðr in Grímnismál (48) and Helgaqviða Hundingsbana I (38) (cf. Strandberg 2008). The poem’s expression ealdmetod32 has the same meaning and is thus very probably an allusion to Odin, especially as it is not known from other Old English texts. In this light, Richard North’s suggestion that æld æscwiga,33 “the old spear warrior,” refers to Odin also seems reasonable (North 1997, 181). William Whallon is of the view that all such expressions in Beowulf, like hālig god, metod¸ fæder, alwalda, drihten, heofon, hel, and wyrd, are also pre-Christian terms that need have no connection with Christian English tradition (Whallon 1962; 1965; 1969, 17–138). He argues, therefore, that the poem “to this extent is neither Christian nor unchristian but pre-Christian” (Whallon 1969, 122). In other texts, Odin is also referred to by other epithets of similar meaning: Fimbultýr “the Eternal God” in Vǫluspá (60), Veratýr “the World God, the God of Being, the God of Man” in Gylfaginning (20) and Grímnismál (3), and Hávi, Hǫvi “the High One” in Hávamál (111). A Migration Period bracteate from Funen, with a man’s head on a horse and the runic inscription houar “the High One,” has therefore, rightly or wrongly, been interpreted as a possible image of Odin (Hauck 1981; Hedeager 1997a; Sundqvist 2002, 236; Heizmann 2012; regarding Odin’s heiti, or bynames, see Falk 1924). 30  955, 1314, 928.

31  316. 32  945.

33  2042.



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It is thus possible that Old English Christian bards or scribes unintentionally understood or deliberately reinterpreted original Scandinavian expressions for Odin as referring to God Almighty and were inspired by this to add comments of their own in God’s name. This could also explain why only God the Father is apostrophized in the poem, never Jesus Christ.

Herebeald and Balder

Attention was drawn early on to the similarities in terms of both content and names between the myth of the death of the god Balder and the storf Hæreth’s son Here-beald [-Baldr] (Nerman 1915; Lindow 1997). Herebeald is killed by his brother Hæth-cyn [Hǫð-r] as the result of a misfired arrow,34 in the same way as Balder is mistakenly killed by a shaft hurled by his brother Höd. In both cases, the high-born kinsmen of the victims suffer unending grief, in the first the gods Odin and Frigg, in the second King Hæreth. When it is stressed in the poem that Hæreth cannot bring himself to avenge Herebeald by punishing Hæthcyn with death,35 he faces the same dilemma as Odin after the death of Balder. Odin cannot punish Höd, his own son, nor can he punish the evil instigator, Loki, who also has the immunity of kinship after entering into blood brotherhood (fóstbrœdralag) with Odin. Here we once again observe the poem’s heavy emphasis on the kinship ethos of pre-Christian society. Although it was an accident in both cases, killing a relative was nevertheless a serious crime. Here I would also note that Roberta Frank regards the expression in the poem describing how Hæthcyn miste merċelses “missed the target” as a linguistic Nordicism (Frank 1981, 132). Beowulf’s, Scyld’s, and Hengest’s ships are all described in the poem as hrinġedstefna36 “ring-prowed,” an expression otherwise unknown in Old English texts. It does, though, echo Hringhorni, which, according to Snorri, is the name of Balder’s funeral ship (Lindow 1997, 83). These points of agreement link the story of Herebeald’s death even more closely to the Norse myth of Balder, while also very clearly reflecting a pre-Christian view of life. The myth of Balder’s death, moreover, appears to be depicted on around a dozen gold bracteates from the Migration Period, contemporary with or only slightly earlier than the events of the poem (Hauck 2011a, 16–28; Hauck 2011b, 80–152). Outside Beowulf, the Balder tradition is not known from Old English sources.

34  2434–69.

35  2435–67.

36  1897; 31; 1131.

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Scilfing

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The word Scilfing (or Scylfing) occurs a total of eight times in the poem as an epithet for no fewer than four different kings or princes of the Swedes: Ongentheow,37 Onela,38 Ohthere,39 and Wiglaf.40 The stem scilf-/scylf- is considered to correspond to OE scielf, scylf and to be synonymous with ON skjálf, OSw. skialf, meaning “raised place, shelf” (Elgqvist 1944). Earlier suggestions that Scilfing (ON Skilfingr) can be traced back to a little-known mythical figure Skjálf, to the place-name Skälv, or to places with watchtowers (Björkman 1920; Elgqvist 1944 and references there) have found little favour (Sundqvist 2002, 96ff. and n125). As Svante Norr and Anneli Sundqvist (1995) and Mathias Bertell (2003) have pointed out, the designation Scilfing could derive from the eastern Swedish elite’s practice of placing their halls on an entirely or partly artificial raised plateau, OSw. skialf. Hall plateaux of this kind from the Middle and Late Iron Age are to be found in various parts of eastern central Sweden, but not, it would seem, in southern and western Scandinavia. The magnificent ones at Old Uppsala and nearby Valsgärde are particularly good examples (Norr and Sundkvist 1995), where natural ridges were exploited to heighten the effect. The large Kungsgården (Royal Manor) plateau at Old Uppsala, with its enormous hall building from the late sixth or early seventh century, seems to have been constructed on top of at least one earlier, underlying platform (Hedlund 1993; Nordahl 1993; Ljungkvist 2013a; Ljungkvist and Frölund 2015), with preserved remains of a timber building. Another example is Old Sigtuna (Hedman 1991). Terraces of smaller dimensions and with some other function than as foundations for buildings are a different matter, and appear to reflect a relatively complex hierarchical settlement arrangement (Skyllberg 2008; Ä� hlström 2015). The epithet Scilfing takes on a further dimension in that the kings of the Swedes were considered to be descended from the gods Freyr and Odin. In Grímnismál (54: 6), Odin himself is called Skilfingr, his dwelling is known as Valaskjálf, and his high seat Hliðskjálf. At Hliðskjálf, Freyr sits looking out over the world, the god who, by the name of Yngvi, was regarded as the ancestor of the Yngling dynasty (Sundqvist 2002; Hellberg 2014; Steinsland 1991, 73–75). The goddess Freyja likewise has the byname Skjálf. The word Scilfing in Beowulf, then, can it seems be linked to central deities such as Odin, Freyr, and Freyja and their supposed royal descendants of the Yngling dynasty. A natural interpretation of the epithet Scilfing, in other words, is that it alludes to the raised dwellings of the Swedish kings, with their divine descent, in direct analogy to the elevated skjálf abodes of the gods. Scilfing could thus, in a transferred sense, be taken to mean “god-begotten prince of the Swedes.” The concept thus has markedly pagan connotations. 37  2487, 2925–27, 2968.

38  63, 2381. 39  2205. 40  2603.



Brosinga mene

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In connection with Hygelac’s death, the mythical Norse necklace Brísinga men is referred to as Brōsinga mene and is said to have been stolen by Hama from Eormenric (Ermanaric),41 the powerful Gothic king who controlled much of the area between the Black Sea and the Baltic around ad 350–375. In Old Norse tradition, for example in Hamðismál (Glauser 1998), these figures appear as Hamðir and Jǫrmunrekkr. The Brísinga men is said to have belonged to the goddess Freyja (Þrymskviða, 13, 19; Gylfaginning, 34; Skáldskaparmál, 20). The necklace also plays an important part in the myth of Loki’s struggle with Heimdall, as recounted in Skáldskaparmál (8, 16), and in Haustlǫng, Sǫrla þáttr and Húsdrápa (Dronke 1969, 322ff.; Klingenberg 1978; Heizmann 2009; cf. Cöllen 2011, 93–117). The story of the necklace, which also occurs in the Nibelungenlied, clearly represents a continental Germanic–Scandinavian tradition with no known appearances in England other than in Beowulf. As Birgit Arrhenius has convincingly demonstrated, the Brísinga men was originally a large, garnet-adorned collar of the same type as the one from Pietroassa in Romania or the bronze neck ring from Ekeby on Gotland, with its large cabochon garnet. As she has also shown, menet was to begin with the name of the necklace of the Egyptian goddess Hathor in her guise as a cow, a name later transferred to the cult of the goddess Isis, which in turn influenced the Norse cult of Freyja. The word brising, from ON brisa “flame, glow,” can be seen as a counterpart to the Greek and Latin words for “garnet,” ἀ�́ νθραξ “anthrax” and carbunculus “carbuncle.” Isis is in fact often portrayed on garnet gems. In Norse tradition, however, the Brísinga men seems to have changed shape into a garnet-adorned disc-on-bow brooch. The goddess Freyja’s necklace is thus in all likelihood a magnificent brooch of this kind worn, with its sparkling garnets, across the top of the chest in the way shown in several Scandinavian images from the late Merovingian/ Vendel and early Viking periods (Arrhenius 1962, 2001, 2009, 2011). Given Gotland’s close relations with eastern central Europe, it is perfectly conceivable that the tradition of Hama/Hamðir, Ermanaric and the Brísinga men was known on Gotland and in eastern Scandinavia during the Migration Period and could therefore have been incorporated in the Beowulf story. When the “gem-adorned,” eorclanstānas,42 ornament which the poem says Hygelac was wearing when he died in Frisia around 530 is compared to the Brōsinga mene, the reference is not necessarily to Hama’s necklace, but probably just to a garnet-studded collar or large neck ring, or some other neck ornament set with garnets. This tradition of the Brísinga men, which is known only in Scandinavian and continental Germanic tradition, is both genuinely non-Christian and non-Anglo-Saxon.

41  1199.

42  1208.

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The Special Charge of the Ring As noted earlier, the poem is full of talk of rings as exclusive gifts and status symbols. There is no question of them being made of any other metal than gold. It is as if the whole of existence is encircled by rings. The linguistic variation in the poem on this subject is remarkably limited. Leaving aside the special word mene, which can best be translated “jewel, adornment,” only two terms are used for rings: bēag or bēah thirty-two times and hrinġ seven times (see Chapter 5). This is in marked contrast to other high-status objects in the poem, for which there is a virtually never-ending stream of synonyms, a clear indication of the very special charge attached to the words bēag and hrinġ. It is also evident that, in the Viking and Early Middle Ages, the corresponding Norse words baugr and hringr had symbolic meaning linked to ritual and oath-taking (Brink 1996; Zimmermann 2003; Sundqvist 2007, 2016a). There is much to suggest, moreover, that neck and arm rings had been ascribed special magical power in Scandinavia as far back as the Middle Bronze Age. In addition, there may possibly be a connection with other ring-shaped symbols surviving from the Bronze Age, in the form of suns and wheels. In that a ring both binds together and has no end, it is a natural symbol of those aspects of existence that endure and recur, and hence also of everlasting allegiance and the whole of cosmic being. Referring to the words Alt ir baugum bundit at the beginning of Guta saga, Torsten Blomkvist and Peter Jackson have discussed the connection between ON baugr and a religio-judicial practice in pre-Christian Scandinavian society, set in a tradition with deep Indo-European roots (Blomkvist and Jackson 1999). In Roman times in Scandinavia, neck and arm rings were rarely deposited in graves, and in the Migration Period they never were, but they do occur in sacrificial finds, a state of affairs which Kerstin Cassel sees as confirming their special symbolic charge (cf. Cassel 1998, 65–70). This raises the question whether humans could not enter into covenants sealed by a ring with higher powers as well, especially as Odin himself is once said to have sworn a ring oath: Baugeið Óðinn, hygg ek, at unnit hafi (Hávamál, 110). When Danish Vikings made peace with King Alfred in 876, it is noted in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that their leader Guthrum swore an oath over a “sacred ring,” hālgan bēage, to leave Alfred’s country for good (Beck 1985; Swanton 1996, 74–75). Another example of this is the remarkable Forsa Ring from Hälsingland, from the ninth or tenth century, an iron ring with a runic inscription expressing a legal stipulation which indicates that it can be interpreted as an oath ring (Brink 1996, 2010; Sundkvist 2007, 182–83; 2016a, 377–92; 2016b). Olof Sundqvist has summarized the clear testimony of the written and archaeological record to the pivotal role of the oath ring in ritual and juridico-religious contexts in western and eastern Scandinavia in the Late Iron Age, not least in connection with cultic buildings. In several contexts gold rings are mentioned, but the archaeological evidence shows that iron often had to suffice (Sundqvist 2007, 164–85; 2016a, 376–429), consistent with the fact that gold was far less common a metal in the Viking Age than it was during the Middle Iron Age.



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With all this in mind, it is likely that a shirt of mail made up of countless small, interlinked rings was regarded not just as a physical, but also as a magical life insurance policy. In the poem, mail is sometimes even referred to simply as hrinġ. In the same way, descriptions of Beowulf’s, Scyld’s, and Hengest’s ships as hrinġedstefna “ring-prowed,”43 and of Balder’s ship as Hrinġhorni (Gylfaginning, 49), meaning “ring-horned” in the same sense, may have been understood as a magical guarantee of a successful journey. The Old English verb bryttia/brytnian means “to distribute, dispense” and the noun brytta “distributor, dispenser, giver.” Nevertheless, Collinder chooses to talk about “goldring breaker’44 and “breaker of gold rings,”45 rather than “giver of gold rings.” He even turns sinċġyfan,46 “treasure giver,” into “ring breaker.” Such translations conjure up a picture of the princes of the day sitting enthroned with bulging biceps, snapping gold arm rings like dry twigs and handing the pieces to their followers. This is both linguistically misleading and factually improbable. Gold rings are not easily broken, nor are any real neck or arm rings of gold that are broken in the strict sense of the word known from the archaeological record. Isolated examples of severed gold rings do not change the picture, as the phenomenon is incompatible with the Old English word in question.47 Regardless of the symbolic significance of the neck and arm rings of Beowulf, it is clear that the rings of precious metals from this time belong in a pagan princely setting closely linked to the world of the gods, primarily perhaps Odin and Balder (Pesch 2015b, 523–25). All the indications are that neck rings of gold served as insignia of rank among the eastern Swedish Yngling dynasty, in particular, in the Roman and Migration periods (Sundqvist 2016a, 425–29 and references there). The dominant role of the ring in Beowulf clearly points to a pagan Scandinavian cultural tradition unconnected with Anglo-Saxon thinking, Christian or secular.

Other Allusions to Pre-Christian Gods

The expression gāstbona in the poem48 is usually interpreted as the Christian “narrator’s” view of pagan gods as representatives of the devil, the figure who in AngloSaxon ecclesiastical circles could be referred to as the “slayer of souls.” But if that is the case, then which gods? In view of the great agricultural disaster of the time (see Chapter 20), the fertility god Freyr seems a possible candidate, not least when, as Richard North (1997, 64) has noted, Hrothgar is referred to in this context as eodor Ingwina,49 most 43  1897, 32, 1131.

44  35, 352, 2070. 45  1969. 46  1342.

47  We see from Collinder 1972: 346, that he does in fact envisage gold rings being broken with bare hands. 48  177.

49  1044.

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likely meaning “prince of the worshippers of Ing,” and hē wisan frēan Ingwina,50 “the wise lord of the worshippers of Ing.” North has also pointed out that the epithet inċġelāf51 for the sword Beowulf uses to fight his last battle with the Serpent could possibly correspond to the weapon which, according to Skírnismál, Yngvi-Freyr gives to Skí�rnir (North 1997, 75). In addition, he argues that when, in the separate Finnsburg Fragment, Finn and Hengest swear an oath on i[n]cegold,52 this is a pagan rite linked to Yngvi-Freyr. North also relates the expression inġesteald,53 generally translated as “possessions in the house” or the like, to YngviFreyr (North 1997, 65–77). On the other hand, the word gāstbona is known only from Beowulf, and both Collinder and Lindqvist consider the interpretation “slayer of giants,” presumably to be understood as referring to the god Thor. This is a reasonable suggestion, given that, in the poem, Grendel is also called a giant, eoten,54 and described as being so large that it takes four men just to carry his head.55 At Ragnarök, Thor similarly does battle with the Midgard Serpent, who, during the famine of the Fimbulwinter, or “Eternal Winter,” may have been perceived as a dark, giant serpent in a blood-red, volcanic evening sky portending the end of the world (see Chapter 20).

Hel and Hell

There are several clear references in the poem to hell in the Christian sense, with or without the devil and his entourage.56 But in one case at least, Beowulf ’s reply to Unferth,57 it is possible to ask, as Carol Clover does, whether the original reference was not to a pre-Christian Hel (Clover 1980, 463–64).

Number of Companions

The twelve horsemen riding round Beowulf’s grave (see Chapter 16) have sometimes been interpreted as an allusion to the twelve apostles of Christ (Klaeber 1911; 1912; and 1950; McNamee 1960; Kaske 1968 and elsewhere). According to that interpretation, the Old English author saw Beowulf in his battle against evil as a Christ figure. It can hardly be as simple as that, however. When Beowulf sets off for Heorot at the beginning of the poem, he is accompanied by fourteen men, and it is clearly stated that 50  1318–19.

51  2577. 52  1107. 53  1155.

54  761; 668.

55  1635–39.

56  101, 179, 788, 852, 1274. 57  588.



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he himself is the fifteenth man on board.58 When one of the men is later killed by Grendel, it is noted that only fourteen remain.59 As Gad Rausing has pointed out, the number fifteen could correspond to two teams of oarsmen, each operating three pairs of oars, i.e., 2 × 6 = 12 men, and each with its own helmsman, making a total of fourteen men apart from their chieftain Beowulf, who was presumably above such things as rowing. They may also have travelled in a larger ship with six pairs of oars, i.e., with twelve oarsmen plus two helmsmen (Rausing 1985). Interestingly, both these alternatives are clearly illustrated in images of ships on Gotland picture stones from the period, which always show two helmsmen, one at each end of the vessel. It is perhaps unnecessary to point out, but eleven or thirteen men at the oars simply does not work. That the crew consists of specially selected men from the highest stratum of society is made clear by the fact that all of them seem to be equipped with helmets and mail shirts. It has sometimes also been claimed that the men accompanying Beowulf to his battle with the Serpent have the same number as the apostles. But that is only the case if we include the poor slave, þē(o),60 who found the Serpent’s treasure and is forced to go with them as a guide. When Beowulf and Wiglaf turn to their companions and speak of him, they do so in a distinctly negative tone that clearly emphaszes that he is not part of the company.61 What is more, it is expressly stated that Beowulf is accompanied by eleven men when he goes into battle with the Serpent and that he himself is the twelfth: Ġewāt þa twelfa sum torne ġebolgen dryhten Ġēata,62 “Swollen with anger, the lord of the Geats went as one of twelve.” That the entire group, including Beowulf, comprised twelve men is also confirmed by the reference somewhat later to Beowulf and Wiglaf having had ten men with them when they set out to fight the Serpent.63 When Beowulf subsequently dies and is to be cremated, the gap he leaves behind is filled by another man to bring the number to twelve again. As all the indications are that we are on Gotland here, it is reasonable to assume that, in the fight with the Serpent, Beowulf himself represents one of the possibly twelve original districts of the island, the one where his royal seat is located. The number twelve could then be taken to mean that the whole community of Gotland is behind its leader in his struggle against evil and later comes together to pay its respects at his funeral. The poem, then, gives no indication that Beowulf is accompanied by twelve men, either in life or at his funeral. But even if he had had twelve followers, there would be no reason to link this to Christ’s apostles. Judging from the legendary sagas, eddic poetry, and other early Scandinavian tradition, twelve was a very common number in the context of retinues, one that we even find in the world of the gods (Sundqvist 1997). 58  207–8.

59  1640–42. 60  2223.

61  2406–9. 62  2401–6. 63  2847.

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The Great Serpent The analogies between Beowulf’s fight with the Serpent and the god Thor’s struggle with the Midgard Serpent, which end with the deaths of all concerned, were observed from early on. But Ursula Dronke is only partly correct when she claims that, in addition to several other detailed similarities, Beowulf and Thor do not die from the bites of the serpents, but from their poisonous breath (Dronke 1969). Beowulf is expressly said to die from the Serpent’s bite.64 Pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon society quite clearly surrounded itself with an entire pantheon of pagan gods. Even if none are mentioned by name, some of them are reflected indirectly, and they also appear in the Old English names for days of the week (North 1997). But of Thor’s dealings with the Midgard Serpent we find no trace in any other Anglo-Saxon tradition. In the literature, the monster with which Beowulf fights his last battle is usually called a dragon. But in the poem itself, the beast is only referred to as a draca on four occasions, compared with the eighteen times it is called a wyrm. The creature is also described as having coiling, snake-like movements, and nothing is said about legs or feet. And when the tradition of Sigurd/Sigemund’s battle with Fafnir is reproduced in the poem, the latter is referred to three times as a wyrm65 and only once as a draca.66 So powerful has been the appeal of dragons in modern times, however, that references in the poem to wyrm are often translated as “dragon.” The otherwise so matterof-fact Wickberg does so as many as seventy percent of the times the word occurs. It takes a long search to find someone who never translates wyrm as “dragon,” and an even longer one to find someone who just once translates draca as “serpent,” if indeed that ever happens. This modern-day soft spot for dragons has not made the poem any easier to understand. In the wider Old English tradition, there are no traces of Fafnir and the Midgard Serpent going back before the Viking Age. And indeed the dragon of fable seems to enter common Germanic, Anglo-Saxon, and Scandinavian thinking relatively late in the day, and chiefly through a Christian, biblical influence (Wild 1962; Rauer 2000; Rebschloe 2014). The overall impression is that an original Scandinavian tradition represented in the poem spoke only of a serpent, and that the few occasions when Beowulf’s adversary is called a dragon are the result of Old English Christian bards or scribes of the Viking Age substituting such a creature for what started out as a serpent. The Swedish and Danish translations of wyrm in the poem as lindorm “lindworm” (Collinder 1954, line 3039; Haarder 2001, 119, 127, 139) are an unfortunate anachronism. The concept of “lindworm” is a folk-etymological creation of much later date (Gräslund 2013). 64  2711.

65  886, 891, 897. 66  892.



Sigemund and Fitela

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As we have noted, there are allusions in Beowulf to the traditions of Sigemund the dragonslayer and of Fitela,67 figures well known in continental Germanic and Scandinavian mythology, in the latter as Sigurd and Sinfjǫtli (Dronke 1969; McKinell 2015). They do not appear to be attested in Anglo-Saxon tradition predating the Viking Age. The motif of Wayland the Smith is represented on the Franks Casket from the first half of the eighth century and that fragments of the Vǫlsung tradition can be made out in Widsith and Waldere (Kopár 2012, 5–10; McKinnell 2015; Ney 2017); however, caution is called for.

The Role of Women in the Hall

A typical feature of pre-Christian Germanic elite settings is the central role which women play in the hall (Enright 1996, 189–94). At Heorot, Queen Wealhtheow has the highprofile duty of greeting distinguished guests, inviting them to drink,68 and dispensing costly gifts while making speeches encouraging peace. Her daughter, Freawaru, likewise offers drinks to guests in the hall,69 as does Queen Hygd in Hygelac’s hall.70 In addition, there is a clear link here with welcoming Valkyrie figures in Scandinavian mythology and visual art (Damico 1984; Ney 2012, 2017), but also with the role of women as officiants in pagan libation rites (Enright 1996; Nordberg 2003; Sundqvist 2002, 2005a, 2007). Richard North even goes so far as to suggest that the final element sibb of the epithet friðusibb, applied to Wealhtheow,71 could be an allusion to Sif, who in Norse mythology serves drink in Valhalla (North 1997, 235–36n126). There can be little doubt that what is described to us here is a feature of a pre-Christian society.

Female Mourners and a Seeress

In connection with the cremation of Hnæf and his men, a lady appears who sings a sad lament.72 Whether this is the mourning Hildeburh or someone else is unclear. When Beowulf is laid on the pyre, another woman performs one song of lament after another, foretelling misfortune for her people, the Gutes, in the form of enemy violence.73 As this seeress is evidently composing her songs on the spot, she is also quite clearly to be regarded as a poet. Unfortunately, this part of the manuscript is badly damaged and it 67  867–902.

68  612–29; 1162–63, 1168–96. 69  2020–21. 70  1980–83. 71  2016–18. 72  1117–18. 73  3150–55.

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is hardly possible to conclude from it, as many have done, that the woman has bound-up hair or is Beowulf’s widow in the shape of Hygd or some other woman. Female mourners at funerals are not uncommon in Old Norse literature (Bennett 1992). Both seeresses and women singing laments of their own composition are a clear reflection of a pre-Christian tradition that has no place in the context of a Christian funeral.

Fyr on flode

The watery, underground abode of the Grendelkin has often been understood as an allusion to the Christian notion of hell (Klaeber 1911; Klaeber 1950, 183; Malone 1958, 306; Feldman 1987; Russom 2007, 234), in which case it represents an unusually damp version of this otherwise arid institution. But there are other interpretations as well, for example, that it reflects the Christian myth of the Flood (Anlezark 2006, 291–367). Christopher Abram has highlighted an expression found in Hrothgar’s description of this watery dwelling: Þǣr mæġ nihta ġehwǣm nīðwundor sēon fӯr on flōde,74 “There each night a fearful wonder may be seen: fire in the water” (Abram 2010, 199). Abram argues that this choice of words builds on the Old Norse tradition of the gods Rán and Ægir and their underwater hall, which glowing gold lights up like fire, an image that seems to have its roots in the continental Germanic tradition of the great hoard of gold in the Rhine. Since the expression fӯr on flōde has no parallels in Old English literature and there are no other traces in an Anglo-Saxon setting of the tradition mentioned, Abram believes that it must be part of the Scandinavian background material which the Old English author of the poem had access to (Abram 2010). But as no Scandinavian background material whatsoever that is relevant to the poem is known from England, we are more likely concerned here with one of many manifestations of an underlying Scandinavian poem. If Abram is correct in his interpretation of the real background to the expression fӯr on flōde, it is an element of pre-Christian tradition probably linked to the gods Rán and Ægir.

Proverbial Expressions

From Susan Deskis’s illuminating study of proverbs in Beowulf, which covers proverbial and sentential passages of various kinds, we see that the majority derive from preChristian and all of them from oral traditions, and that only a minority have Christian features. She also notes that a significant proportion have close Old Norse counterparts, not least in Hávamál (Deskis 1996). On the other hand, most of these proverbial expressions appear to be universal words of wisdom of the kind found in most societies where life is beset with danger. In this context, therefore, all that can really be concluded from them is that they do not rule out a Scandinavian origin. 74  1365–66.



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A succession of pre-Christian and, to some extent, evidently Scandinavian features in Beowulf clearly reveal an older, pagan core to which, here and there, a thin, secondary veneer of Christianity has been applied. Most of the poem is permeated with pre-Christian thinking, involving pagan concepts, myths, and values which the “Christian voice” finds it necessary to relate to, misunderstands, or barely even notices. To view this as a deliberate intention on the part of a hypothetical author is to assume the use of a literary device which, for its day, would have been uniquely advanced. It would, moreover, have been virtually impossible for an Old English author to so accurately describe the poem’s pagan burial practices and notions of death, which the “Christian voice” itself does not even understand. The Christian insertions into the poem are, as a rule, secondary to the action proper and mainly belong in the long mythical passages about Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the Serpent. Sometimes they are put into the mouths of individuals who are making speeches, such as Beowulf, Hrothgar, Hygelac, Unferth, and Hrothgar’s coast guard. In Beowulf’s case, it is when he speaks to Hygelac of Grendel as one of the dēofles,75 the devils or demons. Significantly, the “Christian voice” speaks in the same way of Grendel on another two occasions.76 In more factually based contexts, such as the battles between the Geats and the Swedes and those at Finnsburg, or Beowulf’s sea journeys to and from the Danes, such insertions are conspicuous by their absence. In the accounts of Scyld’s, Hnæf’s, and Beowulf’s funerals, they occur sparingly. Without naming names, the poem seems to allude indirectly to a number of gods of Norse mythology, such as Odin, Thor, Freyr, Freyja, Balder, Höd, Heimdall, Rán, Ægir, and Loki. Clear pagan elements occur in most of the main storylines of the poem, those concerning the Scyldings, Finnsburg, Grendel, and the Serpent, and more sparsely in the narratives about the Swedes. On the other hand, the last-mentioned are almost entirely free from Christian elements. Revealingly, the wars between the Swedes and the Gotlanders do not inspire the slightest pious sigh from the “Christian voice.” Christian reworking of the material is focused on terrifying figures such as the Grendelkin and the Serpent, who could be associated with the enemies of the Christian faith. By contrast, Anglo-Saxon bards seem to have viewed the stories of wars between Swedes and Gutes as a normal, worldly phenomenon that did not need to be given a Christian “spin.” Similarly, the poem’s account of the brutal battles at Finnsburg has not prompted the slightest Christian-inspired exclamation or allusion. Apart from sporadic sighs about the Lord God, the distinctly Christian elements of the poem are few and one-sided. The Bible is represented only by the Old Testament, and only by its oldest parts. There is one allusion to Cain, one to Abel, one to the Flood, and one to the Creation.77 There is not the slightest allusion to the New Testament. 75  2088.

76  756, 1680.

77  107–10, 1261–65, 1688–89.

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Jesus Christ is conspicuous by his absence, along with any reference to his resurrection, ascension, or second coming. Of angels, saints, the Virgin Mary, salvation, the cross, the apostles, dogmatics, exegesis, or church politics, there is not a trace. As far as I understand, however, that is largely the case with other Old English literature, so it perhaps does not tell us very much. As standards of literacy in secular Christian Anglo-Saxon circles were poor, it is generally assumed that the author of Beowulf was associated with a church or monastery (Wormald 1978). The question is, however, whether the Christian colouring of the poem is not far more reminiscent of a simple, popular faith. As has often been pointed out, many of the things in the poem that tend to be regarded as Christian turns of phrase typical of their time, or as expressions of a Christian morality and outlook on life, probably represent universal values that have little to do with religion and that were also self-evident in a pre-Christian Germanic world. We find ourselves here in an extensive grey area between the pre-Christian and the early Christian value base of the day. It is difficult to characterize as Christian a poetic work in which not one person observes Christian practices, clearly expresses a Christian view of life or seeks the salvation of others, and in which no one is given a Christian burial. Things are not made any better by the fact that the figure in the poem who most often refers to the Lord God, King Hrothgar, is at the same time the one who is most clearly represented as a practicing pagan, and one in a position of responsibility in that context at that. The whole thing simply does not add up. Tolkien’s attempt to interpret the last-mentioned contradiction as a mere oversight on the part of the poet (Tolkien 1936) seems too desperate by half. Another example is Beowulf himself. Since he represents pagan ways of thinking throughout the poem, and before his death asks for and is subsequently given a magnificent pagan funeral, it is completely out of character when he thanks the Christian God for his victory over Grendel. In Beowulf, then, there is no real Christian message, no one is guided by Christian ideals, and no one is buried according to Christian practice. The contradiction becomes even clearer when the “Christian voice” puts pious, godly words in King Hrothgar’s mouth, despite the fact that the Danes are said not to know God and Hrothgar is portrayed as the leader of the pagan cult. Similarly, the “Christian voice” has Beowulf invoke the Lord, only to then cremate him as the most impenitent of pagans. These and other conflicting elements clearly show that the story was originally composed in a genuinely pagan world and that the few elements of Christianity were introduced secondarily, without a thought for the logic of the narrative. They are loosely inserted, mainly in contexts which naturally evoke moralizing comments in a Christian spirit, as in connection with evil figures such as Grendel and the Serpent and the fates of various individuals. No scholar has been able to explain why a Christian writer aiming to depict a longlost pre-Christian world would have central pagan figures such as Beowulf and Hrothgar resort to a superficial Christian phraseology. That is a contradiction that can far better be explained by the story having a complex genesis, originating in a pagan world, and subsequently being handed down in a Christian one.



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In fact, it is this very theory of a Christian author that has made the mix of pagan and Christian in the poem intractable to any attempt at a convincing interpretation. The contrast between the two only becomes comprehensible when it is clear that the original narrative was pagan and only secondarily received a superficial Christian reworking. With that, yet another of the cornerstones of the idea that Beowulf was composed by an Old English poet crumbles away.

Chapter 10

POETRY IN SCANDINAVIA There is an

element of catch-22 to the argument that Beowulf cannot have been created in Scandinavia because there is no comparable contemporary Scandinavian work of poetry. In Scandinavia, the literate culture needed to preserve oral poetry was established more than half a millennium later than in England. The question that needs to be asked, rather, is whether the conditions existed for epic poetry in Scandinavia during the Migration Period and whether there are indirect traces of a poetic culture from that time.

Basic Preconditions

In the late Roman Iron Age and the Migration Period, the landscape of southern and central Scandinavia was, by the agrarian standards of the time, almost fully exploited. There is also much to suggest that the population was easily on a par with that of rural areas at any time prior to the Industrial Revolution. The level of artistic expression was high, the network of international contacts well developed, and the social hierarchy complex. In the case of eastern Zealand, an area central to Beowulf, it has been suggested, on the basis of a uniquely rich burial record, that six or seven different social strata can be made out, from the king at the top to slaves at the bottom (Ethelberg 2011). Settlement remains from the Middle Iron Age across Scandinavia generally also point to a qualitative and quantitative socio-economic stratification of society. From the third century ad onwards, many villages had a special building associated with one of the larger farms, one half of which served as a hall for entertaining and ritual activity, although these functions were soon transferred to an entirely separate hall structure (Herschend 1993; 1998, 15–31; 2009, 251–60). In the poem, it is suggested that King Hrothgar and his wife do not spend the night in the hall,1 but in another dwelling house nearby or another part of the building. A further example of social stratification is the weapons sacrifice discovered at Illerup Å� dal in eastern Jutland from around ad 200, in which virtually the entire equipment of a defeated army of around a thousand men, probably of Norwegian or Norwegian–western Swedish origin, was ritually destroyed and scattered across the peat bog. From this material, the picture emerges of a well-organised military hierarchy of three strata, consisting of roughly 2 percent senior commanders, 20 percent other officers, and 78 percent common soldiers (Ilkjær 2002, 124, 134). Such a hierarchical organization of society would scarcely have been possible without a significant concentration of ownership or use and control of land, combined with widespread deployment of slave labour. This highly unequal society with a wealthy power elite, reflected in the archaeological record, also clearly emerges from Beowulf, 1  662–65, 920–27, 1008b–10.

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from other early Germanic poetry, and from the legendary sagas. The question is whether southern and central Scandinavia was not on the threshold of elementary state formation at this time, albeit with vague political boundaries expressed in verbal allegiances within an elite stratum. It is worth bearing in mind that, before the time of King Alfred, a relatively well-functioning state such as Wessex was administered on a purely oral basis. Finally, I would note that, during the Migration Period, Scandinavian society was at a considerably higher level of complexity than early medieval Iceland, with its uniquely advanced literary culture. It may seem unnecessary to argue that such a complex society could support a developed poetic culture. Quite clearly, it would have been a fertile seedbed for heroic oral poetry, including works of epic proportions. Good conditions for poetic creation in fact existed much further back in time. As early as the Late Neolithic, the end of the third millennium bc, social stratification was clearly in evidence in southern Scandinavia. The hierarchical, martial, and internationally- oriented Bronze Age society of Scandinavia that followed (1800–500 bc) was of a complexity that has been regarded as almost on a par with that of the Viking Age (Kristiansen 2007). Jonathan Lindström has argued that many of the complex rock-carving scenes of the Bronze Age represent not only mythological motifs, but also stories and myths of a secular nature (Lindström 2010, 251–58). And as Stephen Glosecki has pointed out, it is evident that representational art in Iron Age Scandinavia and in Germanic areas generally—with its predilection for mythical bears, wolves, serpents, dragons, and other monster-like creatures—fundamentally reflects a rich oral narrative tradition (Glosecki 1986). It is equally clear that many of the picture stones of Late Iron Age Gotland illustrate an oral tradition incorporating mythical, mythological, and narrative elements (Andrén 1993, 2012a, 2014; Guðmundsdóttir 2012; Helmbrecht 2012; Oerhl 2012). Many of the legendary sagas deal with people and events that belong essentially in the Middle Iron Age. Archaic eddic poems such as Skírnismál, Hjálmarsmál, Hlǫðskviða, Hyndluljóð, Sigrdrífumál, Sigurðarkvida in skamma, Vǫlundarkviða, and Vǫluspá quite clearly reflect a material culture which in all essentials can be traced to the late Roman and Migration periods, in some cases possibly to early Merovingian/Vendel times (Nerman 1913, 1931, 1958a, 1960, 1961, 1963a, 1971). It is also remarkable that the picture they convey of a material culture rooted in the Middle Iron Age was not updated to reflect later fashions over the long period in which these poems were transmitted. As part of the picture of a marked social hierarchy with poetically expressed hero worship, there was also a culture of violence scarcely surpassed by that of the Viking period. Long before the Iron Age, then, the basic conditions for indigenous epic heroic poetry were in place in southern Scandinavia. That such a tradition would have flourished anew with the emergence of an elite hall culture in the middle of the Roman Iron Age would seem to go without saying. In an oral world, the only narrative medium available, apart from visual art, was the spoken word—which would normally have been used all the more and with all the greater mastery. Telling stories and advancing arguments was an art form in itself, in which skill in the use of words brought great prestige.



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Individual poems and cycles of poems were probably often recited to the accompaniment of a harp or other rhythmic sounds, before an audience of immediate and extended family, retainers, friends, and guests, and not always by professional bards or poets. Regardless of the literary form, almost everything that was narrated most people were able to reproduce in full or in part, according to their ability and interest. On the journey back to Heorot after Grendel’s mother is slain, one of the warriors recites an artistic poem in Beowulf’s honour, seemingly as they ride along.2 On another occasion, King Hrothgar himself, in a nostalgic mood, reaches for the harp and declaims a poem about events in days of old.3 Although runic writing spread rapidly across the entire Germanic world no later than the second century ad, in Scandinavia it does not appear to have been used for strictly literary purposes, but mostly for simple functional and perhaps ritual ends (Düwel 1998, 2010; Knirk 2002; Henrik Williams 1996, 1997, 2004; Brink 2005; Spurkland 2010). Fundamentally, this remained an oral society. Even individuals who had travelled south and learnt to speak and perhaps write Latin or Greek tolerably well were still, as a result of their upbringing, deeply rooted in an oral conceptual world. Nowadays, we mainly take in information through our eyes and lose the habit of using our auditory memory at an early age. The spoken word chiefly serves as a complement. In oral societies, by contrast, people’s auditory memories are so well trained that any person of average intelligence is like a walking hard drive, capable of memorising and reproducing seemingly unlimited quantities of oral information. Most of what individuals hear in the way of stories, myths, legends, songs, and poems remains in their memory and can later be retrieved with considerable precision (von Platen 1985; Ong 1982; Draak 1958; Bruford 1981; Jabbour 1969; Lord 1981; MacDonald 1978; Nagy 1986; Birgisson 2008). Mishiko Yano has estimated that, in oral societies, an average reciter had a capacity to memorise around 1,500 kilobytes, and real professionals perhaps four times more (Yano 2006). Beowulf, which can be recited in just two-and-a-half to three hours, is a mere morsel by comparison. Unsurprisingly, archaic societies are characterised by an ability to reel off long lists of kin relationships, vertical and lateral and both maternal and paternal, and regarding not only one’s own family but also other people’s. The same capacity to memorise and store information forms the basis for the ability which “primitive” peoples have to find their way over great distances in terrain in which your average ‘civilised’ human being would be lost within a quarter of an hour. The lack of formal schooling in the Iron Age does not mean there was no system of education. Childhood and adolescence were one long apprenticeship for the demands of adulthood. Children were always around adults, observing them and listening to conversations, stories, songs, and discussions. Depending on their age, they would be involved in practical work, with a growing element of active participation and personal responsibility. By the age of twenty, without having read or written a single line, a person would have absorbed a large proportion of the practical know-how, experience, customs, con2  867 ff.

3  2105–14.

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cepts, values, spirituality, traditions, myths, songs, narratives, and aesthetics of their society. It was a system of education that would have scored highly in a modern-day PISA assessment. The downside was that much of the accumulated knowledge and tradition of such a society only existed in the heads of the people who happened to be living at any given time. We now know that the Middle Iron Age villages of southern and central Scandinavia were just as large and complex as those of medieval times. That means that they cannot possibly have operated without an orally transmitted system to regulate all the common legal concerns of village life (Brink 2005). Although certain individuals may have had a particular responsibility to communicate that system to others, every adult must have had a close familiarity with it. In short, the very size and complexity of villages in the Middle Iron Age are clear evidence of the great capacity for oral transmission and memorisation that marks oral societies in general. In oral cultures, people do not abstract, analyze and structure in terms of categories in the same way as in writing-based societies. Instead, they use more concrete, functional and situational concepts and explanations, drawing examples from myth or reality. That does not mean that they think and reason less intellectually, just that they do so by other means.

Linguistic Awareness

A good many letters of the older futhark, the early twenty-four-character runic alphabet, reflect Latin forms. It is strange, therefore, that Latin alphabetical order and letter names were not also adopted, a paradox for which there is as yet no generally accepted explanation. Another manifestation of the independence of the early Scandinavian tradition of writing is that the people of the North did not adopt Latin terms in this field, but used Norse words for the act of writing (vríta, rísta), for written characters (rún, stafr), for writing or literature (vrít, wraita), and for books (bók) (Wimmer 1887, 70; Holm 1975, 113–14). A further point to be noted here is that, throughout the Germanic world, runes were given archaic names which, in terms of their pronunciation, reflected central phenomena and concepts of Scandinavian and Germanic society (Henrik Williams 1996, 1997, 2004). Henrik Williams, who has understood the deeper implications of this question, has suggested that, once the art of writing had become known, the futhark arose in a peripheral part of Scandinavia with limited contact with Roman culture (Williams 1997). It is clear, though, that the earliest examples of runic writing are to be found in southwest Scandinavia (Höfler 1992; Düwel 2010; Barnes 2012; cf. Fischer 2005). Here there are also a good many inscriptions in Latin, written in Roman characters, several of them, moreover, on objects carved with runes. It is reasonable to assume that the people who introduced the futhark were also tolerably familiar, at least, with the art of writing in Latin. Personally, the only explanation I can see for the distinctive character of the futhark is that people in the Germanic world had long held ideas about the phonetic value, character, and mutual relations of the individual phonemes, ideas that were not dislodged by



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Latin alphabetical order. To speak of an “oral alphabet” would perhaps be going too far, but the alphabetical order, conceptual universe and, to some extent, characters of the older futhark nevertheless offer clear testimony to a phonemic awareness with a preliterate background. That in turn can only be understood in the light of a well-developed oral poetic tradition. Such a tradition is virtually unthinkable without extensive use of mnemonic devices such as alliteration and assonance, the kinds of repetition of consonant and vowel sounds that have been common in oral poetry the world over and that presuppose considerable phonemic insight and control. I find it difficult to believe that any sound-based system of writing has ever come into being except against a backdrop of oral literature. Indications of alliteration are indeed to be found in Scandinavia in the Middle Iron Age. Examples include various short runic texts, such as those on the Golden Horns of Gallehus in southern Jutland from around ad 400 and the gold bracteate from Tjurkö in Blekinge from the late Migration Period. Another example is the name alliteration, both consonantal and vocalic, used during the Migration Period by Scandinavian ruling dynasties such as the Ynglings and the Skjǫldungs (Nerman 1913, 1931; Wessén 1927b; Woolf 1939) and, according to Beowulf, also by the Hrethlings of Gotland. Opinions differ, but the sum total of short runic inscriptions from the Middle Iron Age, though they are difficult to interpret, seems to point to the existence of metrical structures that could reflect early forms of, for example, fornyrðislag, ljóðaháttr and málaháttr (Sievers 1893; Herschend 2001b, 2012; Marold 2012b, 2013; Mees 2013). Schulte (2010), however, is less convinced. A possible connection between the futhark and oral literature is reinforced by Snorri’s claim that Odin, the god of poetry, had a special relationship to the runes (Hávamál, 80, 111, 138–43; Ynglinga saga, 6). There is thus much to suggest that there was considerable phonemic awareness among the Scandinavian elite long before they came into contact with Latin literate culture, an awareness that can only be understood in the light of a long-standing tradition of oral literature. Such a tradition is only to be expected, as it is found in almost every known complex society in the world, including some far less complex than Iron Age Scandinavia. As Margaret Clunies Ross has pointed out, moreover, there are significant structural similarities between Beowulf and many of the legendary sagas, chiefly in the shape of “retrospective monologue and prophecy […] and a dialogue of sorts in the Unferð episode” (Clunies Ross 2012, 127). She also observes: Although the action of Beowulf is predominantly presented as a third-person narrative, it nevertheless includes a significant number of other kinds of discourse, many of which can be paralleled in fornaldarsögur and in poetry in eddic verse-forms outside the prosimetrum form. (Clunies Ross 2012, 122)

Another point of literary similarity is the episode just mentioned in which Unferth, King Hrothgar’s þyle, publicly mocks Beowulf’s youthful adventures. As Carol Clover especially has shown, there are significant formal points of agreement here with the Norse flytings (Clover 1980):

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The relation of the Unferð episode to the Norse flytings […] is immediate and detailed, both with respect to situation […] and the nature of the speeches themselves: in form […]; in tone […]; in the use of sarcasm […]; in the emphatic I/you contrast and the use of names in direct address; in the combat metaphor; in the matching of personal histories and the exposure of dubious and shameful deeds […]; in the use of familiar oppositions and paradigms; and in such correspondences of detail as the charges of drunkenness and fratricide and the Hel curse.

Concerning mnemonic devices of relevance to Scandinavian oral skaldic poetry, see Birgisson (2008, 111–47). Given that both Old Norse skaldic poetry and Old English literature were of a character more reflective of memorization and less of improvization than the latter-day SerboCroat oral tradition that served as a model for Perry and Lord’s “oral-formulaic theory” (Lönnroth 1971), it is reasonable to assume that memorization was also central to Scandinavian oral tradition in the Middle Iron Age.

Conclusions

Underlying the old view that the story of Beowulf cannot have been composed in Scandinavia is the implication that Scandinavian society, unlike its Anglo-Saxon counterpart, did not have what it took to produce advanced poetic art. This is a gross misunderstanding. Long before the Migration Period even, all the basic societal conditions were in place in this region for a rich heroic literature, including in an epic form.

Chapter 11

THE ORAL STRUCTURE OF THE POEM To assist the memory, epic oral narrative relies extensively on stock phrases and expressions and other standardized themes and patterns. The preference for poetry which oral tradition in low-technology societies shows is quite natural, given the wider scope which it offers for the employment of mnemonic devices. Oral literature the world over typically makes frequent use of alliteration, assonance, and rhythm, of formulaic expressions, stock epithets and synonyms, of simile, metaphor, repetition and exaggeration, and of contrast and variation. Other characteristic features include additive structure, embedded speeches, poetry within poetry, episodic digressions, a lack of cyclical structure, references to the future in the past tense, and indications of recitation to an audience. In the case of larger poetic works, moreover, internal contradictions are not unusual (Ong 1982; Lord 1987). Quite clearly, Beowulf abounds in such features (Pilch and Tristram 1979, 83–120, 160–72; Irving 1989), a point which no one seems to deny. The need for variation in expression is closely linked to the requirements of metre, and to the fact that advanced reliance on memory is based to a large extent on visual associations that have to be varied if they are to work. And sure enough, we find that Beowulf does not make do with one or two words for key concepts such as “king,” “warrior,” “nobleman,” “sword,” “mail shirt,” “ship” and “sea,” but often juggles ten to twenty synonyms, counting simplex forms alone, along with whole hosts of often quite graphic compounds. For the concept of “hero,” no fewer than thirty-seven different expressions are used, on top of which there are numerous intricate kennings and other circumlocutions. For the main protagonist Beowulf, a hundred and one different epithets appear, for Hrothgar fifty-six. For the concept of “house” or “hall,” thirteen different words are employed, counting only the simplex forms (Schemann 1882). In A Critical Companion to Beowulf, Andy Orchard provides a list of formulaic phrases in the poem running to no fewer than forty pages, although he notes that it could be greatly extended (Orchard 2003, 274–314). Of course, views may differ as to what constitutes a formula. Exaggerations in the poem appear, in particular, in the way kings and nobles are portrayed in glowing colours, sometimes with sharp contrasts between good and bad qualities. The decent, honest Beowulf is set against the questionable Unferth, the democratic Beowulf against the tyrannical Heremod, the noble Offa and the gentle Hygd against the wicked Modthryth/Fremu. The clearly oral character of the poem is also evidenced by the fact that 41 percent of the text consists of direct speech, which can be compared with 47 percent in the Iliad and 60 percent in the Odyssey (Fulk et al. 2009, lxxxi–lxvii). Just over one-fifth of Beowulf, almost seven hundred lines, consists of digressions of varying length dealing with something other than the main theme. The most widely discussed of these are the ones about Scyld and the Scyldings, Sigemund/Sigurd the

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dragon-slayer, the battle of Finnsburg with the funerals of Finn and Hnæf, the figure of Unferth, Queen Modthryth/Fremu and Offa, the death of Herebeald, Hrethel’s mourning, Hrothgar’s “sermon,” and “The Lay of the Last Survivor” (Bonjour 1950; Bjork 1997). Such digressive passages are uncommon in other Old English literature (Pilch and Tristram 1979, 117). Initially, these digressions were sometimes seen as natural traces of an oral epic with a complex genesis. But once the poem had generally begun to be regarded, in the late nineteenth century, as the work of a literate Old English poet, the latter instead came in for posthumous criticism for the lack of logical structure which such passages give the narrative. Since Tolkien, however, scholars have been more inclined to talk of deliberate literary devices in the hands of a great author. The following quotation neatly sums up two hundred years of research on the question (Bjork 1997, 193): Earliest commentaries considered digressions and episodes clumsy breaches of decorum, extraneous matter interesting briefly for historical reasons, or proof of the poem’s multiple authorship. Later commentary, particularly but not exclusively after 1936, viewed them as deliberate parts of an organic whole. The current trend is to regard the approximately twenty-eight digressions and episodes as appropriate in terms of the poem’s non-Aristotelian aesthetics and of their cultural function during the poem’s time of composition.

This view of the matter leaves the door open for a free interpretation both of each individual digression and of the phenomenon as such. I myself regard these digressions primarily as a manifestation of additive reporting of actual experiences, of the kind that is a natural feature of oral epic. We can compare them with when Odysseus, visiting the island of the Phaeacians, listens to the inhabitants’ accounts of their history, which he himself later reproduces in direct speech as an inseparable part of the story of his own experiences (Odyssey, Book 20). At several points, the narrative of the poem is quite evidently presented as if it were being recited by a speaker to an audience. The well-known opening exclamation Hwœt, “lo, listen, pay attention,” is itself telling. The fact that the same expression also occurs in other Old English poems does not automatically mean that writing authors were using an oral stylistic device, but rather that Old English poetry largely reflects oral tradition. In fact, little early Old English poetry can be said with certainty to have essentially been composed in writing (Amodio 2014; Pilch and Tristram 1979). Below, I discuss a few more features of Beowulf which I would argue clearly reflect its fundamentally oral composition, but which do not tend to receive much attention. Several times in the poem, future events are spoken of as if they had already taken place, such as when it is hinted three times that Heorot will be burnt down by the enemy.1 In the same way, it is intimated that Gutnish society will suffer revenge at the hands of the Swedes.2 A natural explanation for this kind of narrative prophecy is 1  76–85, 1233–35, 2050–69.

2  2999–3005.



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that later bards, with the benefit of hindsight, would have been able to add to the poem events that happened later on. There is at least one clear example in the poem of the composition of a new poetic tribute to Beowulf. When the company return to Heorot after Beowulf has killed Grendel’s mother and dealt the death blow to Grendel, one of the party begins to sing a lay in his honour, although whether or not this is to be regarded as improvisation is unclear (Eliason 1952). The most natural explanation for all these features of oral poetry is that the core of the poem was created in an oral setting. I would primarily envisage that several separate poems about the hero Beowulf were eventually combined into a whole, with the involvement of a number of different skalds and bards. Such an origin, which in my view is likely, echoes Schücking’s much-decried “Liedertheorie,” the difference being that he imagined the process taking place on Anglo-Saxon territory (Schücking 1905), while I argue that it mainly occurred in eastern Scandinavia. Some chronological uncertainty exists regarding the various stories of battles between the Swedes and the Gutes that appear in different places at the end of the poem. A good many pieces need to be fitted together to get a clear overall picture, as when Sune Lindqvist, in Beowulf dissectus, creates a single narrative from scattered passages about the same events (Lindqvist 1958). The same muddled structure occurs virtually throughout the poem, to the delight of scholars who are thus provided with an inexhaustible hunting ground for new interpretations. But an author working in writing, with the aim of being understood, would hardly have deliberately arranged the text in this way. Such contradictions are all the more natural, though, in an oral epic that has arisen from separate poems and series of poems later combined to form a larger entity, which was then recited and reworked over a long period of time by different bards in various contexts and areas, a process in which parts of poems may also have been lost.

Narrative Structure

Dramatic stories rhythmically presented in elegant verse in the light of the hall fire were an integral part of every listener’s experience, especially if those listeners had heard them several times and perhaps themselves recited them in their entirety or in part, to themselves or others. In the poem we hear how Beowulf and his men at Heorot listen with rapt attention to songs about events and heroic deeds involving Hrothgar’s kinsmen. When they subsequently return home and one of their number recounts all their adventures, he also recites the songs they have heard as part of their shared experience. He even repeats the stories Beowulf told at Heorot about his background and earlier exploits. In the same way, Beowulf, on his return, repeats things he himself has earlier told Hrothgar. After Beowulf has defeated Grendel and the company return in high spirits to Heorot, one of Hrothgar’s skalds delivers a lay about Sigemund and Heremod, which is heard by Beowulf and his men and therefore automatically added to the poem’s overall narrative about Beowulf’s adventures.

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Facing the final battle of his life, against the Serpent, Beowulf recalls his people’s battles with the Swedes in the presence of his companions, who are thus able to convey his words to others. Something similar happens at Beowulf’s funeral. In high-flown language, his followers extol the virtues and exploits of their hero in the presence of a large company, who can then, in turn, pass on what has been said. The opening exclamation of the poem3 is itself an excellent prelude to an oral narrative: Listen! We have heard of the glory in bygone days of the folk-kings of the spear-Danes, how those noble lords did lofty deeds. (Liuzza 1999, 53)

What is it that “we” have heard? Clearly, the story of Scyld and his descendants and of how Hrothgar built his majestic hall of Heorot. But who is “we’? The likely answer is Beowulf and his fellow countrymen, who are preserving the story for posterity by passing it on. The Christian-coloured account of Grendel’s attack on Heorot during Beowulf ’s visit4 begins with the monster jealously listening to the revelry inside the hall: he heard the joyful din loud in the hall, with the harp’s sound, the clear song of the scop. He said who was able to tell of the origin of men […] (Liuzza 1999, 56)

Here, the poem refers explicitly to bards reciting songs about the ancient history of the Danes in the presence of Beowulf and his retainers. As mentioned earlier, they also listen to Hrothgar when he picks up the harp and begins to declaim poems recalling old memories. These can consequently be passed on as part of what later becomes the poem about Beowulf. Beowulf is introduced in the poem by the words: “Then from his home the thane of Hygelac, a good man among the Gutes, heard of Grendel’s deeds.”5 This prompts him to fit out a boat and set off for Hrothgar’s hall. From this point onwards, everything that happens or is narrated is recounted either by one of Beowulf’s companions or by Beowulf himself. The conversations between the coast guard and Beowulf, between the coast guard and the herald Wulfgar, between the latter and Hrothgar, and finally between Hrothgar and Beowulf have all been witnessed by one or more of the company entering Hrothgar’s hall with Beowulf (one man is said to be guarding the ship and another the weapons left outside). The same is true of Hrothgar’s long speech of welcome at the beginning of the next section, and the recitation of oral poems in the hall: “The scop sang brightly in Heorot” (Liuzza 1999, 68).6 Later we are told how Unferth scornfully addresses Beowulf and mocks him about his youthful adventures, and how Beowulf responds just as sarcastically. Through one of those present, this exchange of words, too, is added to the emerging poem. Soon we also hear how Queen Wealhtheow enters the hall and offers the guests 3  1–3.

4  89–91.

5  194–95. 6  496–97.



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drinks. After that, the words of Beowulf are quoted: “Beowulf spoke, son of Ecgtheow: “I resolved when I set out over the waves, sat down in my ship with my troop of soldiers […]” (Liuzza 1999, 72). It is reasonable to assume that it is one of Beowulf’s companions who presents both this quotation and the narrative account in which it is set, and who prior to Grendel’s visit quotes another long speech by Beowulf: “I consider myself no poorer in strength […]” (Liuzza 1999, 73). After Beowulf’s companions have settled down to sleep in the hall, Grendel forces his way in and devours a man. He is seized by Beowulf, the two struggle so that the hall shakes, and finally Grendel breaks free, losing one arm in the process. Here we read: “From the floor there flew many a mead- bench, as I have heard say, gold-adorned, where those grim foes fought.” The interposed comment is presumably made by a reciting bard who was not present, but who is recounting what he has heard from others. The day after Grendel has returned seriously wounded to his fen, and the company are riding back to Heorot, one man begins to compose a poem about Beowulf’s heroic exploits, comparing them to Sigemund’s. Thus, that story, too, is inserted into the poem:7 There they celebrated Beowulf’s glory: it was often said that south or north, between the two seas, across the wide world, there was none better under the sky’s expanse among shield-warriors, nor more worthy to rule […] At times the king’s thane, full of grand stories, mindful of songs, who remembered much, a great many of the old tales, found other words truly bound together; he began again to recite with skill the adventure of Beowulf, adeptly tell an apt tale, and weave his words. He said nearly all that he had heard said of Sigemund’s stirring deeds, many strange things, the Volsung’s strife, his distant voyages obscure, unknown to all the sons of men, his feuds and crimes—except for Fitela, when of such things he wished to speak to him, uncle to nephew—for always they were, in every combat, companions at need […] (Liuzza 1999, 79–80)

Here we have a typical example of how oral epic can be fashioned. To convey the full extent of Beowulf’s achievement in killing Grendel, a long story is told of the most famous of all heroes in the Germanic world of the time, Sigemund/Sigurd the dragonslayer. Everything is heard by Beowulf’s companions and can thus later be incorporated in the story of his visit to Hrothgar. In the next scene, Hrothgar makes a long speech in praise of Beowulf’s exploits and Beowulf responds by explaining how he killed Grendel. Although those present already know this and have heard it all before, these speeches, too, are stored in their memory and will later be retold together with other things they have experienced on their visit to the Danes. After this, Heorot is made ready for a feast, at which Hrothgar dispenses generous gifts to Beowulf and his men. In the following section, the festivities continue:8 Noise and music mingled together before the leader of Healfdene’s forces, the harp was touched, tales often told, when Hrothgar’s scop was set to recite among the mead-tables his hall-entertainment […] (Liuzza 1999, 86)

7  856–82.

8  1066–70.

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And now the long story is told of the dramatic battle at Finnsburg, ending with the words: “The lay was sung, the entertainer’s song” (Liuzza 1999, 89). Thus, this story, too, is remembered and incorporated into the tale of Beowulf’s adventures. When, in the next chapter, Queen Wealhtheow rewards Beowulf with gifts that include a magnificent neck ring, it is natural to launch into a digression about the mythical necklace Brōsinga mene, which Hama is said to have stolen from the Gothic king Eormenric and which may later have been owned by Hygelac before he lost it in Frisia, an incident that is also described. The fact that the story is not expressly told by any of the people present, and that Hygelac is at the same time said to be alive, could indicate that this narrative was inserted secondarily in conjunction with later transmission of the poem. In the following chapter, Hrothgar turns the conversation to Grendel’s mother and the men march off to the bloody mere, where Beowulf makes a short speech to Hrothgar before diving into the water. The next scene sees Beowulf in full combat with Grendel’s mother, and after a long struggle he is able to kill her. Finally, he deals the death blow to the dying Grendel. When he has returned from the depths, the company set off for home, proudly carrying Grendel’s head. Back at the hall, Beowulf tells of his struggle in the mere and Hrothgar answers with a long speech stressing how important it is for a prince to be generous and good and not such an evil tyrant as Heremod had been in his day. And so that speech, too, is incorporated in the emerging poem. The next section is about leave-taking and departure. Beowulf makes a speech to Hrothgar, who in turn makes one to Beowulf, all presumably in the presence of attentive retainers. The narrative is thus full of passages recounting speeches or referring to pronouncements made by different individuals. When the party return to Beowulf’s native country, the coast guard receives them and helps them ashore. And just as they are about to meet the fair Hygd, her very opposite, the murderous Modthryth/Fremu, springs to mind, a cruel and arrogant woman until she married and came under the influence of the noble Offa, king of the Angles’ continental ancestors. And so this episode is also added to the story of Beowulf. Sitting in the hall a short time later, Beowulf himself gives a potted version of his visit to Hrothgar, including what he himself said there. He also now tells how Hrothgar is planning to marry off his daughter Freawaru to his enemy Ingeld, in the hope of ending the blood feud with the Heathobards. There is a strong ring of authenticity to Beowulf’s long account of this conflict, whose outcome he is pessimistic about. The reason the poem has given no hint of this before could be that Beowulf heard the sensitive story from Hrothgar in private, with none of his companions listening in. The gloomy intimation that all will in any case end in disaster for everyone at Heorot was presumably added later by bards reciting the poem, who by then knew the outcome. After this, Beowulf recounts how Grendel killed one of his men, Hondscioh—this is the first time he is mentioned by name—and how he defeated Grendel and was richly rewarded by Hrothgar. Beowulf also tells how, in his joy the following day, Hrothgar began to play the harp, sing sorrowful songs about the old days, and recount strange



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tales from his youth, while the company continued their revelry until Grendel’s mother turned up in the evening and made off with Æschere; how Beowulf killed her; and how Hrothgar once again rewarded him with precious gifts. Finally, Beowulf himself recites a lay of sixteen half-lines in praise of Hygelac. All this takes place in the hall in the presence of Beowulf’s own companions and other retainers, skalds, and other individuals with good memories, who are thus able to pass the information on. We then have further evidence that this is oral literature, when a reciting “narrator” reappears with the words “I heard that[…],” namely that Beowulf gave the neck ring he had received from Wealhtheow to Queen Hygd. We find a similar verse opening a few times in Ynglingatal: Frákr, “I have heard,” þat frákr enn, “I heard that too,” and þat frá huerr, “everyone has heard that” (Ynglingatal, 8, 16, 22, as numbered in Noreen 1925). This is followed by a panegyric on Beowulf’s splendid qualities, ending with the comment that his foster-father and grandfather Hrethel had initially thought him an ineffectual wimp. Finally, Hygelac rewards Beowulf with seven thousand hides of land and farms. When Beowulf, on his return home, recalls what happened to him and his companions on their visit to the Danes, he does not reproduce a single one of the Christian allusions these events are garnished with in the poem. It is as if he has never heard them. Nor indeed has he, if they were added secondarily in the course of the poem’s transmission in England. All of the above I regard as an object lesson in how oral epic poetry can be built up. The seemingly irrelevant insertions into the poem are in fact part of the logical structure of oral epic. It is perfectly apparent that the poem is brimming with manifestations of oral literature in almost all its known forms—and just as difficult to see what elements of it might reflect a literary creation produced at a desk. With all its interruptions, digressions, chronological leaps, repetitions, and contradictions, so typical of oral literature, Beowulf is at times chaotic. As far as I know, there is no other pre-modern European work of literature with such a complex structure that can be classed with certainty as written fiction. The fact that oral narrative can survive for a long time in an early literate society and influence poets working pen in hand is no proof that Beowulf was essentially composed by a writing author. The way the poem is permeated with features characteristic of oral literature points, rather, to the opposite conclusion, that it is essentially a manifestation of oral epic that has subsequently been preserved in writing.

Conclusions

In Scandinavian Iron Age society, all the basic conditions were in place for the production of oral literature, including works of epic proportions. A second conclusion is that Beowulf exhibits virtually all the known literary devices of oral poetry. And a third is that, in many ways, the poem clearly reflects an oral narrative structure, the way in which an oral epic can be constructed. Beowulf contains so many manifestations of oral epic that it is much more reasonable to assume that it was, in all essentials, composed orally than that it was written by an author seeking to imitate the form and structure of oral poetry.

Chapter 12

RESULTS OF PRIMARY ANALYSIS, STEP 2 From the last five chapters, the following conclusions can be drawn.

Based on a comparison with historical evidence, the main narrative of Beowulf can be dated with considerable confidence to the end of the Migration Period, essentially the first half of the sixth century. This is consistent with the chronological assessment of the material culture of the poem. The type of elite setting reflected in references throughout the poem to prestigious objects such as neck and arm rings, solid gold, and mail shirts is well documented archaeologically from Migration Period Scandinavia, but is not found in Anglo-Saxon England at any time prior to the late Viking Age. The contrast with Scandinavia could not be more stark. Consequently, this special material and ideological setting cannot possibly have been portrayed as distinctly as it is by an Old English author on the basis of either that author’s personal experience or antiquarian frames of reference. Equally, given that archaic features of Old English in the text clearly show that the narrative of the poem was circulating in England no later than around ad 700, such an author cannot have found inspiration in the Scandinavia of his own day, as neck and arm rings and, by and large, solid gold as well were not to be found there either at that time. The material and ideological setting of the poem is firmly located in the first half of the sixth century, the end of the Migration Period. It is no less evident that the very limited Christian elements in Beowulf were added secondarily to a clearly pagan core. Particularly telling is the fact that the “Christian voice” of the poem does not understand the pagan cremations and the associated complex notions of the soul that are depicted with such realism. The poem’s accounts of these cremations also have a tangibility that points to personal experience beyond anything accessible to an Old English Christian poet. Cremation burials are extremely uncommon in England after 600, and richly furnished male inhumation burials are very uncommon from the second quarter of the seventh century onwards. It is also striking that there is no Christian message in the strict sense, and that not a single person in the poem is portrayed as being guided by a Christian faith and Christian ambitions, or is buried according to Christian practice. The conclusion is that, to be able to create the poem in all its material and ideological quintessence, an Old English poet must have had access to so extensive a body of Scandinavian tradition that he would have been no more than a dependent compiler. But as no such traditional material is known from England, he cannot even be ascribed such a role. The picture which the poem conveys of a very special cultural and social setting cannot have been painted anywhere other than in Scandinavia during the late Migration Period. The text of the poem also makes it clear that the Geats (Ġēatas) are a maritime people living in an area surrounded by the sea, somewhere between the territories of the Danes and the Swedes. This is entirely in keeping with the fact that their homeland is explicitly referred to as an island. Apart from Gotland with its Gutes, it is difficult to find

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any other large island in the Baltic with a population who, from a linguistic point of view, could reasonably be described as Geats. The constantly repeated tribal epithet weder for the Geats, in the sense of “ram,” directly parallels the Gutes’ official description of themselves in early medieval times as rams. In the earliest centuries of the Middle Ages, the ram was an official symbol of the Gotland people. There is much to suggest that the expression Weder-Ġēatas is to be interpreted as “Ram Founders” and that the first element weder- served to distinguish the Gutes from other groups of “founders” in Scandinavia, such as the East and West Gauts (östgötar and västgötar) and in my view also the Jutes. As “ram,” moreover, is not known as an epithet for any other relevant tribal group in Scandinavia, least of all for West or East Gauts or Ö� landers, and as other geographical information in the poem also points to Gotland, it would seem to me that the only conclusion possible is that Wederas and Weder-Ġēatas in the poem refer to Gotlanders. That being so, the fact that Ġēatas, unlike gutar, contains a diphthong would appear to be a secondary concern. Several natural explanations are possible, one being that a diphthong developed naturally in England, another that the tradition was transferred to that country by a non-Gutnish bard. Yet another possibility is that, before the Germanic Sound Shift, the name gutar was still pronounced with a diphthong in Proto-Norse and was therefore interpreted as Ġēatas when the poem arrived in England around AD 600. The conclusion drawn from the primary analysis of the evidence, that the core of the Beowulf narrative was created in eastern Scandinavia as an essentially coherent pagan Scandinavian work of poetry, is thus further reinforced. As the story of Beowulf cannot have come into existence as an Old English literary product, written or oral, the conclusion has to be that it essentially goes back to a coherent Scandinavian oral tradition. Given that epic oral tradition around the world—for all the fanciful and unreal elements it may contain—rarely amounts to pure fiction, but ultimately rests on a foundation of reality, there is good reason to assume the same thing for Beowulf, especially as its cast of characters is in fact partly historical and the description of its material setting is largely accurate for the time in question. The two levels of my primary analysis, then, indicate that the narrative of the poem was transferred to England as a largely coherent eastern Scandinavian work of poetry and, on English soil, was given an Old English linguistic form, continued to be transmitted, and was finally written down. Such a process can be seen as a parallel to the way in which many examples of continental Germanic poetic tradition from the late Roman and Migration periods were transferred to mainland Scandinavia and from there to Iceland and in some cases even as far as Greenland, and not written down until well into the Middle Ages. Having concluded, then, that Beowulf was essentially composed in Scandinavia and that the Geats are to be identified as the Gutes of Gotland, let us now take a closer look at the implications of those conclusions. In the following, I undertake an extensive close reading of the poem, taking as my starting point the conclusions that the narrative of Beowulf mainly builds on a Scandinavian poetic tradition and that the Geats are the Gutes of Gotland.

Chapter 13

GOTLAND When Beowulf and his men return home from Heorot and march up towards Hygelac’s hall, the latter is said to be sǣwealle nēah,1 i.e., “near the sea wall.” This sǣweall has caused quite a few headaches. Sometimes it is translated literally as “sea-wall” (Clark Hall 1950; Crossley-Holland 1999) or “havvoll” (with the same meaning, Rytter 1929). Many, though, have taken the word weall to refer to cliffs along the shore, translating the expression for example as “strandklintens krön” (“the crest of the cliff,” Collinder 1954), “sea-cliff” (Walton 2007; Jack 1994; Alexander 2005), “sea-side cliff” (Ringler 2007), “a secure cliff” (Heaney 1999) or “la falaise” (Crépin 2007). Others ignore the word weall and translate the phrase freely as “the shore” (Klaeber 1950; Wrenn and Bolton 1996; Mitchell and Robinson 1998; Fulk et al. 2009) or “Meeresufer” (Heyne 1868; Lehnert 2008). During the Migration Period, however, no chieftain’s residence would have been located right by the shore. Given the Scandinavian elite’s taste for coastal plundering raids in the Middle Iron Age (Herschend 2009, 329–85; Rau and Carnap-Bornheim 2012), they were careful not to be an easy prey themselves, visible from the sea. Usually, the seats of princes were placed a kilometre or two from the coast, as in the case of Uppsala and Gudme, or getting on for ten kilometres inland, as at Uppåkra. So, when King Hygelac’s hall is said to be sǣwealle nēah, it presumably means that it is close to the coast, but still some distance inland. But can a “sea wall” be some way inland? Yes, but not just anywhere. In the southern and central Baltic Sea area, there are large geological formations answering this description, above all on Gotland and to some extent on Ö� land and in Blekinge, more specifically the Ancylus and Littorina beach ridges formed when the Ancylus Lake and Littorina Sea were at their highest levels, during the Middle and Late Mesolithic. The Littorina Ridge came into being when the saline Littorina Sea was at its highest stabilized level around eight thousand years ago (Yu 2003). On Gotland, the Littorina Ridge is at its widest and most conspicuous in the southeast of the island, just inland from the Bandlundviken Bay. Whereas the Ancylus Ridge is a good way inland here, at around 15 metres above sea level, the considerably larger Littorina Ridge, at an elevation of 7–8 metres, is just one or two kilometres from and parallel to the present-day coastline. Between the Littorina Ridge and the coast, the soils of southeastern Gotland are often quite poor, and the limits of human settlement therefore mainly run along or just to the east of the ridge. In that the ridge itself is unsuitable for cultivation, but is permeable, dry, and firm, it has generally been used for settlements, roads, and cemeteries. In the parishes of Burs and När in the southeast of Gotland, the Littorina Ridge is wider and, during the Iron Age, was closer to the sea than in any other part of the Baltic Sea area. With a width of two to four hundred metres and a height of three to four metres, 1  1924b.

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Figure 1. My interpretation of the link between the Beowulf poem and the Bandlund Bay in the island of Gotland with the approximate sixth-century shoreline. Inset: The royal seat of the Gutes with its walled approach road from the harbour. Illustration by Daniel Löwenborg. The numbered locations are:

1. The imposing Littorinavallen (Littorina Ridge). The royal seat is located sǣwealle nēah, close to “The Sea Wall.”

2. “Burgen,” the old name of the cliff-like part of the Littorina Ridge on the northern side of the bay. Beowulf sets off on his sea voyage from the sandy beach under beorge, ‘below the Burg’.

3. “Ö� rnkull,” Earna nœs, from where the dead Beowulf is carried to Hrones næs.

4. Hrones næs where Beowulf is cremated.

5. Ġēata clifu, “The cliffs of the Gutes,” which Beowulf sights on his return home, could be the 37-metre-high Hoburgen cliff. 6. Leode fæsten–Hreosna beorh, the Torsburgen hillfort.

it dominates the flat landscape. Even now, when many parts of the ridge are wooded, it stands out clearly from the surrounding countryside. During the Migration Period, when this beach ridge was just a kilometre or so from the coast—and even less in some areas, such as by the innermost part of the Bandlundviken Bay—“sea wall” would have been a very apt description. What is more, the bivalve shells and other marine fossils it contains clearly announce, even to the layperson, that it was once formed in contact with the sea. The description “sea wall” would at the same time have distinguished the Littorina Ridge from the Ancylus Ridge further inland. In the traditional dialect of the neighbouring parish of Lau, the Littorina Ridge is known as a burg, corresponding to the term landborg on Ö� land. It was referred to quite simply as Burgen. All the indications are that the word burg is also to be found in the par-



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ish name Burs (Olsson 1984, 45, 57–58; 1996, 55, 67–68; cf. Gustavsson 1972–1986), showing what a dominant influence this ridge has had on the local landscape. The existence of the word burg may seem to run counter to the idea that sǣweall in the poem refers to the Littorina Ridge. But in Lau dialect, the word vall has been used in a similar manner for elongated, stony elevations in the terrain (Gustavsson 1972–1986). It should also be noted that early settlement names in eastern Svealand containing Vallas their first element often denote places in the vicinity of substantial ridges. The imposing Littorina Ridge was a landmark that was well known throughout the island. Incomprehensible as the words “near the seawall” may have been to an AngloSaxon audience, and to modern-day translators, to the inhabitants of southeast Gotland they would have been perfectly clear.

Stavgard in Burs

The Bandlundviken Bay in Burs parish was in fact the site of one of Gotland’s best natural harbours in earlier times, with numerous traces of activity from the Late Iron Age. During the time of Beowulf, this bay stretched further inland than it does today, reaching a point less than a kilometre from the great Littorina Ridge, where that formation is at its widest. And precisely there, sǣwealle nēah, “near the seawall,” at Kärne in Burs, is one of Scandinavia’s most monumental settlements from the time in question. For those approaching this remarkable settlement from the shore, the Littorina Ridge would have formed a distinct backdrop. Here, on sandy ground just a few hundred metres to the east of the large beach ridge and immediately adjoining fertile arable soil to the south, we find a striking cluster of foundations. The main structure is a huge building, 67 metres long and 11 metres wide in the middle, narrowing to 8.5 metres at either end. At its northern end, outside an inner door, there is a vestibule with a paved floor. With its length and its roughly onemetre-high and equally thick stone walls, this building is without parallel. It had two rows of roof posts, a doorway at each end, and a low dividing wall across the middle. The width of the building and the side walls angled in at the ends suggest a ceiling of some considerable height. The building’s masonry and the parallel lines of stones leading up to the site are also impressive. In 1928–1931, part of this site was excavated by John Nihlén, primarily the main building, but also two smaller ones immediately adjacent to it. Beneath the large building there were traces of at least one older structure, one of them a roughly forty-metrelong and ten-metre-wide stone house foundation of a typical Gotland type (Nihlén 1932; Nihlén and Boëthius 1933). Of Gotland’s roughly eighteen hundred known preserved stone building foundations from the Middle Iron Age (Svedjemo 2014, 69), the structure at Stavgard is by far the largest (see Svedjemo 2014, fig. 3.1.3). In terms of size, there are in fact no contemporary building remains anywhere in Sweden or Denmark to equal it, though there may possibly be the odd example in Norway.

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Originally consisting of at least five buildings close together, this settlement is more like a large, dominant farm than a regular Gotland village from this period. In popular parlance, the site has been called Stavgard or Stavars hus. In the northern part of the large building there was a hearth, 2.5 metres long and 80 centimetres wide. Judging from the archaeological finds here, this part was mainly used for craft-related activities. The southern section, with a somewhat smaller hearth and finds of certain domestic objects, seems to have served initially as a hall and later as a dwelling for a high-status family, probably after a separate hall building had been constructed in the late Roman Iron Age following the general pattern of the time. The sense of this being a large farm is accentuated by the fact that there are remains of at least four buildings, one or two of them now in quite a ruinous state. A structure now obliterated by cultivation, roughly 40 metres long and 8 metres wide, located 75 metres to the southeast of and parallel to the large building, may have been a separate hall. Yet another large structure may be concealed beneath an oblong, house-sized soil plateau 20 metres to the northwest of and parallel to the largest building. Despite quite limited excavation, this site has produced by far the most outstanding archaeological finds of all the almost fifty Middle Iron Age farms on Gotland that have been investigated by archaeologists, and indeed a richer assemblage than most other individual prehistoric farms studied in Sweden. Inside the large building, a total of twenty-three Roman silver denarii were found, mostly from the later part of the second century. In a midden layer just to the east of it, seven shards of West European glass beakers emerged, along with some thirty shards of Roman terra sigillata pottery, according to Selling of a type made in Upper Bavaria in the second century for distribution to eastern Europe (Selling 1938). Elsewhere in the Nordic region, such luxury ceramics are known only from a few finds in Sweden and half a dozen in Denmark (Helander 1997; Petersson 2007). In the main building, four bronze crossbow fibulae, a horn comb, beads, potsherds scattered throughout the house, a bone implement for working textiles, and weaving weights were also discovered. A good many of the finds were from the fourth and fifth centuries and the most recent from the end of the Migration Period. A few strange coins from the beginning of the Viking Age suggest a certain amount of reuse at that time (Nihlén 1932; Nihlén and Boëthius 1933, 237–51; Stenberger 1964, 458–59). As people were usually careful to keep their houses clean in the Iron Age, datable archaeological finds from dwelling houses are rare, both in mainland Sweden and on Gotland. Given that, a unique wealth of material was found here. The archaeological evidence, including burnt wood from the collapsed roof, shows that the farm was damaged by fire. There are no radiocarbon datings, but based on the most recent datable objects found, it can be assumed, as Arne Biörnstad (1955) does, that this happened in the middle of the sixth century, at the same time as a significant number of other datable burnt buildings on Gotland. This in turn tallies with what Beowulf says about the royal seat of the Gutes and many other settlements on the island being burnt down2 at roughly this time. 2  2325–27, 2334–35, 2305–19.



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Another very special feature of this site is a processional approach road, several hundred metres long and 8–10 metres wide, running from east to west, from what at the time was the innermost part of the Bandlundviken Bay up towards the site of the farm. The road is lined with drystone walls built in part from very large boulders, distinguishing them from ordinary field walls. The wall on the south side is still about a metre high in places, while much of the one to the north has been dismantled to a height of thirty to forty centimetres and parts of it have been completely demolished as a consequence of a deep, mechanically excavated ditch. This feature is clearly marked on early maps. Just to the east of the settlement site the road is interrupted, seemingly abruptly, by a 50-metre-wide piece of arable land, but on old maps there are indications here of the foundations of the south wall, showing that the road originally continued further up towards the farm. As recently as the early 1930s, the walls also appear to have extended another couple of hundred metres down towards the former harbour, reaching a total length of at least seven hundred metres. Nihlén and Boëthius regard this and similar but smaller features primarily as cult roads associated with ritual sites and graves (Nihlén and Boëthius 1933, 155ff.). The unparalleled width and monumentality of this one, and the fact that it stretches from what was the innermost part of the bay straight up to the unique settlement, convey the sense, rather, of a grand avenue linking an important farm to its harbour, comparable to the magnificent stone-paved road at Broskov on Zealand (see Chapter 14). The palatial main building, the large number of structures on the site, the unique monumental approach road between harbour and farm, the well-sheltered natural harbour, the rich agricultural land in the vicinity, and the impressive archaeological finds all point to a high-status setting of the first order, with wide-ranging international contacts. No other known settlement sites on Gotland exhibit anything on a par with this, and certainly none that were sǣwealle nēah. The farm’s location in southeastern Gotland was strategically well chosen, given the island’s active international relations with southern and southeastern Europe in the Middle Iron Age. As the main building, like the royal seat of the Gutes in Beowulf, was burnt down in the middle of the sixth century, I consider it a reasonable hypothesis that this is the site referred to in the poem.

The Bandlundviken Bay

In the preface to his annotated edition of the original text of Beowulf, Grundtvig seems to have regarded Gotland as the most likely homeland of the Geats (Grundtvig 1861, lvi): As regards the “Gothland” or Windmark (weder-mearc) referred to by the poet, I consider, as I have said, that there is every reason to conjecture that it is the Island of Gothland (Gotland), whose ancient significance as a maritime power is certain enough

In the second edition of his Danish translation, he was not quite as categorical, but he did end on an almost prophetic note (Grundtvig 1865, xiv): It would indeed be quite strange if we were not to discover, either on Island Gothland (Gotland) or in one of the Gothlands [Väster- or Östergötland], traces of Veder-Marken [Wedermearc], Hval-Naesset [Hrones næs(s)] or any of the place-names which the Anglian poet used with Shakespearian elegance, but no doubt did not simply pluck from thin air.

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I do not know whether Gad Rausing had read these words, but clearly his thinking went along similar lines, because—based on a few references to places in the poem—he located the royal seat of Hygelac and Beowulf in the vicinity of the Bandlundviken Bay in Burs parish, though he did not actually link it to Stavgard (Rausing 1985). First, Rausing noted that Beowulf and his men met with a familiar sight as they approached their native coast by sea:3 flēat fāmiġheals forð ofer ȳðe, bundenstefna ofer brimstrēamas, þæt hīe Ġēata clifu onġitan meahton, cūþe næssas;

floated foamy-necked forth upon the waves, the bound prow over the currents of the sea, until they could make out the cliffs of the Gutes, well-known headlands

Projecting næssas and high cliffs were to be found at several places round the coast of Gotland, but points and headlands existed above all on the eastern side. Rausing took the view that what Beowulf and his companions first saw as they sailed towards Gotland from the south was probably the monumental, 37-metre-high Hoburgsklippan on the southern tip of the island, which is visible several nautical miles out at sea. The name Earna nœs in the poem4 Rausing linked hypothetically to Arnkull/Nabbu, a large projecting headland in När parish, some five kilometres north of the Bandlundviken Bay. In the seventeenth century the place was known as Örnkull/Örnakull and served as a landmark for seafarers (Rausing 1985). Hrones næs(s) is mentioned twice in the poem as the place where Beowulf’s barrow is constructed, close to the sea.5 A corresponding form Ronesnäs is not known from present-day Gotland, but Rausing nevertheless links the name to Rone parish in the southeast of the island, where, during the Iron Age as there is today, there would probably have been a coastal headland close to what is now Ronehamn, just south of the Bandlundviken Bay (Rausing 1985). As hron can mean “whale” in both Old English and Old Norse, the name Hrones næs(s) is often translated as “Cape of Whales” or the like. Both dolphins and larger whales do appear in the central Baltic from time to time (in August 2014, for example, a humpback whale was seen). Precisely because of their relative rarity, a place where they could be seen or had stranded could have been named after them. In the old Lau dialect of southeastern Gotland, hron also had the sense of “pig, boar” (Gustavson 1972–1986). A more likely interpretation of the parish name Rone, however, is that it derives from a ProtoNorse (PrN) *hraun, meaning “cairn” or the like (Olsson 1996, 64; Elmevik 2011) and referring to the many large cairns from the Bronze Age, in particular the huge Uggard3  1909–12.

4  3031.

5  2805, 3136.



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eroir, which dominates the landscape inland from what is now the only distinct headland in Rone parish. Yet another reference to a place in the poem is of interest. High above the northern shore of the Bandlundviken Bay there is a large ridge that has long been known as Burgen (The Burg), a Gutnish word with a similar basic meaning to OE beorg, beorh, referring to a gravel eminence. When Beowulf and his party leave their home harbour to sail to King Hrothgar’s hall, we read: flota wæs on ӯðum, bāt under beorge (lines 210–11), “the boat was on water, under the Burg.” When Beowulf’s kinsman and retainer Wiglaf informs the people that their king has died, he chooses to do so in the hagan, presumably an enclosed space of some kind and probably an assembly site. The only corresponding place-name known from Gotland is a Hagnasteþu[m], mentioned on a medieval grave slab in Näs in southern Gotland and meaning “the place with the enclosure” (Elmevik 1979, 2000). What is noteworthy here is that the inscription locates this enclosure specifically in Rone, that Beowulf is buried at Hrones nœs(s), and that Stavgard, identified by me as his royal seat, is nearby. A good number of the places and features referred to in the poem, then—Earna nœs, Hrones nœs(s), sǣweall, beorge, and hagan—can it seems be located in the area round the settlement which I have identified on archaeological grounds as the royal seat of Hygelac and Beowulf, with a further feature, hrēosna beorh, just twenty-five kilometres to the north. This seems to me to be far more than a mere coincidence.

“Crater” Cairns

At the beginning of the poem’s narrative about the Serpent, the creature is said to be watching over a hoard:6 oð ðæt (ā)n ongan deorcum nihtum draca rīcs[i]an, sē ðe on hēa(ụm) h(of)e hord beweotode, stānbeorh stēapne; stīg under læġ eldum uncūð.

until in the dark nights a dragon began his reign, who guarded his hoard in the high heaths and the steep stone barrows; the path below lay unknown to men. (Liuzza 1999, 136)

This is often taken to mean that the Dragon or Serpent is guarding its hoard on a precipitous rocky height, cliff, or the like. Wickberg, Lindqvist, and others, however, interpret stānbeorh as “barrow” or “burial cairn,” no doubt influenced by the mention later on of the treasure previously having been hidden in a beorh built on a headland nearocræftum fæst,7 i.e., by implication, “by people.” As stēapne has the primary sense of something 6  2210–14.

7  2241–43.

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steep that towers above us, a reasonable interpretation is probably a “tall, steep manmade cairn.” Later in the poem, the same structure is spoken of using expressions such as beorh,8 beorges hyrde,9 under beorge,10 and beorges weard.11 The comment just before about the Serpent’s presence making the stones (stāne) stink,12 combined with the expression under stāncleofu,13 however, suggests a cairn. The word eorðsele14 is therefore to be understood as referring to either an enclosed room or an earth-covered cairn. The word weall used in connection with the cairn15 is thus most likely to mean a stone wall. Shortly afterwards weall appears once again,16 and then there is a reference to stānbogan, “stone arch, stone vault.” A little later the poem talks about under hārne stān,17 “under the grey stone,” and later still, ūt of stāne,18 “out of the stone.” Then comes the most remarkable thing of all:19 Ðā se æðeling ġīong, þæt hē bī wealle wīshycgende ġesæt on sesse; seah on enta ġeweorc, hu ðā stānbogan stapulum fæste ēċe eorðreċed innan healde

then the nobleman went, still wise in thought, so that he sat on a seat by the wall. On that work of giants he gazed, saw how stone arches and sturdy pillars held up the inside of that ancient earth-hall. (Liuzza 1999, 136, my italics)

Here, the poem does not just speak of the stone structure as an “earth-hall,” but once again quite clearly refers to a stone vault. In addition, there is a reference elsewhere in the text to an entrance to the cairn: Þǣr on innan ġīong.20 All this information combined, in other words, makes it clear that the Serpent’s lair was a tall, steep, earth-covered cairn, built by people a long time ago, with an inner stone vault and an entrance passage. 8  2241–23.

9  2304.

10  2559.

11  2524, 2580. 12  2288. 13  2540.

14  2410, 2515. 15  2526. 16  2542. 17  2553. 18  2557.

19  2715–19. 20  2214.



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What, then, is this? Based on the hypothesis of an Old English author, scholars have often imagined it being modelled on a British megalithic tomb from the Late Stone Age. Others, placing greater emphasis on a Scandinavian tradition, have referred to passage graves from the same period in central Västergötland, the preferred hypothetical homeland of the Geats. Unfortunately, only one grave of the kind that appears to be described in the poem has been excavated in modern times, the one at Koparve in Lärbro parish, northern Gotland, with an original diameter of 23 metres. At its centre there was an almost 3-metrehigh circular tower-like structure of flat limestone slabs, forming an interior space over which the walls were joined at the top to form a vaulted roof. Around and above this structure, a large cairn was built, which may have been covered with soil. To this day, structures of this type—known as “crater cairns” (kraterrösen)—still exist in significant numbers along the coasts of Gotland. In Rone, Burs, and Eke parishes in the southeast of the island, just inland of or on the Littorina Ridge itself, there are a considerable number of cairns of varying size of a Bronze Age character, which may be assumed to contain domed tombs. During the Middle Iron Age, such structures were probably appreciably more common. These evocative monuments from the past were as if made to be filled in the popular imagination with dangerous creatures and mythical treasures, and to be seen as the “work of giants,” just as the poem says. They also fit in much better with the poem’s description of the Serpent’s home than the megalithic tombs of Västergötland or Britain.

“Fortress of the People”

In the poem we are told how the death of King Hrethel triggered hostility between Swedes and Gutes and a fierce struggle across the sea. We also read that “the sons of Ongentheow were bold and warlike, wanted no peace over the sea,” and that they ymb hrēosna beorh eatolne inwitscear oft ġefremedon,21 i.e., they “often caused terrible bloodbaths around hrēosna beorh.” Most interpreters have taken this hrēosna beorh to be a place-name: “Hreosnaberget” (Collinder 1954; Lindqvist 1958), “Korpberget” (“Raven Hill,” Wickberg 1914) or “Mares’ Hill” (Swanton 1997), for example. There is nothing in the text, though, to indicate that it is indeed a name; it could just as well be a simple description of a place, just like hrefna wudu22 and hrefnes holt,23 which are usually interpreted as “Raven’s Wood,” but which need not mean anything other than “the dark wood” or “the great wood.” As noted earlier, the poem recounts how Hæfde līġdraca lēoda fæsten ēalond ūtan, eorðweard ðone glēdum forgrunden,24 i.e., “The fire-dragon had in fire completely destroyed the fortress of the people on the island out there.” In other contexts, both fæsten and eorðweard are considered to mean “fortified place” or “stronghold.” When 21  2475–79.

22  2925. 23  2935.

24  2333–35.

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King Ongentheow is attacked by Hygelac, he and his people seek out a fortified place, fæsten sēċean,25 which is later also referred to as an eorðweard.26 The conclusion that we are probably on Gotland puts an expression like “fortress of the people” in a very different light. As far as Gotland during the Migration Period is concerned, lēoda fæsten, “the fortress of the people” or “of all the people,” can really only refer to Torsburgen, by far the largest prehistoric stone hill fort in northern Europe. It is strategically located in the eastern part of central Gotland, on a thirty-metre-high cliff, parts of it precipitous, that represents the largest hill on the island. The fortification covers an area of 120 hectares and its limestone wall is no less than two kilometres long and at its thickest where the cliff is lowest. Where the cliff is steep and straight, there is no wall. This enormous construction probably originally contained more stone than the entire city walls of Visby, and presumably also served as a source of building materials for them. The high cliff forms an integral part of the fort, a fact reflected in the Gutnish final element of the name, -burgen. Judging from radiocarbon dating, the fortification began to be built in the fourth century but was subsequently partly destroyed and then rebuilt and reinforced, before suffering partial destruction again and finally being restored and reused during the Viking Age, all in accordance with quite a common pattern for prehistoric hill forts in Scandinavia. The sloping limestone wall, which has now slumped to a height of just four to six metres, was probably originally vertical and, after several additions, may have reached a height of eight to ten metres, possibly with a timber palisade on the top (Engström 1984). Significantly, the limestone wall suffered a violent fire and deliberate destruction some time in the early Migration Period (Engström 1984, 21–25). As no analysis has been carried out of the “inbuilt” age of the charcoal (the “old wood” effect), however, the radiocarbon dates arrived at, the late fifth century, could as well be the first part of the sixth century. Johan Engström, who carried out extensive excavations of the masonry at both Ardre luke and Ala luke, believes that the only way an enemy could break through such a massive stone wall would have been to set fire to its internal timberwork. He also argues that the fire, and the accompanying partial collapse of the Torsburgen wall, can only have been the result of a deliberate act (Engström 1984), carried out “for the purposes of destruction […] by a besieging enemy” (Engström 1991). The fact that the Gotlanders invested in such an enormous defensive installation, which required contributions of labour from the entire population of the island, can only mean that they had sad experience of earlier enemy attacks. That Torsburgen was a common concern of the whole of Gotland is also made clear by its huge size compared with other fortresses on the island, its relatively central position far from individual settlements, and the fact that in pagan times, according to Guta saga, it was under the control of the Gotland alþing (Engström 1984; Andrén 2012b). All the indications are, then, that in the Middle Iron Age Torsburgen served as a central fortification for the whole of Gotland, protecting its civilian population, women, chil25  2950.

26  2334.



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dren, and old people, and their livestock. The site thus automatically became the focal point for the military defence of the island. So when Beowulf talks of the Swedes often causing “terrible bloodbaths around hrēosna beorh,” the strong likelihood is that this was at Torsburgen, the only place on Gotland that matches the poem’s reference to lēoda fæsten, “the fortress of the people.” According to the poem, the Gutes were first attacked by the Swedish princes Ohthere (Ottar) and Onela (Ale), and later by Onela alone. Although Torsburgen may thus already have partly collapsed by the time of these attacks, the remaining masonry and the Masada-like cliff probably still offered the best defensive position on the island. As the mighty Torsburgen must have been widely known, its collapse may have made a deep impression on the outside world. Later battles at the site between Swedes and Gutes could then have been remembered as being fought around “the destroyed fortress.” But since the account of how “the fire-dragon had in fire completely destroyed the fortress of the people on the island” refers to a later occurrence, staged by King Onela when he burned down a significant portion of the island’s settlements, this may have been a matter of the final destruction of the fortress after it had been patched up yet again. It is therefore reasonable to assume, I believe, that it was around Torsburgen that Onela and Ohthere caused terrible bloodbaths, and that it was this fortress whose destruction Onela later completed. Only when we understand that the Ġēatas are Gutes, in other words, do the poem’s references to hrēosna beorh and lēoda fæsten make sense. It is unlikely that hrēosna beorh is a corruption of an early form of the name Torsburgen. Behind the word hrēosna, the participle form of the strong verb OE hrēosan “fall, collapse,” rather, I imagine a Proto-Norse/Proto-Gutnish counterpart to the past participle form of the weak verb ON hrasa (hrasaða, hrasaðr), whose senses include “plunge, fall,” in other words, “collapse.” A description of the fort as one that has been destroyed may then, when transferred into Old English, have been expressed as gehrēosen beorh, “the destroyed, collapsed fortress,” or possibly hrēosende beorh, “the falling, collapsing fortress.” My conclusion is that the phrase ymb hrēosna beorh eatolne inwitscear oft ġefremedon in the poem is to be construed roughly as: “around the destroyed fortress [Torsburgen], they [the Swedes] often caused terrible bloodbaths.”

Finna Land

In his sarcastic exchange of words with Unferth at Heorot, Beowulf claims that, having returned by sea from the battles of his youth, he was driven by the waves as far as the land of the “Finns”:27 Ðā meċ sǣ oþbær, flōd æfter faroðe on Finna land

27  579–80.

Then the sea washed me up, the currents of the flood, in the land of the Finns (Liuzza 1999, 71)

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Based on the view that Beowulf has his home in Västergötland, this assertion is generally regarded as an example of the kind of far-fetched claims typical of the poem, whether Finna is interpreted as meaning “Sami” or “Finns.” But if Beowulf is on his way home to Gotland, it puts the matter in a different light. Driven off course on your way from the south towards Gotland, you could easily end up on Finna land, regardless of whether the reference is to the Finns of Finland or Sami in the coastlands of northern Sweden. The former, however, is the likelier and geographically the closer alternative. Although in Norway finner was used to describe the Sami well into modern times, and although Procopius, Jordanes, Paul the Deacon, and Orosius all add various spellings of the prefix Scrithi- (“sliding, gliding”) to the name “Finns,” suggesting Sami, Elias Wessén takes the view that in eastern Scandinavia, from the sixth century at least, “Finns” primarily referred to Finns proper (Wessén 1969, 34).

Conclusions

Hygelac’s royal seat is said to be both close to the sea and “near the sea wall,” sǣwealle nēah. The only significant area of Gotland where this was possible was in what is now the parish of Burs in the southeast of the island. There, just inland from a natural harbour in what at the time was the innermost part of the Bandlundviken Bay, is the large Littorina Ridge, forming the backdrop to one of Scandinavia’s largest and archaeologically richest known farms from the Middle Iron Age, Stavgard at Känne. The poem speaks of the Swedes inflicting bloodshed and devastation around what is referred to as lēoda fæsten, “the fortress of the people,” and hrēosna beorh, “the destroyed fortress.” Archaeological excavations have shown that the enormous national defensive installation of the Gotlanders, Torsburgen, was partly demolished by enemy attack some time before or around these events. The Serpent’s lair is described in a way that is far more consistent with a Gotland “crater” cairn from the Bronze Age than with distant British megalithic tombs, far from the Anglian areas where the poem is assumed to have been conceived, or similar megalithic graves in inland Västergötland. A number of place-names and descriptions of places in the surrounding area, which previously seemed difficult to explain and which have given rise to the most varied interpretations, can be located in the vicinity of the unique large farm of Stavgard at Kärne, identified here as the royal seat of Hygelac and Beowulf. It seems virtually inconceivable that an Old English writer would have had access to all the detailed local knowledge of Gotland which Beowulf reveals. The poem must, in my view, have its roots on Gotland.

Chapter 14

HEOROT The only guidance which the poem offers as to where the Danish king Hrothgar’s hall is located is its account of Beowulf’s sea journey to reach it and his visit there. The preceding discussion has lent strong support to Gad Rausing’s conclusion that Beowulf’s voyage started out from Gotland. Drawing on his own experience of sailing in the southern Baltic, and using information in the poem, Rausing attempted to determine Beowulf’s destination and how long it could have taken him to get there (Rausing 1985). Rausing assumed that the sea journey to Heorot was made under sail. But the poem says nothing about sails. On the other hand, it says nothing about oars either, and the idea of sails may seem to be supported by the reference to the vessel having been winde ġefӯsed,1 i.e., driven by the wind. Yet again, a following wind is also a great help when rowing, and a headwind sheer torment. For the voyage home, however, both sails and a mast are mentioned. There is no firm archaeological evidence of sails and masts at the time the events of the poem unfold, either in Scandinavia or in Anglo-Saxon England. A possible explanation for sails being mentioned in connection with Beowulf’s journey home is that later Old English bards or scribes with experience of sailing may have felt that having eight horses on board would have left little elbow room for rowing, and therefore assumed that the boat would have been sailed. My own view, though, is that the linguistic evidence of Beowulf’s return journey from Frisia having been under oars (see Chapter 20) suggests that his voyages to and from the Danes would have been undertaken in the same way. On the other hand, it is scarcely possible that people in Scandinavia and England at this time would have been unaware of the basic principle of sailing. Perhaps the simple explanation is that only high-status oared warships, and not new-fangled square-sailed ships for the mundane carriage of cargo, were regarded as worthy vessels for a prince’s journey to the realm of the dead, the main motif on early picture stones featuring ships. Raiding from the sea was a popular activity among the southern Scandinavian elite of the time, an activity based on surprise attack and a rapid getaway. Oared ships offered the necessary manoeuvrability, even with an unfavourable wind. Archaeological examples of large rowing vessels are the Nydam ship from the fourth century and probably the one at Sutton Hoo in East Anglia from the early seventh. Oared vessels of the same type are also depicted on many Swedish picture stones from the late Roman Iron Age and the Migration Period, especially on Gotland (Lindqvist 1941–1942; Nylén and Lamm 2003; Andrén 2012a). Rausing’s discussion of how long Beowulf’s voyage may have taken calls for comment. According to the poem, the Danish coast is sighted oð þœt ymb āntīd ōþres dōgores.2 1  217.

2  219.

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Figure 2. On his voyage from Gotland (1) to Heorot, Beowulf probably followed the south coast of Scania straight towards the Stevns peninsula in Zealand (2) before turning south towards Præstø Fjord and landing close to Broskov (3). Map by Daniel Löwenborg.

Here, Rausing is evidently working on the basis of Collinder’s and Lindqvist’s interpretations. Lindqvist translates the phrase “the following day during the first watch,” and Collinder “until early in the morning the second day.” Klaeber, however, is sceptical about āntīd corresponding to Latin hora prima and believes that ymb āntīd can best be understood as “in due time, at the proper time” (Klaeber 1950, 137; cf. Wrenn and Bolton 1996, 108; Chickering 2006, 60; Fulk et al. 2009, 308). If so, ymb āntīd ōþres dōgores



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should in the first instance be taken to mean “in good time the next day,” the implication being “in good time before the end of the following day.” That would mean that, at most, the journey takes a day, a night, and another day. The concept of a day’s journey in ancient times, moreover, was highly ambiguous, sometimes including only the hours of daylight, sometimes the whole of a twenty-four-hour period.

Stevns Klint

Let us assume, as Rausing does, that Beowulf makes his journey in the early summer, when the light nights permit sea travel around the clock, and that he and his men set off in the morning and travel more or less without a break. The poem expressly says that the wind is favourable, winde ġefӯsed,3 which as Rausing notes fits quite well with the prevailing winds on the southern Baltic in early summer in modern times. He assumes an average speed of 4.1–4.8 knots for the roughly five hundred kilometre journey from southern Gotland. With a following wind, such a speed cannot have been difficult to maintain under oars. Rausing’s estimate that the coast of Zealand would have been sighted in the late afternoon of the second day is thus reasonable whether the ship was sailed or rowed. Nothing is said in the poem about how long Beowulf’s voyage home takes. Sailors proceeding from Gotland to Denmark will often ensure that they keep the coast of Skåne in sight on the starboard side. If they then continue towards Zealand, the tall white cliffs of Stevns Klint soon come into view like a large, gleaming lighthouse, a familiar sight to seafarers of old. And as Rausing notes, Beowulf and his crew do indeed encounter a distinctive sight just before they arrive:4 þæt ðā līðende land ġesāwon, brimclifu blīcan, beorgas stēape

that the seafarers sighted land, shining shore-cliffs, steep mountains (Liuzza 1999, 60)

Rausing interprets these “shining shore-cliffs” as the 40-metre-high and 15-kilometre-long steep chalk cliffs of Stevns Klint in southeast Zealand. It may be added that just a few tens of kilometres to the south are the 143-metre-high white chalk cliffs of Møns Klint, which in good weather are visible from Stevns Klint. Cliffs of white chalk can be found dotted along various parts of the Danish coastline, but nowhere else in Scandinavia are there examples anything like as imposing as those observed when approaching eastern Zealand by sea.

3  217.

4  221–22.

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Figure 3. Stevns in eastern Zealand, with its fifteen-kilometre-long and 41-metre-high white chalk cliffs. When Beowulf and his men reach the coast, they see brimclifu blīcan, beorgas stēape, sīde sǣnæssas, “shining shore-cliffs, steep mountains, wide headlands.” Copyright Tage Klee.

The Stone-Paved Road at Broskov Rausing also refers to the beautifully stone-paved road mentioned in the poem, which leads Beowulf and his men to Heorot after they have landed:5 Strǣt wæs stānfāh, stīġ wīsode gumum ætgædere.

The road was beautifully paved with stone, the path led the men together.

As Rausing observes, more paved roads from the Middle Iron Age are known from the Stevns area than from the rest of Scandinavia put together. The whole area is crisscrossed with a variety of old roads of varying quality, dating from the Late Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age through to medieval times, almost all of them designed to provide safe transport across wet, low-lying land. Most seem to have been built during the second and third centuries ad, and several are of good quality, such as the ones at Hårlev, Karise, Varpelev, and Broskov (Hansen and Nielsen 1979). The area also has Scandinavia’s largest concentration of rich graves containing imported Roman artefacts and Roman Iron Age gold objects, such as those at Himlingøje, Varpelev, and Valløby, as well as many rich finds of gold from the Migration Period (Lund Hansen 1991). Owing to the high chalk cliffs, however, there is no natural harbour on the Stevns peninsula proper. Mogens Schou Jørgensen argues that the low-lying shores on the northern side of Stevns served this purpose (Jørgensen 1988, 111; 1996). 5  320–21.



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Figure 4. Broskov, just inland from Præstø Fjord in south-eastern Zealand. The area offered good protection and an excellent location for the important communications with the continent. From the stone-paved road marked here, several sunken lanes lead up the hillside. Heorot is said to have been in a “high place.” Map by Daniel Löwenborg.

In view of the distribution of archaeological finds, Rausing concludes that Heorot was not at Lejre, but somewhere on the Stevns peninsula (Rausing 1985). Surprisingly, Rausing does not mention the unique and beautifully surfaced road at Broskov in Bårsne parish, county of Præstø, the only known prehistoric road in Scandinavia answering to the poem’s description strǣt wæs stānfāh. It is not on the Stevns peninsula proper, however, but twenty to thirty kilometres to the southwest. Here, there is a much better harbour than on the peninsula, a sheltered bay opening onto the largely enclosed Præstø Fjord, providing an excellent and typical harbour site for a princely residence of this period. The stone-paved road at Broskov, which is less than a kilometre from the innermost part of the bay, runs straight across the Hulebæk valley, in a north-northeast–southsouthwesterly direction, ending on the other side of the stream at the bottom of a wooded hillside, where it divides into several sunken lanes. The road is around seventy

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Figure 5. The unique “Roman” stone-paved road at Broskov which Beowulf and his men may have marched along with clinking shirts of mail on their way up to Heorot. Copyright Museum Sydøst­ danmark. Photo Jonas Christensen.

metres long and just over 3.5 metres wide. Its northern section later provided a foundation for a medieval paved road built to a far poorer standard. The Broskov road was carefully excavated by Georg Kunwald in the late 1950s. Together with finds of two characteristic iron spearheads, radiocarbon dating places the site in the late Roman Iron Age, a period which, based on the rich grave finds of Roman imports in the area, Kunwald has hypothetically narrowed down to ad 260–80 (Kunwald 1996, 31). The road is paved with relatively large, flat stones, carefully chosen to fit snugly together. Kunwald argues that this would not have been possible if the builders had randomly laid one stone after another, and that they must instead have selected half a dozen well-fitting ones at a time. The few small remaining areas between these large stones were subsequently filled with smaller ones. Where necessary, the pavement was anchored on a firm foundation of coarse stones, a construction that gave the road a stabilizing internal tension that has kept it intact for almost two thousand years. To avoid cart wheels cutting into the soil beyond the edges of the road, the latter were marked with raised kerbstones. At its northern end, the road dips down into the Hulebæk stream. To build this section, it would have been necessary either to temporarily divert the whole stream or to carry out the work during a period of extreme drought (Kunwald 1962). So high is the technical quality of the Broskov road that, as Kunwald notes, we have to look as far away as Rome, Pompeii, or other ancient Roman cities to find anything to



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equal it (Kunwald 1962). There can be little doubt that whoever supervised its construction must have had personal experience of building Roman roads. As the Romans often used soldiers for this purpose, we can surmise that the person concerned had been in Roman military service. There is thus no need to assume that the expression strǣt wæs stānfāh must have been coined by an author familiar with the old Roman roads of England. Virtually the only things that are described in the true sense of the word in Beowulf are weapons, armour, jewellery, and hall buildings. People are not described at all, apart from Ongentheow and Hrothgar being referred to as grey-haired, which is mostly a way of emphasizing that they are getting on in years. There is no comment whatsoever on the appearance of any of the women. We are not even told what the main character of the poem, Beowulf himself, looks like, apart from the fact that he is big and strong. Nor is a single word wasted on people’s clothes. So, when it is noted that Beowulf and his men proceed along a road that is beautifully paved with stone, we realize that this is something very special. No other known prehistoric stone-paved road in Scandinavia is of anything like the same quality as the one at Broskov. As it is just inland from an excellent, sheltered natural harbour, strategically very well placed for communication with the continent, and with rich late Roman Iron Age grave finds at several locations in the immediate vicinity, such as Snesere Torp five kilometres to the northwest and Udby eight kilometres to the south-southwest (Lund Hansen 1991; Kunwald 1996, 31), I regard the Broskov road as a clear signal of a princely settlement not too far away, in a direction traced by an extension of the road, most likely on the hill to the north of Hulebæk. Beowulf in fact recounts when he returns home that Heorot is in a “high place.”6 Of course, there may be as yet undiscovered paved roads on the Stevns peninsula or in the surrounding area, built to similar Roman standards to the one at Broskov. But as long as this road is the only one of this quality known, close to a harbour superior to any on the Stevns peninsula proper, it is reasonable to assume that it was indeed the one that Beowulf and his men marched along on their way up to Heorot. The innermost shore of Præstø Fjord is very flat. How does that fit in with what the poem says about the harbour being watched over by a coast guard on horseback on a weall?7 Very well indeed, because rising just to the north of the natural landing place in the far southwestern part of the fjord is a high, oblong embankment-like natural ridge running in a west–easterly direction, with a perfect view over the mouth of the fjord. It is probably just a coincidence, though, that the name given to this height on a map from the 1820s is Rytterbakken, “Horseman’s Hill.” The area around the Broskov road would have been ideal for a royal seat, on fertile soil around a kilometre inland from a lagoon-like bay, hidden from view from the open sea. The location is comparable to contemporary high-status sites such as Gudme on Funen, Old Uppsala in Uppland, and Stavgard on Gotland. The risk of attack so close to 6  285.

7  229.

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the coast must nevertheless have been considerable, and it is hardly a coincidence that Hrothgar, just like Beowulf, maintained a permanent coast guard. If we assume, as before, that Beowulf and his crew sailed from Gotland, along the south coast of Skåne and straight across to Zealand, they would soon have been guided by the shining white cliffs of Stevns and could then have followed the coast of the peninsula to Fakse Bugt and subsequently sailed straight into Præstø Fjord, landing close to Broskov. The poem foretells three times that Heorot will suffer misfortune and be burnt down as a result of the smouldering conflict with Ingeld. His people, the Heathobards, are generally assumed to have inhabited the German coast to the south of the Danish islands. If the royal seat of the Skjǫldungs in southeastern Zealand was destroyed by fire just before or around ad 550, it is thus a reasonable hypothesis that it would subsequently have been relocated—possibly through the efforts of Hrothulf (Hrólfr Kraki)—to Lejre in northern Zealand, where it would have been better protected from the Heathobards, their arch-enemy. On one occasion, Beowulf talks with Hrothgar about Danish kings also ruling over Scedenīġ, i.e., Skåne:8 it came into the possession […] of the lord of the Danes, a work of wonder-smiths; […] it passed into the possession of the best of earthly kings between the seas, of all those that dispensed treasures in Skåne. (Liuzza 1999, 104.)

This is consistent with King Hrothgar’s Danes also being referred to in the poem as “East Danes.” If the royal seat of the Skjǫldungs was in southeastern Zealand, it would have been a well-chosen location from the point of view of controlling Skåne as well.

Heorot Is Not Lejre

What, then, of Lejre? Traditionally, Heorot has been assumed to be identical to Lejre in northern Zealand, at the southern end of the long, narrow Roskilde Fjord, the same Lejre as late historical sources refer to as the earthly home of the Skjǫldungs. The view that Heorot is Lejre has also drawn sustenance from the traditional idea that Beowulf travels there from Västergötland, although a number of circumstances contradict that idea. As we have seen, Beowulf’s account of the journey to Denmark does not point to Lejre at all, but to southeastern Zealand. Nor is Lejre mentioned in the poem; Hrothgar’s hall is never called anything but Heorot. Neither is Lejre spoken of in any other early Old English text. For many years, archaeological traces of a princely settlement at Lejre, with a hall from the second half of the sixth century, were considered to link the site to the “time of Beowulf” (Christensen 2007, 2008, 2010) and to show that the Heorot of the poem 8  1680–86.



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is identical to the Lejre of Skjǫldung legend. A 500-page book titled Beowulf and Lejre (Niles 2007) helped to cement this view, which has long been restated as a fact beyond all discussion. This interpretation has also been nourished by the opinion that the “time of Beowulf” corresponds to the period of the finds from the large ship burial at Sutton Hoo in East Anglia from around ad 625, which was contemporary with Lejre. But, as I have already shown, that is not correct either. Despite many years of archaeological excavations at Lejre, evidence has yet to be presented of a link in time with the chronological core of the main story of Beowulf, the first half of the sixth century. At Fredshøj, in the vicinity of Lejre, there are admittedly two buildings from the Migration Period, but at Mysselhøjgård at Lejre proper, no high-status settlement has been found going back further than the later part of the sixth century. Lejre’s heyday as a central place quite clearly falls within the Late Iron Age, i.e., the Merovingian and Viking periods (Christensen 2015, 81–93). I also note that the extensive final publication on the Lejre excavations (Christensen 2015) seems to have tacitly abandoned the idea of a chronological link between Lejre and Beowulf. The Beowulf poem is clear about King Hrothgar having built Heorot,9 but gives no indication of when this happened. Several times, moreover, there are dark hints about Heorot being burnt down in the near future, with nothing said about it being restored.10 In addition, it is noted in Hrólfs saga kraka that it is Hrólfr, generally regarded as synonymous with King Hrothgar’s nephew Hrothulf, who moved the royal seat of the Skjǫldungs to Lejre: Hrólfr konungr setti þar hǫfuðstað sinn, sem Hleiðargarðr heitir (Hrólfs saga kraka, ed. Jónsson 1904, 16). This suggests not only that their seat had previously been elsewhere, but also that Lejre was not established as a royal residence until after King Hrothgar’s death, and after Heorot had been destroyed. The Old English poem Widsith, which mainly represents a northwest continental and southern Danish tradition, mentions both Hrothgar and Heorot (Widsith, 45, 49), but is as silent about Lejre as Beowulf. In both Widsith and Beowulf, the historical tradition ends abruptly in the middle of the sixth century, just before the royal seat of the Skjǫldungs appears to have been relocated to Lejre. On this point, then, Beowulf agrees closely with Widsith and Hrólfs saga kraka. The hall of the Scylding/Skjǫldung king Hrothgar is destroyed some time towards the middle of the sixth century, and not long afterwards Hrothulf has another one built at Lejre, entirely in keeping with the archaeological evidence of a high-status settlement there in the second half of the century. The very extensive and rich Middle Iron Age settlement at Gudme in southeast Funen should also be mentioned in this context. However, like Lejre, that site is a bit too far from Gotland, since the distance would have extended Beowulf’s voyage by another day. Nor is there anything in Beowulf to suggest that his journey passes through long, narrow straits or between several small islands. It is described, rather, as if it crosses the open sea. Still less can Heorot correspond to Jelling in southern Jutland, both on account 9  65–85.

10  76–85, 1233–35, 2050–69.

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of the distance and because that location lacks any archaeological evidence of a relevant settlement before the seventh century. The poem’s account of the duration of Beowulf’s sea journey, and of specific local topographical features along the way, thus provides firm evidence that Hrothgar’s royal hall of Heorot was in southeastern Zealand, and not at Lejre. On the Stevns peninsula, sumptuous and exclusive grave finds from the Middle Iron Age have been discovered which bear witness to an economic and social elite with close ties to the provinces and central areas of the Roman Empire. A short distance to the southwest of Stevns proper, in the area of Broskov just inland from Præstø Fjord, there is a unique, well-preserved stone-paved road built to Roman standards that could be the one referred to in the poem. The site of Heorot may have been some way along a line traced by an extension of this road. Such a location is consistent with the historical dating of Heorot and with the poem’s prediction that the hall would be burnt down, with no mention made of it being rebuilt. It is also entirely compatible with the archaeological dating of the high-status settlement at Lejre to a time after the middle of the sixth century.

Conclusions

The traditional view that Beowulf was composed as a work of fiction by an Old English poet with a modest knowledge of Scandinavian geography has meant there has been little interest in undertaking a close geographical and topographical reading of the poem. The conclusion that the work rests essentially on a foundation of Scandinavian tradition, however, opens up new possibilities and enables us to at least hypothetically locate the sites of the royal seats of the Gutes and the Danes, guided by very specific information in the text of the poem and by unique archaeological and topographical conditions. The only part of Gotland that corresponds to what the poem tells us about King Hygelac’s royal residence being within close walking distance of the sea and at the same time sǣwealle nēah, “near the sea wall,” is a limited area near Kärne in the parish of Burs in the southeast of the island, where the imposing geological formation of the Littorina Ridge assumes a more monumental form than anywhere else in the Baltic Sea basin. In this precise location, close to an excellent natural harbour in the inner part of the Bandlundviken Bay, are the remains of a magnificent settlement with exceptionally rich finds from the Roman Iron Age, with a palatial main building with few equals in the Nordic region, and linked to the inner part of the bay by a unique, monumental approach road. This settlement seems a perfectly feasible site for the royal seat of the Gutes. The description hrēosna beorh could be interpreted as “the destroyed (or collapsed) fortress” and, along with the expression lēoda fæsten, “the fortress of (all) the people,” could refer to the monumental hill fort of Torsburgen, which was partly destroyed in the late fifth and in the sixth centuries. As a model for the Serpent’s lair in the poem, a Gotland “crater” cairn with a vaulted stone roof from the early Bronze Age fits the bill far better than passage graves in Britain or Västergötland.



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As for the Danish king Hrothgar’s hall of Heorot, there is nothing in the poem to suggest that it is located at Lejre in northern Zealand. The account of Beowulf’s sea journey from Gotland strongly suggests that the steep shining cliffs he sights on his arrival are the high chalk cliffs of Stevns Klint. That in turn is consistent with the beautifully paved road which Beowulf and his men march along to the royal hall being the famous stonepaved road at Broskov, to the southwest of Stevns, just inland from an excellent, sheltered natural harbour in the innermost part of Præstø Fjord. According to the poem, the royal seats of both the Danes and the Gutes were burnt down in the middle of the sixth century. If I am correct in placing the hall of the Gutes at Stavgard in Kärne, then it was indeed burnt down in reality. The sites proposed here for the Danes’ and the Gutes’ royal residences in the Middle Iron Age, in the southeastern corners of Zealand and Gotland respectively, seem ideal in the light of these areas’ close contacts with the Roman Empire. When the main seat of the Skjǫldungs was later moved to Lejre, the international geopolitical scene was very different.

Figure 6. Hypothetical reconstruction of the route of the Gutes’ attack on King Ongentheow, overland along the Långhundra channel (Långhundraleden). Map by Daniel Löwenborg.

1. The large barrows at Vada. A likely site for a local Swedish royal hall where the Gutnish king Hæthcyn takes the queen of the Swedes prisoner and is himself killed by Ongentheow. 2. The Brunnshögen mound may be Ongentheow’s final resting place.

3. The Broborg stronghold in which Ongentheow may have taken refuge. 4. The Swedish royal seat at Old Uppsala.

Chapter 15

SWEDES AND GUTES Wars across the Sea In the last third of the poem we find, in somewhat jumbled chronological order, references to battles between the Swedes and the Geats. It is difficult to see this unclear narrative structure as a deliberate device employed by an Old English author, and it has in fact long puzzled scholars (Earl 2015). Here, I will approach the question with the assumption that the narrative essentially reproduces an orally composed Scandinavian poem. Below I have brought together in four groups passages that belong together in terms of the events they describe and hence, presumably, in time. They are reproduced here in a compressed prose form, though without diverging from the content of the original text. Ġēatas, however, is rendered as “Gutes” and hrēosna beorh as “the destroyed fortress.” First war

Beowulf tells us:1

After Hrethel’s death, enmity and strife arose between the Swedes and the Gutes, who fought hard battles across the wide water. The sons of Ongentheow wanted no peace over the sea, and often caused terrible bloodbaths around the destroyed fortress.

Second war Beowulf tells us:2

My kinsmen and friends fought back, although one of them, the Gutnish king Hæthcyn, died in the battle. It is told how early one morning brother avenged brother when Ongentheow met Eofor. His battle helmet was sliced in two and the old Scilfing fell pale to the ground.

A messenger (possibly Wiglaf) tells us:3

[…] it is well known that Ongentheow killed Hæthcyn in Hrefna Wudu when the Gutes had attacked the Battle-Scilfings. Ongentheow destroyed the sea prince and freed his wife, the mother of Onela and Ohthere, the old lady who had been robbed of her gold. Then he pursued his enemies, who just managed to escape into Hrefnes Holt. With his troops he surrounded the battle-weary and wounded Gutes, brought down curses on them through the night and said that in the morning he would cut them open with his sword and hang them in the gallows tree as sport for the birds. Comfort came at dawn, when the Gutes heard the shrill signals from Hygelac’s horn and trumpet as he approached, following the

1  2472–78.

2  2479–89.

3  2922–3007.

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trail his comrades had left. Then Ongentheow sought refuge for his war band. He knew of Hygelac’s prowess in battle and hurried further up into the country. He did not believe that he could resist the men from the sea or defend his treasure, women, and children. The old man took refuge in a fortress. Now they went in pursuit of the men of the Swedes. Hygelac’s standards advanced across the place of refuge as the Gutes pressed forward to the enclosure. There Ongentheow had to submit to Eofor’s judgment. Wulf, the son of Wonred, struck the king with his weapon so that blood poured from beneath his hair. But the old Scilfing repaid him with an even harder blow, so that his helmet split and he fell bleeding to the ground. Then Eofor, Hygelac’s thane, came and struck Ongentheow over the helmet with his sword, so that the king fell down dead. Many men bandaged Wulf’s wounds and carried him away, the battle won. Eofor took Ongentheow’s shirt of mail, sword, and helmet and carried them to Hygelac. For this, Hygelac magnificently rewarded Eofor and Wulf. To each he gave a hundred thousand in land and interlocked rings, and to Eofor he gave his own daughter as his wife. It is because of this mortal enmity that I expect the Swedes will seek combat with us [the third war] as soon as they learn that Beowulf has died.

Third war

The poem tells us:4

This came to pass in later days when Hygelac lay dead and the victorious Scilfings had attacked and defeated Heardred.

The poem tells us:5

Forced to flee, Ohthere’s sons Eadgils and Eanmund crossed the sea to Heardred. They had rebelled against the Scilfing prince Onela. This sealed Heardred’s fate. The son of Hygelac was killed. Onela then returned home and let Beowulf rule the Gutes.

The poem tells us:6

This is what happened with the heirloom of Eanmund, son of Ohthere. Weohstan killed Eanmund with the edge of a sword and took his helmet, byrnie and sword, which Onela let him keep. Nothing was said about Weohstan having killed Onela’s nephew. Weohstan kept the battle gear until he was about to die, when he gave it to his son Wiglaf.

Fourth war

The poem tells us:7

In later days, he [Beowulf] thought about avenging Heardred’s death, befriended Eadgils and supported him with warriors and weapons across the wide sea. Beowulf then took his revenge and killed Onela on a cold journey fraught with sorrow.

As noted in Chapter 13, the “destroyed fortress” mentioned in connection with the first war on Gotland could very well be Torsburgen, which, if so, had previously been partly destroyed—according to radiocarbon dating, in the later part of the fifth century. 4  2200–2207.

5  2379–90. 6  2611–25. 7  2391–96.



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This would suggest that the Gotlanders had come under enemy attack several times before, once when the fortress wall was partly destroyed and at least once before that. The people of the island thus seem to have had good reason to join together in building this enormous defensive installation. Whether the Swedes were also behind these earlier attacks is impossible to say. There were plenty of potential attackers. Before Beowulf returns home, for instance, King Hrothgar recalls that there used to be enmity between the Danes and the Gutes.8 The four wars outlined here, between Swedes and Gutes, had thus been preceded by several others. As has already been shown, there are strong grounds for assuming that the Geats involved in these wars were Gutes. This is consistent with their king Hæthcyn being described as a “sea prince” and they themselves being called sǣmanna, “the men from the sea,”9 the same epithet as the Geats are given when they arrive at Heorot.10 For the first time, we are able to arrive at a picture of these military conflicts that makes objective sense. At least four periods of military action between the Swedes and the Gutes can thus be discerned following the partial destruction of Torsburgen in the late fifth century: First war. Ohthere and Onela attack the Gutes. If the reference to them “often” (oft) causing bloodbaths is meant literally, and not just included for emphasis, there were several such attacks. Second war. The Gutnish king Hæthcyn and his brother Hygelac launch an attack on the Swedes and King Ongentheow, in which first Hæthcyn and then Ongentheow is killed.

Third war. Onela attacks the Gutes, among whom his rebellious nephews Eadgils and Eanmund have sought refuge, and now the latter is killed by the Swedish prince Weohstan. Fourth war. Beowulf, together with Weohstan’s son Wiglaf, supports Eadgils in the civil war among the Swedes, and Beowulf kills Onela. This presumably happens on the Swedish mainland.

Fortress, Enclosure, and Place of Refuge

Let us return now to the second war between the Swedes and the Gutes: but it has been well-known that Ongentheow ended the life of Hæthcyn, son of Hrethel, in Ravenswood […] Immediately the ancient father of Ohthere, old and terrifying, returned the attack –

8  1855–58.

9  2954. 10  329.

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the old warrior cut down the sea-captain, rescued his wife, bereft of her gold, Onela’s mother and Ohthere’s; and then hunted down his deadly enemies until they escaped, with some difficulty, bereft of their lord, into Ravenswood. With his standing army he besieged those sword-leavings, weary, wounded; he kept threatening woe to that wretched troop the whole night through – in the morning, he said, with the edge of his sword he would gut them, and leave some on the gallows-tree as sport for birds. But for those sad-hearted men solace came along with the sunrise, after they heard Hygelac’s horn and trumpet sounding the charge, when the good man came following the trail of that people’s troop. (Liuzza 1999, 142–43)

The passage that follows11 is given here in both Old English and a modern translation: Ġewāt him ðā se gōda mid his gædelingum, frōd felaġeōmor fæsten sēċean, eorl Ongenþīo ufor onċirde; hæfde Hiġelāces hilde ġefrūnen, wlonces wīġcræft; wiðres ne truwode, þæt hē sǣmannum onsacan mihte, heaðolīðendum hord forstandan, bearn ond brӯde; bēah eft þonan eald under eorðweall. Þā wæs ǣht boden Swēona lēodum; segn Hiġelāce[s] freoðowong þone forð oferēodon, syððan Hrēðlingas tō hagan þrungon.

That good man then departed, old, desperate, with a small band of kinsmen, sought his stronghold, the earl Ongentheow turned farther away; he had heard of proud Hygelac’s prowess in battle, his war-skill; he did not trust the resistance he might muster against the seafarers’ might to defend from the wave-borne warriors his treasure, his women and children; he ran away from there, old, into his fortress. Then the pursuit was offered to the Swedish people, the standard of Hygelac overran the place of refuge, after the Hrethlings thronged the enclosure. (Liuzza 1999, 143)

Several pieces of information here are of interest. One is that King Hæthcyn initially captures King Ongentheow’s queen and seizes her gold. As the old lady would hardly have been on the battlefield, this suggests that Ongentheow is surprised in a hall setting, where it would have been natural for the queen to be present, decked out in gold jewellery. We are told, in addition, that Ongentheow counter-attacks, kills Hæthcyn, and 11  2949–60.



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frees his wife. But we are also informed that, on realizing that Hygelac is coming with reinforcements, Ongentheow “turned farther away (or higher up),” ufor onċirde,12 which is fairly generally taken to mean that he retreated “further inland” or “to higher ground.” Attempting to get at the Swedish king by approaching Uppland via coastal waters and the Södertälje passage (Södertäljeleden) would have involved an unnecessarily long and risky journey. King Ongentheow was most probably in the lower reaches of the Långhundra channel (Långhundraleden) with a relatively small band of men, for example in the area around Husa in Vada parish. It is unlikely that the Gotlanders would ever have had the military capability to penetrate the very heartland of the Swedes and attack their king in his own headquarters. Nor, in all likelihood, does the hagan of the poem refer to the enormous enclosure in Old Uppsala, traces of which have recently been found, particularly as the latter was not built until the early seventh century (BeroniusJörpeland et al. 2013; Wikborg 2017; Ekero Eriksson 2018). The hagan mentioned was most probably to be found somewhere along the Långhundra channel. It is not known whether the Swedish kings rotated between their residences according to a fixed schedule or, for reasons of security, on a more irregular basis. Either way, Ongentheow was clearly unprepared for an attack. Possible sources of intelligence about his movements may have been the brothers Wulf and Eofor, who I have identified elsewhere as likely noble-born renegades from Svealand with a particular grudge against King Ongentheow. As the Gutes may be assumed to have advanced from the southeast, the sequence of events described supports the assumption that Ongentheow retreated in a northwesterly direction along the Långhundra channel, towards Uppsala in Swēoðēod, with which he is directly associated in the poem,13 and Swīorīċe, to which he is linked through his son Onela.14 The order in which the different events take place is not crystal-clear. Evidently, though, Ongentheow retreats inland and takes shelter in a fortress, while Hygelac and his men set off in pursuit and then advance across a “place of refuge” near an enclosure. Here, Ongentheow does battle with Wulf and is killed by Eofor. Throughout the Iron Age, the Långhundra channel appears to have stretched more or less uninterrupted from the Baltic Sea as far inland as Vallby, on the boundary between Ö� stuna and Husby–Långhundra parishes, where the Stockholmsåsen esker bridges the valley and, at the time, dammed a large lake to the east. The esker was breached in the early eleventh century, resulting in much of the lake’s water draining away to the west (Skoglöv 2000: 15–18, 107–58). At this precise spot, just twenty kilometres from Old Uppsala, on a sharp eminence close to the esker, is the monumental ancient hill fort of Broborg, which controlled the place where goods were trans-shipped onto what is now the Storån, a small river that led on to open waters closer to Uppsala. Broborg was the Uppsala area’s last major defensive position along the Långhundra channel. Around and 12  2951.

13  2922.

14  2383, 2495.

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to the southeast of Broborg, place-names such as Tuna, Husa and Ärnavi testify to the key importance of this area. As he retreats inland, Ongentheow seeks refuge in a stronghold, fæsten sēċean,15 and behind an eorðweall,16 the latter not necessarily an earthwork, judging from other passages in the text. The only large hill fort directly adjacent to the upper reaches of this waterway is Broborg. Unfortunately, the scattered, small-scale excavations carried out on the site provide little basis for conclusions. What is clear, though, is that the originally substantial double walls of the fort and its entire internal structure have been damaged by an extremely intense fire.17 Judging from datings of the use and destruction of other hill forts in central Sweden, it is reasonable to assume that this happened roughly in the time of Beowulf, and hardly later than that. The word hagan in the poem is sometimes translated with an expression referring to a fortification. But the basic sense of OE haga is definitely “enclosure,” corresponding to ON hagi and OSw. hagh/haghi “fence, enclosure.” It is thus unlikely to refer here to a functioning stronghold. Many translators do indeed opt for words such as enclosure, encampment, or Einfriedung. Others seem to have wondered what an enclosure is doing in this context and resort to makeshift semantic solutions. In his Aanteekningen, an influential work at the time, Peter Jacob Cosijn for instance took the view that what the poet had in mind here was a [bord]haga or [wig]haga, in the sense of a “shield wall” or “phalanx” (Cosijn 1892). But in the poem, hagan also occurs in a different, peaceful context, where that interpretation is out of the question. Sune Lindqvist, for his part (1958, 75), suggests that hagan could represent a place-name Hag. But hagan is a singular form, and in eastern Sweden old place-names formed from this basic word, at least when they consist of a simplex, are only known in the plural form Haga. In early Germanic and Scandinavian legal tradition, enclosed areas generally enjoyed strong protection by law and were associated with severer penalties. The tradition of providing protection by this means is reflected to this day in the German word for a means of enclosure, Einfried(ig)ung. The expression freoðowong, which many Beowulf translators have found difficult to handle—referring to the land Hygelac enters when he reaches the enclosure: segn Hiġelāce[s] freoðowong þone forð oferēodon18—is important in this context. Idyllising interpretations such as “fridfulla ängar” (“peaceful meadows,” Lindqvist 1958) hardly fit the context. If we assume instead that the enclosure surrounded a sacred place of sanctuary, then interpretations such as “fredade fält” (“protected fields,” Collinder 1954), “fredet land” (“protected land,” Haarder 2001) and “field of refuge” (Fulk et al. 2009) seem much more reasonable. In my view, it is unlikely that we are concerned here with the tun “enclosure” at Tuna or the village name Haga a couple of kilometres to the northeast. 15  2950.

16  2957.

17  For a good summary, see Fagerlund 2009. 18  2958–59.



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The basic meaning of ON vangr (m.) appears to be “field, pasture,” i.e., enclosed open ground (Ståhl 1975). However, the place-name Vang(r), which is quite common in Norway, often occurs in the vicinity of key cultic sites in central settlement areas (Olsen 1915, 130–49; 1926, 217–30, 234–57). The same seems to be true of at least one similar place-name in Sweden, namely Västra Vång in Hjortsberga parish in Blekinge, where rich finds have been made of precious metals, weapons, glass, and horse equipment from the Iron Age, including 32 gold-foil figures, all clearly indicating ritual activity in the Roman, Migration, Vendel, and later periods (Ekero Eriksson 2014; Henriksson et al. 2016; Henriksson and Nilsson 2016). We thus have to ask ourselves whether Broborg is where Ongentheow seeks refuge and whether it is a fire started by the enemy at the fort that forces him out into the open to meet his foe. If that is the case, then hagan and freoðowong could refer to an enclosed area of sanctuary close to the nearby cultic site of Ä� rnavi at Husa in Husaby, near Husby– Långhundra Church, which in turn suggests the existence of a royal seat in the vicinity. The idea that it was around here that King Ongentheow died should also be seen in the light of the remarkable grave finds from Brunnshögen, which is centrally situated in the area. This mound was excavated in the early 1980s, although the finds have yet to be processed and published. The most recent cremation burial (A1) contained grave goods from the sixth century that have generally been regarded as royal in character. Among the severely burnt objects there were garnets in their original gold settings and some fifty flat-cut stones of the same type, some of exceptional size and thickness and possibly of Byzantine origin. A burnt gold object with garnets has been viewed as possibly belonging to a counterpart to the famous bowl from Pietroassa in Romania from the late fourth century. In addition, there were filigree-decorated gold fragments, a silver-gilt object in the shape of an animal’s head, with garnet eyes and gold beading, silver objects, two fish-shaped almandines, fragments of light-green and green drinking glass, ivory gaming pieces of the same shape as in the West Mound at Old Uppsala and the princely grave at Taplow in England, remains of gold cloisonné, turquoises, and two wing-shaped slices of almandine, and possibly indirect traces of silk (Arrhenius 1985, 70; Arrhenius 1988; Menghin 1988, cat. no. xi, 4 a–b; Bratt 2008, 243–44; Ljungkvist 2010, 2013b; and Bertil Almgren, Gunnar Hedlund, and Kent Andersson, personal communications). The finds also included fifteen to twenty kilograms of burnt animal bones (Bäckström 2005). Let us return now to the poem’s account of King Ongentheow’s death: Wulf the son of Wonred lashed at him with his weapon, so that with his blow the blood sprang in streams from under his hair. Yet the ancient Scylfing was undaunted, and dealt back quickly a worse exchange for that savage stroke, once the ruler of that people turned around. The ready son of Wonred could not give a stroke in return to the old soldier, for he had cut through the helmet right on his head so that he collapsed, covered in blood, fell to the ground—he was not yet fated to die, but he recovered, though the cut hurt him.

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The hardy thane of Hygelac [Eofor] then let his broad blade, as his brother lay there, his ancient giant-made sword, shatter that gigantic helmet over the shield-wall; then the king stumbled, shepherd of his people, mortally stricken. (Liuzza 1999, 143–44)

In the burial just described, a piece of bone from the back of a human skull was found, with a severe gash in it, interpreted by the osteologist Ylva Bäckström as caused by a sword blow and not the heat of cremation. What is noteworthy about this injury is that it shows no sign of healing and was thus followed directly by death (Bäckström 2005, 8). In the case of such severely burnt skeletal remains, determining age and sex can be problematic. The grave contained the bones of at least three individuals: a man, a possible woman and a person of indeterminate sex. One of these is judged to be a mature adult (Bäckström 2005, 5 and appendix 1). It is difficult to make a definite determination of sex, however, from the available information and the archaeological evidence. Even so, the archaeological material from the grave has generally been regarded as male. And a sword blow to the skull also primarily suggests a male. Despite the amazing wealth of finds in this burial, however, and although cremation seems to have taken place at the site of the grave, there are no definite traces of either a sword, a helmet, or a shirt of mail. In my view, the rectangular extension of the burnt layer and the huge quantity of animal bones also point to this being the site of the cremation, as, according to Bäckström, do the facts that humans, horses, sheep, and birds are all represented by bones from every part of the body and that nineteen claws from a bearskin were found fairly close together in the burnt layer (Bäckström 2005, 9–11, figs. 1–2). Given that the burial appears to be on the exact site of the cremation, the absence of definite traces of a helmet, sword, or mail shirt is striking. In the light of Beowulf’s account of Ongentheow’s death, however, it makes perfectly good sense: Then one warrior [Eofor] plundered another, took from Ongentheow the iron byrnie, his hard hilted sword and his helmet too, and carried the old man’s armor to Hygelac. (Liuzza 1999, 144)

Brunnshögen eclipses even the West Mound at Old Uppsala in its riches. It is also far too close to Uppsala not to represent a king of the Swedes or a very close relative of such a king. One should be cautious about placing historically known kings in specific barrows. But as the claim that Ongentheow/Egil was buried at Uppsala is only to be found in Ynglinga saga’s extremely improbable prose account of the king’s death (see below), we cannot help but ask ourselves: could the Brunnshögen mound in fact be where he was laid to rest? I am simply asking the question, not offering an answer. The problem is complicated by the fact that in much of the Germanic area in the Migration and early Merovingian periods, both inhumation and cremation graves often suffered secondary disturbance shortly after the burial (Klevnäs 2015). An example that immediately suggests itself is the princely grave in the Gnista mound in Uppsala (Hennius et al. 2017, 64, 395).



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Whatever the truth might be about King Ongentheow/Egil and the Brunnshögen mound, a comprehensive analysis of the grave finds would seem to be a very high priority. In Beowulf, as noted above, a second hagan is also mentioned. When Wiglaf, or the “messenger,” informs the people about Beowulf’s death, he does so in a hagan,19 which is usually translated as “enclosure,” “camp” or the like. It would seem that Wiglaf chooses to announce the sad news in a place of particular ritual significance, a communal meeting place protected by an enclosure. There is no place on Gotland called Haga, but there is a place-name Hagnasteþu[m], mentioned on a medieval grave slab at Näs in the Sudret area and expressly linked in the inscription to Rone. According to the poem, as we have seen, Beowulf is buried at Hrones næs(s). Lennart Elmevik has interpreted the name Hagnasteþu[m] as a dative form of OGutn. *Hagnasteþar, meaning “the place with the enclosure or enclosures” (Elmevik 1979, 2000). This topographical reconstruction of the military sequence of events surrounding King Ongentheow’s death is admittedly not free from speculation, but is nevertheless remarkably consistent with the topographical, archaeological, and onomastic evidence to be found along the Långhundra channel.

Beowulf and Ynglingatal

As many is well known, a few lines of Ynglingatal and a prose passage in Ynglinga saga also contain information about the death of Egil/Ongentheow. What is less well known is that Beowulf’s detailed account of the same event is more concrete and more credible than those of the Old Norse texts. Despite this, the information in those sources is often interpreted without reference to Beowulf, as if the latter had not existed as a historical source. And of course, in a sense it does not, as it has generally been regarded as a written work of fiction by an Old English poet. Ynglingatal, a poem composed in kviðuháttr, is traditionally seen as the work of the Norwegian Tjodolf (Þjódólfr ór Hvini) and is generally dated to around ad 900. But it has also been placed in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries (see Marold 2012a, 3–5, for an overview). At the same time, it is quite widely believed that the core of the older part of the poem, dealing with the Yngling kings at Uppsala, reflects an earlier, mainly eastern Swedish tradition (see Sundqvist 2002, 39–52; Sundqvist 2016a, 63–80; Birgisson 2008). Let us begin with Snorri Sturluson’s prose version of the death of Egil in Ynglinga saga: It happened in Svíþjóð that the bull that was intended for sacrifice was old and had been bred to be so fierce that it was vicious, and when people tried to catch it, it ran into the woods and turned frantic, and stayed in the forest for a long time, causing a lot of mischief for people. King Egill was a great huntsman. He often rode during the day into the forests to hunt animals. It happened one time that he had ridden out hunting with his men. The king had been pursuing one animal for a long time and chased it into the wood away from all the men. Then he noticed the bull and rode towards it and was going to kill it. The bull turned towards him, and the king got his spear into it, and the spear-head

19  2892–93.

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broke off. The bull plunged its horns into the horse’s flank so that it immediately fell flat, and so did the king. Then the king jumped to his feet and tried to draw his sword. The bull gored him in the chest so that its horns pierced deeply. Then the king’s men came up and killed the bull. The king lived for a short time, and he is buried at Uppsalir. (Finlay and Faulkes 2011, 29)

A brief account in Historiae Norwegiae (9) likewise attributes the king’s death to a bull. The Ynglinga saga version is admittedly concrete, but also unreal in a way that gives the impression of being a secondary embellishment of a cryptic oral verse tradition as found in Ynglingatal, which Snorri also cites (Ynglingatal, 17; or 14 according to Noreen 1925): Ok lofsæll ór landi fló Týs ôttungr Tunna ríki. En flæmingr farra trjónu jǫtuns eykr á Agli rauð, sás of austmǫrk áðan hafði brúna hǫrg of borinn lengi. En skíðlauss Skilfinga nið hœfis hjǫrr til hjarta stóð. (Marold 2012a, 31)

The first two lines about the slave Tunni’s rebellion we can pass over here. To begin with, here is Adolf Noreen’s interpretation (with his explanatory parentheses): och på Egil färgade sitt galttryne rött det jättens kringflackande ök, som förut hade hän över österns vildmark länge burit omkring (?) sina ögonbryns (?) tempel (dvs. huvudet), och beskällarens (dvs. fargaltens) skidlösa svärd (dvs. vildsvinsbete stod till hjärtat på skilfingarnas ättelägg. (Noreen 1925)

and on Egil the wandering draught animal of the giant coloured its boar’s snout red, that had in the past long carried around (?) the temple of its eyebrows (i.e. its head) across the eastern wilderness, and the stud’s (i.e. the boar’s) sheathless sword (i.e. its tusks) penetrated the scion of the Skilfings to the heart.

As will be apparent, Ynglingatal’s verse about the death of Egil is virtually incomprehensible when translated as closely to the original as possible (leaving aside Noreen’s unjustified “wilderness” for mǫrk). The minor differences between the various manuscripts (Grape and Nerman 1914) do not make us any the wiser. A host of questions suggest themselves here. Yes, a wild boar is a dangerous animal, but why a giant’s boar? Why is the boar said to carry around its head? Every animal does that as long as it can still move its legs. Has the boar really been in the eastern wilderness and then returned? If so, where is this wilderness? In Roslagen, along the southeast



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coast of Uppland? On the other side of the Baltic? And aren’t wild boars’ eyebrows actually quite discreet? All the indications are that the message conveyed by these lines had become so corrupted after a long period of transmission that it can hardly have made sense even to Snorri when he quoted the poem in Ynglinga saga. In West Norse, the only definitely attested meaning of the word farri is “bull” or “ox” (Blöndal Magnússon 1989). The sense “swine, boar” has admittedly also been proposed (Kock 1934, § 2544), but hardly convincingly. For Snorri as an Icelander, it would thus have been natural to interpret farri in Ynglingatal as “bull” and to attribute Egil’s death to such an animal in Ynglinga saga. Henrik Schück, however, took a different view. Referring to PrGmc *farha-, IndoEuropean *porko-, Old High German far(a) and OE fearh, and to fargalt and farre meaning “boar, swine” and the verbs fara and färja meaning “farrow, give birth” (of a sow) in various Swedish dialects, he interpreted the word farri in Ynglingatal as “boar” (Schück 1907, 106). On the same grounds, Elof Hellquist seems to have been inclined, with some hesitation, to agree with that interpretation (Svensk etymologisk ordbok, ed. Hellquist 1922, with subsequent editions in 1939 and 1948), and, as we have seen, Noreen a few years later concurred with Schück. Farre for a breeding boar is also well documented in various Swedish dialects of Sweden and Finland (Tamm 1905 [fargalt]; SAOB [farre]; Rietz 1962 [far]; Ahlbäck 1992). Verbs such as fara and færja in the sense of “farrow, give birth” (referring to a sow) also occur in older West and East Danish dialects (Kalkar 1881–1918, 1: 509; Dahl et al. 1907, 168; Ømålsordbogen 1998, vol. 4 [s.n. far]). Even though it is clear, then, that in eastern Scandinavia the cognates of farri primarily referred to swine, many translators have followed Snorri’s Icelandic interpretation and, in contrast to Noreen and Schück, rendered farri as “bull” or “ox”: men oksen rødfarvede sit hovedsværd i Egils blod. Den (okse), som tidligere i en lang tid havde båret sit hoved i østen, men stangerens skedeløse sværd (hornet) gennemborede Skilvinge-ætlingens hjærte. (Snorri Sturluson, ed. Jónsson 1911) Men oxen vild sitt vassa pannsvärd färgade rött i Egils blod han som österut hade i skogen länge strövat till skräck för männen. Oxens svärd det skidlösa, Skilvingars ättling till hjärtat trängde. (Olson 1919)

Men oxen vild sitt vassa pannsvärd färgade rött i Egils blod, han som österut hade i skogen länge strövat till skräck för männen. Oxens svärd, det skidlösa, Skilvingars ättling till hjärtat trängde. (Snorri Sturluson, ed. Johansson 1991)

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Mais la bête de trait Du géant rougit Sur Egil l’épée Du museau du taureau Lui qui, naguère, Longtemps porta La falaise des sourcils Dans les forêts de l’est. Mais dépourvue de fourreau, L’épée du féroce S’enfonça jusqu’au cœur Du fils des Skilfingar. (Dillmann 2000)

And on Egill the giant’s draught-beast reddened the bill of the bull’s snout, And from the land fled the lauded kin of Týr

Tunni’s realm. Having worn in woods of Sweden its forehead-peak for a long time; the cattle-sword, scabbardless, of the Skilfing prince pierced the heart. (Finlay and Faulkes 2011, 29–30)

And the roamer, the draught-animal of the giant [BULL], which before had long borne the cairn of the brows [HEAD] about the eastern forest, reddened its weapon of the bull [HORN] upon Egill. And the sheathless sword of the bull [HORN] stuck in the heart of the descendant of the Skilfingar. (Marold 2012a)

Interpretations of farri, then, depend crucially on whether the word is considered to be West Norse, in which case the meaning “bull” seems unavoidable, or East Norse, in which case the sense “boar, swine” is self-evident. Choosing to translate the word as “ox” rather than “bull,” as many have done, does not make these lines any easier to understand. The whole point about oxen is their gentle disposition—they are not in the habit of goring people to death. The tradition concerning the early Swedish kings recorded in Ynglingatal is considerably more obscure than that relating to the later Vestfold kings. This makes it very clear that this particular passage had lost much of the original sense of its message before it even came into Tjodolf’s safekeeping, but also that the poet made little attempt to clarify it or fill in the gaps. Further confirmation that the section relating to the Yngling kings rests essentially on an eastern Swedish tradition comes from the fact that its account of Egil’s death has clear points in common with that in Beowulf, which is not only independent of West Norse tradition, but also has a marked eastern Scandinavian centre of gravity. As Ynglingatal was not composed in Iceland and as Tjodolf’s influence on the older part of the poem seems to be limited, there is equally no reason to interpret the word



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farri from a West Norse linguistic point of view. All the indications are that it should be interpreted from an East Norse standpoint and translated as “boar” or “swine.” In the following, therefore, I will discuss the question of Egil/Ongentheow’s death on the basis that farri in Ynglingatal refers to a boar and that the Geats of Beowulf are Gutes. I will also proceed from Sune Lindqvist’s very reasonable assumption that it was not a boar or a bull that had roamed in the east, but King Egil himself (Lindqvist 1936, 286). The question then is whether my interpretation of the Old English poem can contribute to a factually more meaningful reconstruction of the original message of the Old Norse one concerning Egil’s death. Beowulf’s account has a far more realistic feel than the one in Ynglingatal, hardly surprisingly given that it is much closer in time to the events in question. Here I cite the passage from Beowulf concerning the death of Ongentheow in both Old English20 and a modern English translation: Þǣr wearð Ongenðīo ecgum sweorda, blondenfexa on bid wrecen, þæt se þēodcyning ðafian sceolde Eafores ānne dōm. Hyne yrringa Wulf Wonrēding wǣpne ġerǣhte, þæt him for swenġe swāt ǣdrum sprong forð under fexe. Næs hē fohrt swā ðēh, gomela Scilfing, ac forġeald hraðe wyrsan wrixle wælhlem þone, syððan ðēodcyning þyder onċirde. Ne meahte se snella sunu Wonrēdes ealdum ċeorle ondslyht ġiofan, ac hē him on hēafde helm ǣr ġescer, þæt hē blōde fāh būgan sceolde, fēoll on foldan; næs hē fǣġe þā ġīt, ac hē hyne ġewyrpte, þēah ðe him wund hrine. Lēt se hearda Hiġelāces þeġn brād[n]e mēċe, þā his brōðor læġ, ealdsweord eotonisc entiscne helm brecan ofer bordweal; ðā ġebēah cyning, folces hyrde, wæs in feorh dropen. Ðā wǣron moniġe þe his mǣġ wriðon, ricone ārǣrdon, ðā him ġerӯmed wearð.

20  2961–83.

There with the edge of a sword was Ongentheow, old graybeard, brought to bay, so that the king of that nation had to yield to Eofor’s will. Angrily he struck; Wulf the son of Wonred lashed at him with his weapon, so that with his blow the blood sprang in streams from under his hair. Yet the ancient Scylfing was undaunted, and dealt back quickly a worse exchange for that savage stroke, once the ruler of that people turned around. The ready son of Wonred could not give a stroke in return to the old soldier,

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for he had cut through the helmet right on his head so that he collapsed, covered in blood, fell to the ground—he was not yet fated to die, but he recovered, though the cut hurt him. The hardy thane of Hygelac [Eofor] then let his broad blade, as his brother lay there, his ancient giant-made sword, shatter that gigantic helmet over the shield-wall; then the king stumbled, shepherd of his people, mortally stricken. (Liuzza 1999, 143–44)

What is striking is that Beowulf, just like Ynglingatal, mentions that Ongentheow is covered in blood in the same way as it says that Wulf is coloured red with it (blōde fāh). It may seem natural for blood to flow when someone is attacked with a sharp weapon, but the fact is not noted for any of the many other princes who die a violent death in Ynglingatal and Ynglinga saga, nor are such references common in skaldic poetry. The reference to the ground being stained red when Dómaldi (Domalde) is sacrificed is only an apparent exception, as flowing blood is the whole point of a blót sacrifice. As several commentators have pointed out, Eofor is not just a man’s name, but also means “boar.” Schück therefore understood the word Eofor in Beowulf as a reference to a mythical boar that kills Ongentheow (Schück 1907, 106). Sune Lindqvist, conversely, interpreted the words farra trjónu, “swine’s snout, boar’s snout,” in Ynglingatal as a metaphor for Eofor’s sword (Lindqvist 1936, 301). To my mind, it seems reasonable to suggest that the tradition behind Ynglingatal originally spoke here of Egil being struck down by Eofor’s sword, just as we read in Beowulf, and that this gradually came to be interpreted in a literal sense, i.e., as Egil having been killed by a real boar, a farri. Even a minor change such as this would have caused the meaning of the verse to break down altogether. It may be assumed that, to make any sense of it at all, subsequent tradition had recourse to the kenning of the boar’s tusk as the cause of Egil’s death and altered an original reference to Eofor’s sword being pulled from its sheath to a kenning referring to the sheathless tusk of the animal. Another possibility is that eofor originally served as a kenning for a boar-crested helmet, of the kind typical of the period, decorated with a three-dimensional figure of a boar, and referred to several times in Beowulf as an eofor21 or swīn.22 In that work, eofor also appears in expressions for a banner, eaforhēafodseġn,23 and a boar spear, eofersprēot.24 When Beowulf and his companions arrive at King Hrothgar’s hall, we read:25 Boar-figures shone over gold-plated cheek-guards, gleaming, fire-hardened (Liuzza 1999, 62)

21  303, 1112, 1328. Variant spellings such as eofer and eafor also occur. 22  1111, 1286, 1453.

23  2152. 24  1437.

25  304–5.



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Whether it is the boar figures on the helmets or the cheek-guards that are gleaming with gold is unclear. When Beowulf dives into the mere to fight Grendel’s mother, he is well equipped:26 The shining helmet protected his head, […] decorated with treasure, encircled with a splendid band, as a weapon-smith in days of old had crafted it with wonders, set boar-images, so that afterwards no blade or battle-sword might ever bite it. (Liuzza 1999, 97–98)

Beowulf also describes two occasions when boar-crested helmets are split by a sword:27 when a bloodstained blade, its edges strong, hammer-forged sword, slices through the boar-image on a helmet opposite. (Liuzza 1999, 92–93) when the foot-soldiers clashed And struck boar-helmets (Liuzza 1999, 94)

In Skáldskaparmál (41) in Snorri’s Edda, Á� li’s (Onela’s) boar-crested helmet is referred to as Hildisvín “Battle Boar.” Helmets crested with a three-dimensional figure of a boar and swords slicing through them seem to have been emotionally charged motifs in the poetry of the time (cf. Beck 1965). They are also to be found in contemporary images from eastern Sweden, discovered in archaeological excavations. Yet another possible interpretation builds on the suggestion by Erik Harding (1941), Heinrich Beck (1965), and Lanka Kováróva (2013) that a word for “boar” was behind the tribal name of the Swedes and that the wild boar had been a totem of the Swedish kings since early times (see Appendix 2 of Gräslund 2018). Particularly telling, it has been suggested, is the image of a helmeted prince with jaws shaped like a wild boar’s tusks on the decorative foil of the magnificent helmet from Grave XIV at Vendel in Uppland, a setting closely linked to the power centre of the Swedes at Uppsala. Mention may also be made here of a gilt-bronze figure from a princely grave from the early Vendel Period at Gnista, just outside Uppsala, in the shape of a boar’s head with upturned tusks and with a cut garnet as an eye (Hennius et al. 2017); four similar bronze figures from Landshammar in Spelvik in eastern Södermanland (Lamm 1962); and a series of images of similar boars’ heads on the helmets of warrior figures in the lower frieze of the helmet from Valsgärde 7 (Arwidsson 1977, figs. 26 and 120). With this in mind, it seems perfectly reasonable to me to think of King Egil/Ongentheow as a “boar-king” and for him to be referred to in Ynglingatal as a “boar.” With the words farra trjónu, that poem may originally have been expressing how the boar-king Egil’s head was coloured red with blood, precisely as it is described in Beowulf. With that, the whole passage suddenly makes sense. 26  1451–53.

27  1285–87, 1326–28.

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Since the god Freyr, with his close mythological relationship to the kings of the Swedes, travels in a chariot pulled by the boar Gullinbursti (Gylfaginning, 68), the word eykr in Ynglingatal, which normally refers to a draught animal, could here be a kenning for a boar. Where, then, does the “giant” referred to in jǫtuns eykr fit in? Strikingly, there is also mention of a giant in Beowulf’s version, where Eofor’s sword is described as “giantmade.” Could this be the giant behind jǫtuns eykr? To conclude, I would note that a West Norse translation of farri as “bull” or “ox” has never been compatible with a factually credible interpretation of Ynglingatal’s lines about the death of King Egil, whereas an East Norse translation as “boar” opens the way for several reasonable interpretations. And then we have the strange reference to the boar having long “carried its head across the eastern wilderness’: sás of austmǫrk áðan hafði brúna hǫrg of borinn lengi.

Brúna hǫrg could perhaps be translated as “temple or sanctuary of the eyebrows,” as Noreen does, but hardly as a kenning for a head which Egil or some boar or bull carried around in the east. Sune Lindqvist interprets the expression as “house of the eyebrows,” referring to Egil’s helmet (Lindqvist 1921, 150n) and probably alluding to the pronounced eyebrow arches that adorned princely helmets at this time. These eyebrow pieces, often decorated with gold and garnets and terminating in bird or animal heads, helped to make the face mask of the helmet impressively and terrifyingly human in character. They gave its wearer not only physical but also magical protection. Helmets with eyebrow arches were common in the native territory of the Skilfing kings around Uppsala, Valsgärde, and Vendel. As regards austmǫrk, Gotland is spoken of in Beowulf as Wedermearc, “Wethermark, Land of the Rams.” From other contexts we see that OE mearc and ON mǫrk “forest” can both have the secondary sense of “area, land, large island.” And if the basic meaning of “forest land” is behind the expression, then Gotland does after all have a fair amount of woodland. As for the reference to the “east,” it may be noted that, in prehistoric Scandinavia, “east” commonly meant what would now be called “southeast” (Ellegård 1955; Lindström 1997) and that Gotland is to the southeast of Uppland. In other words, austmǫrk here could very well refer to Gotland. And since, according to Beowulf, the sons of Ongentheow often raided the island of the Gutes, he himself would presumably also have been involved, if only as the overall leader. In short, then, a possible reinterpretation of these lines from Ynglingatal could be that the boar-king Egil was involved in battles on Gotland wearing a helmet with eyebrow pieces (and possibly crested with a boar figure). In Beowulf, Ongentheow has grown-up sons. He is also referred to several times as old at the time of his death, although that need not mean any older than fifty-five to sixty-five; clearly, he is still perfectly fit for combat. According to the Old English poem, his sons first harry the Gutes, who in turn later attack the Swedes. After Ongentheow has first freed his wife, who had been captured by the Gutes, the latter seek refuge in the



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woods, with Ongentheow’s curses raining down on them. But when Ongentheow twice hears the horns and trumpets of the famous Hygelac in the distance and realizes that he is arriving with reinforcements, he retreats inland, with Hygelac and the Gutes in pursuit. Finally, Ongentheow engages Wulf and Eofor in combat and is killed. The word flæmingr m. in verse 17 of Ynglingatal (according to Marold 2012a), formed from the verb flæma “to flee,” is an unusual word in Old Norse skaldic poetry and prose. Its primary meaning is “flight” or “fleeing,” and here chiefly “the fugitive.” The word is usually either not translated at all, or else rendered as “wandering,” “roaming,” or the like. But as we have seen, there is a person here who is indeed fleeing, namely King Ongentheow/Egil. Beowulf clearly shows that Ongentheow/Egil is not killed by a bull or a boar, but by Eofor’s sword. It therefore seems reasonable to me to assume that skíðlauss “sheathless,” as an adjective qualifying hjǫrr “sword,” originally referred to Eofor’s sword, drawn from its sheath. In Ynglingatal, Egil is described as Skilfinga nið, “scion of the Skilfings.” In Beowulf the word Scilfing/Scylfing is used no fewer than eight times as an epithet for various kings and princes of the Swedes. The same text also uses the expressions GūðScilfingas28 and Heaðo-Scilfingas,29 “Battle-Scilfings,” for Swedish kings in general and Onela in particular.30 Twice, Ongentheow is referred to as gomela scylfing,31 “the old Scilfing.” In the eddic poem Hyndluljóð (11) we find Skilfing as an epithet for an undefined dynasty, and in Grímnismál (54) as an epithet for Odin. In other Old English texts, Scilfing is conspicuous by its absence. As Scilfing/Skilfing can thus only be associated with Swedish kings of the Migration Period, this epithet, too, links the Beowulf tradition of King Ongentheow’s death to an eastern Swedish tradition in Ynglingatal. In Ynglingatal, Aðils/Eadgils is spoken of as Ála dolgr, i.e., the enemy of Á� li/Onela, as he is in Beowulf. The late Old Norse tradition of Á� li hinn Upplenzki as a king from Opland in Norway who fights Aðils on the ice of Lake Vänern is, as Sune Lindqvist for one has convincingly shown (1936, 297–98), a result of confusion with the Swedish king Ale/ Onela who appears four times in Beowulf. Here I would also mention that the rather unusual expression hjǫrr for “sword” in Ynglingatal may have a parallel in an emended form heoro- which several scholars (e.g., Klaeber 1950; Alexander 2005; Chickering 2006) have suggested as the first element of a compound with blac in Beowulf, i.e., heoro-blac, meaning “sword-pale” and referring to Ongentheow when he falls to the ground, mortally wounded, after Eofor has split his helmet.32 (Others have suggested hilde- “battle-” as an emendation; Fulk et al. 2009.) In Ynglingatal, the word hjǫrr occurs specifically in connection with King Egil and the word Skilfing.

28  2927.

29  2205. 30  63.

31  2487, 2968. 32  2488.

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Finally, I would note that in the eight lines of Ynglingatal dealing with the death of King Egil, much of the space is taken up by words, expressions, meanings, phenomena, and names, such as farra, austmǫrk, brúna hǫrg, á Agli rauð, flæmingr, jǫtun, Skilfing, and possibly also hjǫrr, which in one way or another have counterparts in Beowulf’s account of the death of Ongentheow. The description of Aðils/Eadgils as Ála dolgr in Ynglingatal (22) is also confirmed by Beowulf.33 In general, the much older and more realistic account in Beowulf must take interpretive precedence over the late and obscure tradition behind Ynglingatal and Ynglinga saga. The Old English poem makes it clear that Ynglingatal’s lines about King Egil were not originally about him being killed by a bull, an ox, a boar, or a giant. Presumably, they must instead have described how the boar-king Egil, wearing a helmet with eyebrow pieces, had earlier attacked Gotland, was later wounded by a sword blow that drew a great deal of blood, and was subsequently killed by Eofor’s sword. Ynglingatal’s claim that Egil receives a blow to the heart and not the head could be a secondary adaptation to the idea that he was killed by the tusks of a boar or the horns of a bull. To sum up, it is my view that the message of the lines from Ynglingatal we are concerned with here can be reconstructed roughly as follows: and the boar-king Egil, wearing an eyebrowed helmet, ravaged for a long time on Gotland. Later, the fugitive scion of the Skilfings was struck bloody [by Wulf] and then killed by Eofor’s giant-made sword, drawn from its sheath.

To me, it seems evident that the accounts of King Ongentheow/Egil’s death in Beowulf and Ynglingatal trace their roots to a common eastern Swedish tradition.

Swedish Influence on Gotland

Can the information given in Beowulf about the Swedes defeating the Gutes in the middle of the sixth century be checked against the archaeological record? Yes, it certainly can. From the mid to the late sixth century and in the course of the seventh, a sudden Swedish influence on Gotland can be observed, affecting weapons of every kind, jewellery, tools, stylistic forms, burial types and practices, and types of buildings. All the evidence suggests a strong influence from Svealand in the earliest Vendel Period, Phase VIIA of the Iron Age, around ad 550–600 (Nerman 1963a; Høilund Nielsen 1991). Most strikingly, at this time Gotlanders began to abandon the old tradition of building houses on stone foundations (Svedjemo 2014) in favour of the mainland model of post-built houses with no such foundations. Another detail in this pattern, observed by Torun Zachrisson, is that, during the Vendel Period, the typical Svealand practice of burying 33  2380–81.



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women on lynx skins also began to appear on Gotland (Zachrisson and Krzewińska 2019). All these things coincide with a Swedish influence on place-names on both Gotland and Ö� land and a clear linguistic influence from Svealand along the entire east coast of Sweden as far south as Möre, eastern Blekinge and Ö� land (Fries 1962; Hellberg 1979, 1988; Olsson 1996). Beowulf is thus remarkably consistent here with the archaeological and linguistic evidence. The influence of eastern Svealand is massive. The picture is entirely in keeping with a comment in Wulfstan’s account of his travels two hundred years later, that Gotland belonged to the Swedes (Bately 2009). According to the “Florence List,” the island also belonged to the Swedes around 1160 (Lindkvist 1983, 284). There is no archaeological evidence of a corresponding Svealand influence on the central settlement areas of the Gauts in Västergötland and Ö� stergötland, with the exception of the coastal regions of Ö� stergötland. Two rune stones in southern Uppland may possibly be linked to the information in Guta saga about a treaty with the Swedes. At Torsätra in Ryd parish, there is a stone (U 614) from the beginning of the eleventh century, with an inscription which Wessén and Jansson interpret as follows: “Skule and Folke raise this stone in memory of their brother Husbjörn. He fell sick abroad when they were taking geld on Gotland” (Wessén and Jansson 1949, 21–26). The men in question can hardly have been collecting such payments on their own account, but must presumably have been doing so for the Swedish king, which agrees with what Guta saga tells us about the Gotlanders having to pay a tax to the Swedes. All these archaeological, historical, and philological indications of a sudden, strong, and enduring Swedish influence on Gotland significantly strengthen my assumption that the information in Guta saga about Avair Strabain’s peace talks with the Swedes goes back to the time of the final battles between Gutes and Swedes in Beowulf. The opening sections of Guta saga are generally held to contain a core of early, preChristian oral tradition, reflected in the composition, content, style, alliteration, and other features of the text (Mitchell 1984; Kyhlberg 1991, 341ff.; ed. Peel 1999). Birger Nerman even suggests that the word baugum in the expression alt ir baugum bundit (Guta saga, chap. 1: 12) points back to the time before ad 550, after which prestigious rings, especially rings of gold which baugr usually refers to, are completely absent from the archaeological record, not only on Gotland but throughout the Nordic region (Nerman 1960). But even if, as is also possible, the expression baugum bundit is interpreted in a figurative sense, reflecting a Scandinavian and Indo-European ritual and judicial tradition (Blomkvist and Jackson 1999), it still harks back to pre-Christian times. There is thus good reason to assume that the opening of Guta saga contains traces of early pagan traditional material.

Beowulf ’s Role in the Wars

The individuals who are said to have participated in the first, second, and third wars are Hæthcyn, Hygelac, Heardred, Eofor, and Wulf. Nothing is said about Beowulf. It is extremely unlikely that something as crucial to the protagonist of a heroic epic as

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involvement in wars would be concealed. This failure to mention Beowulf also tallies with his own claim later on that he did not participate in the Gutes’ attack on the Swedes, but that it was carried out by his “friends and kinsmen” (including Hygelac and Hæthcyn), and also that he “had heard” about Eofor having killed Ongentheow, i.e., not seen it for himself. The report about Onela letting Beowulf take over the throne of Gotland after Heardred can also be seen as confirming that Beowulf was not involved in these conflicts. Regarding Beowulf’s Swedish kinsman Wiglaf, nothing is said about him participating in the first three wars, only that he inherits the battle gear which his father Weohstan, as Onela’s companion, took from the Swedish prince Eanmund after killing him during the third conflict. All this fits logically into a wider context. Although Beowulf represents the people of Gotland, he is of Swedish royal descent on his father’s side and avoids for as long as possible getting dragged into the struggle against his kinsmen (cf. Shaul 2017). He himself also says that, before his battle with the Serpent, he had never been at war since becoming king.34 There is thus nothing in the poem to show that Beowulf was king of the Gutes during the first three wars or that he participated in those wars. Here we have the hint of an explanation for two circumstances that have long perplexed scholars. The first is the poem’s silence on Beowulf’s relationship to the opposite sex. Not a word is wasted on a queen or other woman in his life. The second is the fact that, after Hygelac’s death, Beowulf declines the offer from his widow Hygd to take over the throne of Gotland—which could of course also be seen as an offer of marriage. This has led some to assume that he is more interested in his own than in the opposite sex. But as male homosexuality, in particular, was strongly suppressed socially in Iron Age society (Meulengracht Sørensen 1983; Price 2005; David Clark 2009), an openly homosexual man seems virtually unthinkable as the main character of a male heroic epic, whether it was a matter of oral tradition committed to writing or written fiction. Beowulf admittedly declines the offer, but in practice, by agreeing at the same time to be a closer adviser to Hygd’s son, the young heir to the throne Heardred, he nevertheless takes on the role of regent. The arrangement automatically gives Beowulf an agreeable proximity to Queen Hygd, perhaps even access to the royal bed. For when the poem says that Beowulf’s “own home,” his sylfes hām, is identical to ġifstōl Ġēata,35 “ the royal seat (or hall) of the Gutes,” which in turn must be assumed to be occupied by Queen Hygd and the heir Heardred, the conclusion should be that Beowulf is living there together with Hygd (regarding ġifstōl, see McGillivray 2008). If that is the case, Beowulf could hardly have arranged things better for himself. When Beowulf contents himself with the role of Heardred’s adviser, it looks mainly like a stratagem to avoid becoming involved in the war of vengeance which he realises his Swedish kinsmen will embark on as soon as the hated Hygelac’s son Heardred is old enough for them to seek revenge on him. And Beowulf does indeed avoid becoming an 34  2733–38.

35  2325–27.



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object of Onela’s wrath when the latter attacks the Gutes and has Heardred killed. And who is then set to become king of the Gotlanders, if not Beowulf? The poem is strangely silent as to Beowulf’s whereabouts when the Swedes kill his protégé Heardred. Is he deliberately keeping out of the way? Or is he forced to remain passive by Onela?36 All we know for sure is that he does not sit around at home waiting, since he hears from others that his home, the royal hall, has been burnt down. In the poem it is hinted that Beowulf sees this disaster as a punishment for his having violated ealde riht,37 which can best be rendered as “traditional social norms.” Charles Moorman has assumed that what is weighing on his conscience could be the crime of killing Onela, a kinsman (Moorman 1967, 16). But this does not fit chronologically, as the fire precedes Onela’s death. The fact that Beowulf later lends his support to Eadgils in his struggle against Onela does nevertheless have a whiff of treachery about it. Because by accepting Onela’s invitation to take over the throne after Heardred, Beowulf is entering into a morally and socially binding contract. And by killing him he also commits the offence of taking the life of a kinsman, albeit to avenge another kinsman. Here we can recall that Beowulf earlier publicly accused Unferth of having caused a kinsman’s death.38 So when Beowulf, on his deathbed, boasts of never having sworn false oaths,39 he has conveniently repressed a thing or two. It is difficult to avoid the impression that Onela waits to avenge the death of his father Ongentheow until Hygelac’s son Heardred has reached adulthood. That is when Onela strikes, has Heardred killed, and places Beowulf on the throne, apparently regarding him as a loyal kinsman. If he does, though, he is sadly mistaken. Heardred was not only Beowulf’s cousin and the son of a beloved uncle, but in practice also something of a stepson. The poem says quite clearly, moreover, that one of Beowulf’s motives for supporting Eadgils in his struggle against Onela is vengeance for Heardred’s death.40 Onela may feel he has good reason to attack and once and for all subjugate the Gutes, in order to avenge not only the death of his father Ongentheow, but also the Gutes’ impertinence in capturing his ageing mother and taking her gold. It is perfectly understandable that he is out for vengeance, and he gets it good and proper. He attacks the Gotlanders, burns down their settlements, kills Heardred and brings the whole island under Swedish control. The last nail in the coffin is when, as a deeply humiliating symbolic act, he burns down the royal seat of the Gutes. Later, in connection with Beowulf’s funeral, it is indeed made clear how, through Hygelac’s attack on the Swedes, the Gutes have brought subjection upon themselves.41 When the messenger arrives with news of Beowulf’s death, he says with regret that the Gutes’ attack on the Swedes was onmēdlan,42 36  2319–30.

37  2330.

38  587–89.

39  2738–39.

40  2391–92b.

41  2922–3006b. 42  2926.

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basically, “out of overweening pride.” The verdict is understandable, given that the Gotlanders must always have had less military strength than the Swedes and ought to have realised that, in the long run, war against them was futile. If there is anything in my idea about the Serpent being a metaphor for King Onela (see Chapter 20), it would mean that Wiglaf abandoned his father Weohstan’s side in the struggle between the two Swedish factions and joined their opponents. On one side we then have Onela and Weohstan, on the other Eadgils, Eanmund, Beowulf, and Wiglaf, all of them of Swedish royal descent. Here we get a sense of a dynastic feud of truly Merovingian proportions, in which vengeance according to strict concepts of honour, combined with a struggle for power, glory and wealth, causes the vicious circle to spin on, generation after generation. It is a story that would have merited a Gregory of its own. The picture of Beowulf as a selfless idealist who is virtually asexual in orientation, which a cursory reading of the poem might suggest, is thus flawed. Beowulf strikes us, if anything, as a cautious strategist and practitioner of realpolitik. The whole poem gives the impression of being a massaging of the biographical facts by people close to him, by and large perhaps already during his lifetime and in the years immediately following his death.

Conclusions

As we saw in Chapter 8, it is evident that Beowulf, on his father’s side, is of Swedish royal descent. We also saw a clear link between the Skilfing kings of the Migration Period and the poem’s eastern Swedish designations Swīorīċe, “realm or dominion of the Swedes,” and Swēoðēod, “people of the Swedes,” these last two expressions not found in other Old English texts before the beginning of the eleventh century. The references to the four wars between the Swedes and the Geats only form a comprehensible pattern once it has been established that the latter are the Gutes, or Gotlanders. The same goes for the accounts in Beowulf and Ynglingatal of the death of Ongentheow/Egil. Ynglingatal’s lines on the subject seem severely mangled, in terms of both factual content and language. The analysis undertaken here also provides further support for Sune Lindqvist’s conclusion (1936, 297–301) that the stories of the king’s death in these two sources go back to a common eastern Swedish tradition. This in turn supports the idea that the core of the Beowulf story passed through eastern Svealand on its way to England.

Chapter 16

THE HORSEMEN AROUND BEOWULF’S GRAVE In connection with Beowulf’s funeral, twelve young noblemen ride around his grave, expressing their grief and singing of the courage and exploits of the deceased:1 Þā ymbe hlǣw riodan hildedīore, æþelinga bearn, ealra twelf(e), woldon (care) cwīðan, (ond c)yning mǣnan, wordġyd wrecan, ond ymb w(er) sprecan; eahtodan eorlscipe ond his ellenweorc duguðum dēmdon Then round the mound rode the battle-brave men, offspring of noblemen, twelve in all, they wished to voice their cares and mourn their king, utter sad songs and speak of that man; they praised his lordship and his proud deeds judged well his prowess. (Liuzza 1999, 150)

A group of men riding round the grave of a dead man, praising his achievements, is a ritual mark of respect in a society in which it is entirely natural for the highest elite to be represented by mounted warriors. But Scandinavian society at the time in question was hardly an equestrian one of that kind. Nor is there any evidence of a similar funeral ritual involving horsemen in Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon or any other Germanic tradition (Klaeber 1927). Klaeber is very cautious in his interpretation of this scene, apparently assuming that the Old English author simply gave free rein to his imagination and included the horsemen as an allusion to Christ’s apostles (Klaeber 1927; see also Chapter 9). Martin Puhvel, who has noted a number of latter-day folk customs in northern Europe in which people file around graves, though never on horseback, suggests that the Old English poet was working on the basis of such traditions, but was also influenced by literary sources (Puhvel 1983). Both Klaeber and Puhvel thus cling firmly to the idea that the poem was the work of an Old English author. The only peoples in Middle Iron Age Europe with an elitist equestrian culture were the Central Asian Huns and the closely related Turkic-speaking peoples of central and southeastern Europe. Jordanes reports a similar scene in conjunction with the funeral of Attila, king of the Huns, in 451, probably somewhere in present-day Hungary. As Attila lies in state in a silken tent, a number of noble horsemen ride around him, chanting songs about his great deeds to the accompaniment of laments (Jordanes, 256–58). Many years ago, the Danish legend scholar Niels Lukman drew attention to similarities in terms of names and personal histories between the Danish Skjǫldung and Swedish kings of the Migration Period on the one hand and various Hunnic rulers on the other. Behind Healfdene/Hálfdan(r) he sees the Hunnic prince Huldin, behind Hrothgar/ 1  3169–74a.

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Hróarr/Ro the Hunnic prince Roas, and behind the Swedish kings Ottar and Adils the Hunnic kings Octar and Attila. Lukman has often been understood to have regarded these Scandinavian figures as identical to their Hunnic counterparts, and to have believed that the Huns became masters of Scandinavia. But the only thing he expressly says, and also convincingly shows, is that there is a clear link between late Scandinavian legendary traditions about the Skjǫldungs and Skilfings and continental Hunnic traditions, and that the former were clearly influenced by the latter. He seems less interested in whether there may be a real-world basis for the legends, although he does believe, in the light of archaeological evidence, that the Hunnic traditions were primarily brought to Scandinavia through eastern Swedish contacts with the Danube region (Lukman 1943). In recent years, fresh attention has been drawn to Lukman’s work by Lotte Hedeager, who has put considerable emphasis on the possibility of a Hunnic takeover in Scandinavia in the late fourth and first half of the fifth century, chiefly with reference to Hunnic influence on the stylistic development of Scandinavian metalwork and on the hybrid and shamanistic character of Odin (Hedeager 1999a, 1999b, 2007, 2011). Hedeager’s conclusions have met with criticism from other archaeologists (Näsman 2008, 2009), but more recently Frands Herschend (2009, 406) and Anders Andrén (2014, 173–78) have also put the case for a degree of Hunnic influence on the martial elite environment of Scandinavia at this time. Clearly, the Huns in Europe and their original society in the Xiongnu empire of Central Asia had a far more advanced social, organisational, and military structure than has previously been assumed, and they probably contributed to some extent to the emergence of early feudal Europe (Kim 2013). The rise in Europe during and immediately after the Migration Period of such general manifestations of Germanic elite culture as gold-and-garnet jewellery, horse worship, horse burials, hunting with birds of prey, large barrow burials and wooden-chambered tombs can it seems also be linked to the influence of the Huns and other Central Asian peoples (Niles 2016). In eastern Svealand this influence is palpable. It is striking, moreover, how leading strata of the Huns and the Germanic tribes quickly intermingled as a result of dynastically motivated marriages. Famous Gothic kings such as Theodoric and Odovacar seem to have had Hunnic blood in their veins, while the Ostrogothic king Valamir appears to have been of pure Hunnic extraction. Also noteworthy is the documented practice in Germanic elite groups of taking the names of celebrated Hunnic princes (Kim 2013). It thus seems reasonable to regard the similarities between early Hunnic and later Scandinavian rulers’ names, cited by Lukman, as reflecting this practice of name-giving after famous Hunnic princes. Here I would draw attention to the analysis recently presented by Birgit Arrhenius of the finds made in the female grave, excavated as early as 1846, in the large “Gullhögen” mound at Old Uppsala. Among the cremated artefact remains there was a pear-shaped strap-end of thin gold with garnet cloisonné inlay, now lost, which is usually regarded as typical Hunnic work of the second half of the fifth century. As the actual burial can be dated to around 600 or somewhat earlier, Arrhenius believes that this object may have been among the property inherited by the woman buried here (Arrhenius 2015).



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Such an artefact could of course have ended up among that property in various ways, but one possibility is that it was as a result of dynastic intermarriage between Swedes and Huns in the late fifth century, the buried woman being the descendant of a Hunnic ruler’s daughter who had married a Swedish prince a few generations earlier. The position of the grave, immediately adjacent to the great West Mound from around the same time, gives a clear indication of her high rank. It is not necessarily the case that all the gold that poured into Scandinavia during the Migration Period, primarily finding its way to the Baltic islands of Gotland, Ö� land, and Bornholm (Fischer 2005, 150–57), consisted of tributes or plunder from the Roman Empire. Some of it may also have passed through the hands of Huns and closely related ethnic groups who—long after the Battle of Chalons in 451 and after most Goths had moved on to the southwest—still controlled significant areas of central and southeastern Europe (Kim 2013). In the form of ransom, plunder and tribute, the Huns extracted enormous quantities of gold from the Romans. On one occasion in the mid fifth century, for example, they laid their hands on 4 tonnes of pure gold at one go (Kim 2013, 71–73). Die identities observed within several Scandinavian hoards of solidi from the fifth century are in fact generally taken to mean that these hoards were not gradually accumulated by Scandinavians by means of trade and plunder, but had existed as coherent entities on the continent outside the empire before being transported north (Fagerlie 1967, 112–36; Fischer 2005, 150–51 and references there). Flush with capital, the Huns then pursued roughly the same policy as the Romans, recruiting foreign troops in their service and tying powerful Germanic princes and peoples to themselves as vassals or military partners. A similar Hunnic influence on Anglo-Saxon territory, on the other hand, is difficult to discern. There must in other words have been every possibility of Scandinavian elites, not least on eastward-looking Gotland, adopting some of the spectacular customs of Hunnic equestrian society. I therefore consider it reasonable to assume that the horsemen reciting their songs around Beowulf’s grave reflect a Hunnic cultural influence on Scandinavian elite circles a few generations earlier, possibly mediated by Gutnish mercenaries in the service of the Huns. In another context, I have put forward the idea that the three large, gold-rich Baltic islands of Gotland, Ö� land, and Bornholm operated like modernday employment agencies, providing the Huns, in exchange for ready cash, with mercenaries from throughout the Nordic region (Gräslund 2019). The number twelve referring to the horsemen around Beowulf’s grave, on the other hand, is a characteristic Scandinavian element that can be compared to Beowulf’s twelve oarsmen, Ormika’s twelve rams in Guta saga, and many other parallels.

Chapter 17

SOME LINGUISTIC DETAILS Given that the core of the Beowulf tradition is clearly essentially Scandinavian,

it might be expected that the Old English of the poem would contain traces of an earlier Scandinavian linguistic form. As this question goes beyond my own academic area of expertise, however, I will confine myself here to a few general reflections based on others’ observations. Arthur Brodeur has noted that no fewer than 115 “base-words” in Beowulf form a larger number of compounds there than in the entire body of other Old English poetry put together, while 143 base-words form more compounds in other poems than in the epic. He also observes that a disproportionately large number of compounds are peculiar to Beowulf, one example being compound nouns with gūð- (“war, battle”) as their first element. In these respects, the poem differs markedly from other Old English literature. Embracing as he does the conventional view that Beowulf was composed by an Old English poet, Brodeur concludes that the author himself coined numerous words, particularly compounds, in order to accentuate the special function and subject of the poem (Brodeur 1959, 9ff., 28–29, 254–71). To me it seems more reasonable to consider whether a good number of these words do not in fact reflect an original, Proto-Norse usage. Gregor Sarrazin, in his day, noted a series of words and expressions which he believed to have been adopted from an original Scandinavian poem, referring to them as “Norroenicismen” (Sarrazin 1888, 68): Þengel (ON þengill), þyle (ON þulr), þyrs (ON þurs), sess (ON sess), eodor (ON jaðarr), brimlad (ON brimleið), adfaru (jfr ON bálfǫr), swanrad (jfr ON svana braut), feorhlegu (ON fjǫrlag), facenstafas (ON feiknstafir), heaðolac, beadolac (cf. ON hildileikr), beadoleoma (cf. ON gunnlogi), werþeod (ON verþjóð), heafodmagas (cf. ON hǫfudniðjar), sæcyning (ON sækonungr), þeodcyning (ON þjóðkonungr), beaga brytta (cf. ON baugbroti), gamol (ON gamall), atol (ON atall), meagol (OHG megle, magle), feorhsēoc (ON fjǫrsjukr), missan (ON missa), rædan (ON ráða), byrgian (ON bergja), hlēotan (ON hljóta), gewegan (ON vega), þing gehegan (ON þing heyja), healdan heafodwearde (ON hálda hǫfuðvǫrð).

Sarrazin also referred to a number of phrases and constructions that are otherwise unknown in Old English. The verb forlēosan appears several times in the poem with a dative object,1 a phenomenon not otherwise found in Old English, but entirely in keeping with Old Norse constructions with týna. The wording mǣl is mē tō fēran2 Sarrazin compares with Old Norse expressions such as mál er mér at ríða (Helgakviða Hundingsbana II, 49). The phrase iċ þe […] biddan wille […] ānre bēne3 corresponds 1  1470, 2145, 2861.

2  316. 3  426.

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word for word to biðja mun ek þik bœnar einnar in Sigurðarkviða (III, 62). The unusual alliteration frēondum befeallen4 has a direct counterpart in fallin at frændum in Hamðismál (5), all according to Sarrazin. A number of these words are perhaps not entirely unique to Beowulf, some of them having counterparts at least in other poetic Old English texts. Klaeber judged Sarrazin’s examples to be “interesting similarities rather than proofs of imitation” (Klaeber 1950, cxvii). Imitation, however, would have required an Old English author of the poem and such an author cannot, in my opinion, be shown to have existed. At the same time, Klaeber himself provided many additional examples of unique poetic words and expressions in the poem which he considered to have Scandinavian roots: atol, bront, eodor, lēod, beadolēoma, bona Ongenþēoȩs, ġehēġan ðinġ, iċ þē […] biddan wille […] ānre bēne, īsiġ, hæftmēċe, hēah, gamol (as an epithet for Healfdene), mǣl is mē tō fēran (Klaeber 1950, cxvii). Roberta Frank (1981) has cited a number of expressions in Beowulf which are not found in other Old English literature, but do occur in Old Norse texts, and which she views as possible manifestations of the poem having been created at a late date in England in contact with Scandinavian Vikings. One is when the poem describes how Hæthcyn miste merċelses,5 “missed the target,” which Frank regards as a linguistic Nordicism. Another is lofġeornost, “most eager for fame,” which in other Old English texts is only used in a negative sense, but which in Old Norse tradition (lofgjarn) consistently has the same positive meaning as in the poem. A third is benċþelu,6 “bench planks,” which apart from here is unknown in Old English and which in early Germanic literature is only found as bekkþili in Eiríksmál (Frank 1981). Frank’s view has met with some criticism, however (see Fulk et al. 2009, clxxi, 271–72).

Personal Names

Deciding whether personal names are Old English or Scandinavian can be difficult, as Scandinavian written sources from the time of the poem’s events are thin on the ground and considerable similarities existed between Old English and the language of eastern Scandinavia. Another difficulty is that originally Scandinavian names may have become corrupted in the course of transmission in Old English. A good many personal names in the poem, such as Scyld, Healfdene, Halga, Heorogar, Hredric, Hrothgar, Hrothulf, Ohthere, and Onela, however, have Scandinavian counterparts and are not recorded elsewhere in Old English (Björkman 1920; Wessén 1927b, 53–59). The same is true of names such as Ongentheow, Wealhtheow, and Ecgtheow (see below). Several of these names are also attested in later Scandinavian sources as referring to Scandinavian historical figures roughly contemporary with Beowulf. There is thus much to suggest that a substantial proportion of the principal names in the poem reflect originally Scandinavian names, several of which have been changed 4  1126.

5  2439.

6  486, 1239.



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to such a degree that they must be assumed to have been transmitted over a long period of time in Old English (Björkman 1920; Wessén 1927b; Fulk et al. 2009, clxxi). According to Wessén, one example of this could be the transformation of Aðils (*Aðgils) to OE Eadgils (*Auðgils) (Wessén 1927b, 54–55, 57). Ongentheow is regarded by Wessén as a reshaping of *AngilþewaR, which in turn had the abbreviated form *AgilaR, i.e., ON Egill (Wessén 1927b, 57–58). Moreover, Leonard Neidorf has drawn attention to various types of misspelling which show that the scribes handling the poem were often completely unfamiliar with the personal and tribal names that occur there (Neidorf 2013a and 2013b).

The Name Element -þēo(w)

Three of the personal names in Beowulf—as noted a century ago by Morsbach (1906, 277), Björkman (1920, 19) and Wessén (1927a; 1927b, 110–18)—have a clearly Scandinavian final element: Wealh-þēo(w), Ecg-þēo(w) and Ongen-þēo(w). The word þēo(w) is admittedly also Old English, but in that language it does not normally occur as the final element of a name. The name Wealhþēo(w), in particular, has given rise to much discussion. Since captured individuals of Celtic birth were often slaves in Anglo-Saxon society, and the word þēo(w) can mean both “servant” and “slave,” the first element wealh- in Wealhþēo(w) has often been interpreted as an expression of Celtic origin (Klaeber 1950, 140; Damico 1984, 59–86). But the socially unfree position of a servant which both the first and the final element here have been considered to imply seems, from an extralinguistic point of view, quite implausible for a queen of the Danes. On the contrary, the fact that the family epithet Helming is applied to Wealhtheow identifies her as being of high birth. The same interpretation of -þēo(w) as a final element of course applies very much to Ongenþēo(w) and Ecgþēo(w), whose bearers both belong to the very highest stratum of society. Elias Wessén regards Wealhþēo(w) as a direct etymological counterpart to ON Valþjófr (1927b, 110–18), as does E. V. Gordon. The latter takes the view that the first element wealh- is the same as in the Scandinavian man’s name Valþjófr, whose first element he links to a Germanic *wala, meaning “chosen, beloved,” which was quite a common initial element of names in early Germanic times. His conclusion is that the name Wealhþēo(w) can be interpreted as ““chosen servant”, as denoting a person devoted to some god or power which was expected to show special favour” (Gordon 1935). As noted earlier, the role of women in welcoming guests with drinks in princely hall settings is closely akin to that played by female officiants in pagan libation rites. Helen Damico suggests that the image of Queen Wealhtheow in the poem echoes the Norse mythological figure of the Valkyrie in Scandinavian Viking Age tradition (Damico 1984). As Wealhtheow is a queen and high-born, it is thus this higher form of servant we should envisage here. Like Gordon, Stefan Brink has linked the final element -þēo(w), corresponding to -þewar in early Scandinavian men’s names, to a serving role at the highest level of society, sometimes perhaps in the sense of “servant of a deity” (Brink 2003). This interpretation fits well with the male names Ecgþēo(w) and Ongenþēo(w), both of which are asso-

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ciated with the royal Scilfings of eastern Sweden. As Olof Sundqvist has shown, the kings of the Swedes in particular appear to have had a role in cultic practice as high servants of the gods (Sundqvist 2002). The link between the elements -þeo(w) and -þewar is also evident in the case of the name Ongenþēo(w), which seems to be identical to Angantýr/ Egill in Old Norse tradition. Gordon and Brink also suggest that the name Incgenþēow in Widsith (116) can be interpreted as “servant of the god Ing” (Gordon 1935; Brink 2003). If that is correct, the reference is presumably to Yngvi in the shape of the god Freyr, the principal deity of the early Uppsala cult, to whom the kings of the Yngling dynasty appear to have stood in a particular relationship of service, as well as claiming a genealogical relationship (Sundqvist 2007). The fact that the name Ecgþēo(w) strictly means “sword servant” can be seen as an example of the kind of metaphorical ambiguity typical of the time, the deeper meaning of the name being “sword-armed servant,” in the sense of “serving warrior.” As I see it, then, there is good reason to assume that the name ending -þēo(w) in Beowulf can be traced back to a PrN -þewar and that the names Wealhþēo(w), Ecgþēo(w), and Ongenþēo(w) in the poem ultimately have a Scandinavian background. Wealhþēo(w) in Beowulf is the only female servant name known from Old English and Old Norse texts. Gordon also believes that it belongs to an early Germanic name stock which, like many other names, did not survive the linguistic changes of the transition from the Middle to the Late Iron Age. Since Wealhþēo(w), “from the nature of its elements,” must be an old name, he argues that, by the same token, it cannot have been “invented by the Beowulf poet” (Gordon 1935: 175). In fact, the names Wealhþēo(w), Ecgþēo(w), Ongenþēo(w), and Eadgils (*Auðgils) all seem to point back to the time before the Germanic Sound Shift. Here, mention may also be made of the name Owlþuþewar on a Roman Age scabbard chape from the bog find at Torsbjerg in Denmark (Jacobsen and Moltke 1941, cols. 27–28; 1942, cols. 19–21), and of the name Laguþewa[z] on a silver shield-handle mount from Illerup in Denmark from around ad 200 (Peterson 2004). The name element -þēo(w) in Beowulf is a good example of how the hypothesis of an Old English author can lead to conclusions that are contradictory to the point of absurdity, at the same time as a Scandinavian view of the poem’s origins clears the way for a natural explanation.

Æppelfealu

Four of the eight horses which Hrothgar presents to Beowulf as a gift are described in the following terms: fēower mēaras lungre, ġelīċe lāst weardode, æppelfealụwe.7 The expression æppelfealu has caused a few headaches, as it is unknown from other Old English texts. The final element -fealu is often understood to describe a colour: “yellow,” “yellowish,” “dun,” “glossy” or the like (cf. fallow in modern English). Jennifer Neville, who has made a careful study of words for and descriptions of horses in Old English law codes, wills, and other texts from the period 700–1200, has not found the slightest trace of the designation æppelfealu. In her view, therefore, no one 7  2163–65.



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involved with horses in Anglo-Saxon England would have understood the expression (Neville 2006, 131–57). For Scandinavian and German translators, æppelfealu has rarely presented a problem. In Scandinavia, the word apelkastad “dappled” has been known since at least the sixteenth century. The final element -kastad corresponds directly to expressions describing a horse as fallen efter or fallen undan (“by” or “out of”) its parents. The word apelkastad may thus very well have had a synonym *apelfallen, meaning “having apple-patterned (dappled) ancestry.” Horses described as apelkastade often have a grey or whitish coat, partly variegated with darker, “apple-shaped” rings. Apelkastad, in other words, is not a colour term. Dappling can occur with any background colour but stands out particularly clearly on a light-coloured horse. Apelgrå (“dapple-grey,” literally “apple-grey”) with reference to a horse thus does not mean that it is “grey like an apple,” but is a linguistic contraction of “apple-patterned grey horse.” In any case, apples are not generally grey. “Apple-grey” as a designation for a horse appears in as early a source as Njáls saga (57), in the form apalgrár, and in Swedish versions of Staffansvisan, which probably has a medieval background. English translations that refer to Hrothgar’s horses as “dappled” thus probably come closest to the original meaning of the word æppelfealu. We now know that dappled patterns are an ancient characteristic of horses in Europe. DNA studies have been made of a large number of fossil horse bones, ranging from the last ice age twenty thousand years ago to the end of the Stone Age four thousand years ago. Six of the horses were found to share the LP allele, which is associated with what is called “leopard complex spotting.” As genetic markers were also found for the other basic coat colours of horses recorded in Palaeolithic cave paintings, the 25,000-year-old paintings of spotted white horses in the Pech-Merle cave in southern France are no longer regarded as products of the imagination, but as depictions of wild spotted horses actually living at that time (Pruvost et al. 2011). There thus need be no doubt that dappled horses were to be found in Europe in the time of Beowulf. It is reasonable to assume that they were also known in Anglo-Saxon princely settings, though they may have been referred to by other terms in that context. All the indications are that the word æppelfealu reflects a Scandinavian tradition referring to horses with dappled ancestry. Being unknown to Old English bards and scribes, the expression may mistakenly have been understood as denoting the colouring of the actual dapple pattern, hence -fealu. The word æppelfealu may be just a detail, but it is still revealing testimony to the Scandinavian background of the Beowulf story.

Old English Words Unique to Beowulf

Almost seven hundred of the words in Beowulf are not attested in other Old English texts. I have not been able to find a single listing of them, however; if such a list exists, it has gone largely unnoticed. Based on the glossary in Fulk et al. 2009, I have compiled a list of 674 words unique to Beowulf, 651 of them compounds and twenty-three simplexes, the former often kennings. The simplex words in question are often found in

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known Old English compounds, and the compounds in my list usually consist of known Old English simplexes. Simplexes

The twenty-three uncompounded words not found in other Old English texts are of most interest: bealdian “show oneself brave,”8 berian “bare, make clear,”9 brenting “ship,”10 cēnðu “boldness,”11 *dēagan “conceal, be concealed,”12 eolet “voyage (?), sea (?),”13 eotenisc, eotonisc, etonisc, entisc “giant, made by giants,”14 fǣt “(gold) plate, tray,”15 fenġel “prince, king,”16 hæf “sea,”17 hindema “last,”18 hilted “hilted,”19 hōs “troop (of attendants),”20 onhōhsnian “check, stop,”21 rēoc “fierce, savage,”22 scenn “sword-guard, plate of metal on handle of sword (?),”23 sioloð “water, sea,”24 strenġel “chief, ruler,”25 swaþul “flame, heat,”26 swīn “image of boar on helmet,”27 ġewegan “fight.”28 Compounds

Of the 651 compound words in the poem not found in other Old English texts, which occur in a total of 801 instances, 518 are nouns. The list is impressive. But as most of them are formed from known Old English simplexes, many of them may nevertheless have been used in spoken Old English, without being preserved in writing. An obvious example of this is hellbend, “bond of hell.” However, it is also possible that some of them, 8  2177.

9  1239. 10  807.

11  2696. 12  850. 13  224.

14  1558, 2626, 2979. 15  2256.

16  1400, 1475, 2156, 2345. 17  1862, 2477. 18  2049, 2517. 19  2987. 20  924.

21  1944. 22  122.

23  1694. 24  2367. 25  3115. 26  782.

27  1111. 28  2400.



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as compounds, derive from Scandinavian expressions. This could perhaps be true of the word seleġyst, “hall visitor, hall guest.”29 A corresponding name saligastir appears on a stone carved in runes from the older futhark at Berga near Trosa in Södermanland, and another four examples of early names with the final element -gastir are known in Scandinavia (Källström 2009,39).

Conclusions

In Beowulf, compound words seem to vary to a far greater degree than anywhere else in the entire corpus of Old English literature. In addition, there are a disproportionately large number of unique compounds in the poem, which also, taken as a whole, stands out in many other linguistic respects. A considerable proportion of the personal names in Beowulf had contemporary or later Scandinavian counterparts or can be reconstructed as Scandinavian, although many of them were misunderstood in the course of their transmission in Old English. Particularly noteworthy among a significant number of likely linguistic Nordicisms are the three princely names in -þēo(w) and the very striking example of æppelfealu.

29  1545.

Chapter 18

FROM SCANDINAVIA TO ENGLAND Before attempting to explain how the Beowulf tradition found its way to England, I would like to sum up some of my findings from the preceding chapters: – The geographical setting of Beowulf is purely Scandinavian. – The historical context of the story is purely Scandinavian.

– None of the historical tradition of the poem appears in other Old English writings.

– Such traditions can, on the other hand, be found in Scandinavian written sources. – No Anglo-Saxon tradition is to be found in the poem.

– The historical events of the poem end abruptly in the middle of the sixth century.

– Central material and ideological elements of the poem disappear in Scandinavia in the middle of the sixth century and either did not exist at all, or not until several hundred years later, in England. – The indirect geographical information in the poem must have been incomprehen sible to Anglo-Saxon audiences.

– There is a clear link between the poem and the eastern Swedish tradition recorded in Ynglingatal. – A link probably also exists between the poem and Gutnish tradition as recorded in Guta saga. – Beowulf is of Swedish royal descent on his father’s side.

– A rich array of pagan ideas and ways of thinking shine through a thin veneer of Christianity.

– The poem’s realistic accounts of Scandinavian cremations can hardly have been composed by an Old English Christian poet, especially as there is no trace of such traditions in the rich corpus of other Old English writings.

– The “Christian poet” does not understand the pagan rituals he himself is assumed to be describing. – The poem contains a good many linguistic Nordicisms.

– The uniquely tangible descriptions of settings and situations found in the poem suggest that the period of oral transmission was relatively short in both Scandinavia and England, and that the poem was memorized quite mechanically in England.

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– Archaic linguistic features show that, in England, the story was first transmitted in Anglian areas, and that it was circulating in England no later than ad 685–725. – Orthographic and palaeographic features suggest that the poem already existed in writing at that time.

Taken together, these and other circumstances give a clear indication that the story of Beowulf was created long before the Viking Age, was transmitted orally in Scandinavia, was transferred after just a few generations to an Anglian dialect in eastern England, subsequently continued to be transmitted in Anglian dialect areas with some Christian reworking, and was committed to writing, first in Anglian and finally in West Saxon dialect in the south of England.

Sutton Hoo

The meagre written sources in existence are almost completely silent on the subject of contacts between England and eastern Scandinavia from the middle of the sixth century to the beginning of the Viking Age. But that does not mean that such contacts did not exist. The archaeological evidence also shows that Angles in Kent maintained links for a time with their former fellow countrymen in southern and central Jutland, and perhaps also with Norway. In addition, there are significant points of agreement in the archaeological records of the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries between southeast England and Scandinavia, including eastern Svealand and Gotland (Hines 1984, 1992; Bruce-Mitford 1974; Ljungkvist 2005, 2013). Clear archaeological indications of more direct pre-Viking Age contact with eastern Scandinavia, however, can only be found for a very short time and between two specific areas: Suffolk in East Anglia and Uppland in eastern Sweden. Aristocratic hall settings with professional bards and influential audiences seem obvious channels for the reception and spread of the Beowulf tradition. In that connection it is impossible to ignore the ship burial in Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo (Bruce-Mitford 1974, 1975, 1978, 1986; Carver 1992a, 1992b, 1998), the boat-burial cemeteries at Vendel (Stolpe and Arne 1912) and Valsgärde (Arwidsson 1942, 1954, 1977) in Uppland, and the large barrows at Old Uppsala (Lindqvist 1936). Soon after the discovery in 1939 of the Sutton Hoo ship burial, one of the most magnificent princely graves ever found in Europe, it was held up as an archaeological illustration of the material and social world of Beowulf and as a possible code to understanding the poem’s origins. Initially, scholars such as Herbert Maryon (1946) and Birger Nerman (1948) saw such great similarities to the boat-grave finds in eastern Svealand that they believed an eastern Swedish king to have been interred at Sutton Hoo. That view, though, never gained a firm foothold, and for good reason. Of the many magnificent objects found in the ship burial at Sutton Hoo, the shield and helmet show the greatest similarities to eastern Sweden. The shield, with its iron rim, special ornamental mounts, sturdy boss with large round rivet heads, curiously folded iron handgrip and movable hanging loop on the back, has no parallels in England, but does have clear counterparts at Vendel and Valsgärde and, as far as the mounts and



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the boss are concerned, also on Gotland. The shield is in fact generally regarded as being of eastern Swedish extraction in one way or another (Bruce-Mitford 1974, 45, 51–55; Bruce-Mitford 1978, 91–99; Dickinson and Härke 1992b; Dickinson 1992; Härke 1992a, 1992b; Ljungkvist 2013). Although the ornamental mounts on the Sutton Hoo shield are of higher quality than their eastern Swedish counterparts, Angela Care Evans (2010, 55) argues that the magnificent iron boss, the foil strips, and the designs used to decorate the dragon can only have been created by craftsmen who had worked in the milieu that produced the Vendel XII shields. The richness of the Sutton Hoo shield with its limewood construction may suggest that it was assembled by Swedish craftsmen working to commission in the workshops of the royal Anglian court.

The helmet, with its pronounced crest, its eyebrow pieces, and its circle of panels with warrior figures, has obvious parallels at Valsgärde and Vendel (Bruce-Mitford 1974, 36–40, 51–55, 198–209; Bruce-Mitford 1978, 91–92; Marzinzik 2007), although there are also differences. The most striking similarities are to be seen in the figures on the die-stamped foils of the helmets, and with a similar figural fragment from the East Mound at Old Uppsala. Evans therefore considers it possible either that the helmet foils were made in eastern Sweden or by eastern Swedish craftsmen working at the East Anglian court, or that the dies for them were obtained directly from eastern Sweden (Evans 2010, 49). Significant similarities also exist between certain figure scenes on the purse lid and the helmet from Sutton Hoo and the figures of the bronze dies from Torslunda on Ö� land (Bruce-Mitford 1974, 43–45, 55, 214–22), an area in close contact with eastern Svealand at this time. How differently these similarities can be interpreted, though, is illustrated by the views of two former experts at the British Museum. First, Rupert Bruce-Mitford (1974, 46): I hope that it will now be accepted—by historians, linguists and students of Northern Literature, as well as by archaeologists—that there existed a direct and substantial connection between East Anglia and Sweden a hundred and fifty years and more before the commencement of Viking raids upon the British Isles. It seems to me certain that any question of independent parallel development in Sweden and Suffolk from some supposed common continental source is completely ruled out.

While Bruce-Mitford thus firmly rejects the possibility of these resemblances being coincidental, David M. Wilson warns against drawing far-reaching conclusions from what does and does not happen to have been preserved and discovered in the archaeological record. He believes that the similarities between Sutton Hoo and eastern Sweden, in terms of boat burial practices, helmets and shields, are simply a manifestation of something common Germanic, typical of the period, and that “Sweden’s connections with Sutton Hoo, while remarkable, are coincidental” (Wilson 1983, 166). Wilson’s assessment is justified as a warning that everything need not be as simple as it looks. Yet there can be no justification for denying similarities of this kind any significance as a matter of principle, with reference to possible archaeological discoveries still to be made. Nor does this view appear to have been accepted by other scholars. More than forty years on, the similarities are still “remarkable.”

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Figure 7. The natural route between East Anglia (1) and Uppsala (3) would have crossed the Schleswig isthmus (2), making use of the rivers Eider, Treene and Rheider Au (Rejde Å� ), and the Schlei inlet. The distance to be covered overland is only fifteen kilometres in flat terrain. Map by Daniel Löwenborg.

Another object relevant to the question of possible contacts with Scandinavia is the shirt of mail from the large ship burial. Mail shirts were common in princely contexts in Scandinavia and on the continent for much of the Iron Age. But the one from Sutton Hoo is the only known example in England from any time during the Anglo-Saxon period. The only recorded instances of similar objects are the mail neck guards of the helmets from Coppergate in York and Benty Grange, from the eighth century. Based on this striking gap in the Anglo-Saxon archaeological record, and the lack of textual evidence for the use of shirts of mail in England during the period, Carla Morini has concluded that there



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was no indigenous production of mail shirts at all in England before the late Viking Age (Morini 2006, 2013). The only known shirt of mail in an Anglo-Saxon context, then, has been found in a pagan shiburial of a Scandinavian character, together with a shield and helmet of equally evident Scandinavian extraction. This is a strong indication that the mail shirt, too, came to England from Scandinavia, though not as a separate display piece, but as part of a complete set of protective equipment for an eastern Scandinavian prince. In Sweden alone some thirty finds have been made of remains of mail shirts. Looking specifically at eastern Sweden, they have been discovered in graves such as Vendel III, VIII, X, and XI in northern Uppland and Valsgärde 8 near Old Uppsala, all from the late sixth and early seventh centuries (Fredman 1992; Stolpe and Arne 1912; Arwidsson 1939, 1954). In a grave at Old Uppsala, remains have also been found of a shirt of mail probably dating from the late Roman Iron Age (Arwidsson 1935; Fredman 1992). In addition, long mail shirts like the one at Sutton Hoo are clearly depicted on figured helmet foils from the boat burials at Vendel and Valsgärde and in the dies from Torslunda on Ö� land just mentioned. Grave finds of rings from mail are common in the rest of Sweden, but in many cases it is not possible to tell whether they were part of mail shirts, neck guards for helmets, or both. Helmet neck guards seem to be very common (Fredman 1992). Only a small number of other boat burials are known from eastern England. None of them, though, appear to date from before around 600. The earliest examples are from East Anglia, notably the one at Snape, just to the northeast of Sutton Hoo (Bruce-Mitford 1974, 114–40; Carver 1995). The archaeologically rich central place of Rendlesham (Scull et al. 2016), identified by Bede as an Anglian royal seat in the mid-seventh century (Bede, book 3, chap. 22) and just some six kilometres upriver from Sutton Hoo, halfway between there and Snape, links these two boat burials to one and the same princely setting. Taken in its entirety, the sumptuously furnished ship burial in Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo is unrivalled in England. While the boat graves of Uppland are perhaps no older than the earliest English ones, it is clear that the practice of burying the dead in a vessel rests on an ancient Scandinavian tradition of the boat or ship as a mediating link with the afterlife. Ever since the Bronze Age, the ship has had a crucial place in Scandinavian cosmology, mythology, and conceptions of death, expressed with particular clarity in innumerable Bronze Age images of ships in rock carvings and on razors found in graves, and in stone settings in the form of ships (Ohlmarks 1946; Müller-Wille 1970, 6; Schönbäck 1983; Capelle 1986; Crumlin-Pedersen and Munch Thye 1995; Kaul 1998, 2004; Andrén 2012a, 2014; Wehlin 2013). We also know now that ritual images of ships in rock carvings, in western Sweden at least, occur long into the Roman Iron Age (Bengtsson 2013). When fully-fledged boat and ship burials appear in Scandinavia in the early Roman Iron Age, as at Slusegård on Bornholm (Crumlin-Pedersen 1991), in western Norway during the late Roman Iron Age (Bonde and Stylegar 2106), and in a metaphorical form on Gotland picture stones from the Migration Period, in other words, it is primarily a matter of a revival of ancient ideas. A picture stone with a ship motif is also to be found at Häggeby in Uppland (Nylén and Lamm 2003).

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The connection between ships and ideas about death during the Migration Period is hinted at by the not infrequent finds of picture stones with ship imagery in the vicinity of burials on Gotland. The idea that these vessels represent a symbolic journey to the afterlife is reinforced by the fact that several of them, such as those pictured on the south wall of Bro Church and on Sanda Church 4 (cover illustration; Lindqvist 1941–1942), have a rectangular tent- or chamber-like structure amidships, directly corresponding to the birchbark-covered tents of the burial boats of Valsgärde 6 and Valsgärde 8 (Arwidsson 1942, 106–9; Arwidsson 1954, 107–12) and to the central wooden chamber of the burial ship at Sutton Hoo (Carver 1998, 122–31; Evans 2010, 32–33). On the roof of this chamber/tent on the magnificent picture stone from Sanda, a row of circles can be seen that could represent shields hung from or laid on the roof, in the same way as a good deal of equipment was placed on the chamber roof of the Sutton Hoo ship. In this light, it is reasonable to assume that the manned rowing ships of the Gotland picture stones represent the vessels in which it was envisaged that the deceased would be carried to the other side in a manner befitting their rank, and sheltered from the sun and wind, the oarsmen straining at their bending oars to propel them to their destination in the hereafter. As far as I am aware, there is no evidence of early traditions linking ships to notions of death in the Anglo-Saxon world. Nor do ships appear to have had any special symbolic meaning in Christian thinking about death during that period. Possible eastern Swedish influences at Sutton Hoo, then, include not only a set of royal armour in the form of a shield, helmet, and shirt of mail, but also the very idea of burying the dead in a ship with a chamber-like burial space at its centre. It could be objected that the Sutton Hoo ship is twice the size of the boats at Valsgärde and Vendel, but the basic idea is the same. Just as clearly non-Christian as burying someone in a ship is the Germanic animal ornament and symbolism that abounds on artefacts from the ship burial at Sutton Hoo, with particularly good examples on the shield, helmet, purse lid, and large belt buckle. This ornament not only served a decorative function, but also, and primarily, reflected a pagan world view (Hedeager 2004, Pesch 2012 and others), although the tradition did survive as an aesthetic in England for a few more generations into Christian times. While some of the magnificent objects from the Sutton Hoo ship burial have their origins in Christian societies in Western Europe and the Mediterranean world, really only the two silver spoons named Saulos and Paulos openly express a Christian symbolism, possibly linked to Christian baptism. In the light of a reference in the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson, Wilson put forward the idea that the large whetstone “sceptre” in the ship burial could be a symbol of Odin (Wilson 1992, 168–69). This interpretation has gained considerable support from Neil Price and Paul Mortimer’s conclusion, underpinned by observations also made by Dave Roper and Steve Pollington, that the left eye is missing from one of the eight faces on the sceptre. They also observe that the left eyebrow of the helmet, the left eye of the long birdlike creature extending down over the helmet’s face mask, and one of the human figures on the magnificent purse lid all seem to have been deliberately fashioned with the clear intention of discreetly suggesting that one eye is in fact missing. Price and Mortimer are



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able to cite several other examples of Scandinavian artefacts representing faces from the late Migration, Merovingian/Vendel, and Viking periods, where one eye was first made and then removed as part of a single intentional act. The authors attribute this to a desire on the part of Germanic royal military leaders to project an image suggesting that they are the representative on earth of the war god Odin (Price and Mortimer 2014). The reason for giving these facial images two eyes, only to immediately remove one of them, was not to suggest that their princely wearers had sacrificed an eye in the Well of Urd, but to emphasize that, as representatives of Odin, they possessed divine knowledge and power. The combination of sumptuously rich material furnishings, pagan ornament conveying a message, and a burial ship placed in the middle of a pagan cemetery is a clear indication of non-Christian intentions and ideas. The ship burial at Sutton Hoo is a literally glittering display of pagan beliefs about death and of an ambition to manifest power and status on a scale only known to be paralleled at this time in the royal elite circles of Uppland in eastern Sweden. As a conceivable English setting for the reception of the Beowulf story, Rendlesham in East Anglia emerges as a natural choice. The place is on the river Deben, six and a half kilometres northeast and upstream of Sutton Hoo, and is spoken of by Bede as an East Anglian royal seat in the middle of the seventh century (Bede, book 3, chapter 22). The uncertainty previously created by the absence of visible archaeological monuments and high-status finds has now been dispelled by systematic metal-detecting surveys over several years. Numerous finds of precious metalwork of the highest quality and of gold coins from the period not far from Sutton Hoo identify Rendlesham more clearly as a high-status central place than any known counterpart in Anglo-Saxon territory (Scull et al. 2016). Rendlesham emerges as a royal centre on a par with Gudme, Uppåkra, and Old Uppsala. Taking Sutton Hoo as his starting point, Sune Lindqvist in his day pointed to Beowulf’s young kinsman of Swedish descent, Wiglaf, as the possible mediator of the Beowulf tradition to England (Lindqvist 1948a, 1948b, 1958). He also suggested that Wiglaf’s father Weohstan could be the Wuffa who is mentioned as the possible founder of the East Anglian royal dynasty (Lindqvist 1948b, 139). Rupert Bruce-Mitford, for his part, argued that some of the regalia, particularly the helmet and shield, could be old heirlooms that were brought out of the family treasury to be placed in the grave, just as Lindqvist had previously suggested regarding the boat burials in eastern Sweden. Bruce-Mitford assumed that, if this was the case, they would have come to East Anglia from eastern Svealand in the mid-sixth century with the Wuffa just mentioned (Bruce-Mitford 1974, 259). However, if—as I argue in the following—the Beowulf tradition came to England around or soon after ad 600, then Wiglaf would probably have been too old by then for such adventures, if he was not already in Valhalla feasting on roast boar. If Wiglaf played any part in the process, then, as one of the Skilfings with inherited estates in Svealand, he is more likely to have helped transmit the tradition of Beowulf from Gotland to Swīorīċe, either himself or through his retainers. The king of East Anglia from 599 to 624/625 was Rædwald, who according to Bede was also bretwalda, overlord of England south of the Humber (Keynes 1992). It cannot be proved that he was the person buried in the large ship at Sutton Hoo, but of the

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few possible candidates he is regarded by most scholars as by far the strongest (Keynes 1992; Carver 1998, 23–24, 33ff., 172; Archibald 2013). The similarities described between Sutton Hoo and eastern Swedish burial practice and material culture have quite naturally interested many who have sought to understand the contacts between Scandinavia and England that must be assumed to have existed, even if Beowulf is seen as the work of an Old English poet. In 1954, Francis Magoun identified East Anglia, with Sutton Hoo at its centre, as the mediating link between Uppland in eastern Sweden and England regarding what he calls the “Beowulf version,” the actual core of Beowulf, including the information about Hygelac’s Frisian expedition (Magoun 1954a, 1954b). Sam Newton, for his part, believes that the archaeological evidence, together with place-names and various other onomastic, genealogical, and historical data, points to East Anglia as the area where Beowulf was very probably conceived, following contacts primarily with Denmark, albeit not until the first half of the eighth century (Newton 1993).

Direct Mediation

Long chains of indirect trading and cultural links can of course enable works of poetry to travel great distances. But the scale of Beowulf and the striking social, material, and historical freshness of the text are nevertheless more suggestive of direct mediation by a professional bard than of an indirect chain made up of multiple links. Lorenz Morsbach in his time—long before the Sutton Hoo ship burial had been discovered—suggested that the Beowulf tradition had come to England with a Danish princess who had married and moved to Anglian Northumbria. His principal arguments were the un-English name Wealhþēo(w) in the poem and the equally un-English Ingenþēow in a Northumbrian source (Morsbach 1906). Much later, Klaeber endorsed Morsbach’s idea that the tradition had reached England through a marriage between a Danish and an Anglian royal family, though without discussing exactly how (Klaeber 1950, cxv). Later still, Godfrid Storms proposed that it had found its way to East Anglia as a result of the son of a young East Anglian ruler bringing over a wife, from either Zealand or Uppland (Storms 1970). It is the latter alternative that I wish to take a closer look at here. Female exogamy appears to have been the norm in the bilateral kinship system that characterized the whole of the early Germanic world. This is well attested by both historical sources and old Germanic laws (Murray 1983; Winberg 1985), and is also indicated by philological evidence (Haubrichs 2007). The possibility of using archaeological finds of jewellery to document female out-marriage in Germanic areas during the Middle Iron Age has been discussed by Birgit Arrhenius (1995) and Eldrid Straume (1995). Ulla Lund Hansen has argued that the uniquely rich female burial at Tuna in Badelunda near Västerås, from the late Roman Iron Age, is that of a ruler’s daughter, married off for dynastic reasons, from Himlingøje in eastern Zealand (Lund Hansen 2001, 172), and Kent Andersson has made the additional suggestion that the woman’s grave goods consist in part of her Danish dowry (Kent Andersson 2011, 45–47). If this is the case, it cannot be ruled out that she may originally have belonged to the circle of



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King Hálfdan, a few generations before Beowulf’s visit to Heorot. Anders Andrén, for his part, has expressed the view that bracteates in female graves outside Scandinavia may have served to signal the ethnic origins of Scandinavian women married off for dynastic purposes (Andrén 1991). The question of female exogamy in early Anglo-Saxon England has been considered by Sue Harrington (2011). In the Germanic elite of the time, young daughters thus represented a significant political capital. We find several examples of this in Beowulf. The Danish king Hrothgar’s daughter, Freawaru, is married off to the potential enemy Ingeld with a view to securing better political relations, while the Danish prince Hnæf’s sister, Hildeburh, is married to the Frisian king Finn for the same reason, although in neither case is the political outcome what is hoped for. Hrothgar’s wife, Wealhtheow, is the daughter of a Helming, possibly from Ö� stergötland; Beowulf’s father, Ecgtheow, who is of Swedish royal descent, married a daughter of the Gutnish king Hrethel; and the Swedish king Onela seems to be married to King Hrothgar’s sister or possibly to Hrothgar’s widowed sister-in-law. On textual grounds, Alaric Hall has claimed that, when Beowulf uses the word ofermāðmum (l. 2993) to refer to Hygelac’s gesture of rewarding Eofor for killing King Ongentheow by giving him his only daughter as his wife, it is to be interpreted as veiled criticism for having thereby wasted the chance of using her for a politically more advantageous match (Hall 2006). But as there is much to suggest that this Eofor is not a Gute, but a high-ranking man of Swedish descent who has allied himself with the Gutes, this action by Hygelac would also fit in with a pattern of dynastic marriage. As we have seen, the oldest of the few other boat burials known in England have also been found in East Anglia and can be dated to around 600. At that time, moreover, the practice of cremation was on the verge of a revival in the area. John Hines and Martin Carver have regarded this shift as a reaction to Frankish Christian influence arising from an active Christian mission from nearby Kent. At the time, the Franks even seem to have been making certain political claims to southern England (Wood 1992). Against this backdrop, Hines and Carver are inclined to view the Scandinavian features of the Sutton Hoo ship burial as an indication that the royal rulers of East Anglia were deliberately trying to mobilize traditional pagan values by seeking political alliances with known pagan powers in Scandinavia (Hines 1992, 327; Carver 1995, 120ff.). As Hines and others have noted, the archaeological record in Scandinavia from this period reflects a clear shift in power from western Norway to eastern Sweden. Also relevant here, as mentioned earlier, is the marked expansion of Swedish influence in the southern Baltic Sea area during the Vendel Period. Given Bede’s assertion that King Rædwald’s wife was pagan (Bede, ed. Sherley-Price, 15), the scenario which Hines and Carver outline is perfectly consistent with the idea of a dynastic marriage between an East Anglian prince, such as Rædwald, and the pagan daughter of a powerful Scilfing in the Swīorīċe of Beowulf. It may seem something of a contradiction for a new convert to Christianity like Rædwald to have sought closer ties with a pagan kingdom. But all the indications are that he was baptised less out of conviction than as a result of political pressure from his Christian overlord, Æthelberht of Kent (Hogget 2010, 29). And such a marriage could also be seen as a demonstrative countermove to King Æthelberht’s earlier union with the Christian Frankish princess Bertha, a

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union that served as a prelude to the threatening Frankish mission to the southeast of England. As John Hines in particular has pointed out (1984, 1992, 1993), Anglian England and Scandinavia had, since the Migration Period, been part of a common northwest Germanic cultural network, with a palpable sense of a shared cultural identity. Clearly, leading political groupings in eastern England and eastern Svealand had long maintained indirect or direct contacts, creating good conditions for the Beowulf tradition to be passed on to southeastern England. Martin Carver believes that an endeavour to secure political support from illustrious fellow believers in Scandinavia in the way described explains not only the ship burials at Sutton Hoo and Snape, but also why the practice proved so short-lived in England. The whole enterprise of resistance to the advance of Christianity, after all, did not last long (Carver 1995). In my view, then, it is perfectly possible that the Beowulf tradition was brought to East Anglia from eastern Svealand sometime around or shortly after 600, in connection with a young East Anglian prince or king, most probably Rædwald, taking an eastern Swedish princess as his wife. Such a scenario sits well with the fact that cultural contacts between East Anglia and eastern Svealand, as reflected in the Sutton Hoo ship burial, seem to have been essentially an isolated occurrence. How might such a marriage have been arranged? Of course we can only speculate. But I can imagine an East Anglian deputation travelling to eastern Sweden to make the acquaintance of a suitable female candidate and her kinsmen, exchange gifts, and discuss the terms of the “deal.” If these negotiations took place at Uppsala, it would presumably have been in the magnificent, 600-square-metre hall on the Kungsgården plateau, in which case the members of the delegation would certainly have had something to talk about on their return home. No houses or halls even approaching such palatial dimensions are known from England at that time (Hamerow 2011). The least likely route for such a journey was the long and risky passage across the North Sea, Skagerrak, and Kattegat, on through the Sound and across the Baltic Sea to Uppland. Strong onshore winds, heaving coastal seas, sandbanks, and a dearth of safe havens make the waters off the west and north coasts of Jutland some of the most dangerous in northern Europe. An even more unlikely option would have been to cross the North Sea to the west coast of Sweden before making the long and, even in historical times, logistically arduous and time-consuming overland journey to Uppland (cf. Retsö 2007). By far the shortest, quickest, least hazardous, and simplest route would have been the short crossing from East Anglia to northwest Germany, followed by a journey by river and overland across the narrow Schleswig isthmus, which had the added advantage of being populated by Anglian kinsmen. Most of the journey across the isthmus would have been on the rivers Eider, Treene, and Rheider Au (Rejde Å� ). Hauling a vessel the remaining short distance to the Schlei inlet to the east would have been straightforward in the flat landscape (Maixner 2010). The deputation could also have left their



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ship, walked the rest of the way, and hired another one to carry them along the east coast of Sweden to Uppland. With good weather, the whole journey need not have taken more than seven to twelve days each way. It is no coincidence that Haithabu, northern Europe’s largest transit port between west and east in the Viking Age, was located at the precise point where the river route across the isthmus connected with the Schlei. It is in the light of this almost arrow-straight and comparatively sheltered communication route between East Anglia and Uppland that the contacts suggested by the ship burial at Sutton Hoo are primarily to be understood. Once the marriage had been agreed, the Anglian deputation could either have waited until the royal bride had been suitably equipped for the journey, or else returned home, leaving her to follow later on a ship of her own, perhaps early the next summer. In either case, she would not have travelled empty-handed, but with a wealth of personal belongings, a significant dowry, gifts befitting the status of her intended, and a retinue of servants and high-born confidants of both sexes. There would no doubt also have been a bard or þulr to entertain the party and the East Anglian court with songs and tales from back home, including the one about the hero Beowulf, which would have been on everyone’s lips in eastern Sweden at this time. I imagine that most members of the travelling party would have remained in England for good. The young, noble-born woman in question could have been of Swedish or Gutnish descent, or both. Judging from the Liber monstrorum, Gregory’s Libri historiarum decem and Widsith, the military exploits of Hygelac and the Gutes in Frankish Frisia had reverberated throughout northwestern Europe, in a way that could have given a high-born Gutnish woman considerable prestige. It should also be remembered that Gotland, together with eastern Svealand, shows clearer archaeological links with southeastern England at this time than many other parts of Scandinavia (Ljungkvist 2005, 2013). In earlier chapters, I have shown that it is reasonable to believe that Beowulf and his people had their home on Gotland and that much of the core content of the poem came into existence there. But the close contacts between Gotland and eastern Svealand in the early Vendel Period, evidenced by the combined testimony of the archaeological record, Beowulf and, in my view, Guta saga, also meant that the Beowulf story was incorporated early on in eastern Swedish tradition, especially as the hero of the poem is of Swedish royal descent and helped the Swedish king Eadgils/Adils come to power. It is also striking how the poem maintains what is fundamentally a fairly positive tone regarding the Swedes, and is never critical or hostile. Although the battles between the Gutes and the Swedes are described from a Gutnish standpoint, the Swedes are spoken of in remarkably objective terms. All this tallies well with the assumption that the story of Beowulf passed through eastern Sweden before reaching England. During the Vendel/Merovingian Period, boat burials appear to have been a social distinguishing mark of royal dynasties and other elite groups in Scandinavia. The lack of definite finds of Late Iron Age boat graves from Gotland is also consistent with the fact that the Gutes seem to have become politically subordinate to the Swedes at the beginning of the Vendel Period and that there is no evidence of a Gutnish kingdom during the Late Iron Age. The absence of boat burials on the island, in other words, may reflect a refusal by the Swedes to allow the Gotlanders to have a king of their own. If that is the

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case, then the boat burial practice found in East Anglia in the early seventh century and in the ship burial in Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo can hardly have drawn inspiration from Gotland. I therefore primarily envisage a marriage involving an eastern Swedish princess of the Skilfing dynasty, or alternatively a high-born woman of Swedish-Gutnish descent whose union was arranged by Swedish kinsmen. As a potential pawn in the ongoing religious-political power game in southeast England, however, presumably only a daughter of the Skilfings would have been acceptable. A dynastic marriage between East Anglia and eastern Svealand would explain the Upplandic character of the burial practice and some of the armour found in the Sutton Hoo ship burial. The magnificent helmet, with its characteristic eastern Swedish form, decoration and figural images, and the large parade shield could very well have been made in Uppland. Along with the very un-English mail shirt, they look very much like the kind of high-status armour that would have made a fitting gift for a royal bridegroom. The fact that the shield and helmet were somewhat antiquated when they were placed in the grave around 625 does not necessarily mean, as has sometimes been assumed, that they had come to England several generations earlier. As equipment of such quality cannot be produced at the drop of a hat, the only way of making gifts fit for the bridegroom available in time would probably have been to take them from the royal treasury. That this meant that they were of a somewhat older vintage did not matter, as they were chiefly intended for display in England, where they would in any case be seen as exotic. It seems less likely that a Swedish bride would have been accompanied by one or more skilled craftsmen who made the helmet and shield in the Sutton Hoo burial, since the helmet would in that case have been somewhat more modern in design. If Rædwald appeared in public from time to time in this magnificent armour of a regal Swedish character, it may very well have served as a political signal to his contemporaries that, as an opponent of Christian Frankish claims to power, he had powerful pagan allies in eastern Sweden of roughly the same military calibre as the famous Hygelac who had previously raided Frankish coasts. It is tempting to imagine that such equipment could have strengthened Rædwald’s political standing and helped ensure his elevation to bretwalda after Æthelberht’s death in 616. It is in this perspective that Bede’s references to King Rædwald’s pagan wife are of interest. First Bede recounts how Rædwald gave King Edwin of Northumbria sanctuary, only to then be persuaded by threats of war and promises of money to murder him. But, Bede observes with approval, when Rædwald’s wife heard of this, she prevailed upon her husband to refrain from such a shameful act (Bede, ed. Sherley-Price, 12). A little later in his account, however, he is less impressed when he reports how that same wife persuaded Rædwald to return to his pagan beliefs. According to Bede, the result of this was that, from then on, Rædwald openly worshipped old heathen gods in a special temple where, alongside a Christian altar, he also had a pagan one, used for human and other sacrifices (Bede, ed. Sherley-Price, 15). The picture Bede conveys of Rædwald’s wife, then, is that of a strong-willed woman with considerable influence over her husband, and so deeply rooted in pagan religion that she was reluctant to have a Christian spouse. That idea seems particularly plausible if the woman in question was a member of the eastern Swedish Yngling dynasty, whose



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kings appear to have served as pagan cultic practitioners with almost divine status (Sundqvist 2002). If Rædwald’s queen was of Swedish origin, then, it is not unthinkable that she herself and her kinsmen may have made it a condition of the marriage that her husband-to-be should return to paganism. Bede speaks with disgust of certain doctores perversi, “perverse teachers,” who are said to have assisted Rædwald in the sacrifice of humans and animals. Richard North interprets this as a reference to shamans associated with an old Anglo-Saxon cult of Vanir gods such as Yngvi-Freyr and Njǫrðr (North 1997, 321ff.). But if Rædwald’s pagan wife was the daughter of an eastern Swedish ruler, then “perverse teachers” could also refer to pagan cultic practitioners she had brought with her from home, well aware of the pressure pre-Christian beliefs were under in the area she was moving to. Nor can it be ruled out that the pious Bede is alluding here to rites involving sexual elements, a feature hardly alien to the worship of pagan fertility gods. The whole thing is reminiscent of when Adam of Bremen, half a millennium later, expresses his horror at nenia […] multiplices et inhonestae, the “indecent songs of many kinds” said to have been sung as part of the pagan sacrificial rites at Uppsala (Adam Bremensis book 4, chap. 27; ed. Trillmich 1978, 472). From here, it is only a short step to Martin Carver’s suggestion that Rædwald’s energetic wife had a hand in the planning of his funeral (Carver 1998, 169). If we add that the custom of burying the dead in ships was new to England, that the pagan boat burial practice found at Sutton Hoo is typically eastern Swedish, and that the whole arrangement of the grave contrasts with what was otherwise common in East Anglia (Hogget 2007, 2010), this possibility is perfectly compatible with the idea that his queen was from eastern Sweden. Bede portrays Rædwald as a man with a belt-and-braces approach to matters of religion. It is thus not unreasonable to suppose that he himself stipulated that his pagan funeral was also to include a few symbolically charged Christian objects, in particular the two silver spoons. If you are unsure where your final journey is going to end, then you may prefer to play safe and travel with two passports. The ship at Sutton Hoo was probably Anglo-Saxon. But at just over 27 metres long and with 40 pairs of oars, it was quite clearly a seagoing vessel grand enough for a princess and spacious enough for a long voyage with a sizeable retinue and a large amount of equipment. It is therefore possible, I would suggest, that Rædwald’s queen may have sent her husband on his final journey in the ship that had once brought her to her new country. Traces of repairs to oar holes and the stern section, rivet holes, and some reriveting of the hull clearly show that, at the time of the burial, the vessel was close to retirement (Evans 2010, 28).

Conclusions

With the archaeological and historical sources available, Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo in East Anglia, from around ad 625, seems to be a possible key to understanding how the poem about Beowulf found its way from the eastern part of Sweden to England, probably through the mediation of an eastern Swedish bard who, around 600, had accompanied a

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princess from his homeland who had been married off to an East Anglian ruler, probably King Rædwald. The magnificent helmet and shield and the shirt of mail in the ship at Sutton Hoo could then be seen as a gift to the bridegroom. The Scandinavian practice of boat burials recently introduced in the vicinity of the site is also in keeping with this overall picture.

Chapter 19

TRANSMISSION AND WRITING DOWN IN ENGLAND Even in the Viking Age, Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons were able to communicate fairly freely with one another without an interpreter (Townend 2002, 183, 210). This must have been even truer in the early seventh century, especially if the initial contact occurred with Anglian areas. The small group of people from eastern Sweden who I suggest could hypothetically have accompanied a king’s daughter to the southeast of England could therefore presumably have been assimilated quite quickly from a linguistic point of view. Hailing from an oral world, they would have had all their natural linguistic receptivity intact and could have adapted fairly rapidly and seamlessly to the local language. As the poetic form, social settings, and functions of oral poetry at this time were quite similar in England and Scandinavia, as part of a wider Germanic cultural environment, a Scandinavian bard reciting the songs and stories of his homeland, such as the one about Beowulf, should have been readily understood. With written culture still poorly developed in England, Anglo-Saxon listeners would have been able to reproduce more or less verbatim even a long work of poetry presented in an eastern Swedish dialect. With every subsequent recitation of the story, Scandinavian linguistic features would gradually have been erased and the language would have become increasingly Old English, albeit with some remaining special Scandinavian words and expressions. Possible Process of Transmission

As the most likely alternative, I have argued here that the core of the pagan tradition of Beowulf was transferred to England as a coherent work of poetry from the outset. A bard from eastern Sweden could of course have recited several separate eastern Swedish poems about Beowulf at the East Anglian court, these then being woven together into a whole by East Anglian bards. But if Anglian audiences perceived them as belonging together, it can only have been because they had been recited in a single context, as if they did belong together, in which case they were in practice already a single entity. I can see no weighty reason not to assume that Beowulf was transferred to England as a poetic work that formed a coherent whole from the outset. As noted earlier, Francis Magoun and Sam Newton have assumed that the core of the Old English poetic tradition concerning Beowulf was by and large fully conceived by the time it left East Anglia to be further transmitted and reworked in Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex. I also note Robert Fulk’s view, based on linguistic features, that the Anglian area in which the poem began its spread can hardly have been north of the Humber (Fulk 1992, 381–92). This is the picture which Magoun outlines: There is nothing against the idea that all stories about Béowulf took shape in East Anglia and at the royal seat at Rendlesham, a couple of miles from Sutton Hoo, and from there

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spread to any part of England. A singer from anywhere who was visiting Rendlesham might have heard this or that Béowulf story in song once or a few times and learned it (the story); many a good oral singer can master a song at a single hearing. Our imaginary visitor later returns home and regales his local audience with his song of the subject or subjects. Thus, there is in a sense no limit to the spread of such material. However, the best singing tradition in Anglo-Saxon England seems to have been in the Anglian north and various linguistic features of the surviving Béowulf material point strongly to an Anglian origin for the particular performance or performances that have survived and, of course, likewise for such other stories as are introduced by way of embellishment. (Magoun 1954b, 204)

Swanton, likewise, regards eighth-century East Anglia, or alternatively Mercia, as a possible area of origin of Beowulf: the bulk of the story-material—the semi-historical or mythical lays out of which the author composed his poem—came to England from across the North Sea some time during the second half of the sixth century. It would be perfectly appropriate that the poem should first have been recited in the hall at Rendlesham in the presence of one or other of Redwald’s successors. (Swanton 1997, 8)

Joseph Harris (1985, 265–66), Theodore Andersson (1997, 146–48) and several others have advanced similar ideas. As we see from eddic poetry, for example, oral transmission can preserve old linguistic features within an otherwise updated linguistic form. The various elements of archaic Anglian dialect in the poem could thus suggest that the preserved text is the result of a chain of oral versions in the Anglian areas of East Anglia, Northumbria, and Mercia, and finally in Saxon Wessex. Clear palaeographic traces in the manuscript point to an archetype as early as around 700, presumably in Anglian dialect. Michael Lapidge’s view that the poem ultimately goes back to a written archetype in minuscule from the first half of the eighth century (Lapidge 2000)—a view based on errors in the copying of individual letters—has been criticized by Davis (2006), but supported on palaeographic grounds by George Clark (2009, 2014), Fulk (2014) and Neidorf (2014b, 2015). Proceeding from an analysis of scribal errors affecting names in the poem, Neidorf argues that there is a gap of at least two or three centuries between the creation of the poem and the only preserved manuscript (Neidorf 2013b). In such a perspective, the archaic linguistic features from various Anglian regions make a good deal more sense. The perfectly acceptable West Saxon dialect of the poem, however, gives us reason to assume that it was transmitted orally in West Saxon for a not insignificant period of time. We also have to allow for the possibility that the Old English Beowulf tradition branched out into partly different versions, which continued to be recited orally even when the poem had first been written down. If that was the case, we must also assume that there would have been some mutual influence between different oral versions, between different written ones, and between oral and written versions (cf. the discussion in Honko et al. 1998, 71–77). Oral memorization of course remained a living reality among the Anglo-Saxon elite long after the art of writing had been established, not least in Wessex following that kingdom’s cultural decline in the eighth century. Well into the ninth century, illiteracy



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was widespread in Wessex, even in the highest strata of society. If Asser’s biography of King Alfred from 893 is to be believed, the entire administrative apparatus of the kingdom, which covered a large part of southern England, was organized on an oral basis. Asser also claims that, as a boy, Alfred had such limited access to teachers that he did not learn to read until the age of eleven or twelve (Asser, ed. Keynes and Lapidge 2004, 8, 11; Smyth 1995; Pollard 2005). Having paid two long visits to Rome with his father as a child, as a guest of the Pope, it is quite possible that Alfred had a spoken command of Latin long before he was able to read. From his youth, according to Asser, Alfred had broad cultural interests and loved hearing others read aloud and listening to oral performances (Asser, ed. Keynes and Lapidge 2004, 76–77, 81, 88). Of particular interest are Asser’s repeated references to him being able at an early age to memorize and recite all the stories and readings he heard (Asser, ed. Keynes and Lapidge 2004, 22–24), an ability especially characteristic of individuals who, like Alfred, have not been exposed to systematic reading from early on. Asser also stresses that, much later, when he was able to write, Alfred still retained his capacity to learn Old English poetry by heart (Asser, ed. Keynes and Lapidge 2004, 76): However, he was a careful listener, by day and night, to English poems, most frequently hearing them recited by others, and he readily retained them in his memory (Asser, ed. Keynes and Lapidge 2004, 22; Smyth 1995).

John D. Niles believes that it was only towards the end of Alfred’s reign (871–899) that the time was ripe in southern England to write down old oral traditions, people having by then distanced themselves sufficiently from their pagan past, at the same time as a market for secular reading had begun to emerge (Niles 1997). Citing Alfred’s great interest in oral poetry, Justin Pollard has toyed with the idea that the king “from his earliest years would have listened to Beowulf and his fight with Grendel” (Pollard 2005, 56). Given Asser’s testimony that Alfred was able to recite by heart entire poems and books he had listened to, moreover, it is a tempting thought that the king might have been able to do the same with the whole of Beowulf. Against this backdrop, it seems perfectly conceivable that it was during this time that Beowulf was “upgraded” to West Saxon dialect and recorded in a West Saxon text in a scriptorium associated with King Alfred. Here I would recall Alfred’s interest in Boethius, the philosopher of late antiquity, an interest reflected in the annotated Old English translation of the latter’s De consolatione philosphiae which he personally prepared. As Heather O’Donoghue and others have noted, there are striking similarities between Boethius’s Aristotelian-inspired moral philosophy and the message of King Hrothgar’s famous “sermon” before Beowulf returns home, with its emphasis on all the dangers a prince faces in the form of pride and a preoccupation with worldly success, power, and wealth (O’Donoghue 1999, 118). As Hrothgar’s speech is virtually an echo of Alfred’s own philosophy of rule, inspired by Boethius and Gregory, we also have to consider the possibility that this passage in Beowulf may have caught Alfred’s particular attention. Through Boethius, Alfred was familiar with the philosophical nuances of late ancient and early Christian concepts such

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as Fortuna and Fata. In his translation of Boethius’s work, he renders both these concepts as wyrd (Weber 1969), the same wyrd that figures eleven times in Beowulf in contexts that are by no means particularly Christian, and that corresponds directly to ON urðr in the same sense. For long periods of King Alfred’s reign, Danish raids on southern England were a national scourge. One might imagine, therefore, that there would have been little interest there in listening to Beowulf’s tales of the Danes’ ancestors. But as far as we can judge, the Saxons’ hostility towards the Danes manifested itself more in religious than in ethnic terms. And anyway, the poem does not portray the Danes as conquering heroes, but as a godless and unfortunate people, afflicted by a murderous enemy they are unable to defend themselves against and need outside help to resist. Perhaps Beowulf’s stories of the misery of the pagan Danes may even have afforded the tormented Saxons moments of pleasurable schadenfreude. The fact that the Christian reworking of the poem is fairly limited, highly undogmatic, little grounded in Scripture, and untainted by ecclesiastical politics indicates that it was not undertaken by a learned priest, monk, or senior dignitary of the Church. As it is also well integrated into the poem in purely literary terms, it is not likely, either, to be the work of a scribe. To me it seems most probable that the Christian elements were gradually introduced as the poem was recited orally by Christian bards with little theological schooling. This may have happened as early as the second half of the seventh century, when Christianity had become firmly established and no one quite understood any more what paganism was about, but while people still had a marked respect for the heathen past of their ancestors. As devoted bearers of tradition, professional bards may be assumed to have felt such great respect for the outlook on life of a past age that they did not allow the ideas of their own times to do too much violence to a pagan narrative.

How Was the Poem Written Down?

It goes without saying that Anglo-Saxon minuscule, as it has been preserved in manuscripts, cannot have been used to take down entire works of poetry from dictation. But even a cursive script like that of the Anglo-Saxon charter was too elaborate to serve as a shorthand in any real sense. It is often assumed that, before the days of sound recording, oral literature was written down from dictation. But as Elias Lönnrot’s work of transcribing the Kalevala poetry of Finnish Karelia has shown, this requires access to an almost stenographic script and an immense knowledge and understanding of the tradition in question, one which in Lönnrot’s case permitted him to memorize the text himself afterwards by singing it, thereby checking and filling in any gaps in what he had rapidly committed to writing (Honko 2002a, 2002b). According to Bede’s Old English translator, the poems of the illiterate herdsman Cædmon were written down by monks who æt his muðe wreoton ond leornodon, i.e., “wrote down and learned from his lips” (Niles 1983a, 35). This is sometimes cited as an example of writing from dictation, but could just as easily mean that the monks wrote the poems down afterwards. Cædmon’s poems were short enough to be easily memorized in their entirety.



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I do not consider it at all likely that Beowulf was written down directly from dictation, with bard and scribe collaborating as two distinct professions. For that to have worked without numerous errors, dictation must have been painfully slow and involved frequent pauses and repetition, an extremely trying task for both parties. The question is whether the scribe, too, must not have been able to memorize the entire work. That would have greatly improved the prospects of writing the text down without misunderstandings, in some sort of stenographic cursive script, and of making the necessary corrections and filling in any gaps afterwards based on what had been committed to memory. The likeliest scenario in my view, however, is that bard and scribe were one and the same person, someone who, by means of a mumbled recitation with many pauses and repetitions, would have written the work down straight from memory. The same person could then also have checked the text he had recorded by reciting it at his leisure afterwards. As far as I understand, this was roughly how Greenlandic oral tradition was written down in the nineteenth century by literate Inuit bards (Thisted 1998). However the text was finally committed to writing, it must always be assumed that there was at least one previous working version of it on a cheap substrate, which was presumably discarded once a fair copy had been made in minuscule script on parchment. The same procedure would presumably have applied even if the poem had been composed in writing. It is scarcely possible to compose directly in minuscule. It is reasonable to imagine a similar procedure being used to write down much of the Scandinavian literary tradition, although there has been surprisingly little discussion of the question. Here I recall an interesting article by Alger Doane, in which he argues that seemingly unwarranted irregularities in many Old English manuscripts, in terms of word division, punctuation, diacritics, capitalization, and so on—exemplified from two tenth-century manuscripts of the poem Soul and Body—show that copying scribes worked with a strong sense of being involved in an oral performance (Doane 1994). But his idea of a scribe copying a text is based on the premise that the originals were composed in writing. I myself consider it far more likely that such traces of clear poetic involvement on the part of the scribe reflect a process whereby the text was originally composed orally and then written down by someone who could themselves recite the whole of it orally and thus could not help but write with some sense of being involved in its recitation.

Conclusions

The Beowulf tradition was in my opinion transferred from eastern Svealand to East Anglia around ad 600. It then continued to be transmitted orally, with some Christian and literary reworking, in Anglian dialect in East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumbria, where it was probably written down after no more than around three generations. Subsequently, it was transferred to West Saxon dialect, first orally but eventually in writing as well, before finally ending up on parchment again around 1000.

Chapter 20

ALLEGORICAL REPRESENTATION Many attempts have been made to interpret Beowulf on the basis of what may

be assumed, from a purely literary point of view, to have been in the mind of an Old English Christian author. It has for example been suggested that the poem is a critique of Germanic hero worship, an elegy to a departed Germanic heroic culture, or an allegory of the Anglo-Saxon politics of various periods. Above all, though, scholars have applied a Christian perspective, viewing Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the Serpent as symbols of evil in general, and Grendel in particular, in his underground abode, as a metaphor for the devil himself. If that were the case then, mirabile dictu, the aforesaid potentate would have been safely out of action, one-armed and decapitated in his gloomy lair, ever since the sixth century. That comforting thought is dashed, however, by the fact that the poem is unlikely to have been composed by a Christian author. The nightmarish figures of the Grendelkin and the Serpent, and the monsters Beowulf encounters on the sea, have at the same time been construed as expressions of popular superstition. Against that idea, though, we have to set the remarkably realistic, concrete, and down-to-earth character of the rest of the poem. The contrast is sharp enough to raise the question whether we really are concerned here with primitive folk belief. To understand the monsters of the poem, we clearly have to look in other directions. And we should do so assuming that the poem is essentially a manifestation of pagan Scandinavian tradition.

A Metaphorical World

Oral poetry builds to a large extent on imagery, and Beowulf is one long demonstration of the art of formulating vivid kennings, metaphors, and other circumlocutions. Scandinavian, early Anglo-Saxon, and wider Germanic decorative arts from the sixth and seventh centuries similarly bear witness to a refined metaphorical way of thinking, with stylized snake- and dragon-like creatures and birds of prey as leitmotifs, pulled apart into a jumble of heads and limbs. This is how Leslie Webster (2005, 2) describes this Germanic visual world, with its roots in pagan thinking: The visual culture of the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries is grounded in an artfully constructed interplay of human and animal forms, in which recurring elements are very prominent. Hidden images, metamorphs, and antithetical dualities abound. The highly analytical, formulaic style of the earliest metalwork (Salin’s Style I) produces densely articulated surfaces which also serve to conceal, rather than to reveal […] but the smoother, interlacing symmetries of the later Style II are equally designed to decoy the eye, revealing their content only on a closer interrogation […] This is a riddling world of paradox, antithesis, and transformation, in which layered meaning can be encoded.

As many have noted, there is also a direct link between the complex figural decorative art of Scandinavia at this time and the metaphorical thinking of oral poetry. In the sha-

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manistically- coloured world of ideas that informs this deliberately ambiguous art, wild, monstrous creatures, in particular, are a central motif (Sven Söderberg 1905; Lie 1952; Hedeager 1997a, 1997b, 2004; Andrén 2000, 11, 26; Domeij 2005, 2009). If there was one thing the people of early Germanic society had mastered to perfection, it was the use of monster-like beings to metaphorically represent the world around them. That Iron Age society should have chosen to depict the major disasters that afflicted it in the metaphorical guise of terrifying beasts is hardly any stranger than the medieval use of the Grim Reaper to represent the Black Death. As Bergsveinn Birgisson has shown, Old Norse skaldic poetry had a strong predilection for exaggerated and grotesque kennings that would later be misunderstood and taken literally. He gives good examples of this, for instance, from the older, eastern Swedish part of Ynglingatal (Birgisson 2008, 251–416). It is in this light, in my opinion, that figures like Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the Serpent are primarily to be understood. Here, I will interpret the first two of these, and to some extent also the third, as eastern Scandinavian allegorical imagery for the terrible famine disaster of the period.

The Great Trauma of the Time

It makes little sense to discuss societal conditions in the mid-sixth century without touching on the severe crisis that hit the societies of northern Europe, indeed the whole of the northern hemisphere, at that time. Palaeobotanical data show that large areas of previously open farmland became overgrown for generations to come, not only in Scandinavia, but in much of Europe north of the Alps. At the same time, there was a dramatic decline in human settlement, not least in a region as climatically sensitive as Scandinavia. All the evidence suggests a wholesale abandonment of farms and villages owing to a sharp decrease—probably by at least half—in the population (Gräslund 2007 and references there; Löwenborg 2012; Gräslund and Price 2012; Price and Gräslund 2014 and references there; Solheim and Iversen 2019). In earlier times, the only real function of the cultural landscape was to produce food and other resources to meet human needs. So, when human settlement and cultivated land both contracted dramatically in a short space of time in Scandinavia, it can only be interpreted as reflecting a rapid decline in food production, associated in turn with a rapid decrease in the population. Everything points to an acute climate disaster that gave rise to an equally acute food supply crisis, resulting in famine and high mortality. Tree-ring records from the whole of the northern hemisphere also bear witness to extremely slow forest growth throughout the period 536–550, albeit with regional variations. According to the general view, this can only have been caused by abnormally cold summers (Büntgen et al. 2016; Toohey et al. 2016). And it was precisely the summer months that people’s entire existence depended on. For the years immediately following AD 536, ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica show a marked rise in sulphates, which is generally taken to reflect the remains of volcanic sulphur dioxide that had settled out of the stratosphere after circulating there for several years, preventing sunlight from reaching the earth’s surface and causing pro-



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nounced global cooling (Sigl et al. 2015; Büntgen et al. 2016; Toohey et al. 2016). Overall assessments, primarily of glaciological and dendrochronological data, indicate a rare combination of several interacting supervolcanic eruptions, the first early in 536, probably in western North America, a second one in the tropics, probably in Central America, in 540, and a third, somewhat smaller one, location unknown, in 547 (Sigl et al. 2015; Büntgen et al. 2016; Toohey et al. 2016; Dull et al. 2001). The problem with supervolcanic eruptions is that the gas cloud is flung right up into the stratosphere, high above the clouds, which means that it is not washed out by rain and can circulate there for several years, preventing the sun’s warmth from reaching the earth. This scenario is confirmed by reports from late antiquity about it being impossible to see what was obscuring the sun during the years 536–537. Half a dozen writers from that time record how the sun was almost completely concealed and ineffectual in the Mediterranean region from the beginning of March 536 right through to the autumn of 537, a period of at least eighteen months. The consequence was cold, wet, dark, and unsettled summers with severe crop failures in several parts of the northern Mediterranean and the Middle East (Arjava 2006). Failed harvests accompanied by famine and mass mortality were also experienced in eastern China (Houston 2000). In the wake of the first volcanic eruption in 536, the average temperature in Europe is assumed to have dropped by 1.6–2.7°C compared with the preceding thirty years, and after the eruption of 540, by 1.4–2.7°C, with lasting effects on climate through to around 550. For northern Sweden, the decline in annual mean temperature has been estimated at 3–4°C, and for central Norway, 3.5°C. New comparative dendrochronological studies in the Altai region of Central Asia and in the European Alps point to devastatingly cold summers down to the middle of the sixth century. Recent attempts to reconstruct the impacts on the agricultural growing season in the northern hemisphere indicate particularly severe consequences for Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea region. Overall, the period 536–545 stands out as the coldest decade for several millennia. At least four or five of those years have also been interpreted as downright catastrophic for any form of agriculture (Sigl et al. 2015; Toohey et al. 2016; Andersson Stamnes 2016). The possible implications of the feared theoretical phenomenon of “nuclear winter” are thus something the human population of the northern hemisphere has already experienced in reality. In a log from the large Rakni’s Mound in Østfold, Norway, originating from this particular period (Iversen 2017, fig. 9), there is a faint suggestion of a growth ring between two wide, light-coloured rings. I regard the latter as reflecting tree growth in the springs of 535 and 538. That would suggest that the intervening ice-cold springs of 536 and 537 are represented by a single, faint dark line. From a subsequent series of thinner growth rings, we can also make out the effects of the volcanic eruptions of 540 and 547, which were followed by a prolonged cold period lasting right through to around 550. Throughout the period from 536 to the middle of the seventh century, in fact, the average climate was unusually cool. All the evidence suggests that this was the coldest period in the northern hemisphere over the last few millennia. To refer to it as the Late Antique Little Ice Age (Büntgen et al. 2016), however, is somewhat overstating things.

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Interestingly, it would seem possible to link this natural disaster to the Norse myths of the Fimbulwinter (Gräslund 2007; Price and Gräslund 2014). In Gylfaginning in the Edda of Snorri Sturluson, and in eddic poems such as Hyndluljóð and Vafþrúðnismál, we read of this mythical “Eternal Winter” when the sun has no effect or seems to have completely disappeared after being devoured by monsters. It is also said there that Ragnarök, when the world will end taking humans, gods, and everything else with it, will be ushered in by two consecutive summers with winter weather. The references in Gylfaginning to the sun not being seen for two summers in a row suggest that this is the same event as is spoken of by the writers of late antiquity. Similar traditions about the sun disappearing for a long time, with severe consequences for people, animals, and the natural world, and yet finally returning, are to be found in mythologies throughout the northern hemisphere, although they are usually difficult or impossible to date. One example is the Kalevala poetry of Finland. My assumption (Gräslund 2007) that the reference in Cantos 47 and 49 of the Kalevala (trans. Huldén and Huldén 1999) to an extended, devastating blotting out of the sun corresponds to the Fimbulwinter is supported by Canto 46’s description of a spearhead of the same type as in Vendel Grave XII, as that type has hardly been in use since the seventh century (Ä� yräpää 1925; Lindqvist 1945). The claim in the eddic poem Vafþrúðnismál that just one pair of humans survived the Fimbulwinter to give rise to new races of people (Vafþrúðnismál, 45) could thus very well go back to a folk tradition about a deadly famine disaster. A remarkable archaeological observation in Sweden is that the farms and villages that were abandoned were not burnt down or demolished. All the indications are that most of them were simply left to decay, reflecting a general sense of paralysis. For a long time, such ghost settlements could well have served as a terrifying monument to what had happened and as a reminder that the Fimbulwinter could return in apocalyptic consummation in the form of Ragnarök. A possible example of a reference to such traditions, recently highlighted, is the inscription on the famous Rök Stone in Ö� stergötland in southern central Sweden, from around 800 (Holmberg et al. 2019). As if all of this were not enough, southern, western, and central Europe at least were afflicted from ad 541 on by the Justinian bubonic plague pandemic, which ultimately appears to have been triggered by the climate disaster (Schmid 2015). The diagnosis of bubonic plague has been confirmed by DNA of the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis from skeletons in collective burials in southern Germany and France (Gräslund 2007 and references there). Plague is believed to have eliminated 25–50 percent of the population of affected parts of Europe (Lester 2006). Whether the disease reached Scandinavia is unclear, but it cannot be ruled out (Gräslund 1973). At northern latitudes, though, the effects of the climate disaster were probably far worse. It has also been suggested that the damp, cold weather throughout the period resulted in both grain, especially rye, and livestock pastures being contaminated with ergot, giving rise to ergotism, a form of poisoning with a very high mortality rate (Bondeson and Bondeson 2014). But life in Scandinavia was probably nightmarish enough at times, even without plague and ergotism. What makes this entire scenario scientifically so convincing is that it is based on a whole series of mutually independent sources, in the form of volcanological, glaciologi-



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cal, palaeobotanical, dendrochronological, archaeological, and textual evidence, a unanimous testimony that would be every prosecutor’s dream. It is not too much of a leap to assume that the people hit hardest by the famine would have been the many thralls, landless people, and smallholders. The upper strata of society, the real elite whom we encounter in Beowulf, no doubt escaped more lightly. Everything thus points to a very tangible background to the “darkness” in terms of sources so characteristic of the middle and second half of the sixth century, which has always stood out as a natural boundary between late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. During this time of transition, there were also a series of remarkable changes in Germanic Europe, affecting social structure, language, the cultural landscape, dress, and many other phenomena. It is scarcely a coincidence, either, that many Scandinavian legendary sagas, poems, and poetic fragments reflect traditions from the prosperous age before the mid sixth century, but comparatively few of the period immediately following. In all ages, great adversity has contributed to a disintegration of social norms. That is precisely what the seeress in Vǫluspá (44) says of the state of the world during the Fimbulwinter, the time of the awful famine. These are the gloomy terms in which she describes the situation (my interpretation, based on translations of the Codex Regius text by Brate 2004, Larrington 1996, Henrik Williams 2010, and Lönnroth 2016): Brother will slay brother, cousins beget in incest, it will be hard in the world, much whoredom; a time of axes, a time of swords, shields will be cleft, a time of storms, a time of wolves; no man will spare another.

Views as to the age of Vǫluspá differ. But hardly any of the content of the poem that can be determined archaeologically can be referred to any other time than the Migration and early Merovingian/Vendel periods (Nerman 1958a). I see this as a clear indication that, regardless of any later reworking, its core goes back to a period close to the time of Beowulf. That a profound crisis shook Scandinavian society to its foundations, demographically, socially, economically, politically, and culturally—of that there can be no doubt.

Grendel

More than half a dozen linguistic interpretations of the name Grendel have been proposed. Primarily, scholars have worked on the basis of one or other of the following words (see Steele 2003; Fulk et al. 2009, 467–68): • OE, ON grindan, to “grind down” in a destructive sense, “destroy” • OE *grandor and ON grand, meaning “evil” or “injury” • OE grindel, in the sense of “bar” or “injury” • ON grindill, meaning “storm.”

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With these starting points, Grendel has chiefly been taken to mean “destroyer, doer of harm,” although there is no universal acceptance for this interpretation. Awareness of the terrible famine disaster of the time, however, opens up the possibility of another explanation. Here I would draw attention to ON grenna (-grenda, -grendr), with the senses “make thin,” “make slender,” “reduce,” “waste away somewhat,” “make grey” (Norrøn ordbok 2008). The fact that this verb is mostly known from skaldic poetry suggests that it is very old. The name Grendel could then be construed as “the starver” and seen as a metaphor for “the Great Famine.” The ending -el occurs in three other personal epithets in Beowulf, namely þenġel,1 fenġel,2 and strenġel,3 all with the sense of “prince,” and the last two without parallels in any other Old English texts. Klaeber clearly links strenġel to the adjective strang (strenġest), in the sense of “strong,” with a corresponding noun strenġo (Klaeber 1950, 402). Strenġel could then be understood as “the one who shows strength, the mighty one.” The word þenġel has a cognate in ON þengill “chief, king,” the first element of which has been linked to the verb þēnian, meaning “serve” (Klaeber 1950, 412). If so, þenġel could be seen as corresponding conceptually to princely names with the final element -þēo(w), like the Ongenþēo(w) and Ecgþēo(w) of the poem. Here I wish to refer to Peter Jackson’s discussion about the ambiguous nature of Indo-European words for “guest” (Jackson 2010; cf. 2013). He argues that the unspoken social contract of mutual behaviour inherent in the concept of “guest” is sometimes broken, and that words for “guest” can then also have a negative sense. He mentions, among other examples, the words for “guest” used in Beowulf, with somewhat varying spellings, to refer to Grendel and Grendel’s mother, such as ġest, giest, ġist, ġyst and gast. Jackson also points out that such Old English words, when they appear as the final element of a compound, do not seem to allude to a “ghost” or “spirit,” but to some negative transgression of a boundary. He continues: The fact that Grendel is also described as an eoten (cf. ON iǫtunn) is interesting in this context, as the Germanic noun *etuna is usually linked to the verb *etan (< IE *h1ed) “eat.” (Jackson 2010:72)

If I understand Jackson correctly, he is saying that Grendel is such a boundary-transgressing guest, who gobbles things down in an unwelcome way, eating people out of house and home. This ties in closely with my linguistic interpretation of Grendel’s name as meaning “the starver.” This would suggest that Grendel is not a name in the strict sense, but a description: “the one who causes famine,” “the starver,” “the great starver.” By analogy with medieval expressions like “the Great Death” for what later came to be known as the Black Death, one could speak here of “the Great Famine.” The idea that Grendel is a descriptive word, rather than an actual name, is supported by the fact that it is unknown in the rich name 1  1507.

2  1400, 1475, 2156, 2345. 3  3115.



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stock of Scandinavia and the wider Germanic world. Thatrendel’s mother has no name of her own is then entirely logical. The freezing-cold summers of the famine disaster must have resulted in abnormally low evaporation, high atmospheric humidity, raised water levels in lakes and rivers, and rising groundwater. From the mere where Grendel and his mother have their abode, it is indeed said that4 Þonon ӯðġeblond up āstīgeð won tō wolcnum þonne wind styreþ lāð ġewidru, oð þæt lyft ðrysmaþ roderas rēotað.

The clashing waves climb up from there dark to the clouds, when the wind drives the violent storms, until the sky itself droops, the heavens groan. (Liuzza 1999, 95)

Similar expressions associated with the Fimbulwinter, speaking of waves being flung right up into the sky, can be found in the eddic poem Hyndluljóð (42): Haf gengr hríðum við himin siálfan líðr lǫnd yfir, en lopt bilar; þaðan koma snióvar ok snarir vindar; þá er í ráði at rǫgnum þrióti

The ocean stirs up storms against heaven itself, washes over the land, and the air yields; from there come snow and biting winds; then it is decreed that the gods come to their end. (Larrington 1996, 258)

It is worth noting in this connection that, after the disaster, many settlements in eastern central Sweden, for example, which previously had often been built on low-lying clay soils close to water, were moved to higher, drier ground nearby, as if rising groundwater had become a problem (Gräslund 2007). Similar relocations to better-drained soils seem to have occurred on Gotland at this time (Svedjemo 2014, 177). There was thus good reason for the Scandinavians to associate damp, fens, and cold with the great famine disaster of their time and no longer to view wetlands as the medium of benevolent gods, but rather as the abode of evil forces such as the “starvers,” Grendel and Grendel’s mother. Frands Herschend argues that the scene in which Beowulf finds a “great ancient sword,” ealdsweord ēacen,5 to defend himself with in the watery lair of Grendel’s mother can be directly related to the earlier practice—evi4  1373–76.

5  1663.

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denced in the Kragehul bog—of sacrificing entire sets of arms and armour in water (Herschend 2009, 350). The conclusion that wetlands, previously regarded as a medium of favourably disposed forces, had now become the haunt of evil ones like the “starver” and his mother finds support in the archaeological record. From the mid-sixth century, there was a decline in the ancient practice in southern and central Scandinavia of depositing large offerings in wetlands and lakes, in favour of drier ground or hall settings (Fabech 1991, 1994, 2007), although wetlands were not abandoned altogether and gradually began to be used for sacrifices again to some extent (Fabech 1991; Hedeager 1999a; Zachrisson 1998, 117–18; Andrén 2002; Lund 2004, 2010). Sacrificial finds including valuable metal artefacts from the subsequent early Merovingian/Vendel Period, however, are almost entirely unknown. Here we can sense an acute, but gradually passing, crisis of confidence in wetlands as a medium of higher powers. When Grendel makes his appearance at Heorot, we read: Cōm on wanre niht scrīðan sceadugenġa,6 “The walker in the shadows came striding through the night.” It may perhaps seem natural to refer to someone who appears in the night as a walker in the shadows. But at night there are no shadows, and I would therefore suggest that the starver Grendel is referred to in these terms as a metaphor for the shadowy existence that prevailed even in the middle of the day when the sun did not shine for almost two years. The idea of Grendel as a metaphor for the Great Famine is supported by the way the poem clearly stresses that his foul deeds strike not only at the inhabitants of Heorot, but at the entire Danish people.7 Heorot is not just the hall of the Danish king, but just as much a representative of the whole of society and the enduring order of the world. Where, then, does Grendel’s mother come into the picture? The fact that she behaves in basically the same way as her son, albeit on a smaller scale and more briefly, and that the two are represented as mother and son residing in the same watery dwelling, shows that they are linked metaphorically as well. The rejoicing at Beowulf’s victory over Grendel could then be interpreted as reflecting a temporary improvement in the abysmal summer weather, with the appearance of Grendel’s mother on the scene representing a new famine following fresh eruptions in 540 and 547 (Sigl et al. 2015; Toohey et al. 2016). Likewise, her death and the final demise of Grendel himself could be seen as the end of all the misery as the year 550 approached. Further support for the idea that Grendel symbolizes the Great Famine is found in what the poem says about him already having tormented the Danes for a full twelve years at the time of Beowulf’s visit.8 This tallies with the twelve to fourteen years that global cooling persisted, and the fact that summers were generally wretched throughout the period 536–550, even if some years may have been slightly less difficult than others. And since the last of the years of poor harvests were probably less disastrous than the first two during the Fimbulwinter proper, when the sun did not shine at all, it is natural 6  703–4.

7  597–98, 634.

8  145–49; cf. 830–33.



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that Grendel should be avenged in the poem by his mother, and not some even more gruesome father figure. As has been widely noted (e.g., Amodio 2014, 281), Grendel’s external features are described in vague terms throughout. That he is human-like there is no doubt, but nothing is said about his appearance apart from his fiery eyes.9 The epithets applied to him mainly focus on his gruesome character. Even the way Grendel moves about, expressed by the verb scrīðan “stride,” is unspecific. His mother is an even more indistinct figure. One might be tempted to say that this fits in with the idea that Grendel was not originally envisaged as a real being, but as a metaphor embodying the deadly famine of the time. On the other hand, the poem is no more forthcoming about the physical appearance of humans, and Grendel is after all not all that metaphysical a figure when he tears open the door to Heorot.10 The first element fen- in the name Fenrir/Fenrisúlfr would appear to correspond to ON fen (Dillmann 1994), in the sense of “fen, marsh.” Thus, the wolf Fenrir, who, by devouring the sun is the cause of the Fimbulwinter, is—just like Grendel—associated with both wetlands and the famine of the period. It is perhaps no coincidence that, according to Gylfaginning (34), Fenrir’s sister, the goddess Hel who presides over the kingdom of the dead, has a dish called Hunger and a knife called Famine.11 What is interesting in this context is that Grendel’s watery abode is referred to no fewer than six times as a fen, the word occurring twice as a simplex12 and four times in compounds: fenfreodo,13 fenġelād,14 fenhlið,15 and fenhop.16 Further underlining the connection, Fenrir’s mother Angrboða—“the one who brings grief”—is a giantess, while Grendel and his mother are associated several times with giants,17 a point also illustrated by the fact that it takes four men just to carry Grendel’s severed head on a pole.18 Similarly, it is said in Vǫluspá that the beast Fenrir, as the devourer of heavenly bodies and hence the cause of the Fimbulwinter, appears í trollz hami, “in the shape of a troll” (Vǫluspá 40). Other possible links between Grendel and Fenrir are when King Hrothgar informs Beowulf that two figures resembling Grendel and his mother have been observed on wulfhleoþu,19 “on wolf slopes, in wolf country,” and when Grendel’s mother in her watery 9  726–27.

10  720–22.

11  My thanks to Jonathan Lindström for pointing this out to me. 12  104, 1295. 13  851.

14  1359. 15  820. 16  764.

17  eoten 112, 668, 761; þyrs 426. 18  1635–39.

19  1358.

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home is twice referred to as a brimwylf,20 “she-wolf of the lake or water,” an expression unknown in other Old English literature. And while a fiery gaze may have been standard issue for monsters of old, it should be mentioned that, just as “a horrible light like a fire” shines from Grendel’s eyes, him of ēagum stōd liġġe ġelīcost lēoht unfæġer,21 so too a terrifying fire is said to burn from the eyes and nostrils of Fenrir as the Fimbulwinter makes way for Ragnarök (Gylfaginning, 51). Nor is it surprising that fire should also spew from the jaws of the Serpent, who here seems to be a precursor of Fenrir’s brother, the Midgard Serpent, given the latter’s possible background in blazing volcanic evening skies. I am not claiming that Grendel and Fenrir are identical, but still wish to highlight the clear connection between the fen-inhabiting Grendel, in his probable capacity as the “starver,” and Fenrir, the “fen dweller,” who by devouring the sun is the creature who unleashes the famine. It should also be noted that the myth of Fenrir ushering in Ragnarök by biting off the hand of the god Tyr (af Edholm 2014) seems to be represented on a number of gold bracteates probably dating from the late Migration Period, including one from Trollhättan (Axboe and Källström 2013). This is not to say that the myths about the end of the world at Ragnarök arose as a direct result of the volcanic disasters of 536 and 540. Similar myths seem to have existed far back in Proto-Indo-European tradition (Hultgård 2017) and could very well have been revived time and again in the wake of natural catastrophes in early times, such as the volcanic eruption on Thera/Santorini in the Aegean Sea around 1620 bc and the supereruptions of the sixth century ad. To sum up, I consider it a reasonable hypothesis that the eastern Scandinavian tradition of Beowulf created the figures of Grendel and Grendel’s mother as metaphors for the terrible famine disaster of the period.

Sigle

Three times the poem refers to an object described as a siġle.22 The word is usually translated as “shining jewel,” but Sune Lindqvist argues that, as OE siġel is also used for “sun, disc of the sun,” and so too in the poem,23 then it could correspond to the round, sun-disc-like gold bracteates of the Migration Period (Lindqvist 1958, 110). While some gold bracteates may still have been circulating in early Merovingian/ Vendel times, the great majority of them belong to the later part of the Migration Period, 450–550. Gold bracteates have also been found in England, though in smaller numbers and mainly in burials, particularly in Scandinavian-influenced Kent (Gaimster 1992, 2011; Pollington 2008). Viewed in this perspective, siġle could correspond to the gulnar tǫflur (tafla n.) in Vǫluspá (Codex Regius, 59: 3; Hauksbók, 53: 3), which are found by the gods who have survived Ragnarök. The expression gulnar tǫflur here is usually interpreted as “gold 20  1506, 1599.

21  726–27.

22  1157, 1200, 3163. 23  1966.



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gaming pieces.” Gaming pieces are quite common in the archaeological record of Scandinavia, having been found in several hundred burials from the Iron Age, Roman times, the Migration, and Merovingian/Vendel periods and the Viking Age. Strangely enough, though, no gaming pieces of pure gold are known. Even in graves that are otherwise full of objects made of gold and precious stones, game pieces are mostly of horn or bone, the most exclusive ones being of elephant or walrus ivory. One almost gets the impression that such pieces, which are moved about a board with definite intentions, were ascribed a living agency which in turn required that they be derived from animate beings. Be that as it may, since neither gaming pieces nor boards are ever of gold, gulnar tǫflur in Vǫluspá can hardly refer to such objects. Lars Lönnroth’s translation “guldtavlor” (gold tablets), to its credit, avoids any such associations (Lönnroth 2016, 36–37, 52). Vǫluspá may be an obscure poem, but, like other eddic poetry, it is still remarkably free from archaeological anomalies in the shape of exaggerated, fanciful, or anachronistic descriptions of reality. Since gold gaming pieces are unknown throughout the Germanic world in the Iron Age, and since, as Birger Nerman has pointed out, the word gultafla was used in the early sixteenth century in the sense of “gold medallion” or the like, there is good reason to follow Nerman and interpret gulnar tǫflur, not as “gold gaming pieces,” but primarily as “gold bracteates.” The epithet undrsamligar in Vǫluspá would also be much more relevant to the enigmatic visual world of gold bracteates than to gaming pieces, even if they were of gold (Nerman 1963b). Nerman’s interpretation is entirely in line with Morten Axboe’s view that the largescale deposition of gold bracteates in the ground during the late Migration Period represents desperate sacrifices to the gods during the disastrous years of the Fimbulwinter (Axboe 1999, 2001a, 2001b, 2004, 2005, 2007). That in turn tallies with the fact that, in Vǫluspá, gulnar tǫflur appear in the world of the gods. Lindqvist’s view that the word siġle in the poem represents a golden sun disc, as a metaphor for gold bracteates, thus coincides closely with Nerman’s and Axboe’s interpretations.

Why Does Beowulf Go to Heorot?

On arriving in the land of the Danes, Beowulf says nothing in answer to the coast guard about having come to slay Grendel, only that he intends to offer Hrothgar “generous […] counsel […] how, wise old king, he may overcome this fiend.”24 As there is much to suggest that this happened during the time of the Great Famine, it is reasonable to imagine that it was precisely this problem that Beowulf wished to offer advice on. But what sort of advice would that have been? Well-meaning suggestions as to previously little-used sources of food would surely have been stating the obvious. And in any case, wild food resources would probably have been almost as decimated as those from agriculture, at least as far as resources to be found on dry land were concerned. And failed photosynthesis combined with low water temperatures would presumably have adversely affected biological growth in lakes and streams as well. 24  277–79.

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In the mythical opening of Guta saga, we are told how, in a dim and distant past, the population of Gotland had grown so much that the island could no longer feed everyone, resulting in widespread famine. To solve the problem, the alþing decided that a third of the population must emigrate. After those chosen by lot had first refused and taken refuge in Torsburgen, they finally set off via Fårö to Dagö (Hiiumaa) off the coast of Estonia, before continuing east and finally reaching Byzantium (Guta saga, chap. 1). In the early thirteenth century, Saxo Grammaticus, in his Gesta Danorum, gives a detailed account of a dreadful famine that afflicted the Danes, apparently at some time in the Middle Iron Age: Whether it was that the soil had too little rain, or that it was too hard baked, the crops […] were slack, and the fields gave little produce; so that the land lacked victual, and was worn with a weary famine. The stock of food began to fail, and no help was left to stave off hunger. […] Meanwhile, the land of the Danes, where the tillers laboured less and less, and all traces of the furrows were covered with overgrowth, began to look like a forest. Almost stripped of its pleasant native turf, it bristled with the dense unshapely woods that grew up. Traces of this are yet seen in the aspect of its fields. (Saxo Grammaticus, book 8: 13, trans. Elton)

Saxo also tells us how some of the men proposed that, to relieve the pressure, children and old people should be killed. Following indignant protests, however, the assembly decided instead that part of the population, chosen by lot, would have to emigrate. Those selected to leave sailed via Blekinge and Gotland to Rügen, before finally travelling as far as Italy. Here Saxo (book 8: 13, 1–2) echoes Paul the Deacon’s account in his History of the Lombards of how, after lots had been drawn, a third of the Lombards were forced to emigrate from their old homeland after the population had grown so much that the land could no longer support them all (Paul the Deacon, book 1, chaps. 1–3). Scholars have therefore been inclined to regard Saxo’s account as copied from Paul’s. But Saxo’s comment that even in his own day it was possible, in forests around Denmark, to see traces of old fields that had become overgrown after the population had been reduced by famine suggests a different conclusion. We now know that large areas of open farmland became overgrown in the middle of the sixth century across much of Scandinavia and northern Europe generally, and that this continued for several generations. As for the original Lombard emigration from northwest Germany, it probably occurred a century or so earlier. And given that there are distinct differences between these three emigration traditions, there is reason to believe that they do not go back to a general topos, but simply reflect the same real-world background. If certain mythical elements are stripped away from these three narratives, a core remains that need not represent the cultural diffusion of a myth, but could very well reflect a single brutal reality with similar consequences. Paul was active for several years at the court of Charlemagne in Aachen. From other Germanic scholars there he could very well have heard of an emigration caused by the climate disaster among the Lombards still living in their original homeland, perhaps



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the very people who are referred to in Beowulf as Heathobards25 and in certain other sources simply as Bards. Unless, of course, he had heard about an exodus from Denmark triggered by famine and had erroneously linked it to traditions concerning the much earlier emigration of his fellow Lombards. There is cause for scepticism about the claims in Paul’s History and in Guta saga about the famine being the result of population growth. Mass starvation for such a reason alone is completely unheard of. Normally, such occurrences were associated, rather, with severe disruptions of the natural environment, of the kind that Saxo speaks of and that were all too common in reality at the time in question. What is remarkable, then, is that the only parts of Scandinavia for which traditions have survived concerning organized Iron Age emigration resulting from famine are precisely the areas highlighted in Beowulf, namely Gotland and Denmark. In the light of this, I consider it reasonable to assume that Beowulf visits Hrothgar to suggest the same course of action as may, according to Guta saga, have been tried back home on Gotland. Let us consider the following hypothetical scenario. The situation was more or less equally disastrous throughout the Nordic region. The pragmatist Beowulf or someone close to him came up with the idea of alleviating the worst of the suffering by getting a section of the population to emigrate to warmer climes. After the assembly had taken the decision and it had been put into effect, Beowulf went to Hrothgar to advise him to do the same thing, prompted by the debt of gratitude he had inherited from his father Ecgtheow, which is mentioned several times in the poem. The interesting thing here is that Beowulf informs Hrothgar that, before setting off, he had slayed a number of niceras nihtes, “water monsters of the night,” that had been plaguing his fellow countrymen:26 Þā mē þæt ġelǣrdon lēode mīne þā sēlestan, snotere ċeorlas, þēoden Hrōðgār, þæt iċ þē sōhte, forþan hīe mæġenes cræft mīn[n]e cūþon; selfe ofersāwon, ðā iċ of searwum cwōm fāh from fēondum, þǣr iċ fīfe ġeband, ӯðde eotena cyn, ond on ӯðum slōg niceras nihtes, nearoþearfe drēah, wræc Wedera nīð—wēan āhsodon— forgrand gramum.

These lines are often translated with reference to Beowulf being said in other contexts to have killed giants and beasts of the night as he crossed the seas. But here there is in fact no mention of either seas or a sea journey. The passage refers only to “waves,” ӯð, to niceras (OE nicor “water monster”) and to eotena cyn, “the race of giants.” Nor does the number five (fīfe) appear in the manuscript; this is a free emendation usually justified by the fact that, in another context, niceras is accompanied by an alliterative indication of number, nigene, “nine” (Fulk et al. 2009, 141). 25  2032.

26  415–24.

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Significantly, the watery abode of the Grendelkin is said to be populated by niceras, the implication being that Grendel and Grendel’s mother are themselves niceras.27 Furthermore, Grendel is associated several times with an eoten, “giant.”28 With all this in mind, I would propose the following translation: My people advised me, wise men among us, our best advisers, that I should come to see you, King Hrothgar. For they knew that my ability had been tested; they had seen me come from battle, bloody from the enemy, after I had fought and slayed a whole race of giants and in the waves killed water monsters of the night. It was no easy task, but I managed to liberate the Rams [the Gutes] from this affliction.

What these monsters have in common with Grendel and his mother is precisely the fact that they inhabit water, appear by night, and are called niceras. In my view, it is perfectly possible to read this passage as an allegorical reference to the fact that, by means of an assembly decision on emigration back home on Gotland, Beowulf has just been involved in combating famine, which is associated with water monsters, and now wishes to advise Hrothgar to take the same course of action. The responsibility does not rest on Hrothgar’s shoulders alone, however. The poem says that powerful men among the Danes meet to deliberate on how to alleviate their people’s suffering under Grendel’s tyranny: Moniġ oft ġesæt, rīċe tō rūne; rǣd eahtedon, hwæt swīðferhðum sēlest wǣre wið fǣrgryrum tō ġefremmanne.29 In view of Grendel and Grendel’s mother’s assaults on Heorot, the word fǣrgryrum here is usually translated as “attacks” or the like. The first element fǣr- can admittedly have this meaning, but its basic sense is nevertheless “great danger, disaster.” I therefore propose the following translation: Many powerful men often sat in council to deliberate on how best to handle the great affliction.

The poem’s reference to powerful men gathering in council fits well with what Saxo and Guta saga say about decisions on emigration having been taken jointly by the assembly. If the suggested interpretation is accepted, this passage of the poem no longer seems an unwarranted and incomprehensible insertion into the sequence of events, but rather a natural link in a logical narrative structure. It is precisely in this context that the “Christian voice” of the poem observes that the Danes “at times […] offered honour to idols at pagan temples, prayed aloud that the soulslayer [in the shape of the pagan gods] might offer assistance in the country’s distress,” with the moralizing comment: “Such was their custom, the hope of heathens” (Liuzza 1999, 58–59).30 This passage in fact describes quite well what people in Scandinavia 27  845, 1411, 1427.

28  112, 668, 761. 29  171–74. 30  170–79.



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generally seem to have done during the great crisis. Morten Axboe suggests that, during the Fimbulwinter disaster, the Scandinavians literally tipped their accumulated stocks of gold into the ground as desperate sacrifices to the gods (Axboe 1999, 2001a, 2001b, 2004, 2005, 2007). Views admittedly differ somewhat as to when during the Migration Period this deposition of gold occurred, but while it may have gathered momentum in late Roman times and continued throughout the Migration Period, it is nevertheless clear that it accelerated sharply towards the end of that period, before showing an abrupt decline. In an age incapable of understanding the natural mechanisms behind climate disasters, climatically-induced years of failed harvests and famine could scarcely be viewed other than as an expression of displeasure on the part of divine powers. When the bitter realization finally dawned that no help was to be had from the gods, who were as powerless as humans—a realization so clearly expressed in eddic poetry—no other option remained than to attribute the situation to an incomprehensible fate in the shape of evil forces (Gräslund 2007). Just as people had imagined the Fimbulwinter to be caused by the monstrous wolf Fenrir devouring the sun and moon, so they may have pictured death by starvation in the shape of monsters—Grendel and Grendel’s mother—devouring people. It may seem at this point that I am back in the same well-worn tracks as Knut Stjerna (1905) and Birger Nerman (1963a), who saw the emigration described in Guta saga as the explanation for the deserted settlements of Gotland. But people do not give up functioning sources of livelihood without good reason, and the abandoned settlements of the island should be viewed in the same context as corresponding phenomena in the rest of Scandinavia and northern Europe. I thus propose the very opposite interpretation, namely that the emigration referred to in tradition was a result of the privations arising from the acute climate emergency which we know affected the whole of northern Europe, privations that laid waste to thirty to fifty percent or more of the roughly two thousand seven hundred farms/households on Gotland at that time (Svedjemo 2014, 228). The references in the poem to a shining sun and to the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening, at the time of Beowulf’s journey to and stay at Heorot, may seem something of a contradiction. But as desperate a step as ordering the emigration of part of the population would hardly have been taken until there had been at least two years of severe crop failures in succession—by which time the sun would once again have become visible in the heavens. That means that Beowulf’s expedition would not have taken place until the summer of 538 at the earliest, when the sun had reappeared, but the weather was still atrocious. But if we take at face value what the poem says about Grendel already having afflicted the Danes for twelve years by the time Beowulf visited them, then his visit must have occurred, rather, after the second supereruption in 540, or even after the third in 547.

Burnt Settlements

A surprisingly large number of abandoned buildings on Gotland from the Migration Period appear to have been burnt down. Of the roughly twenty-five buildings on the island which Arne Biörnstad recorded as fully or partly excavated in 1955, around sixty

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percent had suffered that fate. If small outhouses, poorly documented buildings, and structures where only limited excavation had been carried out are excluded, the proportion is seventy-five to eighty percent of the buildings excavated at that time (Biörnstad 1955, 951–67). This is a remarkably high figure, given that these structures are scattered over the whole of Gotland and thus represent a geographical average. Among them, we may note the entire village of Vallhagar in Fröjel parish, comprising five or six farms, and a village of three farms at Rings in Hejnum parish. The buildings in Vallhagar are so far apart that the fires here cannot have been accidental, unless there were galeforce winds blowing along the length of the village. The fact that the burnt remains of humans were found in two of the houses, and that one of these individuals had been killed before the fire, further reinforces the impression that the fire was started as a deliberate act of violence. Mårten Stenberger, who led the excavations here, shares the view that Vallhagar village was deliberately burnt to the ground, and believes that the same must be true of many other farms on Gotland (Stenberger 1955). Further evidence of intentional destruction was the discovery, in one of the burnt houses at Höglundar in Stenkyrka parish, of the incinerated remains of a woman who had first been killed by two blows to the head (Lundberg 1951). Burnt-down buildings from this period have been observed in a variety of places across Scandinavia, but nothing like to the same extent as on Gotland. In the core territory of the Swedes in Uppland, where hundreds of houses from the Middle Iron Age have been excavated, at most 5–10 percent had been destroyed by fire. The contrast with Gotland is huge and shows that the large number of burnt-down farms there cannot be put down to accidents and other normal causes. The combined evidence clearly shows that Gotland came under enemy attack in the late Migration Period, resulting in extensive burning of its settlements.

The Serpent Burns Down Farms

It is difficult not to relate these observations to what is said in Beowulf about King Ongentheow’s sons Ohthere and Onela “often caus[ing] terrible bloodbaths” among the Gotlanders and about Onela later attacking the island and forcing it into subjugation. The sudden upsurge in Swedish influence on Gotland, as on Ö� land, in the period that immediately followed—in terms of types of artefacts, burial practices, and place-names—is entirely consistent with the picture of a decisive military success for the Swedes in the southern Baltic Sea area. Such use of military force is difficult to imagine without the standard weapon of war of earlier times, namely torching the settlements and storehouses of the enemy. I regard it as entirely possible that many settlements on Gotland were set on fire in the repeated military attacks by the Swedes spoken of in the poem, which appear to have begun in the fifth century, increased in the sixth, and culminated in the middle of that century. This line of argument is supported by Johan Engström’s observation, based on archaeological excavations, that Torsburgen, the enormous central fortification of the Gotlanders, suffered fire on a major scale as the direct result of a deliberate enemy act (Engström 1984).



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This is how the poem speaks of the Serpent as the warlike foe of the Gotlanders:31 Then that strange visitor began to spew flames and burn the bright courts; his burning gleams struck horror in men. That hostile flier would leave nothing alive. The worm’s warfare was widely seen, his ferocious hostility, near and far, how the destroyer hated and harmed the Geatish people […] He had surrounded the people of that region with fire, flames and cinders […] To Beowulf the news was quickly brought of that horror—that his own home, best of buildings, had burned in waves of fire, the gift-throne of the Geats. (Liuzza 1999, 124)

The references to Onela laying waste the land of the Gutes and to the Serpent burning down buildings on the island are thus consistent with the archaeological evidence that a significant proportion of Gotland settlements were destroyed by fire in the middle of the sixth century. It therefore seems reasonable to me to regard the fire- and smoke-breathing Serpent as an allegorical representation of the way King Onela and the Swedes burnt the Gotlanders’ villages, including their royal seat, harried the area around their already partly destroyed national defensive installation, and subjugated them politically. The question is whether the Serpent is not in fact a personification of Onela himself, the man who led the decisive brutal attack on the Gutes, had their young king Heardred killed, and presumably plundered them to the bone. This would fit well with the chronological order of the poem. Beowulf does not take up the struggle against the Serpent until after the Gutes’ settlements have been burnt down, presumably by Onela. And just as the Serpent dies before Beowulf, so too does Onela.32 In the poem, Beowulf goes to fight the Serpent with eleven warriors. This could mean that he assists Eadgils in his struggle with Onela as the leader of a contingent of warriors drawn from each of the island’s administrative areas, of which there are assumed to be twelve, Beowulf himself representing the twelfth. According to Guta saga, Avair Strabain states, prior to the peace negotiations with the Swedes, that he does not have long left. If there is anything in my assumption of a link between Avair, Alvar, Ælfhere, and Beowulf (see Chapter 21), the whole story would seem to end with Onela, alias the Serpent, dying first and Beowulf, alias Avair, dying somewhat later. The fact that Beowulf dies from injuries received in his fight with the Serpent could then be taken to mean that, in his struggle with Onela, he sustains injuries which eventually lead to his death at home on Gotland. If my earlier assumption is correct, that the successful peace talks with the Swedes spoken of in Guta saga have something to do with the events described in the poem, then Beowulf’s assistance to Eadgils would have put him in an excellent position to conduct 31  2312–19, 2321–27.

32  2395–96.

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the negotiations. So, even if Beowulf/Avair was in poor shape physically, it is natural that the Gotlanders would want him as their negotiator. His final mission in life would then have been to negotiate with his friend and kinsman King Eadgils as good a long-term peace treaty as possible for the Gotlanders. Here I would also raise the possibility that the great treasure of the Serpent could in fact be a metaphor for riches which Onela/the Serpent had previously plundered from the Gutes and which Beowulf recovers when he kills Onela, or which represent plunder he and the Gutes receive as compensation for what they were previously robbed of. If the poem is to be believed, the tradition of Sigurd the dragon-slayer is known at the court of King Hrothgar. When Beowulf has killed Grendel, he is hailed at Heorot as the equal of the dragon-slayer, albeit that the poem does not refer here to Sigurd but to his father Sigemund.33 Judging from several picture stones, the tradition of Sigurd the dragon-slayer was also known on Gotland during the Migration Period (Ney 2017, 236–48). The possibility of poems about this figure having circulated on the island is, in addition, suggested by the fact that Sigurd’s horse Grani with his burden of gold seems to be depicted on the Migration Period picture stones Tängelgårda I and Stora Hammar I in Lärbro parish (Andrén 1993; Ney 2012; Ney 2017, 238–41). I agree with Agneta Ney that the armed male figure in front of the gaping jaws of a centipede-like serpent figure on the Austr I stone in Hangvar parish could just as easily represent Tyr before the wolf Fenrir as Sigurd before Fafnir. Below them, there is a circle with a spiral pattern, and beneath it the prow of a ship, of a type associated with the Migration Period. At the top of a picture stone from Martebo Church, a similar serpent figure can be seen, although half of it is now lost. That stone does not include the figure of a man, but it does feature an oared ship of a Migration Period type (Nylén and Lamm 2003, 30–31). Significantly, Beowulf records that Sigemund’s dragon lives under hārne stān, “under the grey stone.”34 This is exactly the same expression as is used twice in the poem to refer to the Serpent’s lair,35 a circumstance that has prompted much discussion (most recently in Abram 2017). As there is no other historical or archaeological tradition in the poem that can be said with certainty to be later than the Migration Period, it seems likely that its version of the tradition of Sigemund the dragon-slayer can be regarded as the earliest manifestation of the later tradition of Sigurd the dragon-slayer. That this story was known on Gotland and Zealand is quite natural, given these islands’ close links with continental Germanic areas. According to the poem then, when Beowulf returns to Gotland, he has a newly acquired reputation as the equal of the great Sigemund as a slayer of monsters, albeit only in a metaphorical sense. This mythical image may subsequently have been elaborated further in Gutnish circles in songs about Beowulf’s exploits and expanded after his death into a larger allegorical account of his great achievements in battle with the Great Famine, alias Grendel and Grendel’s mother, and with Onela, alias the Serpent. 33  887.

34  887.

35  2553, 2744.



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The imagery of the Serpent, however, may be more complex than that. One thing the Serpent, Grendel, and Grendel’s mother all have in common is that they are only active after nightfall. It is natural to make a connection here with the flaming, blood-red skies which—after sunset, i.e., at nightfall—can occur around the world for several years after a major volcanic eruption. Such fiery-red volcanic evening skies are often streaked with dark, serpentine bands, a phenomenon beautifully illustrated by Edward Munch’s five different paintings on the theme of The Scream, which so clearly express the artist’s horror-filled experiences of such skies in the autumn of 1883, following Krakatoa’s eruption in August of the same year (Gräslund 2007). Such uncanny, blood-red volcanic sunsets with dark, snake-like bands must inevitably have been widely visible after the eruptions of 536, 540, and 547. As I have argued earlier, twisting dark bands of this kind could be behind wordings in a number of eddic poems relating to the Fimbulwinter and could have given rise to myths, or possibly reinforced existing ones, about the Midgard Serpent’s bloody battle with the gods as a portent of the end of the world at Ragnarök (Gräslund 2007; Gräslund and Price 2012; Price and Gräslund 2014). A relevant point here is that, repeatedly in Beowulf, the Serpent is described as flying, and as doing so at night. A possible connection between the Serpent of Beowulf and the myth of the Midgard Serpent was proposed by as early a scholar as Grundtvig in his first translation of the poem (Grundtvig 1820), and others have developed on the idea (e.g., Dronke 1969, 302–25; Earl 1994, 29–48). The sinuous dark bands near the horizon in a volcanic evening sky also fit in with Norse mythology’s description of the Midgard Serpent as encircling the whole world. Another characteristic of the Beowulf Serpent is that it spews out fire and poisonous smoke. This calls to mind the Laki eruption on Iceland, lasting from June 1783 right through to February 1784, the toxic gases from which killed a fifth of the island’s population and 90 percent of its livestock, and directly or indirectly caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in Western Europe. The winter of 1783–1784 was the harshest in Europe and North America for 250 years. If the secondary consequences of climatic and other environmental effects are included, the global death toll may have amounted to many millions of people (Witze and Kanipe 2014). What should be remembered, though, is that the Laki eruption was little more than a whisper compared with the supereruptions of 536 and 540. Like that of 536, the eruption of 540 probably flung its gases up into the stratosphere. But if the more modest eruption in 547 occurred closer by, for example, on Iceland, a lower ash cloud could very well have made itself felt in Scandinavia. Be that as it may, since many farms and villages on Gotland appear to have been burnt down in Onela’s last invasion of the island, then—just as the poem says—flames would probably have been visible all round the horizon and the whole island would have been blanketed in pungent smoke. The image of the terrible Onela may then quite naturally have merged with that of the fire-breathing Serpent in a volcanic evening sky. It is thus possible to regard the Serpent of Beowulf as a complex metaphor for the whole tragic fate of Gotland at the end of the Migration Period, summing up in a single, evil figure King Onela’s brutal assault on the Gutes, the terrifying Serpent/Midgard in a volcanic sky, and the Great Famine. This tallies well with the fact that Beowulf engages in

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three rounds of combat with the metaphorical monsters, first with Grendel, then with Grendel’s mother, and finally with the Serpent. If there is anything in this interpretation, it would suggest that Gotland was worse afflicted than most other parts of the Nordic region—with famine and destructive warfare all rolled into one.

Beowulf No Marathon Swimmer

Alongside the narratives about Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the Serpent, the stories of Beowulf’s youthful swimming exploits have contributed to the aura of unreality that has given the poem its reputation for historical unreliability. One of these stories is told when Unferth, King Hrothgar’s þyle, taunts Beowulf for having lost a swimming contest with Breca in his youth, the aim of which was to be the first to get home across the open sea. Beowulf replies with a boastful account of how he battled with storm-tossed waves and terrible sea monsters to make his way home.36 The second story is recalled by the “narrator” of the poem prior to Beowulf’s fight with the Serpent, and describes how, after Hygelac’s death, Beowulf swam all the way home from Frisia with the armour of thirty men over his arm.37 The third is a brief account given by Beowulf himself when he introduces himself to the Danes and speaks of his earlier achievements.38 When the gods and giants of Norse and Greek mythology perform great exploits, the exaggeration is usually to be found in inflated human qualities such as strength, intelligence, appetite, or the like. No god or giant would undertake marathon swims with thirty sets of armour on his arm, quite simply because no human being, however strong, would be able to swim a single stroke carrying such a mountain of battle gear in this way. As these mythical swimming adventures are located in the past in the poem, and Beowulf’s voyages to and from Heorot are completely free from mythical fantasy, it is likely that these accounts, too, go back to a flowery use of metaphor, with swimming originally a natural image for a journey across the sea, an image which, following repeated transmission, came to be construed as a literally intended narrative. That is indeed what many scholars have concluded on purely linguistic grounds on the basis of the following lines (Robinson 1965, 1974; Wentersdorf 1971, 1975; Earl 1979; Frank 1986):39 Þonan Bīowulf cōm sylfes cræfte, sundnytte drēah; hæfde him on earme (ealra) þrītiġ hildeġeatwa, þā hē tō holme (þron)g. […] Oferswam ðā sioleða bigong sunu Ecgðeowes, earm ānhaga eft tō lēodum;

36  506–85.

37  2358–69. 38  418–24.

39  2359b–62, 2367–68.



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Even if the word sund may perhaps have referred to “swimming” in these contexts (Fulk 2005), it does not change anything. As Fred Robinson has observed, it is the dubious character of Unferth, deliberately seeking to cast suspicion on Beowulf, who talks about swimming in the episode with Breca, and not Beowulf himself. The latter uses the expression rōwan [rêon], with the clear meaning of “row,” as well as paraphrastic words such as flēotan in the sense of “travel on the sea” or “sail” (Robinson 1974, and repr. 2000, 86ff.). All the indications are that the traditional interpretation is based on a combination of misjudgement of the original text, unfortunate emendation, and mistranslation. Both linguistic and literary arguments support the view that this was originally a rowing and not a swimming contest. Robinson offers the following summarized reinterpretation of the lines in question (Robinson 1974, and repr. 2000, 85): From there [i.e. from the battle] came Beowulf by means of his own physical strength— undertook a journey on the sea. He had held battle-gear on his arm when he moved toward the sea […] Then, alone and wretched, the son […]

This reinterpretation generally seems to have been embraced, with minor reservations, by the academic community, and it has also influenced modern translations. Andrew Cooper argues, moreover, that the traditional understanding is incompatible with the poem from a literary standpoint as well, summing up the discussion: “That Beowulf’s adventure with Breca was a boating adventure is now surely beyond reasonable doubt” (Cooper 2009). It is difficult, then, to regard any of the tales of Beowulf’s mythical swimming as intended literally.

Is Hygelac Alive, or Just a Ghost?

The attentive reader will no doubt already have seen that there is a snag to my reasoning about Hygelac. If not, I will point it out myself. My metaphorical interpretation of Grendel and Grendel’s mother as representing the famine disaster of the period after 536 comes up against a chronological contradiction, namely that Hygelac is spoken of as living at the time of Beowulf’s visit to Hrothgar, even though he can scarcely have been alive after 530. There is something wrong either with my metaphorical interpretation or with what the poem says about Hygelac. However much we examine the problem of Hygelac’s age and the date of his death, it remains one of the most obscure questions in the entire poem. We have to ask, therefore, whether it really is so certain that Hygelac is alive at the time of Beowulf’s visit to Hrothgar. The day after Beowulf’s struggle with Grendel, when he is rewarded with arm rings of gold and “the greatest of neck rings,” healsbēaga mǣst, the poem’s “narrator” observes that the neck ring is as magnificent as the Brōsinga mene, the necklace that Hama once stole from the Gothic king Eormenric. It is then said that Hygelac wore “that ring” when he was killed in Frisia.40 This would imply that Hygelac is already dead when Beowulf 40  1192–214.

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visits Hrothgar. But the idea that the reference is to the healsbēag just mentioned, as is sometimes assumed, is contradicted by the fact that the Brōsinga mene with which it is compared is closer in the text, and also by the fact that, on returning home, Beowulf does not give the ring to Hygelac at all, but to his wife Hygd. There are two possible interpretations here. Either the poet, or a narrator later passing on the story, is informing us that Hygelac wore a sparkling neck ornament when he later died in Frisia, which would be consistent with him being alive in the poem when Beowulf gets home. Or else he is saying that Hygelac had worn such an ornament when he had previously died in Frisia. The latter alternative gains some support from indications that Hygelac is no longer in the land of the living when Beowulf visits Hrothgar. One such indication could be that Hygelac is not on the scene when Beowulf sets off on his journey to Heorot. Had he been alive at that point, it would have been a strange breach of the social proprieties of the poem for him not to be present to take his leave of Beowulf with a short speech and wise advice for his journey. He is there only as a shadow, in the sense that Beowulf is referred to as Hygelācs þegn.41 But this formulaic epithet for Beowulf also appears much later in the poem, when there is no doubt that Hygelac has long since departed this life.42 Another indication is that, when Beowulf and his men return home from their voyage and march up towards the royal hall, it is not their meeting with Hygelac which they seem to be looking forward to, but the pleasure of seeing Hygd. A third one is that, when Hygelac appears in the hall on Beowulf’s return, he does so in quite an impersonal way. He makes a little speech of welcome to Beowulf, after which Beowulf holds long monologues about his experiences without eliciting the slightest response from Hygelac. This is in marked contrast to the earlier exchanges between Beowulf and HrothgarThe vague impression we get of their meeting in the hall on Beowulf’s homecoming prompts the following comment by Kenneth Sisam (Sisam 1965, 44): The Geatish court is lifeless. Hygelac and Hygd are little more than names of a good king and his good queen […] The “Return” reads like the work of a well-equipped poet who has temporarily lost his inspiration, and drifts when he has not another adventure to tell of.

In Beowulfs Rückkehr: Eine kritische Studie, Levin Ludwig Schücking concludes on stylistic and metrical grounds that the entire account of Beowulf’s return was composed by a different poet from the rest of the poem (Schücking 1905). He argues that the Old English poet has picked up and woven together two separate narratives: “Er verknüpfte sie indem er den Zeitraum zwischen beiden überbrückte” (Schücking 1905, 71–74). A similar argument has been advanced by Francis Magoun, based on discrepancies between the account Beowulf himself gives of his experiences in the land of the Danes on his return home and the one given earlier in the poem (Magoun 1959). Several details combined thus suggest to us that Hygelac is dead when Beowulf visits Hrothgar. 41  194.

42  2977.



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A possible explanation for the lack of clarity on this point in the poem could be the one Schücking and Magoun have touched on, namely that several shorter poems about Beowulf were originally in circulation, with partly differing content, or different versions of the same poem, which were eventually combined into a single work. In the process, additions and omissions may have arisen, resulting in a degree of contradiction and ambiguity. Certainly, my arguments for the time of Hygelac’s death could be stronger. But I still consider them sufficiently cogent to put a question mark against the poem’s claim about him being alive at the time of Beowulf’s visit to King Hrothgar.

Conclusions

If the oral tradition of Beowulf set out to make poetic sense of the terrible incomprehensibility of the famine disaster and the Swedes’ violent military assault on the Gutes, then a documentary report would be the last thing we should expect. Since everyone already knew what the drama was about, it was natural in the thinking of the time to give the story a metaphorical form. But such an approach still requires a backdrop of reality, which would explain the seemingly breakneck contrasts between fantasy and reality in Beowulf. In such a perspective, the figures of Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the Serpent seem more an expression of sophisticated intellectualism than of primitive popular superstition. As time went by and the stories of Beowulf were passed on to new generations, it was natural that awareness of the real-world background to figures like the Grendelkin and the Serpent should fade away and the elaborate use of metaphor gradually begin to be understood as accounts of actual events, especially once the tradition had made its way to England. Perhaps, in that setting, Grendel and the Serpent even came to be regarded as examples of the kind of strange monsters often associated in earlier times with foreign lands, roughly as we see illustrated in Olaus Magnus’s Charta marina.

Chapter 21

BEOWULF AND GUTA SAGA It is hinted in the poem that Beowulf also has another name; that, in his capacity

as a kinsman of Wiglaf, he is called Ælfhere: Wīġlāf wæs hāten, Wēoxstānes sunu, lēofliċ lindwiga, lēod Scylfinga, mǣġ Ælfheres,1 “He was called Wiglaf, Weohstan’s son, a worthy shield-warrior, a prince of the Scylfings, kinsman of Ælfhere.” Although the connection is not unambiguous, several scholars regard Ælfhere as Beowulf’s real name, especially as it shows vocalic alliteration with Ecgþēo(w), the name of his father (Malone 1923, 236–37; Woolf 1937, 7–9; Woolf 1939, 153–57; Collinder 1954, x–xi). The fact that the name Ælfhere is only mentioned in connection with Wiglaf, Beowulf’s Swedish relative, points in the same direction. With this in mind, it is not unreasonable to assume that Ælfhere (Swedish Alvar) was Beowulf’s original name as a child born of Swedish royal descent, and that he only received the rather unusual name of Beowulf when he was adopted by King Hrethel at the age of seven. Why this happened we are not told, but as Hrethel was his maternal grandfather it is possible that he had been orphaned. Certain similarities between the names Ælfhere/Alvar, Avair, and Þieluar thus need to be considered. According to Guta saga, the last two of these figures were the first unifying leaders of the Gutes. Both names bear a striking resemblance to the form Ælfhere found in the poem, which could be Beowulf’s original name. But the similarities could go beyond that. Avair’s byname Strabain may perhaps have referred to him being thin- or stiff-legged, but has also been regarded as a possible allusion to straw leggings similar to those of the Norwegian Birkibeinar of the twelfth century (cf. Guta saga, ed. Peel 1999, 30). If that is the case, then the first element stra- can be compared with one of the possible meanings of beow-, the first element of Beowulf, i.e., “straw, grain, barley.” If the boy’s original name was Alvar/Aivar, he may have been given the name Beowulf when he was adopted by Hrethel, either as a nickname or because he had called himself “Barley Wolf” (Beowulf) or “Straw Legs” (Strabain) on some occasion when he had kitted himself out in boyish fashion in leggings of barley straw, like a shaggy wolf. The uncompounded male name Wulf/Ulfr is by far the commonest of early runic names in Sweden, but on Gotland it does not occur at all as a simplex in the early name stock and is only found a handful of times as the final element of a compound. Similarly, the name Biǫrn/Biorn, the second commonest simplex name in the Swedish runic record, is not found on Gotland (Snædal 2005; Peterson 2007). The natural explanation in both cases is that wolves and bears have never lived on Gotland. For a boy from the mainland, on the other hand, the wolf may have been an obvious status symbol. The poem makes it clear that Beowulf had positive memories of his upbringing with his grandfather, that he was of Gutnish descent on his mother’s side, and that he evidently identified with the Gutnish people, and it may therefore have been natural for 1  2602–4.

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Figure 8. The gigantic Torsburgen hill-fort with its two-kilometre-long collapsed stone wall and an inner area of one hundred and twenty hectares. Copyright Museum Sydøstdanmark. The National Board of Antiquities.

Beowulf to become his special Gutnish name, particularly if it also sent a signal about his Swedish origins. Old Norse literature provides many examples of both changes of name and the use of additional names (Mejsholm 2009, 104ff.). Such a background also explains why the name Beowulf is so unusual, indeed unique. Anders Andrén argues that the name Þieluar in Guta saga can be seen as corresponding to Þjálfi, in Old Norse tradition the servant of the god Thor, and that, judging from the island’s place-names and the name Torsburgen for its central fortification, Thor may have been something of a principal god of the Gutes (Andrén 2012b). The fact that Beowulf’s possible original name Alvar has similarities both to the form Þieluar in Guta saga and to Þjálfi could thus suggest that, as king of the Gotlanders, he had the same position of service in relation to the gods as Swedish princes with names ending in -þēo(w), meaning “servant of the gods,” such as his kinsmen Ecgtheow and Ongentheow. As readers will be aware, the son of Scyld, and paternal grandfather of Hrothgar, is referred to twice in the opening of the poem as Beowulf. It has long been agreed, however, that a more original manuscript spoke only of Bēow (Bēaw), and that the final element -wulf was added by an Old English scribe, influenced by the fact that the whole poem was about Beowulf. This is supported by the fact that the longer name Beowulf disturbs the metre of the poem here, and that later Anglo-Saxon genealogies speak of a certain Bēaw/Bēo(w) as the son of Scyld (Fulk et al. 2009, xlviii–li, 113, 117). The name Beowulf for the main character of the poem would in that case be unique, strengthening the assumption that it is a byname or nickname. If, as is often assumed, the first element Beo- means “bee” and Beowulf means “bee wolf” and thus refers to a bear, it may be noted that only two examples of the name

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Biarnulfr are known from Scandinavian runic inscriptions, one of them on one of two silver vessels from a rich eleventh-century deposit from Old Uppsala, the other on a rune stone at Svista, just north of Old Uppsala (U 1103; Peterson 2007; Helmer Gustavsson 2004)—both, in other words, from the centre of the Swedish kingdom. But as there are also isolated examples of corresponding names from Norway and from Old High German settings (Beck 1965, 81–84), and given the considerable distance in time from the events of the poem, that does not tell us very much. Another possible alternative is that Beowulf ’s original name as a Scilfing of the Wægmunding lineage was Wulf, and that the first element Bēo- was added after he was adopted. The fact that Wulf alliterates with the names of Beowulf’s kinsmen Weohstan and Wægmund may support this view. The berserker Bǫðvarr Bjarki (in Hrólfs saga kraka, Bjarkamál in Gesta Danorum, Bjarkarímur and Skjǫldunga saga) is generally considered to reflect remnants of obscure legends related to the figure of Beowulf. However mythical Bǫðvarr’s adventures may seem, they nonetheless clearly have some sort of a link to the events of Beowulf and unfold in contexts that can be dated to the late Migration/early Merovingian periods. As a guest of Hrólfr Kraki (Hrothulf), he kills a monster that is terrorizing the place (Hrólfs saga kraka, Gesta Danorum), just as Beowulf does on his visit to Hrothulf’s uncle Hrothgar. And just like Beowulf, Bǫðvarr helps King Aðils/Eadgils in the war against King Á� li/ Onela (Bjarkarímur, Skáldskaparmál, Skjǫldunga saga). In the light of this, there may be cause to consider Bǫðvarr’s byname Bjarki. In late tradition, the name has been linked, inter alia, to his having been fathered by a bear and having a bear as his fylgia (Hrólfs saga kraka, Bjarkamál). But it could also derive from a word for “bark, birchbark” which, over a long period of transmission, had come to be misunderstood as bjarki “bear cub.” There is a possible connection, too, between Bǫðvarr’s byname Bjarki and the first elements of Beowulf and Strabain, by analogy with the name Birkibeinar, which appears to have referred to a special type of birchbark leggings. It may also be noted that Avair is the only early leading figure in Guta saga who is said to come from southeastern Gotland, more specifically the parish of Alva, a name that is related to the Ælfhere of Beowulf. Alva parish is not far from the unique hall from the Middle Iron Age that has been hypothetically identified here as the royal seat of Hygelac and Beowulf. The name Stavars hus, which is commonly applied to this building, may be a popular reinterpretation of the old farm name Stavgard. The legends about “Stavar the Great” that are associated with the site have been regarded as the product of a nineteenth-century romanticization of ancient times (Lithberg 1933). On the other hand, it should give us pause for thought that, in a Gotland folk legend, Avair and Stavar appear as one and the same person. It may be added that Guta saga links Graipr, Þieluar’s grandson, to Uggarderoir, Gotland’s largest Bronze Age burial cairn, just inland from the coast at Rone, and not far from what are assumed to be Beowulf’s burial place and royal seat. The final element -var (-vair) is by no means uncommon in personal names, but it should nevertheless be noted that it occurs in all the names whose links with the figure of Beowulf have been hypothetically discussed here: Alvar/Ælfhere, Avair, Bǫðvarr, and Þieluar. In addition, there is the possible connection between the first elements of the name Beowulf and Avair’s byname Strabain.

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The assumption that Avair in Guta saga bears traces of the figure of Beowulf is underpinned by Ola Kyhlberg’s observation that the large wergild Avair demands (see below) suggests that he was of royal descent (Kyhlberg 1991, 238–39). Each of these name similarities, on its own, does not tell us very much; the sources available are fairly limited. But it still seems a possible hypothesis that they reflect an old tradition linking Ælfhere/Beowulf to the Avair Strabain of Guta saga.

Peace between Swedes and Gutes

The second chapter of Guta saga begins with the following passage:

Many kings fought against Gotland while it was heathen; the Gotlanders, however, always held the victory and constantly protected their rights. Later the Gotlanders sent a large number of messengers to Sweden, but none of them could make peace before Avair Strabain of Alva parish. He made the first peace with the king of the Swedes. When the Gotlanders begged him to go, he answered, “You know that I am now most doomed and ill-fated. Grant me then, if you wish me to expose myself to such peril, three wergilds, one for myself, a second for my begotten son, and a third for my wife.” Because he was wise and skilled in many things, just as the tales go about him, he entered into a binding treaty with the king of the Swedes. Sixty marks of silver in respect of each year is the Gotlanders’ tax, divided so that the king of Sweden should have forty marks of silver out of the sixty, and the jarl twenty marks of silver. Avair made this statute in accordance with the advice of the people of the island before he left home. In this way, the Gotlanders submitted to the king of Sweden, of their own free will, in order that they might travel everywhere in Sweden free and unhindered, exempt from toll and all other charges. Similarly, the Swedes also have the right to visit Gotland, without ban against trade in corn, or other prohibitions. The king was obliged to give the Gotlanders protection and assistance, if they should need it and request it. In addition, the king, and likewise the jarl, should send messengers to the Gotlanders’ general assembly and arrange for their tax to be collected there. The messengers in question have a duty to proclaim the freedom of Gotlanders to visit all places overseas that belong to the king in Uppsala and, similarly, to such as have the right to travel here from that side. (ed. Peel 1999, 7)

The opening sentence—“Many kings fought against Gotland while it was heathen”— sounds familiar. This is precisely what Beowulf speaks of. The poem makes no mention, though, of taxation. On the other hand, it is unlikely that, after his victory over the Gutes, Onela/Ale would have left the island without rich spoils. And when Onela graciously allows Beowulf to succeed Heardred as king of the Gotlanders, it must surely have been as a politically subordinate figure. Beowulf’s successful gamble, along with the fact that he had previously given Eadgils refuge, presumably put him in an excellent position to negotiate with Eadgils after the latter had become king of the Swedes. Asked by the Gotlanders to travel to the Swedes and negotiate a peace treaty with them, Avair replies: Mik vitin ir nu faigastan ok fallastan, “You know that I am now most doomed and ill-fated” (Guta saga, chap. 2)—in other words, “I don’t have long to live.” Presumably, what Avair means is that a man who feels his powers are failing him has the right to set conditions before undertaking such a mission. When Guta saga says of Avair that hann var snieldr ok fielkunnugr, so sum sagur af ganga, “he was wise and skilled in many things, just as the tales go about him” (Guta

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saga, chap. 2: 10–11), it sounds not only like a reference to an early oral tradition about the figure of Avair, but also like an echo of the picture of Beowulf presented in the poem. The reference in Guta saga to many kings fighting against Gotland in pagan times, and to no one being able to make peace with the Swedes before Avair Strabain, suggests that the kings in question were Swedish. It is striking, then, that Beowulf describes a series of wars between the Gutes and various Swedish princes, and that no lasting peace with the Swedes was achieved until after the last war, when Beowulf had assumed responsibility. In my view, then, there is good reason to consider the possibility that the Guta saga tradition of successful negotiations between Avair and the Swedes goes back to talks between Beowulf/Ælfhere/Avair and Eadgils/Adils. What, then, did Beowulf achieve in his negotiations with the Swedes? To answer that question, we need to go back to the point at which Onela has defeated the Gotlanders and let Beowulf take over the throne, despite his having protected Eadgils from Onela. As already mentioned, Onela’s justification for this decision may have been that Beowulf was after all his kinsman and that Gotland was already under the Swedes’ control. Later, when Beowulf has killed Onela, Eadgils ends up even more indebted to him for helping him come to power. It is in this light that we can ask ourselves what Aivar in Guta saga, probably a reflection of the figure of Ælfhere/Beowulf in Beowulf, achieves by his negotiations with the Swedes. Well, for one thing he guarantees the Gotlanders a degree of freedom, in the sense that the Swedes refrain from putting a ruler of their own in charge of the island, at the same time as the Gotlanders gain trading advantages and military protection at the price of an annual tax. If Guta saga’s account of peace talks with the Swedes ultimately goes back to the Beowulf context, then those talks do in fact seem every bit as successful as the tradition represented in Guta saga would have us believe. Historical sources do not give the slightest indication of the existence of a kingdom on Gotland in the Late Iron Age and Early Middle Ages. Guta lag (Holmbäck and Wessén 1943), moreover, is the only early collection of laws in Scandinavia, alongside those of Iceland, that is completely silent on the subject of royal power. It is tempting to see this as reflecting Swedish political control of Gotland going back to the transition from the Migration Period to the Vendel Period, a state of affairs that would of course have been easier to achieve without an indigenous kingdom on the island, with the considerable unifying symbolic value that could have had. The lack of any evidence or traditions concerning a Gutnish kingdom during the Late Iron Age is entirely consistent with the existence of an agreement with the Swedes that included the stipulation that the Gotlanders were to be politically subordinate to the Swedish king. An argument advanced by Tryggve Siltberg (most recently in Siltberg 2013) points in the same direction, namely that there was relatively little variation in the size of farms on Gotland in early historical times, compared with the situation on the mainland. Despite certain differences of opinion, this is a view with which most scholars seem to agree (cf. Svedjemo 2014, 191ff.; Andrén 2009). Subordination to the Swedes need not have been to the Gotlanders’ disadvantage. Apart from the trading benefits it offered, it made Gotland far less attractive a prey for hostile plunderers. The joint Swedish-Gotlandic trading colony established in

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Courland at the beginning of the seventh century (Nerman 1958b) is another indication of the advantages. It has sometimes been claimed that Wiglaf succeeded Beowulf to the Gutnish throne, but there is no support for this in the poem. Nothing is said there about a successor. Was the last thing the pragmatic Beowulf did in his lifetime, then, perhaps to reach a deal with the Swedes sacrificing the Gotlanders’ royal power for a favourable treaty of protection and trade? In Guta saga, Aivar says that, if he is to negotiate with the Swedes, he wishes to be granted þry vereldi: att mir sielfum, annat burnum syni minum, ok þriþia kunu, “three wergilds, one for myself, a second for my begotten son, and a third for my wife” (Guta saga, chap. 2: 6–9). This might seem to argue against the idea that Aivar is Beowulf, as the latter says in the poem that he would have preferred to leave his inheritance to “my son,” suna mīnum,2 as if he did not have one. But the fact that Beowulf is without a son just before his death, and lets his inheritance pass to his kinsman Wiglaf,3 does not mean that he did not have one before, or that he did not have a wife. Beowulf in fact talks about “my son” precisely as if he had had one. He even does so in the same words as Aivar uses to speak of his son (syni minum). From a purely social point of view, moreover, it would probably have been almost unthinkable in the Middle Iron Age to reign as king for many years without a queen at one’s side to act as hostess of the royal hall. The fact that Aivar demands wergild of the Gotlanders can scarcely mean that they were the ones who had killed his son and wife; it is more reasonable to assume that the Swedes had been behind this. So, if Aivar is Beowulf, he may nevertheless have believed that it was the overweening pride of the Gutes in starting a war with the Swedes that had caused the deaths of his wife and son. To Beowulf’s dismay and sorrow, the Swedes had burnt down his royal seat,4 and where would his wife and son have been if not there? And as the chances of extracting wergild from the Swedes would presumably have been minimal, it makes sense for Beowulf to demand it of the Gotlanders when they ask him to sort out the problems they have brought upon themselves. We can of course ask ourselves why it was so important for Aivar to insist on wergild, when he knew his days were numbered. In early Germanic times, however, wergild was not just a matter of material compensation, but just as much one of social redress that might allow the recipient to die in peace.

Conclusion

The whole of my discussion about Avair and Beowulf is hypothetical. Nonetheless, it builds on so many points of agreement that we cannot simply disregard the possibility that Guta saga’s figure of Avair, with the byname “Straw Legs,” represents the last tattered fragments of a Gutnish tradition concerning Beowulf’s figure of Ælfhere/Beowulf, possibly with the byname “Straw Wolf.” 2  2729–32.

3  2813–16. 4  2324–33.

Chapter 22

CHRONOLOGY The absolute and internal, relative chronology of Beowulf is not something that

becomes immediately clear from an initial perusal. It used to be quite common, therefore, for translators to assign approximate dates to the main figures and events of the poem, based primarily on an assumed year for the death of Hygelac in Frisia, but also with an occasional sideways glance at late Scandinavian sources. Chambers (1932), Woolf (1939), and Klaeber (1950) all did this, though usually with little in the way of supporting arguments (Klaeber 1950, xxix–xlv). In the fourth, posthumously revised edition of Klaeber’s authoritative work (Fulk et al. 2009), however, all dates have been deleted. This is understandable, since, when using words, it is possible to express quite free hypotheses without them being understood as anything other than hypothetical, whereas numbers tend to be interpreted as precise, even when they are explicitly said to be approximate. It is thus almost against my better judgement that I set about my task in this chapter. I would stress, though, that I do so with no reference to late Scandinavian sources. I have earlier found there to be good reason to posit ad 530, plus or minus a couple of years, as an approximation for the date of Hygelac’s death in Frisia. Scattered about the poem there are references to ties of kinship that may help to shed light on the chronological relationships between events and characters. To that end, I work on the basis of an average of just over thirty years per generation. Although the poem speaks mostly of men and sons, we must assume that there would have been similar numbers of sisters in each group of siblings and thus at least three to four years between any brothers mentioned—however incorrect that might turn out to be in individual cases. It is not possible to prove that all the figures who appear in Beowulf are historical. But other historical sources make clear that a good many of them are, and scarcely anyone questions such an assertion. When Michael Swanton writes that “It is possible that (with the sole exception of Unferth), all the major figures mentioned by the poet had some basis in actuality” (Swanton 1997, 8), he is probably expressing quite a common view—even, remarkably, among scholars who consider the poem to be the independent product of an Old English Christian poet.

Characters Beowulf

Beowulf is often spoken of in the literature as a youthful figure at the time of his visit to Hrothgar, as Queen Wealhtheow addresses him as hyse, “young man,”1 and Hrothgar calls him ġeong, “young.”2 But from their perspective as an elderly lady and gentleman, 1  1217.

2  1843.

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this may simply mean that, in their eyes, Beowulf seems comparatively young. For when Beowulf appears before King Hrothgar, he talks about himself as if his youth is behind him: “in my youth (ġeogoþe) I performed many exploits.”3 In his later exchange of words with Unferth, he also hints at his adventures with Breca having taken place when they were both young.4 Beowulf, in other words, tells us himself that he is not in the first flush of youth when he visits Hrothgar. He should be at least in his early thirties at this point, in keeping with the status and respect he is accorded. This would also be consistent with what the ageing Hrothgar says about having himself been in his youth when Beowulf’s father Ecgtheow had previously sought refuge with him.5 During Beowulf’s visit to Hrothgar, Hygelac is several times spoken of as if he were alive back home, and when Beowulf returns home, he is indeed received by a living Hygelac. But when, the day after his fight with Grendel, Queen Wealhtheow rewards Beowulf with gold rings, and these are compared to the Brōsinga mene by the poem’s “narrator,” who comments that Hygelac was wearing “that ring” when he died in battle with the Franks,6 it could suggest that he is already dead at this juncture. Unless it is simply an informative explanation offered by a bard who was reciting the story at a later date and knew what had happened. If Hygelac is in fact alive when Beowulf visits Hrothgar, then the visit occurs before 530. But as Beowulf took part in Hygelac’s Frisian expedition in his youth, and is no longer exactly young at the time of his visit, he may also have travelled to Heorot some years into the 540s. The hypothesis about Grendel symbolizing the Great Famine, which is linked to 536 and the years immediately following, is difficult to reconcile with Hygelac being alive on Beowulf’s return home. If, as I believe, Grendel is indeed an allegorical representation of the Great Famine beginning in 536–537, then the earliest Beowulf’s visit to Hrothgar can have occurred is 538, after the worst of the paralysis in society had begun to ease with the reappearance of the sun after the Fimbulwinter proper. If we take into account what the poem says about Grendel already having plagued the Danes for twelve years when Beowulf arrives at their royal seat, then his visit would not have taken place until the end of the 540s. Following the death of Hygelac around 530, Beowulf becomes “regent” for Hygelac’s son, Heardred, until the young prince attains his majority. When Heardred in turn is killed, he is succeeded as king by Beowulf, perhaps in the early or mid-540s. As Beowulf is a young man when he participates in Hygelac’s military expedition around 530, he may have been born around 510. The question of the date of his death depends on how seriously we take the claim that he reigned for fifty years, and whether or not that period also includes his time as regent. Presumably, these fifty years are primarily to be understood as a poetic circumlocution for an unusually long reign, at a time when people’s lifespans, especially those of kings, were often short. I therefore imagine Beowulf departing this life not long after the middle of the sixth century, at a guess around 555. 3  408–9.

4  536–37. 5  459–67

6  1192–214.



Heardred

Chronology

219

If Hygelac dies in 530, presumably in the summer months, his son Heardred must have been conceived no later than 529 and cannot have taken up the role of king until the early 540s. He dies during the third war between the Swedes and the Gutes, probably in the later part of the 540s (see below). Hrethel

Nothing is said about Hrethel’s death. But as he is not mentioned in connection with the attack on the Swedes by the Gutes, led by his sons Hæthcyn and Hygelac, he must presumably have died no later than 529. If Hygelac—who is Hrethel’s third son and has at least one sister, namely Beowulf’s mother—was born around 490–495, then Hrethel may have been born some time between 455 and 460. Hygd

Hygd becomes Hygelac’s wife some time before 530, probably earlier. On Beowulf’s homecoming from Hrothgar’s hall, she is spoken of as very young and as having been married to Hygelac for just a few years.7 It has therefore sometimes been assumed that she is Hygelac’s second wife, as he already has a daughter of marrying age at the time of King Ongentheow’s death. If Hygd is very young when she marries, she may have been born some time between 505 and 510. If, on the other hand, she is the mother of the daughter Hygelac gives in marriage to Eofor, then the year of her birth may have been in the early 490s. Hygelac (Hugleik)

In connection with Beowulf’s visit to Heorot, Hygelac is expressly referred to by him as “young,” ġeong.8 He is also spoken of as a “young battle king,” ġeongne gūðcyning, on Beowulf’s return home, with a clear reference to his earlier involvement in the death of King Ongentheow.9 But that Hygelac is actually of mature years at the time of Ongentheow’s death is made clear by the fact that he gives his daughter in marriage to Eofor in that context, as a reward for killing the Swedish king. As this was a time when girls in all probability did not reach puberty until the age of fifteen to seventeen, it is reasonable to assume that the daughter in question is at least that old. But even if she is only just of marriageable age, she must surely be at least twelve to fifteen. The alternative—that the daughter is even younger, and that Hygelac promises her to Eofor as his future wife—would not be much of a reward for a man of marrying age. Nor is anything of the kind suggested in 7  1925–29.

8  1831. 9  1969.

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the poem; it is merely said, quite clearly, that he gives Eofor his daughter, ond ðā Iofore forġeaf āngan dohtor.10 That Hygelac is no callow youth at this time is also made clear by the way the experienced King Ongentheow, referring to how he has “heard of proud Hygelac’s prowess in battle, his war-skill,” hæfde Hiġelāces hilde ġefrūnen, wlonces wīġcræft,11 is so dismayed at the latter’s approach that he flees further inland and takes refuge with his men in a fortress. With all this in mind, Hygelac may be assumed to be at least thirty to thirty-five years old at his death and to have been born no later than 495–500. Hæthcyn (Håkan)

Hæthcyn dies in connection with the Gutes’ attack on the Swedes,12 prior to 530, as Hygelac is still alive at that point. As a boy, Hæthcyn accidentally kills his brother Herebeald with an arrow, and must at least have been old enough to handle a bow when this happened. The considerable burden of blame his father places on him suggests an age of ten to fifteen. As Hygelac is the youngest of the brothers and is not mentioned in this context, he may have been five to ten years old at the time. So, if Hygelac is at least thirty-five when he dies around 530, then Herebeald’s death may have occurred twenty-five to thirty years earlier. As Hygelac’s elder brother, Hæthcyn may in turn have been born in the middle of the 480s. Hrothgar (Hróarr/Ro)

As Hrothgar is referred to several times in connection with Beowulf’s visit not only as old, but also as grey-haired and beginning to decline in strength, it is reasonable to assume that he is in fact quite advanced in years. As he himself says that he became king at a young age13 and is described as old and grey when Beowulf visits him,14 he may have been on the throne for a long time. That does not mean we must entirely believe the claim that he had already reigned for fifty years.15 If we assume that Hrothgar is 65–70 years old at this point, he may have been born some time between 475 and 480. Nothing is said about Hrothgar’s death or about his fate in connection with the burning down of Heorot at some point in the future, hinted at in the poem. He may possibly have died some time in the late 540s. Heorogar (Hergeir)

As Hrothgar’s elder brother, Heorogar may have been born around 465.

10  2997.

11  2952–53. 12  2922–30. 13  465.

14  356–57, 1873, 1790–93, 1886, 2110–15. 15  1769.



Halga (Helgi/Helghe)

Chronology

221

Halga is Hrothgar’s younger brother. He could have been born in 480–485. Healfdene (Hálfdan(r))

Healfdene may have been born around 440–445. Hrothulf (Hrólfr, Rolf)

Hrothulf is the son of Hrothgar’s younger brother Halga. He belongs to roughly the same generation as Beowulf and was possibly born around 505–510. He is probably identical to the Hrólfr Kraki of Norse tradition. Wealhtheow

When Ecgtheow flees to Hrothgar, the latter, by his own account, is quite young. Hrothgar pays a ransom for Ecgtheow for a death he caused among the Helmings and, as a Helming, Hrothgar’s wife Wealhtheow may be related to the fugitive. As this suggests that Hrothgar is already married to Wealhtheow at this juncture, she too is probably advanced in years by the time of Beowulf’s visit, though perhaps a few years younger than her husband. When Beowulf visits them, she still has a young but marriageable daughter at home, Freawuru. Wealhtheow may by then be 60–65 years old and may have been born around 480–485. Ecgtheow

When Ecgtheow comes to Hrothgar as an exile, the latter is already king, albeit a very young one by his own later account. This could have been some time in the early 490s. It is also reasonable to assume that Ecgtheow is younger than his father-in-law, King Hrethel. He may have been born some time in the mid 460s. Ongentheow (Egil)

Ongentheow dies when the Gutes attack the Swedes under the leadership of Hæthcyn and Hygelac, no later than 529, but probably earlier. As Ongentheow is expressly spoken of at the time of his death as old and grey-haired, but still reasonably fit for active service, he may have been about 60–65 years old at that point and may have been born around 460. Ohthere (Ottar)

Ohthere is referred to as the son of Ongentheow and takes part in the Swedes’ first attack on the Gutes, during the latter’s lifetime, i.e., in 528 at the latest but probably earlier. As Ongentheow dies no later than 529, Ohthere may have become king the same year at the latest, but probably somewhat earlier. Nothing is said about Ohthere’s death or his age, but he may reasonably be assumed to be dead when his sons Eadgils and

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Eanmund seek refuge among the Gutes, as his brother Onela is king of the Swedes at that time. His death may have occurred some time between 515 and 530 and his birth around 480–485. Onela (Ale)

Onela appears to be the younger brother of Ohthere and seizes power among the Swedes following Ohthere’s death, when the latter’s sons Eadgils and Eanmund are still quite young. Onela is said in the poem16 to be married to a woman who may be a daughter of the Danish king Healfdene or (and here part of the text is missing) the widow of Hrothgar’s brother Halga (Malone 1959, 124–41). If the former, she is King Hrothgar’s sister. This does not necessarily make Onela the same age as Hrothgar, but it is a hint that he is not in the first flush of youth when he defeats the Gutes. Onela may thus have been born in the second half of the 480s and have died around or shortly after 550. Eadgils (Adils)

As Ohthere’s sons, Eadgils and his brother Eanmund rebel against their uncle Onela, but are forced to flee to the Gutes. Onela pursues them and has Eanmund killed, but Eadgils escapes. With Beowulf’s help, Eadgils later defeats Onela, who is killed. If Ohthere was born around 480, Eadgils may have come into the world around 505– 510. Nothing is said about his death, but it evidently occurs some time after Beowulf’s, which brings the entire poem to an end, perhaps in the 560s or 570s. Eanmund (Emund)

As Eadgils’ younger brother, Eanmund could have been born around 515, as his elder brother, around 505. He dies in Onela’s attack on the Gutes, probably in the late 540s. Weohstan (Vestein)

Weohstan participates in Onela’s campaign against Gotland. At the time of Beowulf’s death, he is said to have been dead for “many half-years.” He is involved in King Onela’s attack on the Gutes as his kinsman and companion, and personally kills Onela’s nephew Eanmund.17 The fact that Weohstan, when he is about to die, gives Eanmund’s battle gear to his son Wiglaf, who later uses it in the fight with the Serpent, may suggest that Weohstan is dead when that fight takes place. He may thus have been born in the early 500s.

16  62–63.

17  2609–25.



Wiglaf

Chronology

223

Wiglaf appears in the story as Beowulf’s companion in his struggle with the Serpent. In that context, he wears the armour which his father Weohstan had taken from Eanmund and kept for “many half-years” before handing it on to his son before his death.18 This suggests that a number of years pass between Onela’s campaign against Gotland and Beowulf’s struggle with the Serpent. Wiglaf is expressly referred to as young when Beowulf wages his battle with the Serpent.19 If he is about 20 at that point, he may have been born around 530.

The Serpent (wyrm, draca)

In the opening of the section describing the battle with the Serpent, it is said that it takes place “in later days,” ufaran dōgrum,20 in relation to the deaths of both Hygelac and Heardred, and at a time when Beowulf is old. This information is repeated later on, when the time between Heardred’s death and Beowulf joining with Eadgils in the struggle against Onela is also referred to as being “in later days,” uferan dōgrum.21 If, as suggested above, Heardred dies some time in the later part of the 540s, and given the historical dating of Hygelac’s death to around 530, this implies that the Serpent and Beowulf die around or shortly after 550. That should also be the case if I am right in my assumption that the Serpent is a metaphor for Onela.

Battles between Swedes and Gutes

If I am correct in assuming that hrēosna beorh—around which Ongentheow’s sons caused terrible bloodbaths—means “the destroyed fortress” and refers to the central fortification of the Gutes, Torsburgen, which appears to have been burnt down and partly destroyed in the early sixth century, then the wars between the Swedes and the Gotlanders may have started by then, continuing in waves down to the middle of the sixth century. And if the trade treaty between the Gutes and the Swedes hinted at in Guta saga reflects an agreement between the Swedish king Eadgils and Beowulf, it could have been entered into some time in the 550s. If the claim that Beowulf reigned for fifty years is taken at face value, which I have difficulty doing, that takes us to the time around 580. The first battles between Swedes and Gutes mentioned in the poem are when Ongentheow’s sons Ohthere and Onela attack the Gutes following Hrethel’s death.22 They may be dated to any time in the first three decades of the sixth century. But if we assume that Hygelac dies in 530 and manages to launch an assault on the Swedes before that, then the Swedes’ attacks ought to have occurred no later than 528. 18  2620–25.

19  2625–27, 2810. 20  2200–2209. 21  2392.

22  2472–78.

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The Gutes, then, respond with an attack on the Swedes, in which Hæthcyn and Ongentheow are killed and the Gutes under Hygelac take substantial spoils.23 This must have taken place no later than 529.

Battles between Danes and Heathobards

King Hrothgar’s hall, Heorot, can reasonably be assumed to have been built some time during the first two decades of the sixth century. In the poem it is hinted that it will be burnt down at some point after Beowulf’s visit. In line with the discussion above, the earliest this can have happened is around 538, but most probably it was not until around 550. The perpetrators would have been the Heathobards with Ingeld as their leader, possibly with support from Hrothulf. Lejre in northwestern Zealand is not mentioned in the poem, but according to early medieval Scandinavian sources the main seat of the Skjǫldungs was moved to Lejre by Hrólfr Kraki, who appears to correspond to Hrothgar’s nephew Hrothulf in the poem. The earliest definite datings of an archaeologically-documented high-status settlement at Lejre are from the second half of the sixth century (see Chapter 14).

Battles between Danes, Frisians, and Jutes

The poem offers no points of reference for dating these battles, except that they are not described as mythical, but as if they had taken place not very far back in time. A suggestion would be the late fifth century.

Conclusions with Summary Timeline

The main narrative of the poem, dealing with Beowulf’s battles with Grendel, Grendel’s mother, the Serpent, and Onela, may have its centre of gravity roughly in the period 525–560. With just a few exceptions, the many direct and indirect indications of time in Beowulf form a largely logical sequence. The structure is not immediately obvious to the reader, however. To get an overall picture, we have to carefully piece together many small fragments scattered across various parts of the poem. This, together with the chronological contradictions regarding the ages of Hygelac, Beowulf, and Hygd, suggests the lack of a conscious intention to inform, which fits far better with the notion of a gradually emerging, complex oral tradition than with that of a deliberate and structured literary author. It might be felt that a long period of famine and suffering from 536 onwards would tell against the idea of wars continuing into the 540s. In the rear-view mirror of history, however, we see many examples of how hardship and war make all too common bed­ fellows. The timeline suggested here is based on the evidence presented earlier in this chapter. It also takes as its starting point the conclusion that Beowulf was not composed in writing as the literary product of an Old English author, but ultimately goes back to an eastern Scandinavian oral tradition. 23  2479–89.



Chronology

225

All the dates are approximations and must be treated with caution. They should, though, offer some guidance to those wishing to navigate the real-world events of the Migration Period reflected in the poem. Main Events of the Poem 530–550/560

Kings and Queens of the Danes Healfdene 440/445–? Heorogar 465–? Hrothgar 475/480–545 Halga 480/485–? Hrothulf 505/510–(575?) Wealhtheow 480/485–?

Kings and Queens of the Gutes Hrethel 455/460–before 529 Hygelac 495/500–530 Hæthcyn 485/490–529 Heardred 529 (at the latest)–545/550 Hygd 505/510–?. Or 490–?

King of the Gutes and Descendant of the Scilfings Beowulf 510–555/560 Kings and Princes of the Swedes/Scilfings Ongentheow 460–no later than 529 Ohthere 480/485–515/530 Onela 485/490–550 Eadgils 505/510–560/570 Eanmund 505/515–545/550 Ecgtheow 465/470–? Weohstan 500/505–? Wiglaf 530–?

Wars between the Swedes and the Gutes First war After ca. 505 and before 528. Gotland. Second war No later than 529. Southeast Uppland. Third war 540s. Gotland. Fourth war 550s. Mainland Sweden. Burning Down of Heorot by the Heathobards Around 550

Battles at Finnsburg between the Danes, Frisians, and Jutes Late fifth/early sixth century.

Chapter 23

RETROSPECTIVE SUMMARY In such a

wide-ranging, long-standing, and international field of scholarship as Beowulf, one might imagine that everything would long since have been thoroughly investigated. And yet as far as the absolutely crucial question of the poem’s origins is concerned, that is not the case. “Books have their destinies,” habent sua fata libelli, could perhaps be a fitting quotation for a work with as complex a history as Beowulf, all the more so given that both the only manuscript of the poem and its two transcripts came close to going up in smoke. But if we also take into account the opening words of the phrase—Pro captu lectoris—by which Terentianus stressed that literary works are understood differently according to the capabilities of their readers, then the quote is less apt. Traditionally, Beowulf has been interpreted from a very one-sided point of view, namely that it was composed by an Old English poet. To have been able to compose the story independently in as historically and factually plausible a way as we find in the poem, such an author must have had access to a whole array of Scandinavian traditional material. And yet the only material of that kind that survives in Old English is the poem Widsith, which consists of unsorted lists of peoples and rulers of northern Europe and elsewhere, but contains no information about the various historical contexts that make up the narrative of Beowulf. There is hardly a trace of such information, either, in the rest of the rich corpus of Anglo-Saxon writings, or in any other type of source. This premise, so fundamental to the axiom of an Old English poet, thus evaporates at first sight, like a morning mist lifting with the first rays of the rising sun. The idea of such a poet having composed Beowulf guided by Scandinavian traditions preserved in England is based entirely on an argumentum e silentio and has to be judged accordingly. And since, as my analysis in the second half of this book has shown, far too much of the narrative can be interpreted in a plausible Scandinavian geographical, topographical, and historical perspective, it equally cannot be regarded as a work of pure fiction by an Old English poet. The only reasonable conclusion that remains, then, is that Beowulf was originally composed somewhere where the story is set, that is to say, in sixth-century Scandinavia. Given the basic assumption of an Old English poet, it has been natural to try to resolve the question of the poem’s background and origins in the light of philological evidence and by comparing the work with conditions in English society and culture at various times. Unfortunately, the result of this has been that archaeologists in both Scandinavia and England, like Sleeping Beauty and the entire staff of her castle, have fallen into a collective hundred years’ sleep and neglected the fundamental task of evaluating the archaeological content of the poem. As one of that group, just aroused from slumber, I have attempted to remedy this neglect. Although the supposed Old English poet has often been described as a pious Christian living in a monastery, he is sometimes assumed to have used earlier Anglo-Saxon

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pagan traditions for the ideological framework of the poem and as a model for the pagan funerals it describes, while employing the secular upper-class setting of his own day as a model for its material culture. I have therefore scrutinized this premise as well. Earlier archaeological assessments have generally been confined to comparing the material culture of Beowulf with the known archaeological facts about England and Scandinavia at the time when it is assumed to have been composed in England. To avoid circular reasoning, however, the material world of the poem has to be considered without preconceived ideas about when and where it originated, and then compared with what is known and not known from the English and Scandinavian archaeological records of different periods. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the elite material and social setting of the poem is the constant talk of rings of a prestigious character, sometimes specified as neck or arm rings, and never explicitly fashioned from any other metal than gold. In Scandinavia, such rings are a characteristic feature of the late Roman Iron Age and the Migration Period, c.300–550, and—just as in the poem—they are always made of gold. This is in stark contrast to England, where neck and arm rings of gold or any other material are not found at all from the beginning of Anglo-Saxon times to the late Viking Age. Just as crucially, finds of neck and arm rings are entirely absent from the whole of Scandinavia during the following period, c.550–750, in which the poem is generally held to have been composed in England. Another equally prestigious artefact that figures throughout Beowulf is the shirt of mail, or “byrnie.” Mail shirts were used in elite circles in Scandinavia throughout the first millennium ad. In England, only one example is known, from Sutton Hoo. But as this one was placed in a pagan ship burial of a clearly eastern Scandinavian character, together with a shield and helmet no less clearly eastern Scandinavian in origin, there is much to suggest that it, too, came from Scandinavia. The huge number of excavated burials in England from early Anglo-Saxon times with no trace of other shirts of mail can only be taken to mean that they were not in general use in elite circles in that country prior to the late Viking Age. This striking lack in early Anglo-Saxon England of the core material features of the poem—its neck rings, arm rings, and mail shirts—is confirmed by the fact that, when such objects are referred to in other Old English texts from before the late Viking Age, they either reflect a continental European tradition or, in the case of mail shirts, are expressly linked to foreigners. The only possible conclusion is that the Scandinavian material setting central to the poem represents the period prior to ad 550, and never existed in England in AngloSaxon times. An Old English poet cannot possibly, on the basis of either personal experience or indigenous antiquarian tradition, have described so vividly the sight of glistening gold rings in princely halls or the sound and gleam of shirts of mail on marching men, and equally he can scarcely have conveyed the social magic of these materials in the way we find in the poem. The archaeological picture which Beowulf presents is often equated to that provided by the large ship burial at Sutton Hoo in East Anglia, from around 625. But, as has been noted, the material world of the poem reflects a Scandinavian princely environment that



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disappeared for good in the middle of the sixth century, entirely in keeping with my dating of the historical events described in the first half of that century. It is this narrow window that constitutes “the time of Beowulf,” not the time of the Sutton Hoo burial. This is because, like many other Scandinavian traditions from the Middle Iron Age, the one represented in Beowulf ends abruptly in the middle of the sixth century, the time of the great famine disaster in northern Europe (see Chapter 20). The poem’s descriptions of battles between Swedes and Geats and between Finn and Hnæf, and of Scandinavian cremations, have an almost cinematic tangibility that gives far stronger an impression that they are eyewitness accounts than that they are literary products created centuries later in a distant, Christian England. It is much more likely that such impressionistic images spring from direct personal experience of pagan Scandinavia, where the storyline of the poem unfolds. No such traditions appear in any other Old English literature. The idea that the accounts in the poem of pagan cremations derive from Anglo-Saxon traditions is also based on an argument from silence. We can only conclude that an Old English poet would have lacked the antiquarian frames of reference to be able to convey the central significance which neck and arm rings, shirts of mail, and pagan cremations have throughout the poem, in material, ideological, and social terms. And as neck and arm rings were likewise not to be found in Scandinavia in the time of the hypothetical poet, he cannot have found inspiration there, either. Beowulf abounds in features typical of oral literature in verse form, and yet is usually considered to have been composed in writing. In so far as this contradiction is even discussed, it is dismissed with the claim that the Old English poet wrote his work making systematic use of the entire arsenal of literary devices at the disposal of oral poetry. However, I am unable to find a single relevant example for comparison in contemporary Germanic poetry which supports this idea, nor are any such examples generally cited. It is no more than an assumption, whose sole purpose seems to be to legitimize the proposition that Beowulf was composed in writing, which, if true, cannot have happened in Scandinavia. None of the premises for the hypothesis of an Old English poet, then—that the individual in question had access to relevant Scandinavian traditions, depicted the material setting of the poem on the basis of his own environment, and composed his work in writing but in an oral form—find any support in available sources. Even as rudimentary an examination as this shows that an Old English poet would not have been in a position to depict key aspects of the historical, material, social, and ideological framework of Beowulf—in other words, to create the work at all. As the poem does not contain the slightest traces of Anglo-Saxon tradition either, the only reasonable conclusion that remains is that the story was composed in Scandinavia and later transferred to England as a largely coherent work of oral poetry. Archaic linguistic features suggest that the narrative of Beowulf was circulating in Anglian territory in England no later than the end of the seventh or beginning of the eighth century. Archaic characteristics in terms of palaeography and orthography also indicate that the poem may already have existed in written form at that time. But it must be noted that this does not represent an earliest possible date for the creation of the poem, only the point in time before which there is insufficient other Old English material for comparison. The only conclusion that can be drawn is thus that the poem was circulating in England at the time stated, not that it cannot have older roots. An earlier date

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is suggested by the fact that several personal names in the poem have forms that point back to the time before the Germanic Sound Shift. What is quite clear is that there are direct and indirect traces in Scandinavia of verse-based oral narrative poetry from the Middle Iron Age. From a cultural-historical point of view, it is unreasonable to believe that the princely settings of Migration Period Scandinavia would not have cultivated a rich art of oral narrative, including epic poetry, most likely using early forms of the common Germanic metre fornyrðislag. The question is, indeed, whether we know of any non-literate society in the world at the same level of complexity as that of Scandinavia during the Migration Period that did not cultivate a rich oral poetic art in verse form, often including poetry of epic proportions. An obvious illustration of this is Iceland, which in the Middle Ages was one of the least complex societies in Europe, but in literary terms nevertheless perhaps the most advanced. Throughout Beowulf we find an underlying core of pre-Christian, highly materialistic ideas and values, to which the Christian elements have clearly been added secondarily. There is no real Christian message, no one is portrayed as a bearer of Christian ideals and ambitions, and no one is given a Christian burial. The supposed Christian poet does not even understand the pagan conceptions of death and the soul that permeate the accounts of pagan cremations he himself is assumed to have written. Equally remarkably, the figure who primarily expresses himself in Christian terms, King Hrothgar, is at the same time depicted as the leader of the pagan cult. Similarly, Beowulf, despite the pious, godly words put in his mouth, is still accorded a magnificent pagan cremation. The Christian elements in the poem are largely limited to brief moralizing and pious exclamations and comments, which hardly ever encroach on its historical and factual content. Depictions of life in the royal hall and of battles between Danes, Frisians, and Jutes or between Gutes and Swedes are virtually devoid of such elements. Even in the passages where they are most frequent—those about Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the Serpent—they have no influence on the way the social and material culture of the poem is described. The only conclusion that can really be drawn is that the story of Beowulf came into being in an originally pagan setting and that the limited Christian elements were added secondarily to a comparatively intact pagan core. After a period of transmission in an increasingly Christian England, it is natural that some of the pagan elements and the lack of a Christian perspective would gradually have been found objectionable in that setting, encouraging certain corrections and additions from a Christian standpoint. These are remarkably limited and loosely inserted, however, and primarily relate to evil figures such as the Grendelkin and the Serpent, or else remark upon the fates of various individuals. That is to say, they appear in contexts that naturally invite moralizing comments in a Christian spirit. They were probably supplied by Anglo-Saxon Christian bards as they recited the poem orally to Christian audiences. Despite the extremely weak basis for the view that Beowulf was composed in writing by a Christian author, then, it has served as an effective bulwark against the idea that the poem could have come to England as a pagan work of oral poetry originally composed in Scandinavia.



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As it is incompatible with the historical and geographical framework of the poem to regard the Ġēatas as synonymous with peoples such as the Jutes or the Goths, the only possible alternatives are that they are Gauts (ON gautar, Sw. götar) or Gutes (Sw. gutar), i.e., Gotlanders. The traditional view that the Geats of Beowulf have their home in Västeror Ö� stergötland, however, lacks support in the text of the poem, and is in fact even contradicted by it. For historical reasons, Ö� land or other parts of Götaland in the extended modern sense of that designation are also out of the question. The Geats are consistently spoken of as a maritime, seafaring people who maintain relations across the sea with the Danes and the Swedes, a context that clearly points to the southern Baltic Sea area. And, sure enough, their homeland is expressly referred to as an island, ēalond, linguistically an entirely unambiguous word. The only ethnic group of any significant size inhabiting an island in the Baltic who could correspond to the Geats of the poem are the Gutes. This conclusion should be seen in the light of the fact that, in the Middle Iron Age, the large, well-populated island of Gotland enjoyed considerable material wealth, reflecting extensive and independent relations with the Roman Empire and its provinces and with the Gothic and Hunnic regions. Then, as it did later, Gotland played an important political, cultural, and economic role in northern Europe. The Geats are referred to in the poem as Wederas and with the epithet weder, a word which, with its hard d-sound, is traditionally translated as “weather,” “wind” or “storm.” But, as a tribal designation, this seems completely unrealistic and has no known parallels in the Germanic world. A far more plausible explanation for the word weder is that it goes back to a Proto-Norse word for “wether,” meaning “ram, male sheep,” which after 400 years of transmission and copying in England had lost its original lisping sound and been corrupted into a word with the sense of “weather,” which as part of a tribal name is entirely improbable. The traditional assumption that the poem was composed by an Old English poet and that the Geats were Gauts living on the Swedish mainland has resulted in generations of scholars turning a blind eye to the fact that the Geats are described as very much a maritime people, that the only true meaning of the Old English word ēalond is “island,” and that by far the likeliest interpretation of the Old English word weder, as a tribal designation, is “ram,” and not “weather.” With its roots in PrGmc *gautōz, formed from the singular preterite form of the verb *geutan, meaning “pour out,” the tribal name Ġēatas is linguistically close to names like Gauts, Gutes, and Goths. The fact that Ġēatas contains the same ablaut form as Gauts, whereas Gutes and Goths derive from a different ablaut form of the verb in question, PrGmc *gut-, could be taken to indicate that the Geats are not Gutes. However, the initial element weder- in Weder-Ġēatas, and the fact that the latter’s homeland is spoken of as an island somewhere between the lands of the Danes and the Swedes, point in the opposite direction. What is more, no epithet resembling weder is known for any other Scandinavian people than the Gutes. That leaves us with the Gutes of Gotland as our only option. This conclusion is confirmed by the fact that, in the Early Middle Ages, the ram was a well-known official national symbol of the Gotlanders. The circumstances mentioned carry such weight that the difference in ablaut form between Ġēatas and Gutes/gutar cannot be considered decisive. It probably arose either

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over four hundred years of oral and written transmission in England, or as a result of the poem being transferred to England by a non-Gutnish bard who pronounced the tribal name gutar with an au-diphthong. My primary analysis provides a firm foundation for the conclusion that the material, geographical, historical, social, and ideological framework of Beowulf cannot be the independent literary product of an Old English Christian poet, but was in all essentials created orally in Scandinavia, which was a fertile seedbed for epic poetry. Once this has been established, along with the conclusion that the Geats are the Gutes of Gotland, an analysis of the implications enables many previously inexplicable details and contexts, not only in the poem itself but also in other types of sources, to emerge in a clearer light. A number of noteworthy topographical and archaeological circumstances point to an area in Burs parish in southeastern Gotland, inland from what was then the innermost part of the Bandlundviken Bay, as a possible site of the royal seat of Hygelac and Beowulf. The enormous geological formation known as the Littorina Ridge may be referred to in the poem as a sǣweall, and here it forms a striking backdrop to a large farm that includes one of the biggest known buildings in Scandinavia from the time in question, with exceptionally rich archaeological finds and a monumental approach road from a well-sheltered harbour. When Beowulf sets off on his journey to King Hrothgar at the beginning of the poem, he does so under beorge. This could very well be a reference to the high Littorina Ridge on the northern side of the Bandlundviken Bay , known since early times as “Burgen.” The national fortification of the Gotlanders, Torsburgen—the largest stone hill fort in Scandinavia, partly demolished by enemy forces in the early sixth century—may be the site referred to in the poem as “the fortress of the people” and “the destroyed fortress.” The unique vaulted limestone “crater” cairns of Gotland, from the Bronze Age, seem much likelier models for the Serpent’s lair than the Late Stone Age megalithic tombs of Västergötland or Britain. The royal seat of the Danish Skjǫldung/Scylding kings plays a central part in Beowulf. The frequently advanced idea that King Hrothgar’s hall, Heorot, corresponds to Lejre in northern Zealand is inconsistent with the archaeological and historical dating of the events described in the poem and the dating of the oldest known high-status settlement at Lejre. A close geographical and topographical reading of the text points instead to southeastern Zealand, to the Broskov area just inland from Præstø Fjord, southwest of the large Stevns peninsula, Scandinavia’s leading centre of wealth in the Middle Iron Age. The beautifully stone-paved road that is mentioned may be the magnificent “Roman” road at Broskov. All the indications are that the principal seat of the Skjǫldungs was only relocated to Lejre after Heorot had been burnt down by enemies as the poem predicts. No place-names in the strict sense occur in Beowulf, and nothing is said about where the royal seats of the Danes and the Gutes are located. The place where King Ongentheow is killed is not named, nor is the royal residence of the Frisian king, despite the dramatic events that take place there. This lack of clear geographical references has sometimes been attributed to the Old English poet not having aimed for geographical precision in



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his fictional account of a Scandinavia largely unfamiliar to him. I myself regard it as a natural consequence of the well-known reluctance of early Germanic poets and artists to spell things out when they could express themselves indirectly and metaphorically. The geographical reticence of the text is an indication, rather, that the core of the poem came into existence in a setting where audiences already knew roughly what had happened and to whom a nod was therefore as good as a wink. The lack of geographical precision is perfectly compatible with the conclusion that the core of Beowulf was originally composed in eastern Scandinavia. The epithet Scilfing (or Scylfing) is applied in the poem to no fewer than four kings or princes of what is referred to there as Swīorīċe and Swēoðēod. The Swedish elite’s archaeologically well-attested tradition, not least in a royal central place like Uppsala with its nearby satellite settlement of Valsgärde, of making their splendid halls even more monumental by placing them on a skialf, a raised, often artificial plateau, may have been a way of accentuating and reinforcing the myth of the Swedish kings’ relationship to the gods Freyr, Freyja, and Odin, who occupied elevated dwellings bearing names with the suffix -skjálf. The epithet Scilfing in Beowulf, and the names Swīorīċe and Swēoðēod, evidently go back to a specific eastern Swedish tradition from the Migration Period. The poem is very clear about Beowulf, through his father Ecgtheow and his kinsmen Weohstan and Wiglaf, being of Swedish royal descent. This fact, which is often overlooked, helps to clarify the whole narrative. At least four wars between the Swedes and the Geats are described, and these only form a comprehensible pattern once it has been established that the latter are the Gutes. Two of these wars are fought on Gotland and two in eastern Svealand. In the first of the latter, the Swedish king Ongentheow/Egil is killed after first retreating inland, possibly along the Långhundra channel in southeastern Uppland. There, the Gotlanders advance as far as what are referred to as a hagan and freoðowong, an “enclosure” near to “protected fields,” where Ongentheow dies. The conclusion that the Geats of Beowulf are Gotlanders also enables us to arrive at a passable reconstruction of the factual content of Ynglingatal’s badly mangled lines about the death of King Egil. Here, Beowulf and Ynglingatal clearly build on a common tradition, further reinforcing the picture of an eastern Scandinavian background to Beowulf. Many compounds and a good number of simplex words in the poem are not attested in other Old English texts. A good many individual words and expressions, as well as several personal names, are also markedly Scandinavian in character. The apparent unfamiliarity of Old English scribes with a significant number of Scandinavian personal names in the poem fits in with this pattern. The word æppelfealu in the text, describing horses, would probably have been difficult for Anglo-Saxons to understand, but hardly for Scandinavians. Based on the assumption that Beowulf was the work of an Old English author, the final element -þēo(w) in the Danish queen’s name Wealhþēo(w) has often been interpreted as “slave,” referring primarily to a woman of Celtic birth. From a Scandinavian standpoint, “servant,” with the implied sense of “servant for higher purposes in society” or “servant of the gods,” seems a far more credible interpretation in cultural-his-

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torical and philological terms. The same can be said of the Swedish princely names Ongenþēo(w) and Ecgþēo(w). The poem is very sparing when it comes to direct information about the internal chronology of the narrative. Readers have to form their own picture of this, based on indirect and direct information about various events and circumstances. This characteristic is far more in keeping with oral epic than with an author writing in a structured manner. I have drawn up a hypothetical timeline for as many figures and key events in the poem as possible, giving approximate hypothetical dates. Apart from certain contradictions regarding Hygelac and Beowulf, a broadly coherent picture emerges. I have attempted to show that the figures of Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and to some extent the Serpent could plausibly go back to what was originally an allegorical representation of the years of severe crop failures and famine that befell northern Europe in ad 536–550, a period of disastrous summers throughout the northern hemisphere and particularly in Scandinavia. It all began with the sun being obscured for almost two years, an occurrence well attested in texts from late antiquity and probably also reflected in eddic literature and the Kalevala. The cause was a supervolcanic eruption in early March 536, probably in western North America, compounded by another in Central America in 540 and a smaller eruption, location unknown, in 547. These events were accompanied by a dramatic contraction of human settlement and the farmed landscape in northern Europe, a development that can really only be interpreted as reflecting a sharp decline in population, resulting in turn from extensive famine triggered by an acute agricultural disaster. My metaphorical interpretation of Grendel and Grendel’s mother in the light of these circumstances comes up against certain chronological difficulties which can perhaps be overcome, or perhaps not. At all events, it is my view that the figures of the Grendelkin and the Serpent are to be interpreted as reflecting, not primitive popular conceptions, but a Germanic intellectualism typical of the time, which represented real-world occurrences allegorically, in a visual metaphorical guise. The poem is full of minor contradictions that cannot be explained from the traditional Tolkienian perspective of an author of great literary awareness. Most of them are at a technical narrative level, and can readily be understood in the light of a complex history of oral composition and tradition. Historical, topographical, genealogical, and chronological contradictions in Beowulf are relatively few and far between. For all the fanciful depictions of Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the Serpent, both the settings and the dialogue of the poem bear the definite stamp of reality and factual credibility. There is a very clear dividing line between reality and fantasy, or rather between objective realism and what is usually regarded as primitive folk belief, but in fact can hardly be described in such terms. Beowulf’s youthful swimming exploits in the sea are probably not all that mythical either, but would appear to be metaphorical representations of sea voyages in oared vessels, which, as the story was passed on, came to be misunderstood as actual swimming. The poem’s accounts of Beowulf and his dealings with Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the Serpent have certain similarities to tales from Old Norse and later Scandinavian literature involving mythical figures such as Bǫðvarr Bjarki in Hrólfs saga kraka and oth-



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ers in Grettis Saga, Harðarsaga, Gullþóris saga,and the work of Saxo Grammaticus. Even for scholars who are not quite as critical of these traditions as Magnús Fjalldal (1998), it is difficult to see them as anything other than apocryphal impressions of a possible Beowulf figure. Original traditions concerning Beowulf may also have fused with existing narrative types. However this material is assessed, though, it bears repeating that likely literary traces of the figure of Beowulf and historically-known events in the poem named after him are only to be found in Scandinavia, not in the Anglo-Saxon world. The basic vantage point of the poem is clearly eastern Scandinavian, essentially reflecting a tradition from Zealand, Gotland, and to some extent Svealand from just before the middle of the sixth century. I imagine the poem coming into being roughly as follows. When Beowulf and his companions return to Gotland, they bring with them a large body of oral narrative material about their journey to King Hrothgar, life at Heorot, Beowulf’s verbal duel with Unferth, the account he himself gave at Heorot of his youthful exploits in Frisia and his journey home from there, and his struggles with Grendel and Grendel’s mother. Inserted into these stories, like the cherries in a cake, are a good many other things they had heard at Heorot, including a large number of quoted speeches and observations, not only what others had said and various stories they had listened to, but also things Beowulf himself had said before. These include the traditions concerning Hrothgar’s descent, Scyld and his funeral, the fighting at Finnsburg and Hnæf’s funeral, and the continental myth regarding Sigurd/Sigemund. All of these retrospective passages, which have often been regarded as interpolations with no literary justification, or as reflecting the carefully considered intentions of an imagined author, more likely represent the self-evident way in which, in an oral world, Beowulf and his comrades would have reported the sum total of their experiences. This also explains why some of what has been told before is retold, sometimes more than once. When Beowulf and his men set foot on their native shore again and are about to meet the much-esteemed Queen Hygd, their conversation quite naturally turns to her polar opposite, the wicked Modthryth/Fremu. As they recount their adventures a short time later to an attentive audience in the hall, these final reflections are also spoken of and hence remembered and incorporated in the narrative. The way in which the speakers retell everything they have had told to them, experienced, and themselves previously spoken of is part of the natural logic of oral narrative. In contrast to today’s no-frills way of reporting what we have heard and experienced in condensed summaries—a product of the stunted capacity for memorization in a nonoral society—they reproduce as much as possible in direct speech, a natural device that also makes the story more tangible and alive. Not only Beowulf’s companions, but also everyone who was present at their homecoming, listening in the hall, may later have retold all or parts of this story in various contexts and helped to pass it on to others. Eventually the narrative was extended to include the accounts of Beowulf’s fight with King Onela, alias the Serpent, and of Beowulf’s death and funeral. In the latter context, earlier wars and enmity with the Swedes naturally came to mind, were recounted, and became an organic part of the narrative. The metaphorical reinterpretations of Beowulf’s exploits as encounters with Grendel and

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the Serpent which I propose may be assumed to have come about as a result of poetic embellishment on Gotland. Based on systematic computational profiling of various stylistic features, Beowulf has recently been interpreted as a fairly uniform work in literary, linguistic, and metrical terms (Neidorf and Pasqual. 2019): We show that several orthogonal stylistic metrics do not differ between possible partitions of Beowulf, which is consistent with the hypothesis that portions of the poem were not produced separately, or, if they were, that the styles are remarkably uniform. Although this uniformity cannot adjudicate definitively between single or multiple authorship, it militates against a view of the work either as constructed from chronologically disparate poems or as markedly shaped by scribal intervention. Our evidence for the stylistic homogeneity of Beowulf does not prove that the poem is the work of one individual, but it substantially enhances the probability of unitary authorship, while presenting serious obstacles to those who would advocate for composite authorship or scribal recomposition.

These findings are by no means incompatible, however, with the idea of the poem originally coming into being as the result of a Gutnish poet editing and combining into a single work a number of shorter poems and stories about Beowulf, composed according to a common Gutnish poetic pattern. It is hinted at several times in the poem that Heorot will be burnt down and destroyed, with dire consequences for Hrothgar’s family. Such a dramatic event would presumably soon have become known throughout Scandinavia and may have been inserted into the narrative at a later stage by eastern Swedish bards. The poem is not a biography of Beowulf—it tells us relatively little about his life. Tolkien was thus, in a sense, right in his view that, rather than Beowulf himself, the main characters here are Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the Serpent, around whom the poem is structured. The basic theme of the work, as I see it, is these creatures as a manifestation of the misfortunes of the time. As Beowulf is the one who will put everything to rights, he is nevertheless the central figure. At the same time, he provides the tragic hero that every oral epic requires. According to my interpretation, much of the content of the poem reflects a Scandinavian oral poetic tradition, just as Ettmüller (1840), Rönning (1883), Sarrazin (1888), and others assumed early on, but more intuitively, although Rönning imagined that tradition having been edited by an Old English “author” in Northumbria. More recent scholars, such as Magoun (1953), Niles (1983a), Creed (1990, 2003), and presumably others, have also touched on this idea, albeit with considerable caution. The Old English language of the manuscript is a late West Saxon dialect. But as there are also archaic features that point back in time to the Anglian territories of East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumbria, it is reasonable to conclude that the story of Beowulf must initially have been transferred to and transmitted in Anglian areas and only later found its way into Saxon dialect in the south of England. And if, as is now believed, details in the manuscript reflect an earlier written text, we also have to allow for the possibility of some cross-fertilization between written and oral transmission in England.



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The poem’s very tangible accounts of military encounters and material settings suggest that the main narrative was “frozen” early on. Only as short a period of oral tradition as I have assumed before the first manuscript came into being, no more than five or six generations, can explain the concrete and factually credible on-the-spot descriptions of sixth-century Scandinavian settings that are the hallmark of the poem. That would also be consistent with the wealth of plausible geographical, genealogical, historical, and other information about Scandinavia which the text provides, and with the palpable links between Beowulf and the eastern Scandinavian tradition represented in the older part of Ynglingatal and in the archaic opening of Guta saga. All the indications are that the story of Beowulf came to England fairly early on and with few intermediaries, most probably passed on by a professional bard. The point of contact between England and eastern Scandinavia prior to the Viking Age that seems most likely in every respect is the large ship burial at Sutton Hoo in East Anglia from around 625, which exhibits several distinct eastern Scandinavian features in terms of grave gifts and burial practice. Here I have outlined a hypothetical model of how the Beowulf tradition could have been transferred to England by a professional bard in connection with a royal dynastic marriage linking East Anglia and eastern Svealand around ad 600. There is much to suggest that Anglo-Saxon bards and audiences knew the poem was about a Scandinavian past and saw no reason to introduce into it any of the many native heroic and genealogical traditions that must have been circulating at the princely courts of their day. Apart from a superficial Christian facelift, the Scandinavian pagan core of the poem seems to have been left largely intact. This helps us to understand the unique freshness so characteristic of the poem’s descriptions of material culture, funeral scenes, and military operations. Of course, the transfer of the Beowulf tradition to England, and its subsequent oral and written transmission in Old English, may have resulted in passages of the poem, both short and long, being lost. Once the narrative had begun to be transmitted on English soil, it seems that its core content was largely frozen and, all the evidence suggests, written down early on. The contrast with the almost total disintegration of the Beowulf tradition in Scandinavia after seven to eight hundred years of oral transmission is dramatic. Since written culture was so late in becoming established in Scandinavia, here the tradition only survived in the form of disparate and contradictory fragments. We have every reason to be grateful that an Anglo-Saxon cultural elite found this foreign tradition worth passing on with respect and preserving in writing. The only component of the poem that can be said with certainty to have been added on Anglo-Saxon soil is a degree of Christian reworking of the text. As a non-philologist, I have refrained from attempting to assess what the Old English contribution to the poem may consist of in purely literary terms, and which of the Christian elements could be entirely new and which the result of embellishment of a pagan core, for example as regards King Hrothgar’s well-known speech before Beowulf returns home. In view of the discussion so far, there is cause to consider the question of Beowulf’s value as a source. Having been regarded as composed by an English author, who inde-

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pendently transformed Scandinavian tradition and popular belief into a literary work of art, the poem has been deemed to be of limited or no value as a historical source. If my interpretation is correct, the core of the poem, with its various interpolations, came into existence in eastern Scandinavia in the sixth century in the form of separate oral poems that were gradually woven together into a whole, which soon afterwards was transferred to England. There it was transmitted orally for three or four generations, with its main narrative preserved largely intact, apart from a superficial Christian colouring and a misinterpretation of the original allegorical thinking as regards Grendel, the Serpent, and Beowulf’s youthful swimming adventures. A relatively short time would thus have elapsed between the events described in the poem and the “freezing” of the main story that seems to have occurred when it was transferred to England: no more than a couple of generations for the more recent narratives, and three for the older ones inserted into the poem. That is a very short time compared with the twenty to twenty-five generations of oral transmission that many Scandinavian traditions concerning events of the Middle Iron Age underwent before they were written down. The main storyline of Beowulf plays out over a short period of time. Some of the shorter narrative digressions, however—such as those relating to Modthryth/Fremu and Offa, Sigurd and Sigemund, Hama and the Brōsinga mene, and Scyld’s funeral— probably go back to traditions that were already several generations old when, on being retold, they were incorporated into that of Beowulf. The time frame of the material culture of the poem is wider, but still relatively narrow. The value of a poetic work as a historical source is determined not only by the period of oral transmission and the mutual influence of different written versions, but also by the number of times the poem has been recited and edited orally, or rather, the number of times it has passed through a succession of human minds in the course of those processes. Over the course of a century, this may have been anything from three or four to any number of times. During the relatively short period of around a hundred and fifty years that I have assumed for the oral transmission of Beowulf in Scandinavia and England, it could have been recited anywhere between half a dozen and hundreds of times. The lower end of that range is unlikely, and given the poem’s strikingly accurate rendering of concrete facts about the Migration Period, so too is the upper end. I therefore imagine that the Beowulf tradition that has been preserved for posterity was recited between twenty and forty times, by a somewhat smaller number of bards, before it was written down. In addition, there were the influences that came into play in the writing down and copying of the poem. But the numbers suggested can be no more than conjecture. Although Beowulf can be attributed much more than the virtually non-existent value as a historical source that it has traditionally been ascribed, that does not apply across the board. The question has to be considered on a case-by-case basis. Like all literature, oral poetry reflects subjective impressions, feelings, and intentions, and as it is passed on these are subject to alteration. While Beowulf and most of its cast of characters can be assumed to have had a historical background in eastern Scandinavia in the late Migration Period, the narrative never sought to express anything other than personal perceptions of reality, roughly in the way Jens Peter Schjødt assumes regarding the tradi-



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tions behind many legendary sagas (Schjødt 2009). Although the passages of the poem relating to Grendel and Grendel’s mother hardly started off as accounts of real events, it is likely that they did originally reflect actual reality, refashioned into an allegorical form. It is therefore reasonable, in my view, to attribute Beowulf much greater value in general as a historical source than other Scandinavian traditions concerning the same period, such as Ynglinga saga, Ynglingatal, Saxo, and a number of legendary sagas. There is much to suggest that the Geats of the poem were Gutes living on Gotland; that Hygelac, their king, died in a seaborne raid on Frisia; that there were a series of military encounters between Gotlanders and Swedes in the later part of the Migration Period, which ended to the Gotlanders’ disadvantage; that a number of princely figures, and presumably Beowulf himself, ultimately reflect people who actually existed; and that, at this time, the royal seat of the Skjǫldungs was still in southeastern Zealand, before it was burnt down by the enemy and relocated to Lejre in northern Zealand. There is no reason to believe that the archaeologically well-documented Scandinavian raiding expeditions of the Middle Iron Age were aimed exclusively at Scandinavian neighbours or other peoples in the immediate vicinity. No doubt coasts beyond Scandinavia were also harried. An expedition apparently launched from eastern Svealand against Saaremaa in Estonia in the late Vendel/Merovingian Period (Price et al. 2016) is probably just one of many examples of “Viking” raids predating the Viking Age. The joint Swedish-Gotlandic settlement established in western Latvia in the seventh century (Nerman 1958b) would scarcely have been founded by peaceful means and fits in well with the pattern of Svealand expansion in the southern Baltic, which also affected Gotland, Ö� land, and the east coast of mainland Sweden to both the south and the north. Hygelac and Beowulf’s raid on Frankish Frisia also illustrates the considerable reach of plundering expeditions in oared ships. Remains of defensive installations along the coasts of northwestern Gaul and southern England from the first half of the first millennium (Higham and Ryan 2013, 34–36) could suggest that Hygelac’s raid was not the first Scandinavian one in the area, just the oldest known one. It is also of interest here that Frankish sources are clear about Hygelac taking prisoners, who were admittedly liberated by the Franks, but who would otherwise no doubt have been used or sold as slaves. I am not claiming that Beowulf as it now exists is the result of a strict translation from Proto-Norse to Old English, even if the first oral transfer of the tradition may have been of such a character. The latter is no doubt also true of some other Old English texts, such as Widsith, Deor, and The Wanderer. The overall process was more complex than that. Fundamentally, Beowulf is to be regarded as an Old English poem, in the same way as Vǫlsunga saga, Vǫlundarkviða, Atlamál, Hervarar saga, and Hamðismál are to be viewed as Old Icelandic rather than continental Germanic literature. Nonetheless, the main elements of the narrative and its social, ideological, and material world are to be seen as essentially Scandinavian. The general use of the term “author” in this context is an unfortunate anachronism that obscures our understanding of the complex processes involved in the creation of much early Germanic and Norse poetry. Tjodolf may have edited and reworked an eastern Swedish tradition concerning the Swedish Yngling dynasty and linked it to later Nor-

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wegian ones, but to call him the author of the older part of Ynglingatal would be a gross and misleading simplification. In the case of Beowulf, the word “author” is only justified if we assume there were a whole series of them. First, we have the poets of eastern Scandinavia who composed individual parts of the story, and the one or more individuals who combined them into a larger entity. In addition, there were all the people who, first in Proto-Norse and then in Old English, transmitted the poem orally, perhaps adding to, subtracting from, correcting, misunderstanding, and editing it in terms of its content and its literary expression. The few individuals who were involved in writing down and copying the poem presumably had less influence on its content, form, style, message, and length. Essentially, Beowulf emerges as a collective product, primarily attributable to a series of poets and bards in Zealand, Gotland, and Svealand, a number of East Anglian, Northumbrian, Mercian, and West Saxon bards, and a number of Old English scribes, all of them unknown to us by name or character. That the poem, according to this scenario, had its background across a range of geographical areas is not unique. That is also true of much of the early Old Norse tradition in the form of older eddic poetry, Ynglingatal, Ynglinga saga, and legendary sagas. The same respect for foreign cultures can be seen in the way old traditions of continental origin were handled in Old Norse, despite five hundred to a thousand years of oral transmission. On finding that the analysis which I undertake of the implications of my primary analysis tallies closely with and confirms that primary analysis, one could be forgiven for wondering whether this was down to circular reasoning. But the fact that this subsequent analysis allows a comprehensible pattern to emerge from a good many previously inexplicable details, not only in Beowulf but also in other historical and other types of sources, shows that that is not the case. Once again, though, I would stress that the conclusion about the narrative of the poem being Scandinavian in origin is based on my primary analysis and is not undermined by any objections to the ensuing analysis of its implications. As no truly comprehensive investigation of the question of the poem’s origins has been carried out before, my arguments in this book have been directed more against others’ views than against others’ research findings. Sometimes I have anxiously asked myself whether there might be a nationalistic undercurrent to the study I have carried out, but I would like to believe that that is not the case, or at any rate, no more so than for others with the opposite view of the poem’s origins. No one, presumably, can be entirely unaffected by their background and experience. As I see it, responsibility for the serious neglect which the question of Beowulf’s origins has suffered rests less with linguists, literary scholars, and historians than with the archaeological research communities on either side of the North Sea, not least the Scandinavian one of which I myself am a member. The picture I have presented here could equally well have been put forward over half a century ago. The traditional assumption that Beowulf was created independently by an Old English Christian author has made it natural for scholars to interpret the poem in terms of



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what that author’s aims and intentions might have been, on matters large and small. Anyone who heads out onto such dangerous waters without lashing themselves to the mast risks being lured by the sirens’ song into an enchanted world of self-confirming argument. The conclusion of this book—that the narrative of the poem is essentially the product of a complex web of oral composition and transmission in Scandinavia followed by oral and written transmission in England—casts something of a cloud on that scholarly tradition. Not so very long ago, the idea of Beowulf being Scandinavian in origin was dismissed as an “absurd notion” for which there was not “a shred of evidence” (Stanley 1994, 13). That seems to me to be a premature conclusion. That great literature like Beowulf could be created in a genuinely oral world, such as that of Scandinavia in the Migration Period, should come as no surprise. In terms of literary awareness and interest, people in most preliterate, archaic, agrarian societies of the past—across every age group and social stratum—were way ahead of their modern-day descendants.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Note that we

have retained below the alphabetization norms for Scandinavian personal names and their diacritics, but have alphabetized þ as “th” in English. Icelandic names, however, are listed by patronymic rather than forename. The following abbreviations have been used: KVHAA = Kungl. Vitterhets historie och antikvitets akademien, Stockholm.

RGA = Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, edited by Heinrich Beck, Herbert Jankuhn, Kurt Ranke, and Reinhar Wenskus. 2nd completely reworked and heavily expanded edition. 35 vols. 1973–2008. Berlin: De Gruyter.

SAOB = Svenska akademiens ordlista över svenska språket. Stockholm: Svenska aka­de­ mien. Updated online at www.saob.se.

Primary Sources, Editions, and Translations

Adam Bremensis, Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum. 1978. In Quellen des 9. und 11. Jahrhunderts zu Geschichte der Hamburgischen Kirche und des Reiches. Edited by Werner Trillmich, 137–503. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Alexander, Michael, trans. 2005 [1995]. Beowulf. A Glossed Text. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. See Swanton 1996. Asser. See Keynes and Lapidge 2004. Bede. 1986. A History of the English Church and People. Translated and with an introduction by Leo Sherley-Price. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Björkman, Erik, trans. 1902. Beowulf. Fornengelsk dikt. Stockholm. Boethius, De consolatione philosphiae. 2005. Edited by Claudio Moreschini. 2nd ed. München: Saur. Brate, Erik, trans. 2004. Eddan. De nordiska guda- och hjältesångerna. 6th ed. Stockholm: Norstedt. Chickering, Jr., Howard D. 2006. Beowulf. A Dual-Language Edition. New York: Anchor. Child, Clarence Griffith. 1904. Beowulf and the Finnesburgh Fragment Translated from the Old English with an Introductory Sketch and Notes. London: Harrap. Clark Hall, John R. 1950. Beowulf and the Finnesburg Fragment. A Translation into Modern English Prose. Edited by C. L. Wrenn. London: Allen & Unwin. Collinder, Björn, trans. 1954. Beowulf. Översatt i originalets versmått. Stockholm: Natur och Kultur. Crépin, André, trans. 2007. Beowulf. Paris. Livre de poche. Crossley-Holland, Kevin, trans. 1988. The Anglo-Saxon Elegies. London: Folio. —— . 1999: Beowulf. The Fight at Finnsburh. Edited with an introduction and notes by Heather O’Donoghue. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Deor. In Crossley-Holland 1988, 31–35. Donaldson, E. Talbot, trans. 1975. Beowulf. A New Prose Translation. New York: Norton. Edda. 1983 [1914]. Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius. Nebst verwandten Denkmälern. Bd 1. Text. Edited by G. Neckel. 5th and revised ed. by H. Kuhn. Heidelberg: Winter.

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Further Reading and Bibliographies

Baker, Peter S., ed. 2000. The Beowulf Reader. New York: Garland. Barras, Colin. 2014. “The Year of Darkness.” New Scientist, January 18, 2014: 34–38. Christensen, Tom. 2010. “Lejre beyond the Legend—The Archaeological Evidence.” Siedlungsund Küstenforschung im südlichen Nordseegebiet 33: 237–54. Greenfield, Stanley, and Fred C. Robinson. 1980. A Bibliography of Publications of Old English Literature to the End of 1972. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Hasenfratz, R. 1993. Beowulf Scholarship: An Annotated Bibliography, 1979–1990. New York: Garland. Hermann, Pernille, ed. 2005. Literacy in Medieval and Early Modern Scandinavian Culture.

276

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