Steiner, The Dating and Datability of Beowulf

ATING AND

ATABILITY OF

EOWULF IN AN

ISTORICAL AND

SCHATOLOGICAL

ONTEXT

Erica Steiner

Centre for Medieval Studies

University of Sydney

Thesis submitted to fulfill requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (Honours),

University of Sydney, 2008.

Roof Boss from Norwich Cathedral, c. 1145; Laura Ward & Will Steeds, Demons: Visions of Evil in

Art; Carlton Books, Ltd., 2007, p. 95.

Scene from ‘The Last Judgement’ on the tympanum of the Cathedral of Saint-Lazare, Autun, France,

c. 1130-40; ibid, p. 131.

CKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am sincerely thankful for the endless patience of both my supervisor, Daniel

Anlezark, and course co-ordinator, John Pryor; the love and support of my parents

Karl and Katarina; and the eyes and ears of Michelle and Vicki, and all of my friends

– without whom this thesis would not have been the work it is.

For all the Old English texts used the source of the Old English was the

Dictionary of Old English Corpus in Electronic Form, (ed.) Antoinette di Paolo

Healey; Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, 2005; except for Beowulf

which is taken from Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, (ed.) Fr. Klaeber; D.C.

Heath & Co., 3

ed., 1950, and the prose Guthlac, which is taken from Felix, Life of

Saint Guthlac, (trans.) Bertram Colgrave; Cambridge University Press, 1956, and the

poetic Guthlac, which is taken from The Guthlac Poems of the Exeter Book, (ed.) Jane

Roberts; Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, 1979. All translations from the

Old English, where in single quotation marks, are my own, and where in double

quotation marks, are from Anglo-Saxon Poetry, (trans., ed.) S.A.J. Bradley;

Everyman’s Library, 2004; except for Beowulf, which is taken from Beowulf: A new

verse translation, (trans.) R.M. Liuzza; Broadview Literary Texts, 2000, unless other

wise specified, and the Riddles, taken from The Exeter Book Riddles, (trans.) Kevin

Crossley-Holland; Penguin Books, revised ed., 1993. The dictionary used was An

Anglo-Saxon Dictionary based on the manuscript collections of the late Joseph

Bosworth, (ed.) T. Northcote Toller; Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, 1898;

http://beowulf.engl.uky.edu/~kiernan/BT/ Bosworth-Toller.htm.

For Old Norse texts, all translations are from the edition cited, and the

dictionary consulted throughout was Richard Cleasby & Gudbrand Vigfusson, An

Icelandic-English Dictionary, http://www.northvegr.org/vigfusson/index.php.

For Latin texts, translations given in single quotation marks are my own, and

in double quotation marks, from the edition cited. The dictionary consulted

throughout was Charlton T. Lewis & Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary; Oxford

University Press, Clarendon Press, 1958.

The Modern English dictionary consulted throughout was The Oxford English

Dictionary; http://www.dictionary.oed.com.

Regarding places referred to in England; the etymology was provided by The

Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names, Based on the collections of the

English Place-Name Society, (eds.) Victor Watts, John Insley, Margaret Gelling;

Cambridge University Press, 2004; the charters referred to are all taken from Sawyer,

P.H., Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated list and Bibliography; Offices of the

Royal Historical Society, London, 1968, and their contents from the Dictionary of Old

English Corpus in Electronic Form, (ed.) Antoinette di Paolo Healey; Centre for

Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, 2005.

ABLE OF

ONTENTS

Acknowledgements:

Introduction:

Chapter One: The Historical Context of Beowulf:

The Date of the Manuscript:

Scandinavian Influences:

Historical Concordances:

Chapter Two: The Religious Context of Beowulf:

Datable Aspects of Christianity and Heathenism in Beowulf:

Funeral Rites in Beowulf:

Chapter Three: The Eschatological Context of Beowulf:

The Barrow-Dweller:

The Draugar:

Removal of the Draugar:

71.

Conclusion:

Bibliography:

Primary Sources:

Secondary Sources:

NTRODUCTION

“The greater the distance between the date of the Beowulf

manuscript...and the posited date of the poem as we have it

now, the heavier the element of hypothesis.”

Almost every period of Anglo-Saxon history has been used to provide a

context for the date of the composition of Beowulf; but from the available evidence,

the date of highest probability may be whittled down to two periods: the middle third

of the eighth century and the first third of the tenth. In line with Eric Stanley’s

cautionary reminder, quoted above, Chapter One, will examine the physical evidence

of the manuscript that may help to locate a most likely date of composition for the

poem, which I believe, lies in the abovementioned latter period of the early tenth

century. Secondly, the historical realities of this period being one of close linguistic,

literary, and human relationships between the Scandinavians who had migrated to and

settled in parts of England, and the Anglo-Saxons, will be put forth as the historical

and social context of the poem. In Chapter Two, the religious scenery used in Beowulf

will be placed in the historical context of the transition from heathenism to

Christianity in Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Scandinavian England. Finally, Chapter

Three will be a case-study of the themes of cross-cultural interaction and borrowing

between Anglo-Saxons and (Anglo)-Scandinavians in an eschatological context

through the identification of a specific type of supernatural being, the barrow-dweller,

who through the influence of Christianity was transformed into a malevolent version

of its former self, the draugr. The barrow-dweller was a human who remained alive,

or was reanimated, within their grave that almost invariably was a barrow; while the

demonised characterisation of the draugr depends on the conception of not just the

barrow-dweller, but also giants, witches, demons and devils. The draugar may be

found in Beowulf, in the figures of Grendel and his mother, while the possibility that

Beowulf was perceived to have become a barrow-dweller will be briefly introduced.

Much of the evidence which may be used to date Beowulf lies outside of the

spatial limitations of this study; and of the majority of that which has been examined,

no more than a brief treatment was possible. Some of the evidence not examined

E.G. Stanley, ‘The Date of Beowulf: Some Doubts and No Conclusions’, The Dating of Beowulf, (ed.)

Colin Chase; University of Toronto Press, 1981, p.197.

includes the interesting approach of Jennifer Neville, who has looked at the

descriptions of horses in the poem, and shown them to be not in line with standards

of horses in the tenth and eleventh centuries.

In Roberta Frank’s study of the

similarities between the genre of the eulogy in Old English and Old Norse, she

concludes that the earliest examples of the former which date from the tenth century

may have been a direct result of the influence of the latter;

and Walter Goffart’s

identification of the Hugas, used as a by-name for the Franks in Beowulf, with the

followers and inhabitants of the lands of the Frankish ‘Hughs’,

rulers of Neustria

from the later ninth to mid-tenth century, brings him to conclude that “the poem was

written no earlier than in the second quarter of the tenth century...near the year 923

[CE].”

Others have noted the choice of the Geatas as the heroic race in the poem, to

point to the reign of Alfred, when an ancestry including the Geatas seemed to be

ideologically important to the West Saxons.

The form in which the personal and

tribal names have been preserved in the poem, has usually been taken to show that it

is an early composition,

and yet there also exists the strong likelihood that the

original spelling of Beowulf’s name was in fact Biowulf, which would accord with an

Anglo-Scandinavian dialect pronunciation according to Kevin Kiernan.

This may be explained by the disruptions to the breeding practices and stock over the course of the

Vikings’ depredations across England; or as a genuine unadulterated preservation of pre-ninth, or even
pre-seventh century conditions; or as a depiction of the Scandinavian horse breed akin to the modern
Norwegian Fjord Pony, (especially, p. 139-42, 152-3, and n. 49, the latter which states that c. 930 CE,
horses from this time on were ‘definitely’ unlike that in Beowulf); Jennifer Neville, ‘Hrothgar’s horses:
feral or thoroughbred?’, Anglo-Saxon England, v. 35, 2006, p. 131-57.

Robert E. Bjork & Anita Obermeier, ‘Date, Provenance, Author, Audiences’, A Beowulf Handbook,

(eds.) Robert E. Bjork & John D. Niles; University of Exeter Press, 1997, p. 23.

Hugh the Abbot, fl. 866-880’s CE, and Hugh the Great, 923-56 CE, the latter also married a sister of

King Æthelstan of Wessex in 926 CE.

Walter Goffart, ‘Hetware and Hugas: Datable Anachronisms in Beowulf’, The Dating of Beowulf,

(ed.) Colin Chase; University of Toronto Press, 1981, p. 100.

Jane Acomb Leake, The Geats of Beowulf: A Study in the Geographical Mythology of the Middle

Ages; University of Wisconsin Press, 1967, p. 12, is willing to place the writing of Beowulf either
“before the Viking incursions began on a large scale, or after the Danes had been settled in the
Danelaw and the process of assimilation had begun”; Craig R. Davis, ‘An Ethic Dating of Beowulf’,
Anglo-Saxon England, v. 35, 2006, p. 120-5, and John D. Niles, Old English Heroic Poems and the
Social Life of Texts; Brepols, 2007, p. 39-48, both place the generation of the myth of the West Saxons’
heroic ancestry from the Geatas in Alfred’s reign, and the latter also adds that the inclusion of the
character of Wiglaf into the poem must date from after the death of his grandson, Wihstan son of
Wigmund (the name of Wiglaf’s father in Beowulf is Weohstan/Wigstan, son of Wægmund) in the late
ninth century, ibid., p. 38.

Bjork & Obermeier, p. 27; there is also Unfer∂, whose name Robert Fulk dates to being a form

preserved from prior to 700 CE, R.D. Fulk, ‘Unferth and his Name’, Modern Philology, v. 85:2. Nov.
1987, p. 121-2.

However, it is confined to Scribe B, who has a marked preference for using the -io- spelling, more

than twenty times more likely to use it than Scribe A who prefers the -eo- spelling – this may point to
Scribe B having a preference for an Anglo-Scandinavian dialect; but Judith, also transcribed by Scribe
B contains no such -io- spellings, though this may be due to the large portion of Judith which has been

In Kiernan’s controversial study of Beowulf, one of his major points was that

Scribe B was in fact the author of Beowulf as it stands, who melded “two distinct

poems ... combined for the first time in our extant MS.”

This long-outdated theory

has been proven to be false, notably by Janet Bately, who has shown that the use of

the conjunction siþþan is consistent in its syntactical positioning to a degree that

cannot warrant multiple authorship of the poem.

This thesis hinges on a number of a priori assumptions, about the author and

the audience of Beowulf, and therefore about the text. That there are some, but not a

great number of Nordicisms in the poem, and only two possible Old Norse loan-

words, against the late, ‘classical’ West Saxon of the poem, and the Old English

metre, means Beowulf can only be an Old English product. Christianity is ever-

present in the poem in a subtle way; God is continually praised, invoked and thanked

by the ‘narrator’ and the characters of the poem, and the word god itself is by far the

most common one used of God, occurring in over a third of all the references to God,

as almost frequently as the three next most popular by-names, metod, wealdend and

dryhten put together. Christianity brought Latin literacy to heathen Anglo-Saxon

England, but it did not oust orality;

instead the two remained the accepted modes of

information communication along side one another, as the vocabulary of literacy may

indicate,

alongside the example of Aldhelm who apparently mastered the art of

composition in both oral and written registers.

Thus Beowulf is a product of an

Anglo-Saxon, Christian, elite, well-versed in both the oral and literate modes of their

culture.

lost; Kevin Kiernan, Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript; University of Michigan Press, 1996, xxvi;
Peter J. Lucas, ‘The Place of Judith in the Beowulf-Manuscript’, The Review of English Studies, v. 41,
new series, no. 164, 1990, p. 473-4. 9.

Kiernan, 1996, p. 171.

Janet Bately, ‘Linguistic Evidence as a Guide to the Authorship of Old English Verse: A

Reappraisal, with Special Reference to Beowulf’, Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England,
(ed.) Michael Lapidge & Helmut Gnuess; Cambridge University Press, 1985, p. 421-2, 431.

Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, Visible Song: Transitional Literacy in Old English Verse; Cambridge

University Press, 1990, p. 9-11. 77.

Christine Fell, ‘Introduction to Anglo-Saxon Letters and Letter-Writers’, Lastworda Betst, (eds.)

Carole Hough & Kathryn A. Lowe; Shaun Tyas, 2002, p. 282, 284-6.

O’Brien O’Keeffe, p. 8.

HAPTER

ISTORICAL

ONTEXT OF

EOWULF

In any examination of the origins of Beowulf, the first consideration must be to

construct the broadest possible borders within which it could have been created, and

for this the terminus post quem must be provided by the events, episodes and

characters in Beowulf that can be verified in historical sources outside of the poem.

The other limit for the date of Beowulf, the terminus ante quem, is of course the date

of the manuscript itself, the only copy of which is contained within the early eleventh

century Nowell Codex; a composite manuscript containing three prose texts – an

acephalous Passion of St. Christopher, an illustrated Wonders of the East; and

Alexander’s Letter to Aristotle – and two verse texts – Beowulf and a fragmentary

Judith; itself bound with the unrelated twelfth century Southwell Codex at an

unknown later date into the manuscript B.L. Cotton Vitellius A XV.

THE DATE OF THE MANUSCRIPT:

The Nowell Codex was written in two different handwriting styles that each

offer separate date-ranges for their usage: Scribe A used a variation of early English

Vernacular minuscule, while Scribe B wrote in late Anglo-Saxon Square minuscule.

The latter script had its origins in the early tenth century, which, by the second

quarter, had superseded earlier styles of Insular minuscule, remaining in favour for

roughly fifty years.

Imported Caroline minuscule was first used in England for the

transcription of Latin texts from the middle of the tenth century, and by the end of its

last quarter, it had effectively replaced Square minuscule for that purpose, “no

specimen of [which] is datable later than ... after AD 1000”.

English Vernacular

minuscule (an Insular script strongly influenced by Caroline minuscule), whose

origins are in the ‘small print’ of the dual-language charters from the last decades of

the tenth century,

is conversely found no earlier than the first decade of the eleventh

century.

This provides a remarkably slender window of the years around the turn of

David N. Dumville, ‘Beowulf come lately: Some Notes on the Paleography of the Nowell Codex’,

Archiv für das Studium der neuren Sprachen und Literaturen, v. 225:1, 1988, p. 51-2.

ibid., p. 52-4.

ibid., p. 53.

ibid., p. 54.

the millennium within which the Nowell Codex may be placed. Moreover, the fact

that Scribe B’s portion sequentially and continuously follows Scribe A’s work,

support the conclusion that the Nowell Codex is “a product of the quarter-century

interval [centred on] the turn of the millennium.”

The other application of paleography to the dating of Beowulf, recently

championed by Michael Lapidge, examines the type of errors made by the scribes

with a view to postulating the script style of the exemplar. Concentrating on the

confusion of five sets of letter-forms (a/u, r/n, p/þ, c/t and d/ð) Lapidge concludes that

the exemplar was written in a script unfamiliar to the scribes.

To one unfamiliar

with Cursive, or Current minuscule, the open ‘a’, was virtually indistinguishable from

an ‘u’ and a confusion between ‘et’ and ‘ec’ ligatures, both point to a cursive style

script;

but, since the ‘r’s’ and ‘n’s’ are also confused, the exemplar cannot have

been entirely written in Cursive or Current minuscule.

The confusion of the runic þ

with ‘p’ seems to be universal in the copying all Anglo-Saxon scripts.

Concerning

the last letter-set, however, Lapidge dates the beginning of the process of the

consistent application of ð “to distinguish the interdental fricative from the aveolar

stop” (‘d’) to the second half of the eighth century, thus dating the Beowulf exemplar

prior to the mid eighth century.

Yet it is actually very clear from the examples

chosen for his article that the forms ‘d’ and ð are quite impossible to confuse in

Anglo-Saxon Set minuscule (the script he proposes the exemplar to have been written

in), and thus he fails in his purpose of using ‘literal’ scribal errors to theorise a date

for the exemplar of the Nowell Codex. Furthermore, in his desire to date the

exemplar to the early eighth century, he does not dwell on the fact that features of Set

minuscule and Cursive/Current can be found in datable texts up to the early years of

the tenth century.

This semi-formal or informal script, which was designed for

speed and not for clarity, peppered with contractions and abbreviations, was used for

“when scholars wrote for their own purposes ... and, so long as they themselves could

Francis Leneghan, ‘Making Sense of Ker’s Dates: The Origins of Beowulf and the Paleographers’,

Proceedings of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies Postgraduate Conference, 1, 2005, p.
7.

Michael Lapidge, ‘The archetype of Beowulf’, Anglo-Saxon England, v. 29, 2000, p. 7.

Lapidge, 2000, p. 17-9, 27-8.

ibid., p. 22-3.

Leneghan, p. 4.

Lapidge, p. 34.

ibid., p. 34-5, n. 86.

read what they had written, were not greatly concerned with legibility.”

It seems

then, that the exemplar of Beowulf (perhaps even the entire Nowell Codex) was

essentially written in an Anglo-Saxon shorthand – though one not influenced by

Caroline minuscule. Thus the conclusion of the paleographic evidence is that the

exemplar could have been written at any time after c.700 CE, but before the tenth

century got underway.

Some metrical theories have also been used to support an early eighth century

date for the exemplar, as with Kuhn’s laws; which, governing the position of half-

lines in poetry and therefore the order in which the sense of a passage was related to

the audience, “preserved archaic features of primitive Germanic after those features

had more or less disappeared from the language of everyday speech”

– a

phenomenon which whose end-point be dated to no later than the mid eighth century.

But this law may conversely be used to support the existence of a ‘dual literary

separate sets of rules throughout the Anglo-Saxon period. Another metrical test uses

Kaluza’s law, which “asserts that ... short endings are prone to metrical resolution,

while...long endings resist resolution;”

therefore a poem’s strong adherence to this

law suggests that it was composed prior to the “shortening of long vowels in

unstressed syllables.”

The processes behind both laws had already concluded by the

end of the first quarter of the eighth century.

Robert Fulk and Seiichi Suzuki have

both used Kaluza’s law to date the composition of Beowulf (if geographically located

in ‘Southumbria’) prior to 725 CE. However, in Bellender Hutcheson’s application of

Kaluza’s law to poems datable to the tenth century, he found that in a number of

instances “the late poetry actually adheres to Kaluza’s law better than Beowulf,”

and

since the basis of the law cannot be applied to the linguistic conditions present in the

tenth century, he concludes that Old English poetry preserved the integrity of the

ancient form of the traditional oral-formulaic units, to a very high degree.

Beowulf

ibid., p. 16-7.

Calvin B. Kendall, ‘The Metrical Grammar of Beowulf: Displacement’, Speculum, v. 58:1, 1983, p.

B.R., Hutcheson, ‘Kaluza’s Law, The Dating of Beowulf, and the Old English Poetic Tradition’,

Journal of English and Germanic Philology, v. 103, 2004, p. 297.

(quoting Suzuki) ibid, p. 298.

ibid., p. 297.

ibid., p. 309.

ibid., p. 318-9.

therefore, “can either be very early, or heavily influenced by an oral-formulaic

tradition, or both, but it cannot be neither.”

Finally, the spelling preferences of the poet may provide some support to a

late date of composition since, on the one hand some words, such as hoe whose form

“does not occur in prose until the reign of Edgar in the late tenth century, and is never

found in verse,”

and the occasional use of the late case-ending –an for –um, may be

found in the poem;

while on the other, no very early forms of words may be

identified.

However, this is more likely to indicate the spelling norms at the time of

the manuscript’s transcription c. 1000 CE. Other aspects of the spelling that are likely

to be genuine indications of a late date, is the fact that where the poet was able to, he

did not use the early genitive plural which contains an ‘i’ in the case ending.

SCANDINAVIAN INFLUENCES:

It is to the poet’s mode of expression and turn of phrase, illustrated by the

prevalence of litotes and the overall restrained tone of the poem, as well as his

frequent use mod and its compounds, which indicate that the poem’s intended

audience is an elite Anglo-Saxon one.

But, as shown above, Beowulf is likely to

have originated (in the Nowell Codex version) in the first decades of the tenth

century, a date traditionally rejected due to the idea that an Anglo-Saxon poem

concerned with heroic Danes could not have been in circulation at a time when Danes

were engaged in the harrying and settlement of England.

And yet, the manuscript

itself was transcribed in such a period of renewed Scandinavian aggression in the

reign of Æthelred Unræd. Among the West Saxon kings of the ninth to eleventh

ibid., p. 320.

Roberta Frank, ‘Beowulf and Sutton: The Odd Couple’, The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England:

Basic Readings, (ed.) Catherine E. Karkov; Garland Publishing, 1999, p. 328.

In ahlæcan, l. 646b, Alfred Bammesberger, ‘Eight Notes on the Beowulf Text’, Inside Old English:

Essays in Honour of Bruce Mitchell, (ed.) John Walmsey, Blackwell Publishing, 2006, p. 29.

Wundini is no longer considered a genuinely early form, Kiernan, ’96, p. 31-2.

Stanley, p. 209; R.D. Fulk, A History of Old English Meter; University of Pennsylvania Press,

Philadelphia, 1992, §279-81, p. 243-5.

Roberta Frank, ‘The Incomparable Wryness of Old English Poetry’, Inside Old English: Essays in

Honur of Bruce Mitchell, (ed.) John Walmsey, Blackwell Publishing, 2006, p. 63-5; mod is a shorthand
expression for something like ‘inner aristocratic warrior nature’ that is found all throughout Beowulf to
denote the thought patterns and actions of the elite person, John Highfield, ‘Mod in the Old English
‘Secular’ Poetry: An indicator of aristocratic class, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of
Manchester, v. 79:3, 1997, p. 85-8.

This theory may be swiftly dismissed simply by acknowledging that the portrayal of the Danes in

Beowulf was not heroic, since they were unable to prevent the depredations of Grendel, and
furthermore were engaged, at least sometimes, in the heathen worship of idols.

centuries alone, the contacts with Scandianvians and Anglo-Scandinavians can be

seen to be both strong and deep.

Æthelred Unræd, king of England at the time of the manuscript’s production,

spent the majority of his reign staving off the attacks of the Danes under chiefly led

by Swein Forkbeard. And yet in the middle of his reign, he contracted his second

marriage to Emma, daughter of Richard I of Normandy, a family whose sympathies to

those same Vikings harrying England were widely known.

The pair had been

married for only six months when Æthelred ordered the massacre of ‘foreign’ Danes

in England on St. Brice’s Day, but it was during the same winter of 1002, that he

“enrolled northern warlords and their followers in his military forces” and patronised

the Icelandic court poet Gunnlaugr Ormstunga.

Æthelred’s father, Edgar the

Peaceable, had himself been raised in Æthelstan the ‘Half-King’s’ household

(ealdorman of Danish Mercia and East Anglia),

and was said to have “loved bad

foreign habits, and brought heathen customs too fast into this land.”

Edgar’s uncle,

king Æthelstan was foster-father to Harald Fairhair of Norway’s son, Haakon the

Good, and it is possible that when the latter returned to take the throne of Norway in

934 CE, he brought with him the first Anglo-Saxon (or perhaps Anglo-Scandinavian)

missionaries to that country.

The court of Æthelstan’s grandfather, Alfred, was

noted for the “Franks, Frisians, Gauls, Vikings, Welshmen, Irishmen and Bretons

[who] subjected themselves willingly to his lordship, nobles and commoners alike.”

Frisians were involved in Alfred’s naval attacks on the Danes, three of them

mentioned by name in the Chronicle,

and of course the Old English Orosius was

translated at Alfred’s court, incorporating the testimony of Ohthere the Norwegian

and Wulfstan the Frisian.

Mike Ashley, The Mammoth Book of British Kings & Queens; Carroll & Graf Publishers Inc., New

York, 1998, p. 483.

M.K. Lawson, Cnut: The Danes in England in the Early Eleventh Century; Longman, 1993, p. 6.

Ashley, p. 478.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, ( trans., ed.) Michael Swanton; Phoenix Press, 2003, under year 959

CE; Alexander Callander Murray, ‘Beowulf, the Danish Invasions, and Royal Genealogy’, The Dating
of Beowulf, (ed.) Colin Chase; University of Toronto Press, 1981, p. 110.

Fridjov Birkeli, ‘The Earliest Missionary Activities from England to Norway’, Nottingham Medieval

Studies, v. 15, 1971, passim.

Asser, Life of King Alfred, (trans.) Simon Keynes & Michael Lapidge, Penguin Books, 2004, §76, p.

91.

Wulfheard, Æbbe and Æthelhere; Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, under year 897 CE.

The Old English Orosius, (ed.) Janet Bately; Oxford University Press, 1980; lxxi-ii.

“By the second quarter of the tenth century there was clearly a well-

established Anglo-Scandinavian society in the Danelaw,”

but one that was

comprised of migrant populations of Scandinavian elites whose numbers were more

likely to have been in the hundreds rather than the thousands,

and yet who were able

to lay such a lasting impression on the northern and eastern regions in which they had

settled that it was felt for centuries after their total integration into English society had

been accomplished. With regard to the linguistic repercussions of the permanent

settlements of Scandinavians in England from the last quarter of the ninth century,

Old Norse and Old English speakers in the tenth century were thought to have

developed a sort of Anglo-Scandinavian Creole in the north of England;

apparent in

the use of dialect words in Olaf’s speech in the Battle of Maldon;

and Wulfstan’s

sermons, which, when Bishop of York, included more Scandinavian loan-words than

his speeches and sermons dating from his tenure as Bishop of London.

Old English

personal names may have been given to some of the migrants,

while elsewhere

Anglo-Saxon families may have introduced Old Norse names into their family ‘pool’,

probably through intermarriage.

Roberta Frank has identified a number of individual words which, when

viewed in the context of their Old Norse cognates’ contexts, bring a fuller meaning to

their use in Beowulf such as: lofgeornost which in Old English prose carries a

pejorative tone, ‘over-eager for praise’, while in Old Norse poetry it means ‘most

eager for praise’;

dollic, ‘foolish’ in prose contexts, and ‘bold’ in poetic;

mere and

sund play on their dual prosaic and poetic meanings (‘pool’ and ‘swimming’ versus

‘sea’ and ‘sea/sound’ respectively) in such a way that the composer of Beowulf firmly

Julian D. Richards, Viking Age England; Tempus, 2004, p. 41.

D.M. Hadley, ‘Viking and native: re-thinking identity in the Danelaw’, Early Medieval Europe, v.

11:1, 2002, p. 46-8.

Hadley, p. 55.

Robert E. Bjork, ‘Scandinavian Relations’, A Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature, (eds.) Phillip

Pulsiano & Elaine Trehearne, Blackwell Publishers, 2001, p. 392.

Matthew Townend, ‘Viking Age England as a Bilingual Society’, Cultures in Contact: Scandinavian

Settlement in England in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries, (eds.) Dawn M. Hadley & Julian D. Richards;
Brepols, 2000, p. 92-3.

For example in the continued use of ‘Æthelstan’ in East Anglia from pre-Viking times, to Guthrum’s

adoption of it as his baptismal name, to Æthelstan ‘half-king’, the lord of East Anglia in 930’s.

Hadley, p. 59-60.

Roberta Frank, ‘Did Anglo-Saxon Audiences have a Skaldic Tooth?’, Scandinavian Studies, v. 59,

1987, p. 344-5.

ibid., loc. cit.

shows his own skaldic capabilities.

Elsewhere, the poet seems to falter, as seen in

his lack of confidence when using difficult kennings which he then explains more

plainly not more than a few lines later; however, this may in fact be a fault, not of the

original composer, but of the scribe(s) who found the meanings of the kennings hard

to fathom.

Another such word, whose context in Beowulf lies in an Anglo-

Scandinavian millieu, is eorl, which in the earliest Old English texts denotes a man of

the highest social rank second only to the king or prince of that region. By the late

ninth century, though, this meaning had been replaced in most contexts by the words

ealdorman and þegn, and it was not until later, in the tenth century, that the earlier

sense of eorl was revived through contacts with the Anglo-Scandinavian communities

who used the Old Norse jarl in a similar sense of ‘leading man’ or ‘ruler’.

This is

the Beowulfian usage, and since þegn is just as common throughout the text as eorl, it

may point to a post-Alfredian period of composition (rather than deliberate archaising

on the part of the poet) since the two words only co-existed in Old English through

Scandinavian influence.

Other words came into Old English through actual loans from the Old Norse;

however, and though no one seems to have made a case for any such loan-words in

Beowulf as yet, there are two words that deserve reappraisal as possible loan-words.

The first is eoton, an Old English word for 'giant’ that is semantically identical with

ent.

The latter is a relatively common word which is used in both prose and poetry,

but eoton’s only appearances in the Old English Corpus are in Beowulf at least seven

times, and twice in early eleventh century glosses for edax, ‘rapacious, glutton,

voracious’.

Such a relatively high frequency in Beowulf, but nowhere else, suggests

that this is an anglicisation of one of the Old Norse words for giant, jötunn (pl.

jötnar), which happens to be similar to a pre-existing Old English word for the same

Roberta Frank, “Mere’ and ‘Sund’: Two Sea-Changes in Beowulf, Modes of Interpretation in Old

English Literature: Essays in Honour of Stanley B. Greenfield, (eds.) Phyllis Russ Brown et al;
University of Toronto Press, 1986, p. 156-161.

Frank, 1987, p. 343.

H.R. Loyn, ‘Kings, Gesiths and Thegns’, The Age of Sutton Hoo: The Seventh Century in North-

Western Europe, (ed.) M.O.H. Carver, The Boydell Press, 1992, p. 77; Roberta Frank, ‘Skaldic Verse
and the Date of Beowulf’, The Dating of Beowulf, (ed.) Colin Chase; University of Toronto Press,
1981, p. 124.

See Chapter Three.

Eoton – l. 112, 421, 761, 883, eotonweard – l. 668, eotonisc – l. 1558, 2979, are all definite; here it is

unclear if eoton refers to ‘giant’ or ‘Jute’ – l. 902, 1072, 1088, 1141, 1145; both glosses occur in the
Cotton Cleopatra A.III in the form eotend.

creature.

Furthermore, since it is not an isolated occurrence in the text, it strengthens

the theory of Scandinavian influence on the poem’s composition. The second word,

hold, has an Old English homophone meaning ‘loyal, faithful’, but on one occasion in

Beowulf, it is better translated by the Old Norse meaning of a ‘vassal’ or ‘free man,

land-holder, noble one’, which Mary Serjeantson noted, in 1935, “may be ascribed to

the period before 1016 [CE].”

The höldr in Old Norse, was of a rank just below the

jarl in the Anglo-Scandinavian usage.

Roy Liuzza, it may be noted, does not even

translate the word holdra in the following, instead dovetailing its Old English

meaning into the ‘dear (and faithful) troop’, when: ahte ic holdra þy læs deorre

duguðe þe þa deað fornam, ‘then I had less land-holders in the noble troop, when

death seized them from me’ (l. 487b-8).

The words used in Beowulf to denote Scandinavia itself, Scedenig (l.1686) and

Scedeland (l.19), do not appear to be current in the tenth century. Instead, Sconeg

and Skáney,

were both used to refer to the region of Skåne in the tenth century, but

Eric Stanley provides the timely reminder that “[one] cannot date the obsolescence of

Scedenig.”

In addition, Frank has noted that Scedenig and Scedelandum properly,

and accurate philologically, denote Scandza (as Scandinavia as a whole was termed

by many a medieval author), rather than Skåne; which usage makes more contextual

sense in Beowulf than if Skåne alone were indicated.

Carol Clover’s delineation of the difference between skaldic and eddic poetry

is that the former “is emphatically non-anonymous,” as the poet will regularly place

himself personally into the role of narrator – showing his presence in the events

related, or his opinions through asides – rather than “anonymously narrating

traditional tales in the impersonal epic manner.”

This technique may also be

discerned in Old English poetry, as, among others, in Beowulf itself. Likewise, the

Probably because they are descended from the same Proto-Germanic root. The same can be seen in

the other direction, since there is place-name in Iceland, Enta, denoting a volcanic crater, (whose
neighbouring crater is named Katla, ‘witch, she-troll’), that is considered to be a ‘definite loan-word
from the Old English’; Stefán Einarsson, ‘Old English ent: Icelandic enta’, Modern Language Notes, v.
67:8, Dec. 1952, p. 554-5.

Mary S. Serjeantson, A History of Foreign Words in English; Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962, p. 64-

Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, p. 94, n. 7; term occurs under the years 905, 911, 921.

Its only occurrence precisely datable to c. 890 CE [Bately, 1980, xcii-iii].

c. 1000 CE – Frank, 1981, p. 124-5, n. 8.

Stanley, 1981, p. 207.

Frank, 1981, p. 125, n. 8.

Carol J. Clover, ‘Skaldic Sensibility’, Archiv för Nordisk Filologi, v. 93, 1978, p. 63-4.

trading of insults between Beowulf and the coastguard, Beowulf and Wulfgar the

Wendel prince, and most famously, Beowulf and Unferth, has been shown to be

directly related to the genre of flyting in its structure of claim, defense and

counterclaim, and content of “boasts and insults in varying proportions with a

admixture of threats, curses or vows.”

In these verbal combats, Beowulf is as

successful in defeating all of his challengers as he is in his physical contests in

Denmark, a trait which would be recognised and relished by an audience educated in

an Old Norse literary milieu.

On a larger scale, excerpts from a number of eddic and skaldic poems have

been found to be directly related to passages in Beowulf and other Old English

poems.

Robert Fulk has uncovered an analogue to the stories of Scyld and Scef in

the English tradition, in the tale of Bergelmir in Vafþrúðnismál, which may also

further illuminate William of Malmesbury’s account of the monks of Abindgon who

set a sheaf of grain (OE yelm) on a shield floating downriver ostensibly to demarcate

a boundary line.

Another example of textual echoes may be found in the

descriptions of Heorot throughout Beowulf, comparable to the descriptions of

otherworldly halls found in Old Norse literature in general, but specifically to the hall

in Hindar Fell, the ‘rocky hill of the hind’ (note that Heorot is the ‘stag hall’) in

Fáfnismál. There the description where “a high hall stands on Hindar Fell, all

enfolded it is by fire without, cunning craftsmen this castle built, of the glistening

gold of rivers”, may be paralleled in that of Heorot which is fyrbendum fæst ... innan

ond utan irenbendum searoþoncum besmiþod, “fast in its forged bands ... inside and

out with iron bonds cunningly crafted” (l. 722a ... 774-5a).

Finally, an exact

correspondence may be argued between the portrayal of King Alfred in Egil's saga

who was deemed the first 'true' ruler of all England and Englishmen since “had

deprived all the tributary kings of their rank and power; those who had been kings or

princes before were now titled earls” with Scyld Scefing in Beowulf, who was the

Carol J. Clover, ‘The Germanic Context of the Unferþ Episode’, Speculum, v.55:3, 1980, p. 452-3.

ibid., p. 464-5.

For quick overview of others, see Bjork, 2001, p. 391ff.

Relying on the Old English stories mistakenly attributing the tales of the son (Beow) to the

father/grandfather (a not uncommon mistake), and the philological interpretation of Bergelmir as
originally a barley deity, comparative to the identification of his ‘father’ Aurgelmir with the ‘ear’ or the
‘spike’ of the barley (ruðgelmir – perhaps ‘mighty bundle (of grain)’?), and the common basis of the
tale that this barley figure was set adrift in a grain-box; R.D. Fulk, ‘An Eddic Analogue to the Scyld
Scefing Story’, The Review of English Studies, new series, v. 40, no. 159, Aug. 1989, passim.

Fáfnismál, st. 42, p. 231; The Poetic Edda, (trans.) Lee M. Hollander; University of Texas Press,

Austin, 2

ed., 2004.

‘first’ king of the Danes (as presented by the poet) since he had “refused mead-

benches to many nations, struck terror into the earls” (l. 4-6).

HISTORICAL CONCORDANCES:

The original poet of Beowulf then, was well acquainted with Scandinavian

modes of expression, so much so that his own style is, in parts, comparable in

technique, vocabulary and stories common to the skaldic and eddic traditions which

are apparent from the end of the ninth century, but which most likely stretches back to

the Volkerwanderung whence much of the material for the heroic stories originated.

The characters and tribal groups referred to in Beowulf may also be traced to having

originated in this period; however, these references do not correspond to any single

historical period, but are a literary backdrop created to invoke a generic past time that

juxtaposes with the present time of the narration of Beowulf. Since all of those

included as part of this ‘scenery’ must necessarily be in the past at the time of

composition, a terminus a quo for Beowulf may then be placed at the point of the

latest entity. The only problem with this approach is that almost all of these figures,

who occur only once or twice in the poem, cannot be located in other literature; or if

they can, it is not within the context of a historical event or datable document.

The most famous exception to this is the figure of Hygelac in Beowulf whom

Nicholas Gruntvig, in 1817, first equated with the historical figure of Chlochilaich,

whose death c. 530 CE was recorded by Gregory of Tours (c. 580’s CE) while he was

on his fatal raid into “Frisian territory” (l. 2357b).

Since realistic time-keeping was

not the intention of Beowulf’s poet, it is uncertain how much could have elapsed

between this and Beowulf’s own death, but the longest possible gap was a little under

fifty years.

Since Hygelac’s raid is the earliest historically verifiable event related in

the poem, it has been understood that the terminus a quo must be c. 530-80 CE. But

this conclusion has then been used to assert that all of the action (with the exception

of the ‘Finnsburg Episode’ which is presented as a past within the past) occurred

within this historical time-frame, and yet there is nothing to support such a belief.

Egil’s Saga, (trans.) Bernard Scudder, (ed.) Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir; Penguin Books, 2004, ch. 51, p.

90; Beowulf interpretation from Bammesberger, p. 20.

Gregory of Tours, The History of the Franks, (trans.) Lewis Thorpe; Penguin Books, 1974, 3:3, p.

163-4.

Beowulf returned to Geatland while Hygelac’s was still alive, with the necklace that was a present

from Wealhþeow; which was the necklace Hygelac himself wore on the aforementioned fatal raid.

Even archaeological evidence, which can be vague at the best of times in the absence

of precisely datable objects,

cannot agree with the dating of the action in Beowulf to

the sixth century, as shown by the descriptions of the ships in the poem which clearly

have the option of sails – an innovation which did not reach Northern Europe until the

close of the seventh century.

It may be pertinent to note here in the context of

archaeology, that while innovation may be dated, obsolescence cannot.

The character of Ongenþeow has two philologically exact correspondences in

the historical figures of a Danish king Ongendus,

who flourished c. 700 CE, and an

Angandeo, brother to the Danish king Hemming, whose solitary reference is found in

the Annales Regni Francorum as a signatory to Charlemagne’s peace treaty with the

Danes of 811 CE.

There is also the reference in Widsið to an “Ongenþeow [who

ruled] the Swedes” (l. 31b), but this can remain no more than a teaser since Widsið

can in now way be considered a historically accurate source. Ongendus appears in

Alcuin’s Life of St. Willibrord described as “a man more savage than any wild beast

and harder than stone,”

one that accords well the characterisation of Ongenþeow in

Beowulf.

The tribal name, Scyldingas, used throughout Beowulf in reference to the

Danes, arguably provides as firm a terminus a quo from the composition of the poem

as the concordance of Hygelac and Chlochilaich does. The earliest mention of

Scyldingas comes c. 950 CE in the Historia de Sancto Cuthberti naming the sons of

Ragnarr Loðbrók, Ívarr the Boneless and Halfdan the Black, as leaders of the

Scaldingi;

linguistically, this form of the name could not have been borrowed from

the Old Norse after the ninth century.

In the Historia, the Scaldingi refer to the

combined Danish forces of Ívarr and Olaf the White at the battle of York in 867, and

the same army led by Halfdan after Ívarr’s death. These ‘Scyldingas’, who likely had

their origins in the generation before Ragnarr and Olaf, in the chaos of the civil wars

Even in the presence of datable objects like coins, the interpretation is not assured, as with the case

of Mound 1 from Sutton Hoo, which may be dated to that of the latest of the coins, or alternatively, it
has been seen as a deliberate collection of rare coins which may have been collected at any time.

l. 217-8, does not explicitly state there are sails, but l. 1903b-13, does, and likewise Scyld’s ship has

a mast which indicates sails, l. 35b-6a; Arne Emil Christensen, ‘Scandinavian Ships from earliest times
to the Vikings’, A History of Seafaring based on underwater archaeology, (ed.) George F. Bass;
Walker & Co. New York, 1972, p. 165.

In Beowulf, ð and þ seem to be interchangeable, and so are ð and d as seen in Hreþel/Hreðel/Hrædel.

Annales Regni Francorum, [under year] 811, http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/annalesregni

francorum.html

Alcuin, The Life of St. Willibrord, p. 9; [in] The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany, (trans., ed.)

C.H. Talbot; Sheed & Ward Ltd., London, 1981.

Leneghan, p. 10.

Frank, 1981, p. 127, n. 17.

of Denmark that lasted c. 810-40 CE, were more likely to have originally been the

‘Men of the Shield’ (a term comparable to the “Rondingas” in Widsið), rather than

‘the descendants of Scyld’.

This latter idea apparently only emerged in the second

datable period of the name’s use during the first half of the eleventh century by Old

Norse skalds who used it to refer specifically to Cnut the Great, St. Olaf Haraldsson

and Magnus Olafsson the Good.

The usage of Scyldingas in Beowulf,

chronologically falls between these two periods and is also a combination of the

earlier application to incorporate the followers of the ‘descendant of Scyld’, and the

later preference for using it to refer only to that royal descendant himself. Where

Scyld fits into the Anglo-Saxon tradition may be briefly contextualised by glancing at

the ever-expanding genealogy of the kings of Wessex.

The purpose of the royal genealogy in late Anglo-Saxon England, was

arguably to assert the right of rule over a people through the citation of a common,

heroic, ancestor with the leading, or princely families of that region. The core of a

royal genealogy generally would go no farther back in time than three of four

generations from the present, as is the case with the genealogies provided in

Beowulf.

Such a core would have existed for the early West Saxon kings, but as

their spheres of influence grew, “those who calculat[ed] the reigns of kings,”

fabricated a common ancestry between the West Saxons and their subject peoples.

Scyld was likely to be one such adopted ancestor who could have been a combination,

in the West Saxon genealogy, of a hero claimed by some of the Scandinavian

Scaldingi in England, and a legendary “boat-borne hero ... originally fostered by the

Wuffings,” the indigenous East Anglian royal line.

Sam Newton has shown that

these Wuffings most likely laid claim in their own genealogy to the characters of

Hroðmund and Wealþeow, who of course are members of the Scyldingas in Beowulf,

and moreover, that since “there may have been dynastic kinship between East Anglia

and Wessex during the second quarter of the ninth century ... [this provided] a context

ibid., p. 127.

Leneghan, p. 10.

As is the case with the genealogies Bede provides for Hengest, and Æthelberht, and it may be noted

that even though Hengest occupies the fourth place back for Æthelberht, Bede does not link the two in
the way that the Chronicle tends to; Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, (trans.) Leo
Shirley-Price, (revised) R.E. Latham; Penguin Books, 1990, 1:15, p. 63, 2:5, p. 112; Kenneth Sisam,
‘Anglo-Saxon Royal Genealogies’, Proceedings of the British Academy, v. 39, 1953, p. 322-3, 329.

Bede, 3:1 p. 144.

David N. Dumville, ‘Kingship, Genealogies and Regnal Lists’, Early Medieval Kingship, (eds.) P.H.

Sawyer & I.N. Wood; School of History, University of Leeds, 1977, p. 81.

Newton, p. 142.

for the West Saxon acquisition of Wuffing ancestral traditions.”

The theoretical

supremacy of the West Saxon kings was a fait accompli by the opening years of the

tenth century,

having assimilated the illustrious (and distant) ancestors of all the

people now subject to them; though how far this was applied in reality is another

matter all together. With regard to Beowulf, the Anglo-Scandinavian milieu by which

it was greatly influenced – though not so much so that it may be seen as an Anglo-

Scandinavian product – may perhaps tentatively be placed within the Danish kingdom

of East Anglia, that was demarcated c. 890 CE in the treaty between Alfred and

Guthrum, but which remained autonomous for less than thirty years, when, after some

years of upheaval, Edward the Elder permanently gained control over the region in

917 CE.

The majority of authors, in any period of history, when they are writing about

the past, are unable to avoid presenting their material “in the social idiom of [their]

own day, creating an atmosphere and a way of life that would have been familiar to

[their] audience.”

Some authors are better able to dissociate from their cultural

surroundings than others, but it can be hard to tell whether or not this indicates an

objective transmission of an old story over time, or a conscious re-working of the

material in an archaistic fashion. As noted by Hutcheson, Beowulf is unlikely to be the

work of an archaist on metrical grounds as “there is nothing in the surface phonology

[of traditional poetry] that indicates that Kaluza’s law is operating, [and a] tenth

century poet would have had no way of knowing which verses were archaic and

which were not.”

This is clear evidence for the ability of tenth century poets to

compose new material in the style of ancient poetry which does not necessitate a

written form from the eighth century, but simply the barely-changed Old English

traditions of oral composition into the tenth century (and probably further). That the

exemplar from which the Nowell Codex was copied was itself written in a scribal

shorthand, much like a modern-day stenographer’s shorthand, raises the possibly that

this was the original written copy of Beowulf transcribed during a performance. This

ibid. loc.cit.

Davis, p.127-9.

Ashley, p. 467.

Karl P. Wentersdorf, ‘Beowulf: The Paganism of Hrothgar’s Danes’, Studies in Philology,v. 78,

1981, p. 92.

Hutcheson, p. 319.

has been suggested by Paul Sorrell, among others, who notes that since more than one

version of events is related over the course of Beowulf,

and the relationship of the

storyline’s progression is in a “‘zigzag’ pattern of the oral method...an incremental

style that is very close to...the so-called ‘digressions’ in Beowulf,”

the form of the

poem as it stands is very close to an orally delivered original (from which the

exemplar is taken).

A scenario for the composition and transmission of the Nowell Codex Beowulf

may be presented in the ‘recording’ of a recital by one or more scribes, at some point

during the first quarter of the tenth century, somewhere in Anglo-Saxon England

sympathetic to the West Saxons. More precisely, a plausible point of origin for the

written poem lies in the late 910’s or early 920’s when Wessex was re-asserting itself

in the southern Danelaw, or even a little later in the reign of Æthelstan who was

sometimes styled Angelsaxonum Denorumque gloriosissimus rex.

It was then that

the mixed population of the ‘Danelaw’ were not viewed unfavourably in the Anglo-

Saxon Chronicle,

100

may have shifted the focus of their cultural milieu to Wessex,

101

away from the northern Danelaw which in was ruled by a series of heathen Dublin

Norse, who held onto it for the next thirty or so years.

102

Paul Sorrell, ‘Oral Poetry and the World of Beowulf’, Oral Tradition, v. 7:1, 1992, p. 37.

ibid., p. 41, also fig. 1, p. 44.

Murray, p. 109-10.

100

Both Danes and Englishmen work together to improve the fortifications of Nottingham; Anglo-

Saxon Chronicles, under year 922.

101

For instance in Lincolnshire; David Stocker & Paul Everson, ‘Five towns funerals: decoding

diversity in Danelaw stone sculpture, Vikings and the Danelaw, (eds.) James Graham-Campbell et al;
Oxbow Books, 2001, p. 241.

102

Every successive ruler of Danish Northumbria/York in the tenth century, was depicted in the West

Saxon sources as officially sponsored in baptism by a West Saxon king, though some delayed this act,
many later apostasised, and all were antagonistic towards Christianity; Ashley, p. 462-6.

HAPTER

OCIO

-R

ELIGIOUS

ONTEXT OF

EOWULF

Everything which modern scholarship knows about early medieval European

heathenism, has passed through the pens and perceptions of Christians – but all of the

archaeological evidence from the periods prior to Christian influence and adherence,

is mute without this literary context. In fact, very little has survived the early

medieval period, which can be proven to have been drawn from an actual eyewitness

account (or even a reliable firsthand report) of heathen practices,

103

most literary

references to heathenism being far-removed from their source in either time, or place,

or chain of communication – or all three at once. And even when the derivative,

fictive, and un-informed elements are stripped away from an account, the most which

the modern scholar may be provided with are descriptions of the external expressions

and manifestations of heathenism, since not even the most well-informed and intuitive

Christian recorder or complier could report the beliefs underlying the rituals

witnessed without having had them reported to him by their holders, or been one

himself at some stage.

Beowulf is no exception, since even though there are instances of heathen

activities and people in the poem, what they tell us about the nature of any heathenism

known to the Christian Anglo-Saxons is arguably less than what can be gathered from

the Old English penitential corpus.

104

However, the nature of the latter is more

concerned with heathen practices among the general population, than with what may

be termed the elite expressions of heathenism, such as those which the Beowulf poet

draws upon. Those are discussed here include the role of the heathen priest, the

maintenance of heathen temples, and the elaborate and expensive funerary rites,

which, without an aristocratic class to perpetuate them, would arguably not exist, or at

least be greatly altered in form. This discussion does not set out to resurrect the old

103

With some notable exceptions, eg; Ibn Fadlan’s account of the Rus funeral and the letters of

Sidonius Apollinaris.

104

Wentersdorf has shown through the use of excerpts from this and other sources, that in the eighth

century heathen practices were still of great concern to the Anglo-Saxon church – eg, in Egbert of
York’s penitential, c. 750 CE, specific aspects of the usual ‘idol-worship, divination, amulet wearing’
are given: eclipses are special times where by “outcries and charms” one can “defend” oneself,
Thursday and “the first day of January” is dedicated to Jovis, divination ma be done through “oracles
of the saints” and “whatever kind of writings”, while amulets may be of “grass or amber”, p. 102 – and
even of concern to Rome, who sent a stern decree in 787 CE to the Anglo-Saxon bishops to root out
such practices and practitioners as mentioned above, p. 102-3.

pagan-Christian debate; but instead hopes to quell it by showing that the poet displays

a knowledge of only the public expressions of heathenism, which themselves cannot

be seen outside of the context of Scandinavian influences, and thus shows himself to

be a product of a Christian society long accustomed to that state.

DATABLE ASPECTS OF CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM IN BEOWULF:

Christian concepts are virtually undatable beyond their earliest point of their

inception; likewise individual texts, except through datable manuscript rescensions,

and even Christianity itself in Anglo-Saxon England, beyond the date of its official

introduction,

105

are both impossible to date. Within Beowulf in particular, specific

ideas such as the theme of the ‘soul-shooter’ from the Psalms and Ephesians,

106

and

texts including Gregory’s Moralia On Job

107

and Duodecim abusivas,

108

may be

shown to have a very pervasive influence throughout the poem; the problem in using

them to date Beowulf, lies in their ubiquity in Anglo-Saxon England. However, an

exception has been made in the case of the late tenth century Blickling Homily #17,

‘Dedication of St. Michael’s Church’, in which the description of hell has been

proven to be textually paralleled in the description of Grendel’s mere in Beowulf.

Both stem from the Visio St. Pauli (The ‘Apocalypse’ of St. Paul), one of the most

widespread and enduring texts in medieval western Christian eschatology;

109

and the

pre-eminent authority of its textual transmission, Theodore Silverstein, has shown that

neither text is dependent upon the other, but that both are derived from a ninth century

Anglo-Saxon rescension.

110

Not much more can be said of the datable aspects of

Christianity evident in Beowulf; while for the non-Christian elements, there is a single

105

The kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England were converted officially between 597 and 678 CE, but it is

erroneous to assume that there were no Christians in Britain prior to these events, since many Anglo-
Saxons arrived from the Continent (arguably a large portion of them only in the mid sixth century)
where Christianity was establishing itself among the Franks, and had been a part of the culture (in the
form of Arianism) of most of the Germanic tribes to have settled in the Roman Empire for at least a
century. And of course the Romano-British themselves were largely Christian at the time of the arrivals
of the Anglo-Saxons (and others), and many of them maintained their religion if the evidence of place-
names and the cults of SS Alban and Sixtus, as a minimum, are anything to go by.

106

Mark Atherton, ‘The Figure of the Archer in Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon Psalter’, Neophilologus,

v. 77, 1993, p. 653.

107

Judson Boyce Allen, ‘God’s Society and Grendel’s Shoulder Joint: Gregory and the Poet of the

Beowulf’, Neophilologische Mitteilungen, v. 78:3, 1977, p. 239-40.

108

Particularly in the ninth abuse of the unjust king; Rob Meens, ‘Politics, mirrors of princes and the

Bible: sins, kings and the well-being of the realm’, Early Medieval Europe, v. 7, 1998, p. 350-1.

109

Second only the Apocalypse of St. John, or Revelation, and in many places and periods, the Visio

St. Pauli surpassed the latter in importance.

110

Frank, 1981, p. 138, n. 63.

reference to the activities of heathens,

111

when hwilum hie geheton æt hrærg trafum

wig weorþunga wordum bædon þæt him gastbona geoce gefremede wið þeodþreaum,

‘at times [the Danes] vowed at the temple-sanctuary of the being they worshipped,

prayed with words that for them the soul-slayer/spirit-slayer might be a help against

the people’s-misery’ (l.175-6a). Hrærg is invariably emended to hearg, which has a

wide semantic range of ‘temple, altar, sanctuary, idol’ – none of which refers to a

Christian place – while træf likewise is a word associated with places of

heathenism.

112

With reference to the cognate Old Norse hörgr, which is “a heathen

place of worship,”

113

Thomas Markey concludes that the Old English hearg was “a

learned translation of ‘heathen temple’ in Christian texts ... which in its pre-Christian

context would have referred to an (elevated) area in the open where pagan rites were

conducted.”

114

The only other piece of information which these lines yield is that the

being (wig

115

) to whom the Danes “offered worship in [their] pagan cult centres,”

116

is synonymous with the gastbona, who, as any Christian in Anglo-Saxon England

would have known, was the Devil himself.

117

It is then a natural progression for the

poet to state that the Danes were destined to burn forever in hell because of their

actions (l. 183b-6a).

On one occasion the poet refers to Beowulf’s Geats as heathens, when they

arrive back at the court of Hygelac and Hæreðes dohtor ... liðwæge bær hæðnum to

handa, “Hæreth’s daughter bore the cup to the heathens by her [own] hand”, (l.1981-

111

There is the possibility of a single reference in to divination in the poem, though not the traditionally

identified one at l. 204, which Christine Fell has shown to be a prosaic ‘wished him well’, as opposed
to the usual, ‘they cast lots’, or ‘scrutinised the omens’, ‘Paganism in Beowulf: A Semantic Fairy-Tale’,
Germania Latina II: Pagans and Christians, (eds.) T. Hofstra, et al ; Egbert Forsten, 1995, p. 30-3. It
is the ‘day-raven’ of l. 1801-3, which, if the adjective describing the raven is emended from blaca to
blota (according to Lapidge’s set of common substitutional scribal errors (c/t and a/o), the confusion
over whether it is ‘shining’ or ‘dark’ may be dispelled with it would then be - o† †æt hrefn blaca
heofones wynne bli∂heort bodode, ‘[all Heorot slept] until the hallowed raven foretold the joy of
heaven’, ie, that Heorot was now safe from attacks. This emendation alliterates better with the bodode
below, and would be an example of augury from the flight of birds.

112

TOE; Fell, 1995, p. 21-3.

113

That is either a naturally occurring outcrop of stones, or a man-made cairn or barrow in contrast to

the hof which was a man-made temple, associated with buildings and human habitation; C-V.

114

Thomas L. Markey, ‘Germanic Terms for Temple and Cult’, Studies for Einar Haugen: Presented

by Friends and Colleagues, (eds.) Evelyn Scherabon Firchow, et al; Mouton & Co., 1972, p. 368.

115

Wig/Weoh, means ‘idol, being, creature’; it is interesting that the related word wiga means ‘man,

warrior’, which if the wig here is in fact Grendel, accords well with his man/demon split character.

116

Fell, 1995, p. 23.

117

Paul Cavill, ‘Christianity and Theology in Beowulf’, The Christian Tradition in Anglo-Saxon

England: Approaches to Current Scholarship and Teaching, (ed.) Paul Cavill; D.S. Brewer, 2004, p.
27 & n. 35.

3a).

118

This, as noted by Roy Liuzza and Benjamin Slade, is the manuscript reading,

which, even though it now reads hænum, in fact has “an original ð erased between the

æ and the n.”

119

Most editors have emended it to hæleðum, ‘the hero(es)’, Kiernan

retains hænum, ‘the lowly ones’; but ‘the heathens’ is just as appropriate an

appellation for the Geats who, if they even existed,

120

did so long before any

Christianity had reached northern Europe. In any case, the Geats’ heathenism seems

to have been less of an issue for the poet than the Scyldingas’ similar state, mainly

because they did not engage in conspicuously heathen activities that from a Christian

point of view would have damned them to hell. Concerning the other heathens in the

poem, hell is of course the fate of the heathen Grendel (l. 852a, 986a) – who was both

Godes andsaca, ‘God’s adversary’ (l. 786b, 1682b) and feond mancynnes, ‘the enemy

of mankind’ (l. 164b, 1276a) – which was made explicit when hæþene sawle...hel

onfeng, ‘his heathen soul...hell received’ (l. 852). Elsewhere, the word hæðen is twice

used to describe the treasures of the dragon’s hoard (l. 2216a, 2276b), which may

equally refer to the dragon being a heathen creature, or to the undoubtedly heathen

state of the people who had originally deposited the treasures into the barrow along

with their dead chief a millennium ago. When the gold is taken from the dragon’s

barrow and then re-interred into Beowulf’s barrow, it is not called heathen as such;

but the poet comments that the treasures are again eldum swa unnyt þær hit æror wæs,

‘just as useless to men [in] there [as they were] before’ (l. 3168), which “recall[s] the

biblical injunction against ‘storing up treasures on earth’ (Matthew 6:19),”

121

echoed

in the tenth century poem, The Seafarer,

122

and probably points to the gold still

considered as heathen, since it was not orthodox Christian practice in the tenth

century, to bury the dead with grave-goods.

118

Hæðnum can only be a dative plural (unless this is one of Lapidge’s ‘literal’ errors where the ū was

mistaken for a open-topped a in the exemplar, and since hæðen is declined like hand, they may in that
case agree with one another), and handa may be anything but a dative plural; to can govern the dative
or the genitive, and mean not just ‘to’, but also ‘at’ and ‘by’. It is also interesting to note that another
occurrence of hæðnum (l. 2216) also has hond and wæge in the same line, suggesting that there is a
deliberate mirroring of terms here; firstly that a cup is given to the heathen one(s), and secondly that a
cup is taken from the heathen (hoard).

119

Benjamin Slade, ‘Semi-Diplomatic Edition (Old English Text only with notes on the MS)’, Beowulf

on Steorarume (Beowulf in Cyberspace), (ed.) Benjamin Slade; http://www.heorot.dk, note for l.1983.

120

Probably not, since they were a fantastic, fictitious tribes from whom many a nation assigned at

least part of its descent, if the equation is made with the Geatas and the Getae, Leake, passim, but esp.
p. 71-9, 127ff.

121

Beowulf: A new verse translation, (trans.) R.M. Liuzza; Broadview Literary Texts, 2000, p. 38.

122

The Seafarer: ‘Though he wished the grave with gold to strew, the brother for his brother, he buried

beside the dead the precious things that he himself would wish with him; [but] for that soul who was
full of sins he could not [give] gold [as] a consolation against God’s awesome power, for he had
hoarded it before whilst he was living’ (l. 97-103).

When one turns the search from heathen practices to practitioners, the

evidence is just as slim on the ground; and not just in Beowulf, but in the Germanic

world in general. Complicating the matter is the lack of a permanent priesthood,

comparable to the established ecclesiastical hierarchy of Christianity, in the pre-

Christian Germanic religions where the role of a people’s spiritual leadership was

appropriated by the secular leader.

123

This dovetailing of spiritual and secular

authority is preserved best in the Icelandic sources in the duties of the great land-

owning magnates of the goði, the island’s de facto rulers, whose sacred role in pre-

Christian times was to be “responsible for the upkeep of the temple and ensuring it

was maintained properly, as well as for holding sacrificial feasts in it.”

124

Nowhere

else in western European sources is the overlap so well defined, though hints of it

may be found in enough diverse examples to conjecture that the priest-chief was once

the pre-Christian norm. Earl Hákon Grjotgardsson of Lade, ‘held [ie, presided over]

sacrifices’,

125

King Radbod of Frisia, was arguably the chief worshipper of his god,

Fosite,

126

and the ‘custodian’ of the idol in Walcheren was clearly a wealthy man

since he not only owned his own sword, but was apparently unable to be brought to

compensate Willibrord for attempted murder, indicating his higher social status.

127

Anglo-Saxon England, King Redwald arguably tended his own temple, as there is no

mention of any priest(s) who performed this task; likewise, he was able to add another

god (Christ) to his ‘set’ without any opposition.

128

It is also telling that there is no

mention of a Christian priest who accompanied him from Kent after his baptism,

suggesting that he expected to be his own priest.

129

Lastly, King Edwin, prior to his

conversion, is chastised by Pope Boniface in a letter to Æthelburga queen, for

123

Przemysław Urbanczyk, ‘The Politics of Conversion in North Central Europe’, The Cross Goes

North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe AD 300-1300, (ed.) Martin Carver; York
Medieval Press, 2003, p. 19-20.

124

The first generation of Norwegian emigré goðar also usually built these temples in Iceland;

Hrafnkel’s Saga and other Icelandic Stories, (trans.) Hermann Pálsson; Penguin Books, 1977, ch. 2, p.
36; Eyrbyggja saga [in] Gisli Sursson’s Saga and The Saga of the People of Eyri, (trans.) Judy Quinn
& Martin S. Regal; Penguin Books, 2003, ch. 4, p. 75-6.

125

Urbanczyk, p. 19.

126

Alcuin, Life of St. Willibrord, [in], The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany, (trans., ed.) C.H.

Talbot; Sheed & Ward Ltd., London, 1981, p. 10-11.

127

However, the Anglo-Saxons were foreigners in the area and may not necessarily been covered for

reimbursement for physical attacks under local Frisian law, and in any case the attack was justified
from the Frisian point of view, since Willibrord had attacked the idol first. Luckily for Willibrord, God
was there to settle the matter in his favour, since one suspects that in real life the ‘custodian’ would
have won any case brought against him; ibid., p. 12-3.

128

It is only sole Christian worship to which Redwald’s wife and advisors seem to object.

129

Bede, HE, 2:15, p. 133.

‘serving abominable idols’ “with the implication that [he] was involved in these

ceremonies.”

130

Ian Wood has pointed out the discrepancy, across the Germanic world,

between the meagre references to priests in the literature, and the number of words

which mean ‘priest’.

131

One such word is the Old Norse þulr, whose role seemed

primarily to be that of a speaker, as shown through the closely related words þular,

‘poetic lists and mnemonic catalogues of beings and events’, and þylja ‘to speak,

recite, chant’.

132

A secondary association of the þulr is with engaging in divination

and prophecy,

133

and being considered a keeper of wisdom and knowledge.

134

The

earliest occurrence of this word is from a memorial stone in Snoldelev, Denmark,

whose inscription, Gunnwalds stæinn sonar Hróalds þulaR á Salhaugum, “the stone

of Gunnwaldr Hróaldsson, ‘speaker’ at the hall-mounds” is dated to the ninth

century.

135

The þulr seems to be a Scandinavian phenomenon, but there is a cognate

word in Old English, þyle, which Adelaide Hardy first argued may be translated as

‘heathen priest’.

136

Outside of Beowulf, þyle occurs only in Widsið as the name of an

ancient hero in Þyle [weold] Rondingum, “Þyle ruled the Rondingas” (l. 24b),

137

and

in five Old English glosses – twice for orator in the Cotton Cleopatra A.III, (l.4455)

130

Bede, HE, 2:11, p. 124; Barbara Yorke, ‘The Adaptions of the Anglo-Saxon Royal Courts to

Christianity’, The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe AD 300-1300, (ed.)
Martin Carver; York Medieval Press, 2003, p. 252.

131

It is interesting to note here that ealdormann is a synonym for preost in the Thesaurus of Old

English; Ian N. Wood, ‘Pagan Religions and Superstitions East of the Rhine from the Fifth to the Ninth
Century’, After Empire: Towards and Ethnology of Europe’s Barbarians, (ed.) G. Ausenda; The
Boydell Press, 1995, p. 258.

132

Cleasby-Vigfusson.

133

Odin is the fimbulþulr (Ynglingatal, st. 6), and his alter ego in Hávamál calls both himself (st. 80,

111, 134, 142) and the speaker of the chair at Urthr’s well a þulr...and also sacrifice as in Ida Masters
Hollowell, ‘Unferð the þyle in Beowulf’, Studies in Philology, v. 73:3, Jul. 1976, p. 244, (There may be
a link with the chair of the þulr and the platform used in seiðr, as well as to the platforms which may
be archaeologically found as an Anglo-Saxon construction over prehistoric mounds (Sarah Semple, ‘A
fear of the past: the lace of the prehistoric burial mound in the ideology of middle and later Anglo-
Saxon England’, World Archaeology: The Past in the Past: The Reuse of Ancient Monuments, v. 30:1,
Jun. 1998, p. 116-7), and the literary evidence from Gisli Sursson’s saga that esoteric rituals performed
on burial mounds which involved a nine-year old gelding ox and a scaffold structure, were in honour if
Frey (ch. 18, p. 30-1), who of course was the first of the gods/kings buried in a barrow in Saxo
Grammaticus, The First Nine Books of the Danish History, (trans.) Oliver Elton; Publications of the
Folk-Lore Society, Kraus Reprint Ltd., 1967, book 5, §171, p. 210-1; and Snorri Sturluson, Ynglinga
saga, ch. 13-5, [in] Heimskringla: Chronicles of the Kings of Norway, (trans.) Samuel Laing;
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/heim/index.htm.

134

Hollowell, p. 245-6; Rudolph Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology, (trans.) Angela Hall; D.S.

Brewer, 2006, ’06, p. 114, 331-2.

135

Simek, p. 331.

136

Adelaide Hardy, ‘The Christian Hero Beowulf and Unfer∂ †yle’ Neophilologus, v. 53, 1969, p. 63.

137

Incidentally a tribal name reminiscent of the Scyldingas; stretching the link, the ‘rim-men’ or

‘shield-edge-men’ bring to mind the chess pieces from the Isle of Lewis, whose the rooks are portrayed
biting the edges of their shields, the ‘shield-edge-biters’ perhaps.

and the Liber Scintillarum (32.36),

138

and in the compounds fæþelas glossing

histriones,

139

and hofþelum for scurris

140

– all of which have a base meaning of

‘speaker’. A point which other scholars have not given the emphasis it requires, is that

all of these glosses date from the early eleventh century,

141

leaving Widsið and

Beowulf to support an earlier date. The former, who context outside of the late tenth

century manuscript is irretrievable,

142

cannot place þyle before c. 950 CE at the

earliest,

143

while the latter is not likely to reflect a historical situation prior to the turn

of the ninth/tenth centuries.

Thus the þyle covered the same primary meaning as the þulr; the secondary

meaning of ‘priest’, which likely originated from the ritual location of the ‘speaker’s’

activities,

144

though the evidence is not as firm, may also be demonstrated in the Old

English sources. Firstly, the gloss hofþelum may point to a priestly role similar to that

of the Old Norse hofgoðar (which is was used to specifically refer to the pagan

sacerdotal duties of the goði

145

), since here the element hof- refers to the Old Norse

use of the word meaning ‘temple’ rather than ‘house’.

146

Secondly, W.H. Stephenson

notes that when the þyle is described as æt fotum sæt, ‘sitting at the feet’ of Hrothgar

(l. 500a), it is a term equivalent to pedisequus, ‘follower’, which was itself an

equivalent to þegn, used in Asser’s Life of King Alfred.

147

The role of the þyle accords

with the pre-Christian role of the priest being located in the person of a secular

authority, especially in light of the dual description of Coifi as both King Edwin’s

“chief priest” and (indirectly) “[one] of the king’s chief men.”

148

Therefore, even

though pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons had combined their secular and spiritual

leadership into a single person, it seems that after the transitional period of the

138

Orator does indeed mean ‘speaker, spokesman, ambassador’, but it also covers one who prays or

supplicates for anything’, which can be seen in the counter-glosses for orator in wordsnotere,
‘eloquent’ (lit. word-wisdom), spelbodan, ‘messenger, angel, ambassador, prophet’, forspeca,
‘advocate, mediator, sponsor (at baptism)’; Lewis & Short; þelcræfte glosses rhetorica.

139

Fah~ likely means ‘wicked/hostile ‘speaker”, while historiones is ‘actor, boaster’.

140

Hof~ is a ‘temple-þyle’; scurris does indeed mean ‘bufoon, jester’, but it can also mean ‘guardsman’

(of the emperor) in late imperial Latin, a use which may compare to the secular roles of the priests
hitherto emphasised.

141

Hollowell, 250-2.

142

Joyce Hill, ‘Widsið and the Tenth Century’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, v. 85:3, 1984, p. 313,

315.

143

Anglo-Saxon Poetry, p. 201.

144

Hollowell also cites the Danish place-names Tulshøj and Tulehøj as evidence for an association of

the þulr with barrows, p. 243.

145

Cleasby-Vigfusson, also see Eyrbyggja saga ch. 4, p. 76.

146

Markey, p. 366-7.

147

Hardy, p. 66.

148

Bede, HE, 2:13, p. 129.

conversions had come to an end by the middle of the eighth century, literate Anglo-

Saxons in the late ninth and tenth centuries may have had to borrow words from the

Old Norse (or at least add meanings to existing Old English words) in order to

adequately describe the religious roles of heathen rulers with whom they were in

contact.

This contact could have come, locally, at any time before the middle of the

tenth century, since after this point it was highly unlikely for there to have been any

heathen Anglo-Scandinavians in the Danelaw. Of course exactly when the majority of

the migrants were converted to Christianity, and the depth of it, is another question

altogether. It is a fact that the Scandinavians, who were to later settle in the Danelaw,

were heathen when they arrived in England in the last quarter of the ninth century; but

by the 950’s CE, most of the heathen Scandinavian settlers had become transformed

into Christian Anglo-Scandinavians (at least nominally). The earliest of the recorded

conversions of the settlers in the Anglo-Saxon sources, was Guthrum, the Dane who

made himself King of East Anglia. He, along with ‘thirty of his nobles’ went to

Alfred under their treaty terms in 878 CE, and accepted baptism from him.

149

Alfred

was apparently fond of this tactic, for he used on more than one occasion, since

Hæsten’s wife and sons had also been baptised as a result of a treaty in the early 890’s

between the Scandinavians settling and raiding in Eastern England and the West

Saxons.

150

The coinage of the Danelaw may also be indicative of the elite Anglo-

Scandinavians’ religious mood, with the St. Edmund pennies which began to be

minted c. 895 CE,

151

and the similar St. Peter’s pennies in York from c. 905 CE and

St. Martin pennies in Lincoln in the 920’s CE.

152

Gothfrith, or Guthred, the Dane

elected king of Northumbria in 883 CE, was reputedly a Christian on his ascension (as

well as his death in 895 CE) and he was accorded a Christian burial in York

Minster.

153

However, Northumbria – sometimes comprising the Kingdom of York

alone, sometimes including all or part of the Five (sometimes Seven) Boroughs – was

ruled by a series of heathens from the turn of the century to the expulsion of Eric

Bloodaxe in 954.

154

149

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, under year 878, p. 76-7.

150

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, under year 894, p. 86-7.

151

Mark Blackburn, ‘Expansion and Control: aspects of Anglo-Scandinavian minting south of the

Humber’, Vikings and the Danelaw, (eds.) James Graham-Campbell et al; Oxbow Books, 2001, p. 132.

152

ibid., p. 135-6.

153

Ashley, p. 460.

154

Sihtric the Squint-Eyed, ruled 921-7 CE, submitted to Æthelstan in 926, and accepted baptism and

his sister from him, though within a few months he had renounced both; Olaf Sihtricson, ruled 941-3,

As Lesley Abrams points out, the lack of ecclesiastical centres and personnel

in the Scandinavian Danelaw suggests that, at least for the majority of the elite

Scandinavians, Christianity came hand in hand with West Saxon rule from the 920’s

onwards; since no matter how many individuals converted to Christianity, without

any ecclesiastical presence in the Danelaw, no conversion could have been entirely

effective or long-lasting.

155

Especially considering that, apart from the office of the

Bishop of York, no bishopric was held continuously in the period of the settlement of

the Danelaw;

156

indeed many posts never recovered. However, just as notable is that

there do not seem to be accounts of the smashing of idols or temples in the Danelaw,

as was commonly the course of the Christian evangelisation (or re-conversion) of a

people in early Medieval Europe. This in turn suggests that while the population of

the Danelaw were not Christians themselves, neither were they, from the evidence of

their Christian neighbours, overtly visible practitioners of heathenism.

FUNERAL RITES IN BEOWULF:

It has already been noted that the both the Danes and the Geats were labeled

heathens in the poem, and their funerary rites certainly reinforce this fact, since not

one of the funerary rites referred to in Beowulf, would have been considered

appropriate for a Christian at the time of the manuscript. Four characters – Scyld,

Hnæf, Beowulf and ‘Chief’ (the anonymous chieftain whose tomb the dragon later

inhabits) – have their funerals described at length in the poem; and with what little the

poet actually states, all four can be seen to be described in a remarkably similar

manner: all are accompanied by grave-goods in the form of multiple sets of weapons

and numerous ‘treasures’; Beowulf and ‘Chief’ are buried in barrows, the former in

one constructed specially for him, while Hnæf is most likely buried within one, since

his pyre is located for hlawe “before the barrow” (l. 1120a). Points of difference lie in

Beowulf and Hnæf being cremated, and Hnæf being accompanied by his nephew on

the pyre.

157

Cremation is the rite which Wiglaf expresses his preference for, when he

948-52 CE, submitted to Edmund, but renounced Christianity soon after; Ragnall Gothfrithson, ruled
943-5 CE, submitted to Edmund and was baptised a few months in; Erik Bloodaxe, ruled 947-8, 952-4,
was never baptised, and expelled; Ashley, p. 462-6.

155

Lesley Abrams, ‘The Conversion of the Danelaw’, Vikings and the Danelaw, (eds.) James Graham-

Campbell et al; Oxbow Books, 2001, p. 37-9.

156

ibid., p. 33-4.

157

Compare Hildeburh who “commanded that her own son be consigned to the flames ... at his uncle’s

shoulder” l. 1114-7 in Beowulf, to Brynhild in Volsunga saga where she has Sigurd’s three-year old

says that god wat on mec þæt me is micle leofre þæt minne lichaman mid minne

goldgyfan gled fæðmie, ‘God knows for my part that for me it is greater, more loving,

that my body [be] alongside my gold-giver’s in the flames’ embrace’, (l. 2650b-2), in

which a similar ritual to that of Hnæf being accompanied by his nephew may be

implied. Æschere would likewise have been cremated had he not died in the

circumstances and manner in which he did, since bronde forbærnan ne on bel hladan,

‘[the Danes were unable] to burn [him] up with a fire-brand upon the bale-mound’ (l.

2124-9).

The other point of difference between the four funerals is of course that

Scyld's takes place on a boat which is then set adrift. At first there is a superficial

resemblance to the many ship-themed funerals rites practiced all over north-western

Europe from the seventh to tenth centuries;

158

however, it ought to be rapidly apparent

that the rite described in Beowulf is in fact not found anywhere else in early medieval

literature, and neither can it be verified from the archaeological record.

159

Where ship-

funerals are mentioned in the Old Norse literature, they are never simply set adrift –

and if they are, the boat is set on fire first

160

– usually they are not even physically

associated with water, being covered by a burial-mound on dry land.

161

In presenting

this lack of evidence for Scyld’s funeral rites, Audrey Meaney cites a hagiographical

tradition which may have been an influence on the Beowulf poet, found in both the

Breton Life of St. Gildas and a number of Rhenish saints, where the dead saint was

not only laid out on a funerary boat, but let drift free on the assumption that God was

guiding their boat to land where he so wished them to be buried.

162

But even in the

case of Gildas’ funeral which is of these the closest descriptively to Scyld’s funeral in

Beowulf,

163

the motif seems to be somewhat of a thin parallel. It is much easier to

assume that either a fuller description of Scyld’s funeral that fits better with the other

Beowulfian funerals was lost in the course of the scribal transmission; or that the

son killed to accompany them, along with other retainers and servants, onto the funeral pyre, ch. 33, p.
93.

158

Simek, p. 39-40; Audrey L. Meaney, ‘Scyld Scefing and the Dating of Beowulf – Again’, Bulletin of

the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, v. 79:1, 1989, p. 22-6.

159

Fell, 1995, p. 26.

160

Meaney, 1989, p. 28.

161

For instance: Aud the Deep-Minded in Laxdæla saga, ch. 7, p. 57; Thorgrim in Gisli Sursson’s

saga, ch. 17, p. 30 – here the boat is also ‘moored’ into the earth by a huge boulder being thrown into it
which goes through to the ground level; Ragnar the Sea-King in Barða saga, ch. 20.

162

Meaney, 1989, p. 29-30.

163

Meaney, 1989, p. 32.

poet’s knowledge is faulty; or that in fact the poet was merely cobbling together all

the snippets which he had heard about in relation to Scandinavian ship-funerals.

Another burial practice of laying the dead on a couch or a bed, which is only

occasionally found in the archaeological record, may be alluded to in three enigmatic

instances in Beowulf. The first mention comes in the poet’s aside after Grendel has

been defeated, that “Death is not an easy thing to escape...but compelled by necessity

all must come to that place set aside for [people]”, which is described as þær his

lichoma legerbedde fæst swefeþ æfter symle, ‘there [where] his body sleeps on the

death-bed, fast after the feast’, (l. 1007-8a). The second describes Grendel, when

Beowulf, after defeating Grendel’s mother, comes across him in the recede,

‘chamber’ of the hall, where he on ræste geseah guðwerigne Grendel licgan

aldorleasne, ‘[Beowulf] saw the battle-weary one on the bed; Grendel lay lifeless’, (l.

1585b-7a).

164

The third concerns Hreðel, who, just before he dies (l. 2469-71),

gewiteð þonne on sealman sorhleoð gæleð ‘then lay upon his death-couch, chanting a

song-of-sorrow...’ (l. 2460).

165

The three words used to describe the piece of furniture,

legerbedde, ræste and sealman, are all used to describe both a bed or a couch,

166

well as the grave.

167

The modern English cliché of being ‘asleep’ in the grave may

have once been a more literal conception, if the occurrence of the couch or bed in

early medieval graves is anything to go by. Some of the well-known examples include

the early sixth century tomb found underneath Cologne Cathedral of a young boy

lying on an ornate bed, and the beds which were found in the Gokstad and Oseberg

ship-burials from the late ninth and mid tenth centuries respectively. Relevant here are

also a number of ninth century burials found under York Minster, where the bodies

were laid in stone coffins, one of which had a recess for the head, while others had

what have been termed stone ‘pillows’.

168

An early Anglo-Saxon point of reference,

may be provided by the late seventh century (secondary) barrow inhumation at

Swallowcliffe Down of a young woman, accompanied by a rich array of grave-goods

164

Reced may be used to refer to a grave, Thesaurus of Old English Online (henceforth TOE).

165

The phenomenon of singing one’s own the death-song is widespread in Germanic literature, but

related closely to the speech of the haugbúar; N.K. Chadwick ‘Norse Ghosts II: Continued’, Folklore,
v. 57:3, Sep. 1946, p. 114-5.

166

TOE.

167

TOE; Sealman only occurs once elsewhere in reference to Lazarus' death-bed, Bosworth & Toller;

also Kathryn A. Lowe, ‘A Fine and Private Place: The Wife’s Lament ll.33-34, the Translators and the
Critics’, Lastworda Betst, (eds.) Carole Hough & Kathryn A. Lowe; Shaun Tyas, 2002, p. 124-8.

168

These may also be reminiscent of St. Gildas’ pillow; Julian D. Richards, ‘The Case of the Missing

Vikings: Scandinavian Burial in the Danelaw’, Burial in Early Medieval England and Wales, (eds.)
Sam Lucy & Andrew Reynolds; The Society for Medieval Archaeology, London, 2002, p. 163.

(a number of which were undoubtedly Christian in character

169

), and interred upon a

bed constructed from “ash plank sides and headboard, iron hand-rails and leather

‘webbing’ forming the base”.

170

It is also notable that a similar grave assemblage

including a bed was found at a nearby, similarly dated barrow, at Cranbourne

Chase.

171

The Swallowcliffe Down barrow also contained feasting and drinking

apparatus among the grave-goods (not uncommon in Anglo-Saxon graves);

172

these

may provide a context for the reference in Beowulf to the body being ‘laid on the bed

after the feast’ (l. 1007-8a).

Therefore, with the exception of Scyld’s ship being set adrift (and perhaps the

inclusion of a couch among the grave-goods) it seems that for the Beowulf poet, a

noble heroic burial entailed cremation, expensive (but generic) grave-goods, and

interment within a barrow. However, it is a fact that not since the middle of the

seventh century, at the latest, was cremation a normal burial rite in Anglo-Saxon

England.

173

Similarly, the provision of grave-goods “with a range of items, do[es] not

appear on present evidence [to] significantly ... outlast the eighth century”, with

instead the norm being “the near-complete abandonment of grave-goods in the first

decades of the eighth century”;

174

and barrow burials – even secondary interments –

seem to have gone the way of furnished graves, the last being dated to the first third

of the eighth century.

175

But not only had such burial rites not been in use in Anglo-

Saxon England for at least a century and a half, if not for over two hundred years, it is

also a fact that these three main characteristics of the Beowulfian funerals, are never

found combined together in actual Anglo-Saxon burials.

176

There is one possible

exception to this statement in the Asthall barrow, from Oxfordshire, a (primary)

barrow erected over an in situ pyre, on which had been “a total cremation of a rich

grave assemblage” together with a body;

177

the best concordance from the Anglo-

Saxon archaeological record to the evidence from Beowulf. However, it must be

169

Howard Williams, Death and Memory in Early Medieval Britain; Cambridge University Press,

2006, p. 30.

170

C.J. Arnold, An Archaeology of the Early Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms; Routledge, 2

ed., 1997, p. 75 &

fig. 4.5.

171

Williams, 2006, p. 32.

172

ibid., p. 30.

173

ibid., p. 23, fig. 1.4.

174

Geake, Helen, The Use of Grave-Goods in Conversion-Period England, c.600-c.850; BAR British

Series #261, 1997, p. 125.

175

Williams, 2006, p. 30.

176

Fell, 1995, p. 27-8.

177

Tania M. Dickinson & George Speake, ‘The Seventh-Century Cremation Burial in Asthall Barrow,

Oxfordshire: A Reassessment’, The Age of Sutton Hoo, (ed.) M.O.H. Carver; The Boydell Press, 1992,
p. 115.

stressed that this is an isolated example, not just in the unique combination of

elements,

178

but more importantly in that if the Beowulf poet was indeed referring to

this particular event (or one like it for which there is no archaeological proof), then

the chain of information connecting the mid seventh to the close of the ninth century

at the earliest, is far too long and unreliable. A more likely source of information, that

would have had a shorter route to reach the Beowulf poet, may have been accounts of

the funerary customs practiced by Scandinavians of his own day and age (or at least to

within a generation), which most likely reach him through the reported activities of

those Scandinavians who lived on his own doorstep in the Danelaw, as well as from

further afield.

The archaeological evidence for ship-burial noted above (with respect to the

lack of a parallel that can be found for Scyld Scefing’s ship-funeral), points to an

overwhelmingly Scandinavian context for the practice, with over four hundred such

graves having been found in Scandinavia,

179

as opposed to the handful from

elsewhere in Europe.

180

There is a significant overlap with the practice of barrow

burial, since the majority (if not arguably all) of the ship-burials may be seen within

the context of a primary barrow construction;

181

however, within the range of barrow

burials known in the archaeological and literary records, ship-burial was simply one

of many options. Barrow burial seems to have been the most popular option for the

interment of the elite dead in Scandinavia during the ninth and tenth centuries,

182

mirroring the preference of the Beowulf poet. However, the choice of either cremation

or inhumation, seems to be due to dynastic or familial preferences, and such a

distinction does not seem to be shown in Beowulf, where all the familial groups –

Scyldingas and Wægmundingas – practice similar rites.

183

The provision of a wide

range of rich grave-goods in the Scandinavian barrows, was not limited to beg &

siglu, ‘rings and necklaces’ (l. 3163b), or hildewæpnum ond heaðowædum billum ond

byrnum ... madma mænigo, ‘war-weapons and battle-dress, blades and byrnies ...

many riches’, (l. 39-41a) – though these were certainly included – but encompassed

178

Dickinson & Speake, p. 118-9.

179

Meaney, 1989, p. 22.

180

England: Sutton Hoo, Snape; Isle of Man: Balladoole; Continental Europe: Île de Groix; Iceland.

181

Simek, p. 39-40.

182

Simek, p. 49.

183

The Hreþlingas all have deviant burials, except for Beowulf if he is considered one of them through

fosterage and the maternal line.

“personal possessions and all the familiar objects of daily life ... farming implements,

smiths’ tools, kitchen objects and all [those] necessary for spinning and weaving,” as

well as the common inclusion of animal companions within this range.

184

With regards to heathen Scandinavian funerals and burials meant to have

occurred in England, there are three examples of barrow burial in the literary sources:

the barrow of Ubbe Ragnarsson, which was erected for especially for him near where

he fell in battle in Devonshire, was named after him and remembered locally for some

time;

185

Ivarr Ragnarsson, was buried in a barrow somewhere in England;

186

and

Thorolf Skallagrimsson was buried by his brother in Egil with weapons and armour in

a burial-mound.

187

It is very interesting to note that two of the sons of Ragnar

Loðbrok, whose descendants were known as the Scaldingi from the ninth century,

share not just a name with the Scyldingas of Beowulf, but a preferred mode of burial

as well. There do not appear to be any accounts of Scandinavian cremations or ship-

burials that were meant to have occurred within Anglo-Saxon England.

In the archaeological record, burials in England that may be securely seen as

originating from a heathen Scandinavian milieu, are just as rare as the literary

examples. With the exception of the Cumbrian and Northumbrian barrow burials of

the late ninth to early tenth centuries, which belong in the context of the Irish Sea

zone,

188

the evidence for Scandinavian burials in England that may be identifiable as

such is rather slim.

189

James Graham-Campbell in his survey of all the probable,

possible and doubtful heathen Scandinavian burials in England known up to 1997, is

able to conclude that the sum of the possible, but likely, is a meagre total of fifteen

such burials.

190

Their heathen characteristics are thus: all the male burials bar two,

have weapons interred with the body;

191

three may be associated with coin hoards

184

Hilda Roderick Ellis, The Road to Hel: A Study of the Conception of the Dead in Old Norse

Literature; Cambridge University Press, 1943, p. 10.

185

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p. 75, n. 12.

186

Ragnar Loðbrok’s saga, Hemings Þattr; Martin Biddle & Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle, ‘Repton and the

‘great heathen army’, 873-4’, Viking and the Danelaw, (eds) James Graham-Campbell et al, Oxbow
Books, 2001, p. 82-3.

187

Egil’s saga, ch. 55, p. 99.

188

All are furnished, and one, maybe two are cremations out of perhaps twenty noted by Richards,

2002, p. 158-9, and 2004, p. 191-5, fig. 14; Ireland, Isle of Man, Western Isles and Northumbria may
be seen as outliers of influence

189

Richards, 2002, p. 156-7.

190

Nottingham x2, Newark-on Trent, Stanton Downham, Middle Harling, Thetford x2, Wicken Fen

(?), Leigh-on-Sea, Saffron Walden, Reading, Sonning, St. Mary’s at Reading, Hook Norton x2; p. 105-
15; James Graham-Campbell, ‘Pagan Scandinavian burial in the central and southern Danelaw’,
Vikings and the Danelaw, (eds.) James Graham-Campbell et al; Oxbow Books, 2001.

191

Saffron Walden and Sedgeford are both women; no weapons at either Hook Norton; p. 112-5; ibid.

dating to before c. 900 CE,

192

four are interred with a horse;

193

and two are definitely

barrow burials.

194

However, four clearly occur within the context of a Christian

church, and yet display heathen attributes.

195

From York, two only early tenth century

burials with meagre grave-goods have been found, one with a ‘St. Peter’s penny’, a

schist whetstone and a copper buckle, the other with a silver ring on one arm;

196

though it must be considered that so little of the settlement or cemetery areas of any

period in York may be archaeologically inaccessible due to modern use of the sites,

and thus whatever is uncovered cannot be seen to be representative of the area.

There remain the two important sites of Repton and Ingleby for Scandinavian

heathen burials. Until the 873/4 CE wintering of the ‘Great Army’, Repton was both a

royal Mercian double-house monastery and burial place for several Mercian kings,

including Wigstan,

197

but during the Viking winter, Repton was occupied, and

transformed with a series of earthworks into a defensible location, with the church

buildings used as part of these earthworks.

198

Datable to this historical event, in the

opinion of the excavators Martin Biddle and Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle, in the vicinity of

the church, three graves (# 295, 511, 529) have been definitely identified as heathen

burials: all were buried with weapons, the latter two with personal jewellery, and

#511 had not just a Thor’s Hammer, but also a jackdaw bone and boar’s tusk

deliberately placed in the grave with him.

199

There were also three Scandinavian-type

weapons found in the vicinity that may suggest up to three more such graves.

200

Outside of the defenses, an existing small building was leveled by the Vikings, and

transformed into a barrow containing a richly furnished tomb of heathen Scandinavian

character, in which a central figure lay in a stone coffin in the burial chamber which

was filled with the disinterred bones of at least 250 of the monastery’s cemetery’s

occupants (revealed when the earthworks were cut

201

), and accompanied by grave-

192

Hook Norton #1, c. 875; St. Mary’s, c. 870-1; Leigh-on-Sea, c. 895; p. 114-5; ibid.

193

Sedgeford; Leigh-on-Sea; Reading; Saffron Walden; p. 112-5; ibid.

194

Stanton Downham, Hook Norton #2; p. 110-1, 115; ibid.

195

Sedgeford, Saffron Walden, are both buried with horses in a churchyard, the latter also has

Scandinavian pendants and a necklace dated to c. 900 CE based on its style; p. 112, 114; Newark-on-
Trent is not actually a burial, but a report of a Viking sword found while digging underneath a church,
p. 106-8; St. Mary’s is from the churchyard, a coffin/cist containing an 11+ coin hoard, p. 115; ibid.

196

Richards, 2002, p. 163.

197

The very king whom a number of scholars have equated with the Weohstan Wægmunding of

Beowulf; Biddle & Kjølbye-Biddle, p. 50-2.

198

ibid., p. 57-60.

199

Biddle & Kjølbye-Biddle, p. 61-5.

200

ibid., p.65.

201

Richards, 2002, p. 167.

goods and weapons.

202

This barrow has been plausibly interpreted as the tomb of the

abovementioned Ivarr Ragnarsson.

203

The dating of Repton stems from the five coins

datable to the mid 870’s CE from burial #529, and the five coins datable to c. 872 CE

(four of the coins) and c. 873/4 (one coin).

204

Even though the church was apparently

not in use again until at least the 910’s CE,

205

the burials noted above served as a

focus for the continued use of the area around them as a cemetery, and one grave from

c. 900 CE has been identified as probably heathen is that of a woman with an iron

knife and a strike-a-light.

206

Turning to Ingleby, the only cremation cemetery in post seventh century

England; Julian Richards, who conducted the most recent series of excavations of the

site, has, in a number of papers, dated the cemetery as concurrent with the events

referred to above in Repton, suggesting that the later schism in the ‘Great Army’ may

be dated to this point when two separate camps were set up close to one another.

207

However, he does concede that the cemetery may instead be ‘artefactually’ dated to

any time within c. 860-90,

208

and “in use for a relatively brief period of time, and

probably for no more than 20-30 years”.

209

The cemetery itself is comprised of an

original total of fifty-nine barrows, all of which thus far excavated

210

are either in situ

cremations or placed peripherally cremation deposits (which had previously been

identified as cenotaphs), both of which would thereafter have been covered by a

mound.

211

Cremated animal bones have also been recovered from the mounds

alongside weapons, and the presence of the many iron nails from the cremation beds

has been most plausibly linked to the use of biers or platforms for the body while it

was on the pyre.

212

Finally, that some of the “metalwork in both iron and bronze is

fragmentary and unrecognisable, apart from some buckles and strap-fittings,”

213

may

be as a result of metal objects being burnt on the pyre along with the body.

202

That anything could be found after at least three previous openings of the tomb in the seventeenth,

eighteenth and twentieth centuries is quite remarkable!

203

Biddle & Kjølbye-Biddle, p. 81-4.

204

ibid., p. 65, 69.

205

ibid., p. 53.

206

ibid., p. 65.

207

Richards, 2002, p. 169-70.

208

Graham-Campbell, p. 109-10.

209

Richards, 2004, p. 199

210

A third have been excavated as of 2004.

211

Richards, 2002, p. 168.

212

Graham-Campbell, p. 109; Richards, 2002, p. 168-9.

213

Graham-Campbell, p. 109.

In relation to the funerals in Beowulf, Ingleby may well have been an

influence; especially if the cemetery can be shown to have been in use for a

generation. Beowulf’s barrow is constructed over his pyre (l. 2802b-3a, 3159-61a), as

were many of the in situ cremations; and the context of cremations held within a

barrow cemetery, may be suggestive of the description of Hnæf’s funeral pyre which

at the apex of its burning, hlynode for hlawe, ‘bellowed in front of the barrow’ (l.

1120a), suggestive of there being more than one barrow in the place where Hnæf

would thereafter be interred. But Beowulf’s funeral was not located in the context of

other cremations or other barrows, so if his funeral is archaeologically verifiable, then

the solitary barrow rite must be examined. The Ingelby selection of rites may also be

comparable to the Beowulfian accounts of the weapons being assembled on the pyre

along with the body (and then presumably burnt), as in the case of Hnæf and his

nephew (l. 1110-3a) and Beowulf (l. 3137-40); but unfortunately, there is not enough

evidence for these suggestions to leave the realm of conjecture.

Thus Hnæf’s funeral may well have a parallel in the Ingelby cremations

(though this is far from certain); ‘Chief’s’ funeral is so generic as to be able to

describe any furnished barrow inhumation from any period; and Scyld’s funeral may

indeed be based upon a popular form of Scandinavian funerary rite, but ultimately, it

is a work of fiction. The correspondence between Beowulf’s funeral and the Asthall

barrow burial is intriguing – but the great distance in time between the two, and if the

location of the Beowulf’s barrow in the poem is to be taken at face-value, in that it

refers to a coastal headland, where Asthall is nowhere near a coast, does discourage

any direct links. However, this apparent lack of an archaeological parallel in England

to Beowulf’s funeral, does not need to be troubling, since unknown numbers of sites

may well have vanished or been destroyed over the intervening period of over a

millennium. There are two environmental factors that are of relevance here. Firstly,

most of Britain’s coastline (especially in areas of Scandinavian settlement) is prone to

high levels of erosion (as a result of being exposed to strong offshore winds and large

tidal ranges), and secondly, Britain is tectonically subsiding to the south-east. Both of

these factors have been the major causes of the disappearance of a number of villages,

towns and regions (and archaeological sites) in Britain in historical memory,

214

and it

214

For instance towns such as, Ravenser Odd on the Holderness, Dunwich in Suffolk, Shipden and

Eccles in Norfolk and Brighthelmstone in Sussex; whole tracts of land such as the Wirral peninsula,
and the Goodwin Sands.

is tempting to see Hronesnæs (l. 3136b) as one of these headlands that has been since

lost to the sea.

The extent of the Beowulf poet’s knowledge of heathen practices goes no

further than those aspects which were public manifestations – the person of the

heathen priest, religious activities in places which were not Christian churches, and

expensive non-Christian burial practices incorporating cremation and barrow building

– which were unlikely to survive without the wealthy aristocratic classes perpetuating

them. The source of his knowledge was most unlikely to have been cultural memories

of Anglo-Saxon heathenism, which endured to at least the end of the eighth

century,

215

since the linguistic evidence of the ‘temples’ and ‘priests’ in Beowulf

points to “Norse, rather than Anglo-Saxon pagan cult practices,”

216

and the

descriptions of the funerals from Beowulf, where they depart from common Germanic

pre-Christian practice, are most closely paralleled in the Scandinavian archaeological

record, both in the homelands and in overseas settlements. With regard to the Danes

being called heathens; this may have come at almost any point before the last third of

the tenth century when Harald Bluetooth of Denmark officially converted to

Christianity. But the Danes are referred to throughout the poem as Scyldingas, and

before Canute the Great, these could only have referred to the Scandinavians of the

Danelaw, who were definitely considered to be Christian after c. 950 CE. If the

reference to the heathenism of the Danes in Beowulf was meant to be a reflection of

the contemporary knowledge of the poet regarding Scandinavian people and practices,

(as he demonstrates elsewhere), then Beowulf was most probably composed at a time

before these Danelaw Scyldingas were entirely converted to Christianity. This may

have come in the last quarter of the ninth century when prominent Scandinavian elites

converted; but until the 920’s in Southumbrian lands, and the 940’s/50’s in

Northumbrian territory, any such individual conversions would have been negated by

the lack of a support base for Christianity that indicates the heathenism of the area, in

the sense of actual non-Christian beliefs and practices as well as the laspsed or non-

orthodox Christianity.

215

Wentersdorf, p. 100-3, 107.

216

Markey, p. 368.

HAPTER

HREE

SCHATOLOGICAL

ONTEXT OF

EOWULF

The eschatological aspects of Beowulf as a means of better understanding the

social context of the poem, seem to have been somewhat neglected by recent

scholarship – though admittedly there is not much to go from the poem alone. The

two possible references to an afterlife, come in the course of Hnæf’s funeral where

guðrinc astah wand to wolcnum wælfyra mæst, “the warrior ascended; to the clouds

coiled the mighty funeral fire” (l. 1118b-9), and in Beowulf’s funeral where heofon

rece swealg, “heaven swallowed the smoke” from his pyre (l. 3155b). These have

been compared to the practice of taking omens regarding the future status of the dead

man from the pyre’s smoke as in Ynglinga saga,

217

where the precedent of Odin’s

cremation was understood to mean that: “the higher the smoke arose in the air, the

higher he would be raised whose pile it was, and the richer he would be, the more

property was consumed with him.”

218

This was a concept with great longevity in the

Germanic world, since even in eighteenth and early nineteenth century Norway, the

burning of the bed-straw from a death-bed was a practice not only enforced by law,

but also used for omens of the future of the living population as the direction of the

smoke was used to “indicate the place from which the next funeral was to come.”

219

The fate of dead could also be indicated thus, since if the smoke rose straight up into

the air, “it augured well for the future state of the deceased.”

220

Even though no

mention is made of how the smoke would behave if the dead person were to enjoy a

miserable afterlife in the later sources, an indication may be found in Eyrbyggja saga

when during the burning of the corpse of Thorolf the draugr “the wind was strong and

blew the ashes far and wide once the burning took off.”

221

Since his spirit was able to

return to possess a bull-calf (after its mother ingested of the ashes) he may be safely

presumed to have been a damned soul.

217

Paul Beekman Taylor, ‘Heofon riece swealg: A Sign of Beowulf’s state of grace’, Philological

Quarterly, v. 42:2, Apr. 1963, p. 257-9; Cooke also notes this as a possibility, but he prefers to see the
reference in Hnæf’s funeral as referring to a ‘warrior stepped up to the pyre’, itself a reference to Odin
mounting Baldr’s pyre to whisper words into Baldr’s ear, presumably a promise of the afterlife, and
perhaps a ritual evident in Ibn Fadlan’s account of the Rus funeral – William Cooke, ‘Two notes on
Beowulf (with glanes at Vaf†ru∂nismál, Blickling Homily 16 and Andreas lines 839-846’, Medium
Ævum, v. 72:2, 2003, p. 297-8) – both explanations may point to omens about the future life.

218

Ynglinga saga, ch. 10.

219

Reidar Th. Christiansen, ‘The Dead and the ‘Living’, Studia Norvegica, no. 2, 1946, p. 41-2.

220

ibid., p. 42.

221

Eyrbyggja saga, ch. 63, p. 189.

If the smoke of Beowulf and Hnæf travels in any particular manner in

Beowulf, it goes upwards; though what this means for the Christian audience of the

poem is not clear, since the poet seems unwilling to commit himself as to where

exactly in the afterlife the good characters like Scyld and Beowulf end up (l. 50b-2;

2819-20). Yet, he is not so coy regarding the bad ones, firmly stating that they will be

in hell (l. 183b-6a; 851-2). However, the fate of the ‘good’ ones may be reassessed by

comparing the similar wording of Scyld who was sent “into the keeping of the flood”

(l. 42) with all of his treasures, and the disposal of the dragon by “allowing the waves

to take him, the flood embrace that treasure-guardian” (l. 3132b-3a), which may

allude to a common destination. And Beowulf himself may in fact not secean

soðfæstra dom, ‘seek the judgement of those steadfast-in-truth’ (l. 2820) (ie; his

heavenly reward for being resolute in life), but instead be judged by those resolute

ones and sent to hell, in line with the common knowledge that non vult rex celestis

cum paganis et perditis nominetenus regibus communionem habere ... ille paganus

perditus plangit in inferno, ‘the heavenly King does not desire to have even nominal

communion with the damned pagan kings ... the desperate pagan [who] smites himself

in hell’.

222

The poet and his audience know that the characters in Beowulf are heathens

– and what happens to such people – even if they apparently prefer not dwell on this

fact.

The Christianity of the poet and the audience (and thus the poem) was stated

earlier as one of the a priori assumptions of this thesis, and in the previous chapter it

was indirectly averred, since the extent of the author’s knowledge of heathenism

seemed to extend no further than a superficial awareness of what certain practices

may have entailed. If the two lines from Beowulf do refer to the practice of augury

from the funeral pyre, then either the poet or the scribe(s) misunderstood exactly what

this would have entailed, since there is nothing to suggest a heathen afterlife

anywhere in Beowulf. Indeed the statements that it was Beowulf’s soul which sought

judgement (l. 2820) and Grendel’s soul which was claimed by Hell (l. 852), indicate

an Augustinian separation of the soul and the body after death.

223

This is a sentiment

echoed throughout the poem, with the body being the guardian of the soul in life (l.

1741b-2a), and death being the event which would sundur gedælan lif wið lice, ‘tear

asunder life from limb’ (l. 2422b-3a), rendering the now dead body literally

222

Alcuin, letter to Bishop Higbald.

223

Jean-Claude Schmitt, Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society,

(trans.) Teresa Lavender Fagan; The University of Chicago Press, 1998, p. 25-7.

sawolleas, ‘soul-less’ (l. 1406b, 3033b), after which the soul alone would be either

bescufan in fyres fæþm, ‘thrust into the abyss of fire’, or fæder fæþmum, ‘the embrace

of the Father’ (l. 184b-8).

It is therefore ironic that the characterisation of Grendel and his mother in the

poem are dependent upon the type of supernatural beings known as draugar in the

Old Norse tradition,

224

corporeal revenants who haunted and preyed upon the living in

what can only be seen as directly (though not consciously) contrary to the

Augustinian concepts of the dead being only present as imagines, ‘images,

representations’ of the dead person, and completely unable to influence the world of

the living.

225

The features of the draugar are directly descended from those of the

haugbúar, dead people who had become reanimated within the grave; but through the

influence of Christianity on heathen Germanic eschatology, the draugar also inherited

many of their characteristics from the inhabitants of hell – not just hell’s ‘aboriginal’

demons and devils, but also those who were transported there through the process of

the demonisation of heathen spirits and deities (especially in the case of giants), and

heathen people themselves.

Before an examination of these beings and their influence upon Beowulf will

be entered into, a brief look at the terminology of the living dead is necessary. As will

be shown below, both the haugbáur and draugar can be found in the Old English

literature; but there are no Old English words with which to express their entire

semantic range. The Old Norse haugbúar are well described by the translation

‘barrow-dweller’, but there is nothing like a ‘hearg-buend’, or ‘hlæw-buend’ to be

found. Nor is this sufficient to denote the malevolent aspect displayed in the demonic

draugar. Orcneas, meaning ‘hellish, demonic corpse’, comes the closest, being likely

derived from the Latin Orcus, ‘Hades, death’, and ne(o), ‘corpse’,

226

the latter which

may also be found in the compounds nefuglas, ‘carrion-birds’ (Genesis, l. 2159),

drihtneum, ‘troop-of-corpses’ (Exodus, l. 163), and that troublesome word

neorxnawang, ‘paradise’.

227

A second word which may have pointed in the same

direction is (another) uncommon word, aglæca, ‘awesome’ or ‘terrible’ one, whose

224

Derived from the Proto-Germanic *dreugh, ‘harmful spirit’; Simek, p. 65.

225

Schmitt, 1998, p. 25-7.

226

Related to the Gothic naus and the Old Norse nár, both of which mean corpse.

227

Perhaps ne+orcus+wang = corpse-death-plain? Jane Crawford, ‘Evidences for Witchcraft in Anglo-

Saxon England’, Medium Ævum, v.32:3, 1963, p. 102-3.

meaning ranged from denoting a reverent awe to a terrible fear of the one thus

described.

228

THE BARROW-DWELLER:

The corporeal revenant may be found all over the Germanic world, though its

fullest expression lies in the Old Norse traditions, where the earliest manifestation is

found in the haugbúi, “the animated corpse of the dead man [who] liv[es] on in the

barrow in which he has been enclosed.”

229

The earliest datable account of a dead man

being thought to be still alive in his tomb, is found in Paul the Deacon’s Historia

Langobardum, where the grave of the fifth century hero Alboin was ransacked in the

eighth century by a local nobleman, Giselpert, who “opened [Alboin’s] grave and

took away his sword and other of his ornaments found there ... [and] he boasted ...

among ignorant men that he had seen Alboin.”

230

The haugbúar were restricted to the

immediate area of their tomb (usually inside, but sometimes seen on top of the

mound), within which life did not greatly differ from the dead person’s earthly

pursuits. Even in the seventeenth century, a German source tried to denounce the

popular belief that the dead remained alive in their grave, citing as false reports which

had been circulating of “a shoemaker being heard cobbling in his coffin, of infants

shedding their milk teeth and growing second teeth, of [corpses] gnawing their grave

clothes.”

231

A similar idea is found in Thorstein Mansion-Might, where two female

barrow-dwellers are seen together, one weaving on a loom, and the other rocking a

baby.

232

That physical life continued after death was an enduring idea, is shown in the

many folktales and legends from all over Europe of great heroes who sleep in hills

228

See below p. 68ff.

229

N.K. Chadwick ‘Norse Ghosts: A study in the Draugr and the Haugbúi’, Folklore, v. 57:2, Jun.

1946, p.51. There is also a related form of life after death embodied in the bergbúi, the ‘mountain
dweller’, who were though to live within a mountain that was ‘reserved’ for their kin-group – “the
Holy Mountain is the hall of the ancestors”, where they would all together feast endlessly, Odd
Nordland, ‘Valhall and Helgafell: Syncretistic traits of the Old Norse religion’, Syncretism, (ed.), Sven
Hartman; Almqvist & Wiksell, Stockholm, 1969, p.70-1, 81; eg, Eyrbyggja saga, ch.4, p.77; Njál’s
saga, ch. 14, p. 33-4; bergbúi is also another term for giant in the later literature. Some of the confusion
seen in Old English with whether the beorg indicated a barrow or a natural feature may reflect
something akin to this; L.V. Grinsell, ‘Barrows in the Anglo-Saxon Land Charters’, The Antiquaries
Journal, v. 71, 1991, p. 46.

230

Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, (trans.) William Dudley Foulke, (ed.) Edward Peters;

University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadephia, 1974, 2:28, p. 83.

231

Sabine Baring-Gould, Cliff-Castles and Cave-Dwellings of Europe, 1911;

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Castles_and_Cave_Dwellings_of_Europe/Chapter_XII.

232

Thorstein Mansion-Might, [in] Seven Viking Romances, (trans.) Hermann Pálsson & Paul Edwards;

Penguin Books, 1985, ch. 2, p. 259-60.

and caves, waiting for the time when they will awaken and emerge to protect or save

their country from some great peril.

233

The perennially popular legend of the Seven

Sleepers of Ephesus is a Christian representative of this genre, while similarly

structured stories about King Arthur, Charlemagne, Barbarossa, William Tell, Sigurd

and other heroes abound.

234

Even though all of these figures are generally thought to

be asleep, at regular intervals or in warning of times of danger they are believed to stir

from their sleep. When they are disturbed in their caves by some person, they are

reported to be alive and may converse with the living intruder in formulaic speech,

which is usually interpreted by the dead hero to mean that their time to emerge has

not yet come, so they go back to sleep. At other times, the intruder gives the wrong

answer, and thus they are permanently enclosed.

The Old Norse barrow-dwellers similarly tend to speak exclusively in verse,

and some are able to bestow upon the living the power of such poetic speech.

235

The

ability to foretell the future to those who speak with them is one of the primary

functions of the haugbúar; chief of those who converse with the newly dead, and

summon the long-dead to prophesise whether they are willing or not, is Odin, who in

Hárbazljóð is said to have his “words ... from wights so old who dwell in the howes-

of-the-home.”

236

This same ability to raise the dead for their prophetic value is also

accorded to giants, as in the case of the giantess Hardgrep who “graved on wood

some very dreadful spells, and caused Hadding [her heroic human lover] to put them

under the dead man’s tongue, thus forcing him to utter” responses to questions put to

him.

237

The scrap of wood which she places under his tongue seems likely to be

typologically the same as the barrow-dweller’s gold which brings the power of

eloquence when placed under the root of the tongue in Thorsteins Þáttr Uxafóts, and

the instance of the barrow-dweller physically grabbing hold of a man’s tongue to

bring him poetic eloquence in Thorliefs Þáttr Jarlsskálds.

238

Humans may also have the ability to raise the dead, as in the case of the hero

Svipdag, who raised his mother Gróa, a witch, from her barrow, so that she would

233

Even Winston Churchill after his death was believed by some to be “not really dead but in hiding,

and that he would return when his country needed him”, Sabine Baring-Gould, Myths of the Middle
Ages, (ed.) John Matthews; Blandford, 1996, p. 19.

234

Baring-Gould, 1996, p. 18-9, 24-6.

235

N. Chadwick, 1946a, p. 60-4; N. Chadwick, 1946b, p. 106-8, 112-3, 116.

236

Hárbazljóð st. 44-5; also in Hávamál, st. 157, and Voluspá, Voluspá hin skanmna, passim, Baldrs

draumr st. 4, p. 117-8, [all in] Poetic Edda, Hollander, 2004.

237

Saxo, book 1, §22-3, p. 27-8.

238

N. Chadwick, 1946a, p. 61-3.

give him guidance concerning the future.

239

Likewise according to Ælfric, certain

witches “still go to cross-roads and to heathen burials with their delusive magic and

call to the devil, and he comes to them in the likeness of the man who is buried there,

as if he arise from death; but she cannot bring it about that the dead arise through her

magic.”

240

This association of witches as necromancers is apparently one common to

the Germanic languages,

241

and which endured in Iceland into the seventeenth century

with Eirikur Magnusson, a known magician, who raises a dead man from his grave,

physically wrests a grimoire from him which he then reads, until at dawn he is

compelled to hand the book back to the dead man who then is swallowed up by the

ground into his grave.

242

The ability to raise the dead back to life is also accorded to a

number of saints, such as St. Milburga of Wenlock (daughter of King Merewealh of

the Magonsætna) who revives a widow’s dead son,

243

and St. Edith of Aylesbury

(daughter of King Penda of Mercia) who revives a girl that had been drowned and lain

underwater on a riverbed for three days.

244

The other purpose of the barrow-dweller, less frequently referred to, is their

possession of healing powers and/or the ability to bring fertility to a place or a person.

The latter aspect can be seen in the veneration of Frey’s/Frode’s body,

245

which

(while it was kept hidden for a period of three years in his barrow, before his death

was formally announced

246

) guaranteed the fertility of the land.

247

In Óláfs saga

Helga, a barren woman wears a belt that had belonged to her husband’s barrow-

dweller ancestor, until it was retrieved from the tomb, and (successfully) used to

promote her fertility.

248

However, the physical healing abilities of the barrow-dweller

are to be found primarily in the possession of Christian barrow-dwelling saints with

239

Grogáldr st. 1-2, p. 141.

240

l. 118-25; Pope 11, 796; in Audrey L. Meaney, ‘Ælfric and Idolatry’, Journal of Religious History,

v. 13:2, Dec. 1984, p. 130-1.

241

OE wicce is derived from the Proto-Germanic *wikkjaz, ‘to raise the dead’; also Crawford p. 103-4;

Meaney, 1989, p. 16-7.

242

David Keyworth, Troublesome Corpses: Vampires and Revenants from Antiquity to the Present;

Desert Island Books, 2007, p. 194.

243

“The abbess prayed over the little corpse and, while doing so, she suddenly appeared to the poor

supplicant to be raised from the earth and surrounded by lovely flames - the living emblem of the
fervour of her prayer. Within a few minutes, the child had recovered”;
http://www.earlybritishkingdoms.com/adversaries/bios/milburga.html.

244

http://www.earlybritishkingdoms.com/adversaries/bios/osith.html.

245

Snorri has Frey, Saxo has Frode.

246

Probably referring to a 1000 day period of mourning, as is found in other cultures, past and present,

across the world, where the dead person is remembered, and, in spirit, participates in ceremonies held
at regular intervals from the time of death, such as is still practiced in orthodox Islam.

247

Ynglinga saga, ch. 11 (Heimskringla); Saxo 5:171, p. 210-1.

248

N. Chadwick, 1946a, p. 58-9.

the tangible healing touch of the saint-king Magnus of Orkney,

249

and the custom of

touching, or eating or drinking the tomb-dust, of the relics of SS Oswald and Chad

(among others) in Anglo-Saxon England.

250

Thus it can be seen that the positive attributes of the barrow-dweller were

applied to the first generations of native saints whose eligibility for sanctity was

understood to stem from their noble family line.

251

The pre-Christian priest-chief had,

in life, a monopoly in both spiritual and secular authority,

252

which prerogative

continued after death with the expectation of continued contact with the people they

ruled in life in the guise of the haugbúar. As Barbara Yorke has put it, the royal line

was both a stirps regia and a stirps beata;

253

with the conversions to Christianity, this

latter quality inherent in the nobility did not vanish, but was transformed into a

Christian holiness. After all, the primary role of the saint, “to exercise intercessionary

prayer on behalf of those who invoked him,”

254

was very similar in substance to that

of the pre-Christian barrow dweller, who was seen as a sort of portal to

communication with spirits and deities through whom knowledge of the future

(after)life was transmitted. At first, the process was none too subtle, seen in Anglo-

Saxon England with “the promotion of kings, by themselves or by members of their

immediate families, as men who can demonstrate a close link with the new source of

supernatural power through a manifestation of saintliness, achieved either through

‘martyrdom’ ... or through life as a monastic that might also lead to canonisation.”

255

This idea can be demonstrated by both those pre-Christian kings who were deified,

like Eric of Sweden, Hálfdan the Black and Olaf Geirstaðaálfr to whom “men

sacrificed and believed in,”

256

and also the Christian royals who on their death were

taken straight to heaven, like St. Earcongota and the kings Æthelberht, Oswald and

Sigeberht.

257

Sometimes, the process of a ruler’s sanctification took place among their

subjects even when it was not invited, as in the case of Olaf the Holy who was

commonly thought to be a reincarnation of his barrow-dwelling ancestor Olaf

249

Orkneyinga Saga: The History of the Earls of Orkney, (trans.) Hermann Pálsson & Paul Edwards;

Penguin Books, 1981, ch. 57, p. 105.

250

Oswald – Bede, HE, 3:2, p. 145-6, 3:9-13, p. 158-64; Chad – ibid, 4:3, p.211.

251

There is no single saint from the first generations of any people’s conversion in Germanic Europe

who was not ‘of a noble house’ as minimum, aided by the almost exclusively aristocratic populations
of monasteries and nunneries.

252

See Chapter Two.

253

Yorke, p. 255.

254

Farmer, ix.

255

Yorke, p. 252.

256

Ellis, p. 100, 102.

257

Bede, HE, 3:8, p. 156-7; 2:5, p. 111; 3:14, p. 164.

Geirstaðaálfr (‘elf of Geirstaða’

258

), though he himself apparently did not encourage

it.

259

In later generations, the nobility still dominated the ranks of saints, and though it

was less likely that members of the aristocratic classes were considered holy simply

due to their birth, it was not unknown.

260

One of the most important and popular of these saints (and it seems, the only

one who actually dwelt in a barrow) was Guthlac, a member of the Mercian royal

family who voluntarily exiled himself into the fenland of the Wash. There he finds a

suitably desolate spot where he may be a hermit: an earthen barrow upon an island

where there is a subterranean chamber,

261

which he turns into his abode for the next

fifteen years, and in which he requests his body to be laid when he dies.

262

The way in

which he was viewed by others in life is alluded in his Vita by his servant Beccel, also

a cleric, who had at one point attempted to murder Guthlac so that he would

“afterwards live in Guthlac’s dwelling and also enjoy the great veneration of kings

and princes.”

263

This suggests that Guthlac had, for some people at least, come to be

perceived as a barrow-dweller, who though not a revenant, displayed the attributes of

the living dead barrow dweller, since he “abound[ed] in the spirit of prophecy” and

had “foreknowledge of the future,”

264

as well as the ability to reveal and recover

hidden secrets, actions and objects

265

and to exorcise demons from people in the

same way he had exorcised the demons of the fenland.

266

Beowulf was also

essentially an exorcist – but of physical places, rather than people – when he

(successfully) vows to Heorot fælsian, ‘(spiritually) cleanse Heorot’ (l. 432b; 825a,

1176b, 1620b, 2352b). This does not make Beowulf a barrow-dweller in the same

way as Guthlac was viewed, since he did not engage in either prophecy

267

or healing

258

This epithet was only given to him after his death, and it brings up an interesting comparison with

the MS reading of alfwalda at l. 1314 in Beowulf, where it is perhaps applied to Beowulf himself, and
may suggest a sort of ‘pre-barrow-dweller’ eligibility for him; Slade, ‘Semi-Diplomatic Edition’ &
‘Bilingual Edition’, note for line 1314.

259

Ólaf’s saga Helga, Ellis, p. 139.

260

As for instance in the case of Edith, sister of Æthelstan; Yorke, p. 255.

261

... in praedicta insula tumulus agrestibus glaebis coacervatus ... in cuius latere velut cisterna inesse

videbatur ..., Felix, Life of Saint Guthlac, (trans.) Bertram Colgrave; Cambridge University Press,
1956, ch. 28, p. 93-5.

262

Guthlac B, l. 1192b-6; The Guthlac Poems of the Exeter Book, (ed.) Jane Roberts; Oxford

University Press, Clarendon Press, 1979, p. 118.

263

Felix, ch. 35, p. 111-3.

264

ibid., ch. 43, p. 133.

265

ibid., ch.43-4, 46.

266

ibid., ch. 41-2, p. 131-3.

267

Knowing Unferð’s fate (l. 588b-9), is something any of the audience would have known (though

perhaps the Danes within the poem did not), and the disgression on relating Ingeld’s eventual treaty-
breaking is phrased as though anyone ought to be able to see it coming (2063-9a); moreover, if

acts, nor did he live in a barrow. In fact, nowhere in Beowulf can the positive aspects

of the barrow-dweller be found, only those negative traits which the draugar

inherited.

THE DRAUGAR:

By the middle of eighth century, in Anglo-Saxon England, furnished barrow

burial was a thing of the past; and excepting the anomaly of the Scandinavian burials

within the Danelaw in the late ninth century, for the Anglo-Saxons of the later eighth

century onwards, the only contemporary context for barrow burial would have been

either foreign or ancient, but definitely heathen. And likewise, the inhabitants of a

barrow would themselves have been seen as heathens, despite the fact that many of

the last generation who had buried in primary or secondary barrow burials were

arguably just as likely to have been Christians rather than heathens, to judge from the

Christian motifs and objects upon and among their grave-goods.

268

Perhaps at first the

distinction between barrows in which Christians and heathens had been buried, was

kept, but probably not for long or in every region, since as early as c. 730-40 CE,

when Felix’s Life of St. Guthlac was written,

269

the barrow is equated with the

dwelling-places of demons from hell. After the transitional generations of the

conversions (and again excepting the Scandinavian settlers in the Danelaw), the adult

unbaptised were rarely found among the Anglo-Saxons, with usually only unbaptised

infants that died as ‘heathens’.

270

But another group who were referred to as heathens,

in a direct translation of gentilis,

271

were the bad or lapsed Christians who committed

mortal sins, or held heretical beliefs, or practiced customs denounced as

‘superstitions’ or relics of heathenism.

272

And when they died, naturally they would

have been thought to go straight to hell.

273

Beowulf can see into the future, he should have known that there was Grendel’s mother to contend
with as well as Grendel himself, and that he would not survive the bout with the dragon.

268

Arnold, p. 167; Williams, 2006, p. 29-30.

269

Felix, p. 19.

270

Andrew Reynolds, ‘Burials, Boundaries and Charters in Anglo-Saxon England: A Reassessment’,

Burial in Early Medieval England and Wales, (eds.) Sam Lucy & Andrew Reynolds, The Society for
Medieval Archaeology, London, 2002, p. 172, n.9.

271

R.A. Markus, Gregory the Great’s Pagans’, Belief and Culture in the Middle Ages, (eds.) R.

Gameson & H. Leyser; Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 24-5, 34.

272

Reynolds, 2002, p. 172, n.9.

273

As in the case of Ceolred of Mercia, who appeared in a vision of a monk of Wenlock, (reported by

St Boniface in a letter to Eadburga, abbess of Thanet), where the king was given a foretaste of his fate
in hell; #13 Kylie, p. 87; this was confirmed on his death in 716 CE, when “Ceolred ... without

As well as the cessation of pre-Christian burial rites, in the first third of the

eighth century, the practice of churchyard, consecrated burial, seems to have taken

off, and by the end of the century be considered the normal location for a Christian’s

burial. Consecrated burial was not accorded to the heathen, and though this would

have covered any location not within the bounds of a churchyard cemetery, the most

common locations for heathen burials was in those areas already damned by an

association with hell. These were the liminal zones of ancient roadways or abandoned

buildings, ditches, embankments and barrows, and marshland or mountains, which

were frequently used as to delineate boundaries between groups ranging in size from

neighbouring estates to kingdoms. The association of spirits with liminal zones is an

ancient one pre-dating the influence of Christianity; though with regard to the latter,

the spirits and deities who had inhabited the liminal zones remained active, but in the

guise of demons, since it was the practice of Christianity to damn the deities which

they supplanted in the course of their missions. Even though it is impossible to know

which association originally prompted the other – whether the barrow-dweller became

a spirit in the otherworld because of the liminal location of their burial, or whether it

was because of the intention or assumption that they would become spirits like those

who dwelt in these places that they were deliberately buried in liminal locations – the

fact remains that these places became synonymous with hell.

In Beowulf, this correlation is made clear with the well-known parallel

between Grendel’s mere and the vision of hell in Blickling Homily #17. Both

descriptions begin with a harne stan, ‘ancient grey stone’, which an Anglo-Saxon,

specifically West-Saxon, audience could well have taken to mean a boundary marker.

This is borne out by their frequent use together in charters from the mid eighth to the

mid eleventh century from western Wessex, in a cluster between Bristol, Gloucester,

and Abingdon/Oxford,

274

which may indicate the presence of a people enclosed

within these bounds who customarily used the term harne stan to refer to a boundary

penitence and confession, insane and distraught, conversing with the devils and cursing the priests of
God, he departed from this light assuredly to the torments of hell” (p. 169) #40 Kylie.

274

From west-east/south-north: Ashwick (Somer., # 1034), Priston (Somer., # 414), Stoke Bishop

(Glouc., #1346), Pucklechurch (Glouc., #553), Winterbourne Basset (Wilts., #668), Wanborough
(Wilts., # 312), Brightwalton (Berks., # 448), South Cerney (Glouc., #896), Bessels Leigh (Ox., # 673),
Cumnor (Ox., # 757), Taynton (Ox., #1028), Hawling (Glouc., #179), Hawling (Gloucs., # 179),
Bishop’s Cleeve (Glouc., #1549), Cutsdean (Glouc., # 1335, #1353), Tredington (Warw., #55); see
“hoary stone” map at
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=104960581339095231258.000450
082a3a05b1d3a94&ll=51.689585,-1.84021&spn=1.01648,1.851196&t=p&z=9.

marker.

275

Furthermore, this may imply that the Beowulf poet had some connection to

these people, which would then indicate a similar one for the author of the Blickling

Homilies,

276

as well as for the authors of The Ruin and Andreas,

277

since these last two

poems contain the only other examples of these words used together to indicate a

boundary marker. Of course this may only be due the chance survival of records

(which was more likely to have occurred in Wessex than in areas closer to the

Danelaw), but when the four instances of the term in charters just outside of this

region are included,

278

the distribution is still within the authority of Wessex in the

tenth century, and the modern English word ‘hoar-stone’, which still retains the sense

of a boundary marker, may also have, in the seventeenth century at least, referred to a

memorial stone, or marker, “according to the dialect of Sommersett [sic].”

279

What this hoary stone was meant to have looked like in to the Anglo-Saxon

may be indicated from its contextual usage in the poetry. In The Ruin, the lines within

which the pair is found are damaged: leton þonne geotan <ofer> harne stan hate

streamas <un þæt> hringmere hate þær þa baþu wæron, ‘then they allowed to flow

over the hoary stone in hot streams in that circular-mere, hot then were there the

baths’ (l. 42-6), but the description brings to mind that in Beowulf, where the dragon’s

breath which stream ut þonan brecan of beorge wæs þære burnan wælm heaðofyrum

hat, ‘in a stream burst out from within the barrow, there that spring was burning with

battle-flames’ (l. 2545b-7a), which comes just before Beowulf shouts out his

challenge, which stefn in becom heaðotorht hlynnan under harne stan, ‘the summons

280

became battle-bright echoing in [and] under the ancient boundary-stone’ (l. 2552b-

3). Harne stan is used to refer to the abode of both Beowulf’s (l. 2553b, 2744b) and

Sigemund’s dragons (l. 887b), but the far more common description for the former is

275

A hypothesis which may be strengthened slightly by the presence in this enclosure of Hook Norton,

where two possible heathen Scandinavian barrow burials from the late ninth century were briefly noted
in Chapter Two.

276

Unless this usage only stems from such an association for the ninth century author of the version of

the Visio St. Pauli, upon which both rely.

277

Andreas’ debt to Beowulf is well known; The Ruin is probably about the Roman ruins of Aquae

Sulis.

278

Three geographical outliers – in Taunton (Somer., #1819), Horton (Dorset, #969) and one spurious

charter from around Wolverhampton (Staffords., #1380) – and one unknown in South Hams (on
Homme, Devon, # 298) which was not included, as it could not be found.

279

OED, under ‘hoar-stone’.

280

Stefn may either be ‘voice’, or the poet may have been borrowing another homophonic word’s

meaning from Scandinavian usage where stefna means summons in a legal sense, which here is much
more fitting that Beowulf issue formal challenge to the dragon, which then also parallels the earlier
boast of Beowulf that he would ðing wið þyrse, ‘make a treaty with the thurse’, l. 426a. See also
Chapter One for further examples of Scandiavian possible loan-words.

as a barrow, identified through the treasure within, as well as by the words used to

describe it,

281

thus fulfilling the truism in Maxims II that “the dragon belongs in its

barrow, canny and jealous of its jewels” (l. 26).

Sudden burning streams of fire are also associated with the barrows inhabited

by draugar, as in the Grettir’s saga, where “a huge fire burst forth on the headland”

in the place of the barrow of Kar the Old and which was interpreted to mean that there

was treasure within the barrow,

282

and that it was guarded by the dead inhabitant who

was seen as still active. This phenomenon is also related to supernatural fires seen in

marshlands that supposedly show the way to a great treasure, since both types of fire

exit in the natural world with the combustion of methane and other gases indicative of

decomposition – of vegetation in the case of swampy land, and of the dead body in

the tomb in the case of the barrow-flame – which only need a spark caused by friction

from innocuous random events, or from the opening of a tomb when the gases are

released, or from the torches which are used to light the way in a tomb.

283

This beacon

which marked the location of the ‘active dead’, was also interpreted as a sign that the

tomb’s original inhabitant was now in hell, as with St. Eucherius, who had a vision in

which he saw Charles Martel in hell, and acted upon it by going with a group to

inspect his burial place, and “on opening the tomb they saw a dragon dart out

suddenly and found the grave all blackened as though it had been burnt up.”

284

This

only served to confirm their suspicions, since “forever at the doors of hell dwell

dragons with fire at their heart.”

285

Likewise, when the bones of Snorri Goði along

with his mother Thordis and uncle, Bork the Stout, are exhumed and translated into a

church, Thordis’ bones were “as black as if they had been singed,” suggesting that she

too lived in hell because she had died unbaptised.

286

A more comical treatment of the hell-dwelling draugr may be found in the late

Icelandic tale of Thorstein Goosple-Pimples, where the hero encounters one such

being, Thorkell the Thin, called a þúki, ‘troll, demon’ and a draugr, as well as other

words used to denote demons; dólgr, fjándi and skelmir, the latter which also refers to

281

stanbeorh: 2213a; beorg: 2241b, 2272b, 2299b, 2304b, 2322b, 2524b, 2529a, 2546a, 2559a, 2580b,

2755b, 2842a, 3066b; hlæw: 2296b, 2411a, 2773a.

282

Grettir’s Saga, (trans.) Denton Fox & Hermann Pálsson; Uni. of Toronto Press, 1974, ch. 18, p. 36.

283

This is probably the natural explanation behind the barrow-dweller being a night-time entity, since

the gases are more likely to have ignited at night when the use of a torch was necessary to see the way,
rather than during the day when one could most see without it.

284

H. Munro Chadwick, The Heroic Age; Cambridge University Press, 1926, p.127.

285

Christ and Satan, p. 90, Bradley.

286

Eyrbyggja saga, ch. 65, p. 198.

a ‘plague-bearer’.

287

He answers Thorstein’s questions about hell, reporting that both

Sigurd Fafnesbane and Starkað the Old are tormented there. By doing so he fulfils the

barrow-dweller’s prophetic purpose of transmitting knowledge of the future life.

However, the noxious aspect of Thorkell is more interesting, reflecting the reality of

the barrow-dweller being a decomposing body, since he rises up through the toilet

seats of a latrine-house to pester the hero Thorstein, where no doubt Thorkell’s

decomposing smell blended in with his surroundings. This connects with the ‘plague-

bearer’ description of him – an attribute of the draugr found in the twelfth century

English draugar reported by William of Newburgh, Geoffrey of Burton and Walter

Map, where the wandering dead are considered to be the direct cause of ‘pestilence’

in the communities they haunt.

288

The connection between the harne stan and hell may also be implied in the

description of Mermedonia when St. Andrew wong sceawode fore burggeatum

beorgas steape hleoðu hlifodon ymbe harne stan tigelfagan trafu torras stodon

windige weallas, ‘saw the way [stretch] before the stronghold’s gates, the mountains

towered with their steep slope; around the ancient marker, tile-covered temples stood,

stone-towers [and] wind-swept walls’ (l. 839-42), like Beowulf who also beforan

gengde ... wong sceawian, ‘saw the way stretch before him’ when he is approaching

the mere. The heathen connotations of traf have already been noted,

289

and likewise

the barrow is a feature associated with hell, since often it is said to be “the door of the

dead”

290

– an entrance to the otherworld, especially when it is the barrow of a

witch.

291

The man-made stronghold of Mermedonia in Andreas recalls the description

of hell in Christ and Satan as þes windiga sele eall inneweard atole gefylled, “this

windswept hall all inwardly filled with venom”, whose flor is on welme attre onæled,

“floor is seething with burning venom” (l. 135-6; l. 39) – which itself brings to mind

one version of the Christianised Old Norse hell from Voluspá where “a hall stands ...

on the corpse-strand’s shore ... drops of poison drip through the louvre, its walls are

clad with coiling snakes”

292

– while both are also is similar to the natural features of

287

Aaron Gurevich, Historical Anthropology of the Middle Ages, (ed.) Jana Howlett); Polity Press,

1992, p. 117-8.

288

Keyworth, p. 26-7, 98-102.

289

See Chapter Two.

290

Grógaldr, st.1, p. 141.

291

Thorstein Mansion-Might; Baldrs draumar, st. 4, p. 117, st. 13, p. 119;

292

Voluspá, st. 38, p. 8.

Grendel’s mere. In the latter, the approach marked by steap stanhliðo stige nearwe

enge anpaðas, ‘steep stony slopes, with a narrow track, claustrophobic one-man-

paths’ (l. 1409-10a), and when the mere comes into view, like Satan’s hall in Chrst

and Satan, which is located under næssum (l. 133), one sees the wulfhleoþu windige

næssas, “wolf-haunted slopes, windy headlands” (l. 1358). Cliffs also feature in the

hell of Blickling Homily 17, where it is twelve miles between the top of the sheer cliff

and the black water below into which sinners fall when the twigs on which they hang

break. These twigs, presumably have grown from the hrimige bearwas...isigean

bearwum, ‘hoar-frosted woods ... icy groves’,

293

which are paralleled in the

description of Grendel’s mere in the hrinde bearwas, ‘hoary groves’ (l. 1363b) that

hang over the water on a cliff (l. 1358-61a).

The link between the grove and the hillside is made clear in both Guthlac A

where the barrow within which Guthlac dwells

294

is twice called the beorg on

bearwe, ‘the barrow in the grove’ (l. 148a, 429a), and in The Wife’s Lament, where

the ‘wife’s’ dwelling is on wudu bearwe under actreo in þam eorðscræfe: eald is þes

eorðsele, ‘in the wooded grove under the oak-tree in that grave: ancient is this

earthen-hall’ (l. 27b-9a). The Wife’s Lament is unique in that the poem is narrated by

an actual barrow-dweller, who was “commanded” to live within a grave (though the

reasons for her enclosure are unclear), which can be seen to be a barrow, especially if

its description is compared to that of ‘Chief’s’ barrow in Beowulf that is called

eorðhus, eorðreced, and eorðscrafa, (l. 2232a, 2719a, 3046a). A barrow may also be

intended by Sigmund’s jarðhús, ‘earthen house’,

295

which lay in the middle of a

forest, and the outlaws’ ‘underground cave’ in the middle of the forest in Örvar-Odds

saga.

296

The other word used of the ‘wife’s’ dwelling, is herheard, which is generally

emended to herg-eard. The second element means ‘abode, native place’, and the first

‘sanctuary, holy place’, which is used in Old English in the context of a heathen

temple;

297

so together, they may be taken to mean ‘the holy (heathen) sanctuary being

her natural abode’. The barrow-dweller is thus perceived to be a guardian of their

sanctuary, much like the role a priest(ess) would hold – perhaps implied when the

293

The Blickling Homilies, (trans.) R. Morris; In Parentheses Publications, Old English Series,

Cambridge, Ontario, 2000, p. 105.

294

The most common (only?) word used to denote Guthlac’s abode in the poetic version is beorg,

while in the prose Vita, tumulus is used for the same; so although in general the meaning of beorg may
waver between hill and barrow, here the latter is more appropriate.

295

Volsunga Saga ch. 6, p.42, 114, n. 20.

296

Arrow-Odd, [in] Seven Viking Romances, ch. 17, p. 73.

297

See Chapter Two.

heathen priest is called a heargweard in Andreas (l. 1126) – but just as likely to refer

to a deity or spirit who is the custodian of the holy mound.

298

Sarah Semple has drawn

a persuasive link between the narrator in The Wife’s Lament and the figure on the

Franks’ Casket depicted seated on a small mound,

299

whose accompanying inscription

herh os sitæþ on hærmberge likely reads “the deity of the grove sits on the mound-of-

sorrow,”

300

and is reminiscent of the misery which the ‘wife’ not only endures, but

threatens to deal out to others.

301

This ability to curse is one of the characteristics of the barrow-dweller (in their

ability to bring eloquence, inspiration and knowledge to those with whom they

communicate) which was reversed in the draugar. In Harthar saga ok Hólmverja, a

barrow-dweller’s mound in broken into, and when the intruders steal his special ring,

the draugr springs into life and “protests in verse, prophesying that the ring ... will be

a curse on whoever shall possess it ... unless it be a woman,”

302

and in Eyrbyggja

saga, Thorgunna’s last request is that her gold ring, her bed and bedclothes are all to

be burnt upon her death “because I wouldn’t like it if, because of me, people became

as badly afflicted as I know they will be if what I say is disregarded.”

303

Naturally, her

request is not carried out to the letter, and a whole host of people from the farm are

led to their deaths and return to torment the dwindling numbers of the living. Not all

curses are such a ‘blanket’ curse that affects everyone involved in the transgression

against the draugr, but are specific against individuals only. Thus in Orkneyinga

saga, the former earl St. Magnus, is able to blind one of his detractors from beyond

the grave, in what may be termed a non-verbal curse;

304

the giantess Hardgrep is

cursed by the dead she had temporarily reanimated,

305

and the terrifying draugr Glam

in Grettir’s saga, lays a curse on the hero for having drawn him out in order to slay

298

Grendel and his mother are designated ‘guardian’ of something on numerous occasions – their mere,

Heorot, the fens etc.

299

Semple, p. 122.

300

Frank’s Casket, Alfred Becker, ‘H-Panel (Right Side) – The Inscription: Herh-os’; There is also an

obscure and probably euhemerised Anglo-Saxon saint Bega, who was said to have fled an unwanted
wedding by cutting a strip of turf and flying on it over the Irish Sea to land in Cumbria at her
eponymous headland, St. Bee’s Head, she was also associated with a bracelet over which false oaths
were tested, and her name itself is probably derived from OE beag, ring, to this may be compared
Þorgerðr Horgabrúðr’s attribute which is also an oath-ring. It is also suggestive that the riddle
immediately preceding The Wife’s Lament in the Exeter Book, is about a ring which brings well-being
to those who turn it.

301

A.N. Doane, ‘Heathen Form and Christian Function in The Wife’s Lament’, Mediaeval Studies, v.

28, 1966, p.88-9.

302

N. Chadwick, 1946b, p. 107-8.

303

Eyrbyggja saga, ch. 51, p. 169.

304

Orkneyinga saga, ch. 57, p. 103-4.

305

Saxo, book 1, §23, p. 28.

him.

306

In The Wife’s Lament, the figure of the ‘wife’ is found cursing ‘a certain

young man’ to essentially become what she is – an exile – and in Beowulf, the original

user of the dragon’s barrow, a great chieftain of his people (the Geats?), was laid in

his tomb with innumerable treasures and: þonne wæs þæt yrfe eacencræftig iummona

gold galdre bewunden ... swa hit oð domes dæg diope benemedon þeodnes mære þa

þæt dydon þæt se secg wære synnum scildig hergum geheaðerod hellbendum fæst

wommun gewitnad, se ðone wong strude næfne, ‘then was that patrimony of ancient

men’s gold craftily-strengthened and encircled with a curse ... that famous champions

had terribly pronounced [to hold] until doomsday, from the time when they placed

[the treasure] there, that any warrior would be guilty of sins, restrained fast in

(heathen) sanctuaries with hellish-bonds, tortured with terrors – he who would

plunder the ground’ (l. 3051-2...3069-73). This curse had already remained active for

a thousand years, and claimed three victims; the ‘last survivor’, the dragon, and

Beowulf himself. It is of note that the one cursed by this treasure is to remain in the

hergum, which if it may be translated as ‘heathen sanctuary’ as in The Wife’s Lament,

then the one cursed may be arguably restrained within the barrow where the treasure

was secreted. Moreover, the ‘hellish bonds’ and the wommum with which the hoard-

plunderer is to be tortured, are the tortures of a Christian hell.

307

Whether this implies

that the intruder, if he did not survive the journey into the barrow (whether because

‘God did not will it he should survive’, or that he was killed by the barrow-dweller

within) became a barrow-dweller himself cannot be shown; though Beowulf is not left

within the barrow and buried elsewhere, suggesting that there was at least a potential

for him to have become a barrow-dweller.

When Beowulf sets out after Grendel’s mother with a party of Danes and

Geats to accompany him, their first indication that they have entered into her realm is

when fyrgenbeamas ofer harne stan hleonian funde wynleasne wudu, ‘the mountain-

trees leaning over the ancient marker-stone, the joyless wood, was found’ (l. 1414b-

6a); their second is coming across Æschere’s head, which Grendel’s mother probably

deliberately placed under this boundary marker (l. 1420-1). As soon as the party

crosses the boundary she has thus marked, they announce their arrival into foreign

306

Grettir’s saga, ch. 35, p. 79.

307

Hell, for the heathen Germanic peoples, was not a place of torture, and thus all the references to the

tortures of hell in Beowulf, come from Christian eschatology; Simek, p. 137-8.

territory by blowing a horn as a warning (l. 1423b).

308

These mountain-trees occur

where the bearwas, ‘groves’ occur elsewhere, growing on, or over, what is variously

the barrow or marker-stone, and the element fyrgen may have prompted associations

of the otherworld for this environment among the audience,

309

since elsewhere in Old

English, it is usually found in the compound fyrgenstream; the waters which encircle

the earth,

310

whence the mythical origins of the barnacle-goose

311

and the phoenix.

312

In Beowulf this river is the body of water which flows under the cliffs, and covers

Grendel’s hall (l. 1359-60), over which Grendel’s mother carries the dead body of

Æschere (l. 2128), typologically connecting it to the stream, which only the dead and

god(-like) can cross, that divides the otherworld from the land of the living. The

fyrgenstreamas which she crosses, are probably the same as both the cealde streamas

(l. 1261a) that she inhabits, as well as the ‘cold and poisonous’ river inhabited by

“mainsworn men and murderers”

313

that is a part of the vision of hell in Voluspá

which derives from Christian visions of hell where the waters were cold, not burning;

though often, as with the mere, the extremes of cold and heat were presented as

existing simultaneously.

Meanwhile in Andreas, St. Andrew summons a flood, called a firgendstream

at one point (l. 1572), to burst forth from the very stone pillars and foundations of

Mermedonia, the eald enta geweorc, ‘ancient work or giants’ (l. 1494). The flood

rises terribly, and is accompanied by a raging fire; which together are another

indicator of a literally hellish environment where hat and ceald hwilum mencgað

‘heat and cold at times mingle’.

314

Therefore, it is no surprise that the mere in

Beowulf, which has already been located in a hellish otherworld through a number of

clues, is also a place where niðwundor seon fyr on flode, ‘a terrible marvel [is] to be

seen: fire on the water’ (l. 1365b-6a). Hell, which has both water and fire

simultaneously, is also a characteristic of the mere in general (l. 1365-6) and

Grendel’s home in particular, with the great “expanse of water” that covered the hall,

a contrast to the fyrleoht geseah blacne leoman beorhte scinan, ‘fire-light he

308

Cooke, p. 299-300.

309

Related to the Old Norse fjörgyn, the mother of Thor, Mother-earth, or to fjörgynn, the father of

Frigg; also to fjarg-hus, heathen temple, and Gothic faírguni, mountain.

310

Maxims II, ymb ealra landa gehwylc flowan fyrgenstreamas, ‘around each and every land flow the

World-streams’, l. 46-8.

311

Riddle #10, The Exeter Book Riddles, (trans.) Kevin Crossley-Holland; Penguin Books, revised ed.,

1993, p. 14.

312

The Phoenix, l. 100.

313

Voluspá, st. 36, p. 7.

314

Christ and Satan, l. 131.

[Beowulf] saw; the bleak radiance shining brightly’ (l. 1516b-7), lixte se leoma leoht

inne stod efne swa of hefen hadre scineð rodores candel, ‘that radiance illuminated: a

light stood within exactly as the firmament’s candle shines clearly from heaven’, (l.

1570-2a). The eerie fire in Grendel’s hall is rather like that which is seen in the

barrow of Gunnar, in Njal’s saga, when suddenly from one moment to the next, the

mound had apparently opened, and “Gunnar [was seen to have] turned around in his

grave and was looking at the moon. They [Skarphedin and Hogni] thought they saw

four lights burning in the cairn; yet none of them seemed to cast any shadow.”

315

Even the word mere itself was connected to hell, describing both the swampy,

stagnant pools of water found in the fenlands of England, as well as the water features

of hell itself.

316

It also provides another connection to the aforementioned region of

“parts of Wessex and West Mercia” where harne stan seems to have been most

commonly used to denote a boundary, with mere, and perhaps even (to judge from

local charters) Grendeles mere, was a byword for hell itself.

317

The harne stan which demarcates the land of the living and the dead – the

world of humans and hell – is twice used in Beowulf to specifically refer to a barrow.

And even though it is not explicitly said that Grendel’s abode is a burial mound, the

parallels within Beowulf and other texts are quite suggestive that the poet intended for

Grendel’s home to be like the burial mounds elsewhere. When Grendel is first

introduced as waiting to attack Heorot, he is se ellengæst earfoðlice þrage geþolode

se þe in þystrum bad, ‘that bold spirit [who] impatiently suffered for a time, he who in

the dark murk dwelt’ (l. 86-7). His abode is formless and dark, but confining, thus

perfectly conveying the feel of a tomb, and the word is used elsewhere to denote a

tomb, notably in Guthlac B when Guthlac is giving his servant Beccel instructions for

the disposal of his body: þis banfæt beorge bifæste, lame biluce, lic orsawle in

þeostorcofan þær hit þrage sceal in sondhofe siþþan wunian, ‘ [she] ought to commit

this body to the mound, lock it in the loam, the soul-less body into the dark-chamber

where it shall for a time afterwards dwell in the sandy-house’ (l. 1193-6). When

Grendel is overpowered by Beowulf, hyge wæs him hinfus wolde on heolstor fleon

secan deofla gedræg, ‘his soul was eager to escape from him, to flee into the

darkness, and seek out the company of devils’ (l. 755-6a); and heolstor(cofa) is

315

Njal’s saga, ch. 78, p. 153.

316

Frank, 1986, p. 156-7.

317

ibid., loc. cit.

another word which in other contexts has been used to denote a tomb.

318

Moreover,

Grendel is the feond on helle, ‘the fiend in hell’ (l. 101b) before his season of

depredation begins, and as he was not yet near the hall at the time of this description,

the complicated emendation that he is the ‘enemy in the hall’ is unwarranted.

319

Grendel inhabits a tomb, he must have been dead; and, if he had been an evil person

or a non-Christian, then his residence in hell would have been the obvious conclusion

of a Christian audience. Even if the þystrum in which he dwells is not a tomb, then

mere is clearly meant to represent hell, and the combination of epithets applied to

Grendel point to his hellish nature.

A man could not be a demon, nor could a demon be a man – but it was well-

known that a demon could seem to be a human by inhabiting the body of a man. Even

the usually sober William of Malmesbury reports that ‘it was a common belief of the

English in the twelfth century that “the dead body of a wicked man runs about, after

death, by the agency of the devil,”

320

and it has already been noted earlier that Ælfric

likewise reports a belief in the apparent reanimation of heathens, who are in fact

inhabited by the devil. It seems quite likely that Grendel is one such example of a

dead body, that of a man who had died a heathen, being reanimated by magic and

possessed by a hellish spirit. It may even help to incorporate Robert Kaske’s

suggestion that Grendel is the name of a demon, judging from the -el ending which he

shares with the ranks the fallen angels.

321

It will be recalled here that since not only

was the poem set in a timeless historical limbo in which all of the characters were

arguably meant to be heathen, but those people who were actually called heathens in

the period of the poem’s composition, were usually criminals, deviants, alongside the

small proportion of the unbaptised in society. Every description of hell from this

period on is brimming with these criminals, outlaws, and oath-breakers, who are

sometimes punished as sinners, and sometimes are the demons themselves. These

social criminals are also the most highly represented group in the ‘heathen’ burials,

mentioned above, that are executed and buried in these liminal spaces, since they are

damned to go to hell, and since it has been shown that the dead remained a physical

318

TOE, under ‘grave, burial place’.

319

Bammesberger, p. 20-2

320

William of Malmesbury, Chronicle of the Kings of England: From the earliest period to the reign of

King Stephen, (trans., ed.) J.A. Giles; Henry J. Bohn, London, 1847, 2:4, p. 122.

321

R.E. Kaske, ‘Beowulf and the Book of Enoch’, Speculum, v. 46:3, Jul. 1971, p. 426. A further

suggestion is that the ‘grinder’ demon may have been a personification of hell itself, since after all, the
jaws of hell grind all sinners.

presence in the grave, those dead who were claimed by hell could not remain where

those claimed by heaven were buried. Thus the un-Christian in life were buried in a

place where the spirits of hell could easily access them, since they themselves

inhabited the liminal places.

This can be supported by the archaeological evidence for these heathen burial

sites, where there is frequently evidence for decapitation and dismemberment,

skeletons whose hands were tied behind their back when they were buried, and most

commonly, evidence of hanging.

322

This immediately recalls Blickling Homily 17

where on þæm clife hangodan ... manige swearte saula be heora handum gebundne,

‘on that cliff hang ... many a blackened soul with their hands bound’;

323

an image of

the sinner in the afterlife that was a ’snapshot’ of the moment of their death, similar to

that of other draugar also spend the afterlife in the state that they had died.

324

Executions burials in liminal zones are not confined to Anglo-Saxon England, with

many of the continental European bog bodies from the later medieval period which

have been uncovered, also showing signs of mutilation and execution style deaths.

Some of the more pertinent examples include, a strangulated male with his left fore-

arm missing from the Lykkegård fen in East Jutland,

325

the face-down man with his

left foot struck off in fen to the west of river Ems,

326

and the Bocksten bog man, from

Halland, Sweden, c. 1360, was found laying face-down in a bog which was on the

junction of four parish boundaries.

327

He was killed with a blow to the head, two birch

stakes driven through his back (one just above the buttocks and a second almost

piercing him nearby), an oak stake driven through his heart, and one of his feet was

also missing,

328

while his body was confined within the burial by a ‘cage’ made from

sticks pinned into the ground, as found in the case of many other bog bodies, who

were thus confined to stop them from walking after death.

329

In Beowulf, there is one

type of death not mentioned in the previous chapter of deviant death, which is

represented primarily by Grendel and his mother, both of whom are decapitated and

their body parts then displayed after death; but which also includes Æschere, who

322

A. Reynolds, ‘Executions and hard Anglo-Saxon justice’, British Archaeology, no. 31, Feb. 1998.

323

Blickling Homilies, p. 105.

324

For instance the drowned in Eyrbyggja saga, ch. 54, p. 173-4.

325

P.V. Glob, The Bog People: Iron Age Man Preserved, (trans.) Rupert Bruce-Mitford, New York

Review Books, 2004, p.96-7.

326

ibid., p.104.

327

ibid., p. 148-51.

328

ibid, p. 149.

329

ibid, p.66, 74-7, 93, 105-7, 151.

may have been seen as a criminal from the point of view of Grendel’s mother,

330

and

Hygelac who was engaged in a criminal raid from the point of view of the Franks and

Frisians, and suffered for this after death with his body being displayed in a liminal

zone.

331

A discussion of the treatment of criminals would not be complete without

reference to the first criminal – Cain – who was outlawed for fratricide by God, and

condemned to live in the wastelands, where in this isolation, he gave rise to these

inhuman and non-human beings. In the earlier prose Guthlac, the demons who

torment him are described as the filii tenebrum, semen Cain, ‘sons of darkness, seed

of Cain’,

332

and in Beowulf, Grendel is likewise identified a member of the extended

kin of Cain, described there as comprising of untydras ealle ... eotenas ond ylfe ond

orcneas swylce gigantas þa wið gode wunnon lange þrage, “all the misbegotten ones

...’etins’ and elves and ‘orcs’, [and] likewise the giants who strove against God for a

long time’ (l. 111-4a).

333

The latter are the only non-Germanic group of beings linked

to the Grendel-kin, their name originally from the Latin gigantes (sing. gigas). The

word (as in Beowulf l. 113, 1689b-90 – both referring to the giants killed in the

biblical flood) is always used with reference to giants from the Bible or the inherited

Latin Tradition. There are only two possible exceptions to this.

334

The first is found in

the prose Solomon and Saturn in the statement that Mercurius se gigant (16.2); this

may be taken as either the Roman god Mercury, or Woden/Odin (since both the latter

gods were commonly identified with the former through the interpretatio romana,

and with each other in the Anglo-Saxon tradition). The second occasion is when

Beowulf finds an ancient sword – the ealdsweord eotensic (l. 1558), giganta geweorc

(l. 1562), and enta ærgeweorc (l. 1679) – in Grendel’s hall which he then uses to

330

Grendel’s arm which Beowulf wrenched off is hung at Heorot; Grendel’s mother retaliates and

displays Æschere’s head; Beowulf goes back and decapitates both of them, returning with Grendel’s
head which is displayed.

331

The island in the middle of the Rhine – Liber Monstrorum, which the Beowulf poet arguably knew;

Michael Lapidge, ‘Beowulf, Aldhelm, the Liber Monstrorum and Wessex’, Studi Medievali, 3

ser., v.

23, 1982, p. 151-92.

332

Felix, ch. 31, p. 101-7.

333

Elves were likely only used here for alliteration, yet they are rather more common in the rest of the

corpus than the other demons listed in the poem). However, their ability to possess humans and their
possible affinity with water tie them into the type of monster depicted by the poet; H. Stuart, ‘The
Anglo-Saxon Elf’, Studia Neophilologica, v. 48, 1976, p. 313-20.

334

Gigant: 4 times in poetry – Poetic Genesis A, l. 1268, Beowulf l. 113, 1562, 1679; 11 times in prose

– Solomon & Saturn, Blickling Homilies 1 & 3, the Old English Life of St. Machutus, in the prose
Paris Psalter, and Old English Boethius; 26 glosses – Latin words it covers are: gigans, cyclopes,
terrigenae, ‘earth-born’ (Old English counter-glosses for gigans are ent/eten (11), gigant (12) and
ormæta (3), the last of which means the ‘immense, excessive one’.).

behead Grendel and his mother. Ent and eoten (variant eten) seem to cover the same

semantic range of a gigantic being with a voracious appetite, who often lives in old or

skillfully made constructions.

335

The other types of giant in Beowulf include the fifel and the þyrs, and the

enigmatic orcneas. The meaning of fifel is obscure and it only occurs in a handful of

references (five in poetry, three in glosses), but it also seems to be associated with the

sea or rivers, jewellery, and gigantism (in size and qualities).

336

The þyrs likewise

exhibits the same sort of characteristics as other giants such as having a tremendous

appetite, and great size.

337

Its most common attribute is that it sceal on fenne

gewunian ana innan lande, “must dwell in a fen, alone within the land,”

338

or in a pyt,

or a mere, a marshy, boggy environment comparable to that for which the modern

dialect term grindle, ‘narrow ditch, or drain’ is used.

339

The only other giant type who

has an association with a certain place is the ent who once occupies a hlæw,

‘barrow’,

340

and the demon type scucca.

341

The latter appears once in a couplet with

scinnum, when Hrothgar is describing the laþan, ‘hateful ones’, who had besieged

335

Enta geweorc, eald enta geweorc, enta ærgeweorc are all very common, especially in the poetry,

and refers to something ancient, or large, and/or very skillfully/intricately made that can range from
buildings to jewellery. Though mostly refer to biblical/classical giants like the gigantes.

336

Elene, fifelwæg, Widsið the river Eider is the Fifeldor, Metres of Boethius, fifelstream; Waldere &

glosses for scarabeus, ‘scarab’, fibula, ‘brooch’ and spalagius (?); related to Old Icelandic fíflmegir,
giant, fífl, ‘clown, fool’, fífla (v.) to seduce (as in the Icelandic and Norwegian Rune poems, and related
to the seduction of human women by giants in the Book of Enoch, Kaske, p. 426-7.

337

Ic mesan mæg meahtelicor ond efnetan ealdum þyrse, ‘I can gorge more greedily than an old giant,

holding my own in a eating match’ (Riddle #40, l. 59-60, Exeter Book Riddles, p. 43); Þyrs glosses
colosi imagini, ~ anlicnes, ‘likeness of a colossus, giant’; Marsi (& incantatores), ~ & wyrmgaleres,
the Marsi are renowned snake-charmers and wizards, incantator is enchanter, wizard, wyrmgaleres are
literally snake-charmers, in glosses on Aldhelm’s de Virginate, and in the saint’s life of St. Felicity and
her seven sons, all martyrs who refused to worship idols etc; cacus, both a proper name for a giant, and
specifically for the son of Vulcan who dwelt in a cave on Mount Aventius; cyclopes, and lastly, orcus
is glossed simultaneously by orc, þyrs & heldeofol [see above, orcneas]; all from the early 11

century

Cotton Cleopatra A.III Latin/Old English glossary; the Old Norse þurs, and OHG turse also gloss
Orcus.

338

Maxims II, l. 42b-3a, Audrey L. Meaney, ‘The Ides of the Cotton Gnomic Poem’, New Readings on

Women in Old English Literature, (eds.) Helen Damico & Alexandra Hennessey Olsen, Indiana
University Press, 1990, p. 166.

339

Charter #222 (883 x 911 CE, bounds of Marlcliff, in Cleeve Prior, ~7km NE from Evesham,

Worcestershire) has a þyrs pyt; Thursford, ~8km NE from Fakenham, Norfolk; Thursgill, Thursgill,
Yorkshire, Thrushgill, Lancashire, Thursgyll, (1350 CE), near Capenwray ~12km north from
Lancaster; #255 (739 CE, bounds of Crediton, Devon, ~12km from Exeter) has a grendeles pytte; #416
(931 CE, bounds of Ham, Wiltshire, ~15km from Newbury) has a grendlesmere; #579 (951 x 5 CE,
bounds of Old Swinford, Worcestershire, ~15km from Birmingham, is itself only ~20km from a place
called Grindle; #669 (951 CE?, bounds of an estate on Thames between the Fleet river and Tyburn) has
a feature called grendel (ie; mod.dial. grindle?); #1451 (972 x 8 CE, bounds of Lotheres leage, in
Middlesex) has a grendeles gatan.

340

Enta hlæw in Charters #465 (940 CE) & 970 (1033 CE), both for the same place, Poolhampton, near

Overton in Hampshire.

341

Shocklach, ~10km east of Wrexham, Cheshire; (Lower & Upper) Shuckburgh, ~8km west from

Daventry, Warwickshire; Shucknall, 6km ENE from Hereford.

Heorot – clearly a reference to Grendel and his kin. In the rest of the Old English

corpus, the scinn is rarely found, but likely to be an apparition or idol connected with

times or places of pagan sacrifice,

342

and it may be connected to the Scandinavian

loan-word scinn, ‘skin, fur’, especially in the sense that Wulfstan uses wodscinn in a

homily.

343

The scucc is not described in any Old English source, beyond its identification

with the devil or other demons, but folklore traditions from East Anglia (and other

areas bordering on the Wash) up to the present day have preserved many tales about

(Old) Shuck or Shock, a large shaggy dog-like creature with large fiery eyes who

haunts primarily crossroads, boundary areas and barrows, and whose appearance is

usually seen as an omen of death.

344

Likewise in the case of Grendel, him of eagum

stod ligge gelicost leoht unfæger, ‘in his eyes stood an un-fair light most like fire’ (l.

726b-7), which may be compared to the demons in the vision of Dryhthelm, who have

“glowing eyes and foul flames issuing from their mouths and nostrils,”

345

as well as

the beings in the Wonders of the East “whose eyes shine as brightly as is one had lit a

great lantern on a dark night,”

346

and the serpents in the same whose eyes also “shine

at night as brightly as lanterns.”

347

Two variant names for the Shuck, Galleytrot and

Guytrash, are supposedly a corruption of the Norman French gardez le trésor, ‘guard

the treasure’,

348

another variant, Skriker, is related to the Old Norse skrætt, ‘demon’,

to which there is a very interesting analogue with the modern Czeck škrtič, ‘the

strangler’, from the region of the Krušné Hory mountains, the source of the Elbe.

349

342

Scinn as a simplex occurs in Beowulf, (poetic) Solomon & Saturn, the Whale, Gregory the Great’s

Dialogues; unrihte ~ glosses monstrum, ‘monster, divine omen, portent’ and nefandum, ‘abominable,
unspeakable’; deofolscinn occurs in the Legend of the Seven Sleepers, glossing dæmonia, ‘demon, evil
spirit’; scinncræftig in the prose life of St. Columba, glossing phantasmaticis satane, ‘illusions from
satan’; scinnhiw appears in Ælfric’s Peter and Paul homily, and once glosses fantasie, ‘phantom,
apparition’; place-names: Shincliffe, ~3km SE from Durham, Skinburness, prominent headland on
south side Solway Firth, ~30km from Carlisle.

343

wodscinn is the only compound not to also appear as a gloss somewhere, it is interesting to

speculate that this may have meant something like a ‘frenzy-skin’, or type of ritual clothing or
covering, or animal skin used to attain a state of wod, divine madness, inspiration and purpose, and
may point to a Scandinavian origin.

344

Newton, p. 143-4.

345

Bede, 5:12, p.286.

346

The Wonders of the East, §22, [in] Andy Orchard, Pride and Prodigies; D.S. Brewer, 1995, p. 199.

347

ibid., §5, p. 187.

348

Peter Haining, A Dictionary of Ghosts, Robert Hale Ltd., 1982, p. 93.

349

This demon has shape-shifting abilities being able to transform into the form of a bear, wolf, snake,

salamander, or ‘misshapen’ worm, or most commonly, a black or white ‘phantom dog’ with fiery eyes,
which then jumps onto people’s backs and strangles them. It is said to guard a treasure which lies
within a marsh (or a pool). It is most associated with a village called Raschau (in the outskirts of
Oelsnitz, near Plauen) on the Weiße Elster (which joins the Saale in Haale, which itself joins the Elbe

The last of the demons with whom Grendel can be compared, are the orcneas, already

mentioned earlier. This word occurs only the once in the corpus, leaving it up to the

almost as rare word orc to further illuminate orcneas.

350

In its less common meaning

of a demon, orc appears alongside þyrs and heldeofol (self-evident, if tautological)

glossing Orcus, ‘hell, the underworld, (god of) death’, in both the eighth century

Corpus Glossary, and the early eleventh century Cotton Cleopatra A.III glossary. The

only other similar sound in Old English is found in the Orkney Islands - the Orcades

in the Classical tradition,

351

but Insa Orc in the Old Irish, and Orkneyjar in the Old

Norse – which in the vernacular was very close to orcneas, being the Orcanege and

Orcanie.

352

This may not be so far-fetched a connection, since at various times, the

Orkneys were thought one of the mouths of hell, and there is a great pre-historic

chambered cairn which the Norse settlers called Orkahaugr, ‘the mound of

Orc(us)’,

353

reinforcing the idea that the barrow can be an entrance to hell.

If there were any doubts in the minds of early medieval people about whether

a dead person had become an evil revenant, were the corpse found to have an

unnaturally heavy and swollen body any such doubts would be dispelled. It is a

common feature of the draugar that they are enormously swollen with darkly mottled

skin.

354

In Eirik’s saga rauða, a witch’s grave is uncovered under the floorboards of a

church, and she is identified by her “bones which were blue and evil-looking, and a

brooch, and a large witch’s wand...The bones were taken far away to a place where

people were least likely to pass by,”

355

and in Eyrbyggja saga, Thorolf Twist-Foot

repeatedly haunts his farm, and when his body is uncovered, it is “monstrous to look

Dessau and Magdeburg) in the border region which, in German is the Erzgebirge, ‘Ore-mountains’,
and in Czeck ‘the Crusher-mountains’. See http://www.alte-salzstrasse.de/index.php?id-461&L=3.

350

There are two different meanings for orc (1) occurs in Beowulf, Judith and the prose Exodus, and

glosses calix, ‘cup, goblet, drinking vessel’, amphora, ‘vessel, usually for storing, transporting,
measuring wine’, and orca, likewise a ‘large-bellied vessel, wine-butt’; (2) occurs only in glosses, for
orcus, ‘the underworld, abode of the dead, god of the dead (Pluto), and death itself; Orcus is also
glossed by infernus, mors, deað and muþa, (presumably in the sense the mouth/entrance (of hell).

351

Orcadus – Old English Orosius, Chronicle A; Orcadius – Chronicle C; Orcadas – Old English

Bede.

352

Chronicle D and the Old English Bede respectively; *orcas, Proto-Celtic for pig, orcynus, a ‘large

sea-fish of the tunny species’ in Classical Latin, orkn, in Old Norse a type of seal (could this be related
to the supernatural seal like Killer-Hrapp in Laxdæla saga, or Thorgunna in Eyrbyggja saga?), have all
be suggested as etymologies.

353

Also, in later Norse sources, people from the Orkneys and Hebrides have strong associations with

magic (see http://www.orkneyjar.com); Orcus as a focus of worship? In Saxo, 1:36-7, p. 44.

354

See title page, the mottled demon prodding sinners into the jaws of hell, from Norwich Cathedral

roof boss c. 1145.

355

Eirik’s saga rau∂a, ch. 76, [in] The Vinland Sagas: Grænlendinga Saga and Eirik’s Saga, (trans.)

Magnus Magnusson & Hermann Pálsson; Penguin Books, 1965, p. 235.

at. He was as black as Hell and as huge as an ox.”

356

Thorolf also overpowers the

shepherd overnight, and when the latter’s body is found in the morning, “His body

was coal-black all over and every bone was broken,”

357

while in a very similar

episode in Grettir’s saga, the shepherd Glam is killed by the nameless monster of

Forsæludale farm (‘shadow valley’) prior to his reanimation as a draugr, and “his

body was dark-blue in colour and swollen up to the size of an ox”

358

when the people

found it near the cliffs at the head of the valley (presumably close to the monster’s

lair). One of William of Newburgh’s tales, the revenant of Anant is found to be

“grotesque and distended, with a swollen reddened face” when the body is

exhumed.

359

Grendel himself wæs mara þone ænig man oþer, ‘was larger than any

other man’ (l. 1353), and together with his mother, they were micle mearcstapas,

‘huge boundary-walkers’ (l. 1348a). His head which is so great that it takes four men

to carry it back to the hall on the wælstenge, ‘slaughter-stake’ (l. 1635-9), need not be

physically enormous in size, if it is instead preternaturally heavy in the manner of the

bodies of the Scandinavian draugar.

Yet Grendel’s swollen-ness is not just a physical characteristic since he

gebolgen wæs, “he bulged” with anger (l. 723b), which coupled with his great pride

(l. 2090a), may point to this being a late characteristic of the draugr since being

physically swollen is a sign in Christian exegesis of the mortal sin of pride.

360

After

all, it is Satan’s immense pride that is the direct cause of his downfall and physical

transformation into a monstrous being.

361

Pride (in greed for glory) is the one thing

which Hrothgar warns Beowulf to be on guard against, lest he go the way of

Heremod; but perhaps the warning was too late since Beowulf was already larger and

stronger than other men,

362

and on his deathbed it is the only thing which he omits

from his list of good deeds and characteristics when he is dying, while the famous last

words of the poet assert that Beowulf was lofgearnost, ‘most eager for praise’ (l.

3182b). When he receives his fatal wound from the dragon, ða sio wund ongon ...

swelan ond swellan he þæt sona onfand þæt him on breostum bealonið weoll attor on

innan, ‘then that wound began ... to burn and swell, he then immediately realised that

356

Eyrbyggja saga, ch. 63, p. 189.

357

Eyrbyggja saga, ch. 34, p. 133-4.

358

Grettir’s saga, ch. 32, p. 72-3.

359

Keyworth, p. 100-2.

360

Orchard, p. 47ff.

361

Genesis, l. 347-56, p. 22, Christ and Satan, l.65-75, p. 89.

362

l. 247b-51a, 533-4, 752b-3a, 1560-1 – in some Old Norse sagas, those who became draugr had been

more huge than other men in life, as with Skallagrim in Egils’ saga., and Glam in Grettir’s saga.

within him, in his breast, an evil-wickedness welled, poison on the inside’ (l. 2711b ...

2713-5a). This may refer to either a poison which was contained in or exuded by the

dragon and transferred to Beowulf, or even to something within Beowulf which was

activated by the death-wound.

363

There is a seldom remarked upon analogue to the portrayal of Grendel in

Beowulf, found in the character of Ogmund in Örvar-Odds saga,

364

who is described

as “dappled black and blue, with long black hair, and had a rough tussock hanging

down over the eyes where his forelock ought to be,”

365

“more of a monster ... troll ...

phantom ... than a man,”

366

and is “strengthened with witchcraft, so that ordinary

weapons couldn’t bite him.”

367

Ogmund is Arrow-Odd’s recurrent opponent

throughout the saga, and they fight by wrestling with one another, until Arrow-Odd

wins, but Ogmund escapes by magic. Ogmund’s mother, Grimhild, is also a draugr

who compared to Grendel’s mother, is “enormous ... [with] a human head and huge

fangs, a long, thick tail, and talons of fantastic size with a great gleaming sword in

each claw.”

368

She attacks Örvar-Odds saga’s party by the side of a lake, and was

able to kill sixty men in her first rush, and kills one of the heroes by “knocking him

flat ... [and] thr[owing] herself on top of him”

369

but when she attacks Arrow-Odd,

she seems to try to grapple with him, and claw his chest, but he is wearing his special

shirt that renders him invincible (unless he retreats during battle). He then cuts off her

tail before shooting her dead with his special arrow.

370

It is also notable that this

“ogress” apparently lived in “the north of England”, before she was sent to harrass

him.

371

She is also noteworthy for living beneath a waterfall, as do the Sandhaugar

trolls in Grettirs saga,

372

though elsewhere underwater abodes are very rare. There is

the case of Alaric’s tomb for which “His people [the Visigoths] ... turn[ed] from its

363

Like Hygelac’s last raid, which was a prideful act, for which his body was displayed like a criminal.

It is also important to note that all of the Geats have a tradition of being gigantic in stature (did all of
them come to prideful ends?), and there is a connection to the region mentioned above with the harne
stan, since in Aldworth, there is a traditon of the local Norman ruling family in the thirteenth to
fourteenth centuries being giants, http://www.aldworth.info/Aldworth/giants.html.

364

There is also a parallel with the flyting between Örvar-Odds saga and Sjolf and Sigurd, and the

contest between Beowulf and Unferð in Beowulf, ch. 27, p. 101-8; see also Clover, 1980, p. 463.

365

Örvar-Odds saga, ch. 19, p. 81.

366

ibid., ch. 13, p. 58-9, ch. 19, p. 82.

367

ibid., ch. 19, p. 81.

368

ibid., ch. 20, p. 83.

369

ibid. loc cit.

370

ibid, p. 84.

371

ibid., ch. 19, p. 82.

372

Grettir’s saga, ch. 64-6, p. 135-40.

course the river Busentus near the city of Consentia ... led a band of captives into the

midst of its bed to dig out a place for his grave. In the depths of this pit they buried

Alaric, together with many treasures, and then turned the waters back into their

channel,”

373

and Baldr’s burial mound which spontaneously gushed out a flood of

water on the one occasion an attempted robbery was made.

374

In relation to the underwater dwelling-places of the draugar Grimhild and

Grendel’s mother and the nameless ones from Sandhaugar, there is a late folktale

tradition in Norway, concerning a certain type of sea-spirit called the draug who can

“assume any shape at will, but he is most often seen in the guise of a sailor-man –

without a head. In some parts of Norway, however, they maintain that he has a tin-

plate on his neck with burning coals for eyes” and he foretells of storms to come, or is

an omen of death to the fisherman.

375

In the tale of ‘The Fisherman and the Draug’,

the latter is able to take the form of a seal and a “big man ... [with] a long iron hooked

spike sticking out of his back”, with a gaping mouth, who steers his ship manned by

the dead when he is on the prowl for humans during storms. Another tale, ‘Finn

Blood’, has the draug appear on an upturned boat “glaring savagely ... with a pair of

dull reddish eyes. He was so heavy that the boat’s bottom began to slowly sink down

at the end where he sat.”

376

He waits with it in a storm to see if it will be wrecked and

he can claim it. In this tale, the draug is simply the drowned man who did not receive

Christian burial. This is related to the portrayal of trolls in the Saga of Ketil Trout,

since there they dwell in the sea, and live off men whom they drag to their death at the

bottom of the ocean,

377

as well as the description of Grendel’s mother who lives at the

bottom of the mere, dragging men down to the bottom where she crushes them (or

attempts to) to death (l. 1501-12a), which is why she is called the grundwyrgenne,

literally the ‘ground-strangler’ (l. 1518b).

378

Two points from these late folktales are important here; firstly that the draug’s

physical appearance of a being an enormous man (or woman), with a huge yawning

mouth, fiery eyes, and an overly heavy body are all relics of the physical appearance

of the draugar, even though the last quality was also shared with some haugbúar,

373

Jordanes, Origins and Deeds of the Goths, (trans.) Charles C. Mierow;

http://www.ucalgary.ca/%7Evandersp/Courses/texts/jordgeti.html, 30:158.

374

Saxo, 3:77-8, p. 95-4.

375

A Book of Sea Legends, (ed.) Michael Brown; Puffin Books, 1974, p. 106.

376

ibid, p. 124-5.

377

The Saga of Ketil Trout, (trans.) Gavin Chappell; http://www.northvegr.org/lore/oldheathen/

index.php, ch. 5

378

From wyrgan, ‘choke, strangle’, but also related to wiergan, ‘curse’.

such as the saints whose body was unable to be moved without fulfillment of certain

conditions.

379

The second aspect of the draug is that he is connected with storms,

since it is from them that he gains his bodies, and in this the connection is not so

much with the draugar, but with giants, who In Old Norse and Old English sources

were connected with the weather, and some were connected to tempests as above. If

the Exeter Book Riddles 1-3, whose solutions are usually taken to be ‘storm at sea’,

and ‘earthquake’ are taken as either one large riddle,

380

or having the same answer,

then each of the poems may be seen to focus on some aspect of a giant’s activity. In

the final riddle, there is a reference to the invaders of a stronghold as the scriðende

scin, ‘the harming demon’ (l. 50) who shoots spears and arrows at humans in the

guise of lightning, and another aspect of the giant who is enclosed under the earth, in

þystrum, ‘in the dark (chamber?)’ (l. 4), just as Grendel is before he begins his

assaults on Heorot.

One last point must be made here, which returns to the earlier identification of

necromancy as a means by which the barrow-dwellers are summoned, since there is

already noted a connection between witches and giants. This may be illustrated by the

word helrune which is used in Beowulf to refer to both Grendel and his mother

(l.163), while elsewhere it denotes either a human witch, or a female deity akin to the

Old Norse norns or the Classical parcae.

381

Robert Kaske has shown that Grendel is

related to the specific Old Testament, cannibalistic, giants from the Book of Enoch,

and that Grendel’s mother may be related to the sirens, “spectral wanders in the

wasteland ... the companions of demons ... violent flesh-eating monsters,”

382

which

accords with the description of the halirunnae from Jordanes’ Getica as “certain

witches ... [who] wanderered through the wilderness, bestowed their embraces upon

(the unclean spirits) and begat this savage race, which dwelt at first in the swamps – a

stunted, foul and puny tribe, scarcely human, and having no language save one which

bore but slight resemblance to human speech. Such was the descent of the Huns ...”

383

The Huns were also demonised by Gregory of Tours, when in an invasion of King

Sigibert’s lands, “just as they were about to join battle, the Huns, who were highly

skilled in necromancy, made a number of phantom figures dance before their eyes and

379

For instance St. Germanus, bishop of Paris in Gregory of Tours, 5:8, p. 264.

380

Exeter Book Riddles, p. 85; especially since he takes l. 12-4 to refer to the Old Testament flood,

which is of relevance to Beowulf’s and Guthlac’s demons (giants).

381

Crawford, p. 104.

382

Kaske, p. 427.

383

Jordanes, 24:121-2; Except that the Huns are here depicted as scrawny rather than gigantic.

so beat them easily.”

384

That Grendel’s mother is also referred to as ides, ‘lady’ (l.

1259a) is important here since this word may be traced to the same root as the Old

Norse dís, ‘goddess’,

385

though Audrey Meaney would argue that the word originally

refers to a human woman with powers of magic who was later demonised.

386

Grendel’s mother may have been as human as her son once, but associations with hell

have thoroughly de-humanised her. Though not associated with raising the dead,

another figure variously portrayed as a giantess, a troll, a valkyrie type who summons

a storm during a battle, or else as a human woman associated with barrows

387

is one

of the obscure goddesses in Norway, Þorgerðr Horgabrúðr, whose name literally

means ‘Thor’s Earth-giantess barrow-bride.

388

Her function appears to have been that

of a prophetic chthonic fertility goddess, and Hilda Ellis Davidson notes that

Þorgerðr’s brother was himself a draugr, and that they and her family were

“associated with the cult of the dead.”

389

Within the first hundred lines of Grendel’s introduction, the poet is able to

introduce all of these aspects. He explicitly called a man a number of times,

390

and his

abode is described in terms applied to human houses

391

– but much more often he is

called by names given to demons,

392

or of the devil himself.

393

He is a spirit,

394

who is

also able to physically grasp and devour men, a giant,

395

and yet a criminal as well.

396

He inhabits the liminal, unnatural places which men do not, making him the wiht

unhælo, ‘unholy being’ (l. 120b) akin to the demons of Crowland. Where Guthlac had

chosen to isolated himself, was infested with monsters that had until then deterred

384

Gregory of Tours, 4:29, p. 223.

385

Simek, p. 61-2.

386

Meaney, 1990, p. 164-6.

387

Simek, p. 326-7; N. Chadwick, 1946a, p. 53-4.

388

Not always spelt thus, but N. Chadwick argues this is the earliest form of the name, 1946a, p. 54.

389

Ellis, p. 105.

390

wonsæli wer, ‘wretched man’, l. 105a; rinc, ‘warrior’, l. 720b; feasceaft guma, ‘miserable man’, l.

973a; hæþenes ... hilderinces, ‘the heathen battle-warrior’s’, l.986; on weres wæstmum, ‘in the form of
a man’ l. 1352a; here referring either Beowulf or Grendel, or both at once: reþe cempa, ‘fierce warrior’
l. 1585a; gromheort guma, ‘angry-hearted man’, l. 1682a.

391

ham (l. 124b); hof (l. 1506b-7); hus (l. 1666a); recede (l. 1572b); sele (l. 1512b-7, 2139a); wic (l.

125b, 821a, 1575b, 1612a).

392

helle gast, (l. 1274a), feond (l. 101b, 143b... 11 times); Grendel is also included in the following

groups: deofla (l. 1680a); scuccum ond scinnum (l. 939a).

393

feond mancynnes (l. 164b, 1276a); Godes ansacan (l. 786b, 1682b), ealdgewinna (l. 1776a)

394

ellengæst (l. 86a), grimma gæst (l. 102), gastbona (l. 177), gæst yrre (l. 2073b), wælgæst, (l. 1995a),

ættren ellorgæst (l. 1617a).

395

eoten (l. 668b, 761a), þyrs, (l. 426a), mæra (ie; ‘nightmare, incubus’; Nicolas K. Kiessling,

‘Grendel: A New Aspect’, Modern Philology, v. 65:3, Feb. 1968, p. 194, 198, 201.).

396

heorowearh, ‘sword-outlaw’; Fred C. Robinson, ‘Germanic *uargaz (OE wearh) and the Finnish

Evidence’, Inside Old English, (ed.) John Walmsey; Blackwell Publishing, 2006, p. 246.

others from going there,

397

while in the poetic version, the whole region of mearclond

and westennum, ‘uncultivated, borderlands’ (l. 174a, 159a) around Crowland

398

was

considered to be the ‘resting-place’ of the demons until Guthlac arrived: wræcsetla

fela eardas onhæle earmra gæsta sindon wærlogan þe þa wic bugað ‘the abode of

many an exile, criminal place, of wretched spirits is in this land, oath-breakers

are

those that inhabit this land’ (l. 296b-8).

399

Similarly, Beowulf evicts Grendel and his

mother from their realm that they had previously ruled.

One of the words which is used of both the demons in Guthlac A & B and

Beowulf, is aglæca;

400

which was suggested earlier as a possible word with which to

denote the draugr and the barrow-dweller. It only occurs rarely in the corpus in a total

of thirty-eight times (only once in prose), occasionally as an abstract noun that has

variously been translated as meaning ‘misery’,

401

‘torment’,

402

or ‘oppression’,

403

as a place or state of torture.

404

The adjectives it most frequently occurs with, earme,

‘wretched, despicable’, and atol, ‘terrifying, loathsome’, may also help round out the

abstract semantic range of this word. But where it denotes a creature, a monstrous

being of some sort is indicated, like the cannibal inhabitants of Mermedonia in

Andreas (l. 1131), and in The Whale where that creature’s habit of tempting fish into

its yawning mouth so that it may “the grim jaws gnash together around the prey” is

explicitly paralleled with the devil who tempts humans to sin so upon which they fall

into hell and the devil “gnashes fast together those grim jaws, the gaol-gates of hell”

(l. 51). The identification of this being with the devil is made explicit elsewhere, when

either lesser demons,

405

or the ‘old enemy’, Satan himself is referred to as an aglæc.

406

It most commonly occurs in Beowulf, (sixteen times) where it is used to refer mainly

to Grendel,

407

but also to the dragon,

408

and otherwise unidentified monstrous beings

who inhabit watery places and are hostile to humans.

409

397

locum monstrari ... demorantium fantasias demonum, Felix, ch. 25, p. 88-9.

398

Itself derived from crug-land – Celtic for ‘barrow-land’.

399

Wærlogan itself is not found in Beowulf, but when Grendel had forsworen all weapons to be able to

hurt him, this word literally means ‘to renounce an oath’, thus ‘oath-breaker’.

400

Guthlac A (l. 174), Beowulf, (l. 159a, 425a...18 times).

401

Riddle #53, l. 3; Riddle #81, l. 6.

402

Daniel, l. 237.

403

Elene, l. 1186.

404

Riddle #3, l. 6; Riddle #93, l. 20.

405

Guthlac A, l. 574; The Phoenix, l. 437; Juliana, l. 267, 319, 429.

406

Christ and Satan, l. 159, 441, 573; Andreas, l. 1311, 1358.

407

Beowulf, l. 159a, 425a, 433b, 592a, 732a, 739a, 816a, 1000b.

408

Beowulf, l. 2520a, 2534a, 2557a, 2905a.

409

Beowulf, l. 556a, 1512a.

There are also a further six special occurrences of the word which may

indicate an originally human aspect to its semantic range. Firstly, in Beowulf, where it

is unclear if the referent is a monster or the human hero in opposition to it,

410

and in

which cases the human hero is most unlikely to be seen as a demon; secondly, when

Grendel’s mother is called an aglæcwif (l. 1259a), which suffix is used elsewhere in

the corpus exclusively of female humans.

411

Thirdly, elsewhere in the corpus, quite

frequently the demons to whom the word refers, in that specific line, also have the

power of speech,

412

which ability may likewise apply to Grendel on the occasion of

Beowulf’s boasting of his future success, when he says that in the encounter wið

Grendel sceal wið þam aglæcan ana gehegan ðing wið þyrse, ‘I will with Grendel,

with that terrible one, once and for all settle the strife (with words) with the fen-giant’

(l. 424b-6a).

413

That Grendel is frequently called by names also used of Satan (whose

power of speech is never lacking in Old English poetry) further reinforces the idea

that Grendel may have had the power of speech. Finally, there is of course the only

occurrence of the word in the prose Old English corpus, which cannot be seen to

describe its subject as demonic in any way, where Bede is se æglæca lareow, ‘Bede,

that awesome teacher’.

414

Therefore, aglæca must be translated by a word that can

equally describe the terrifying and the admirable qualities in both heroic humans and

demonic beings, and an ideal meeting ground is the figure of the barrow-dweller, who

gave rise to the demonic draugar. In this respect, it must not be forgotten that Bede

was considered a saint in Anglo-Saxon England “within fifty years of his death”,

accompanied by the usual claim of miracles performed through his relics,

415

and

though not himself a type of barrow-dweller, it is arguable that by that time of his

cult, the transferal of the barrow-dwellers’ attributes onto those of the saints was well-

established.

410

Sigemund/dragon, l. 893a; Beowulf/Grendel, l. 1269a; Beowulf/dragon, l. 2592a.

411

Melinda J. Menzer, Aglæcwif (Beowulf 1259a): Implications for –wif compounds, Grendel’s mother,

and other aglæcan’, English Language Notes, v. 34:1, Sept. 1996, p. 4.

412

Christ and Satan, l. 159, 441; Andreas, l. 1311, 1358; Guthlac A, l. 574; Juliana, l. 267, 319, 429.

413

E.G. Stanley, ‘Two Old English Poetic Phrases Insufficiently Understood for Literary Criticism:

Þing gehegan and seonoþ gehegan’, Old English Poetry: Essays on Style, (ed.) Daniel G. Calder;
University of California Press, 1979, p. 77-9.

414

Used in the biblical sense of ‘awesome, terrifying’; Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion, 2.1.174.

415

David Hugh Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints; Oxford University Press, 5

ed., 2004, p. 47.

REMOVAL OF THE DRAUGAR:

Apart from the physical characteristics of the draugar which largely came

from other sources than the haugbúar, the environmental limitations of the barrow-

dweller, were the physical bounds of their tomb, which occasionally extended to the

outside surface of the barrow so that they were seen on top of it.

416

But in general,

unless the tomb were opened by magical means

417

or was broken into, the barrow-

dweller remained within. This was not the case with many of the draugar who were

able to exit the confines of their tomb, and haunt the local area, as with William of

Malmesbury’s report, in The Chronicles of the Kings of England, of King Alfred

being first buried in a cathedral, but later translated to a monastery (which had been

his original wish) since it was reported that “royal spirit, resuming its carcass,

wandered nightly through the buildings” until it was given its new “quiet resting-

place in the new minster.”

418

At first the barrow-dweller may have only been active

during certain hours of the night

419

or certain seasons,

420

or due the un-avenged death

of the barrow-dweller; but the later draugar seem to be able to haunt the living at any

time or place, their only restriction being that they haunt in the hours of darkness.

421

The draugar may have also received strange burial rites, such as being seated

or sanding within their grave,

422

but in a number of cases in the Old Norse sagas, the

barrow-dweller lived on in the grave because they had entered it while still alive, and

as a consequence, was ‘turned into a monster’; ie a draugr. This can be seen in the

stories of Agnar, in Halfdan Eysteinsson’s saga, one of the hero’s opponents who,

after he escaped the fight alive, “went to Halogaland and became a notorious

troublemaker. He amassed a heap of riches and eventually built himself a huge grave

mound, which he entered alive just as his father had done along with all his crew, and

turned into a monster, money and all;”

423

and Thrain in Hromund Gripsson’s saga

likewise had been a powerful ruler in life, and “had accomplished everything by

416

Thorstein Mansion-might, ch. 2, p. 259-60; Thorleifs Þáttr Jarlsskaálds, N. Chadwick, 1946a, p. 61-

417

Njal’s saga, ch. 78, p. 153.

418

William of Malmesbury, 2:4, p. 122.

419

Hrafnkel’s saga, ch. 6, p. 43.

420

Grettir’s saga, ch. 32-3, p. 72-5.

421

Even Glam’s haunting of Forsæludale, occurred in the winter months, when the valley was

permanently in shadow (ch. 32, p. 72).

422

Buried seated – Aran in Egil and Asmund, Kar the Old in Gretir’s saga, Gunnar in Njal’s saga; also

compare to the chair in one of the Vendel graves (Ellis, p. 16). Buried standing up – Killer-Hrapp in
Laxdæla saga; Skallagrim dies in a seated position and cannot be bent out of place, Egils’s saga.

423

Halfdan Eysteinsson’s saga, [in] Seven Viking Romances, ch. 26, p. 198.

sorcery. He did much evil, until he was so old ... so he went alive into the barrow and

took much wealth with him;”

424

and Earl Agdi in Thorstein Mansion-Might who “had

a burial mound built for himself ... then retired into it with a great deal of money,”

425

but he comes back to life and pesters Thorstein, so the hero goes into Agdi’s open

mound, and picks up one his favourite treasures, which brings the wandering draugr

back into the mound to protect his treasure, but Thorstein tricks him, and shuts him

back in his barrow by putting up a Christian cross on the doorway to the mound.

426

the story of Egil and Asmund, Asmund and his sworn brother, Aran, make a pledge

that “the one who lived the longer should raise a burial mound over the one who was

dead, and place in it as much money as he thought fit; and the survivor was to sit in

the mound over the dead for three nights, but after that he would be free to go

away.”

427

Aran was the first to die and it was done as they had agreed, with Asmund

providing large barrow for Aran, and stocking it with treasures, Aran’s horse, hound,

and hawk, and food for himself before he entered the mound, and had it sealed behind

him. Aran comes back to life, and on the first night he consumes the hawk and the

hound, on the second the horse, and on the third, he attempts to eat Asmund himself,

and manages to rip off his ears before Asmund kills him.

428

Saxo has what seems to

be the same story about an Asmund Alfsson and an Aswit Biornsson who likewise

vow to be enclosed in a barrow with one another, and again Asmund’s friend dies

first, and a horse and dog are provided (but no bird).

429

However, here the period of

interment for Asmund is indefinite, and it is only when a passing group of men break

open the barrow in search of treasure, that they encounter him, and believe on seeing

him that he too has become one of the cannibalistic living dead.

430

Cannibalism seems to be a common characteristic of the later draugar, with

some of the malevolent corpses recorded by William of Newburgh, being called

“blood-suckers,”

431

with fresh blood also being found on the corpses of the Drakelow

revenants.

432

In Volsunga saga, Sigemund and his son by incest, Sinfjoti, are said to

424

Hromund Gripsson’s saga, ch. 4. http://www.northvegr.org/lore/oldheathen/index.php

425

Thorstein Mansion-Might, ch. 12, p. 275.

426

ibid., ch. 12-3, p. 274-5.

427

Egil and Asmund ch. 6, p. 236.

428

ibid., ch. 7, p. 237-8.

429

Saxo, book 5, §161-2, p. 200-1.

430

Saxo, book 5, §163, p. 201-2.

431

Keyworth, , 100-2.

432

ibid., p. 26.

have “sucked the blood of many corpses,”

433

while late manifestations of cannibal

giants are found in many English fairy tales where almost every giant encountered

recites a stock phrase along the lines of ‘Fee Fi Fo Fum, I small the blood of an

earthly one, be he living or be he dead, I’ll have his bones to grind my bread.”

434

Likewise in medieval depictions of hell, there invariably is a large, hairy demon that

devours humans by the handful.

435

We are then left with Grendel, who is described in

the poem in the very act of eating a person when he grabs a man at random from the

group and slat unwearnum bat banlocan blod edrum dranc synsnædum swealh sona

hæfde unlyfigendes eal gefeormod fet ond folma, “ripped without restraint, crunched

joints, drank the blood from his veins; he swallowed that criminal meal; soon he had

the lifeless one all consumed from tip to toe” (l. 741b-5a); and the other water-

monster whom Beowulf battles with in Breca episode, where “to the bottom [of the

sea] the hostile fiendish-injurer dragged me [Beowulf], terrible in his grip, however to

me it was granted that I would reach that awesome one with the point of my battle-

blade, in the battle-rush I destroyed that mighty swamp-beast with my own hands ...

they were unable to rejoice in their fill, the man-eaters when they would partake of

me at the feast they sat around near the sea-floor” (l. 553b-8 ... 562-4).

Live interment was not a phenomenon confined to men, as seen in the story

which Saxo tells of Drott, who was shut up in an underground cave by her father, the

Norwegian king Regnald, with many weapons and servants for the duration of a

war.

436

The story is given a fuller treatment in the Swedish fairytale, The Princess and

the Earthen Cave, where the premise is the same, but she is enclosed not with a

retinue and weapons, but with her handmaiden, her dog and a rooster, “to help them

tell the difference between day and night.”

437

Seven years they remained within the

cave, until the food ran out and the princess had to eat her rooster. Her servant then

mysteriously dies, and the princess escapes from the barrow with the dog. Roaming

through the forest, she comes across a wolf, who kindly offers to take her to safety in

exchange for the dog for its food, and so the princess rides on the wolf’s back to a

433

Volsunga saga, ch. 9, p. 49.

434

Joseph Jacobs, English Fairy Tales, 1890; http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/eft/eft14.htm, ‘Jack

and the Beanstalk’; ~/eft20.htm, ‘Jack the Giant-Killer’; ~/eft22.htm, ‘Childe Rowland’; ~/eft23.htm,
‘Molly Whuppie’; ~/eft24.htm, ‘The Red Ettin’.

435

Visions of Evil, passim.

436

Saxo, book 7, §240-1, p. 288-9.

437

‘The Princess and the Earthen Cave’, Swedish Folktales and Legends, (trans., ed.) Lone Thygesen

Blecher & George Blecher; University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2004, p. 160-1.

castle.

438

This last motif is important to note since it identifies her with mythological

representations of giantesses (such as Hyrokkin who comes to Baldr’s funeral riding

on the back of a wolf, with vipers for reins

439

), suggesting that she too, in an earlier

version, may have become a monster while she had been alive in the tomb.

The barrow-dweller was invariably seen as a benevolent force, in pre-

Christian eschatology; but there was nothing good about the draugar, being

associated closely with the condemned, and the damned. Therefore, the malevolent

dead had to be disposed of in such a way that it could not possibly return. If the

draugr was encountered live in its barrow, frequently there would be wrestling

between it and the hero, but primarily, it had to be decapitated with a sword;

sometimes only their own sword would do the job,

440

in such a way Hrunting failed

Beowulf

441

against Grendel’s mother’s magic, for he was only able to kill her and her

son using the sword that hung on their own wall (l. 1557-8). On other occasions, the

draugr was dismembered,

442

or pierced through the heart;

443

these and similar

precautions may have even been taken when it was feared that the dead person may

become a draugr death.

444

It is also notable that when Judith slays Holofernes, she

does so firstly by decapitating him (l. 98-111), and secondly by displaying his head on

her triumphant arrival back to Bethulia (l. 173-4). This does not mean that Holofernes

was meant to be portrayed as a draugr, but it does thematically connect this poem to

the rest of the Nowell Codex, re-integrating Judith into the ‘book of monsters’.

445

And

finally to return to the eschatological evidence of cremation cited at the beginning of

438

ibid., p. 162.

439

Simek, p. 170.

440

Like Starkað who is decapitated, at his request, by his own sword after his third lifetime is up, and

as his head falls, it literally bites the dust; Saxo, book 8, §274, p. 329.

441

Like in the much later folk-tale of Childe Rowland, who must decapitate every being he encounters

in the otherworld with “the good brand that never struck in vain”, else he would never return to earth
(Childe Rowland, Jacobs, http:// www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/eft/eft23.htm), Beowulf takes the
sword Hrunting, which “had never failed any man who grasped it in his hands in battle, who dared to
undertake a dreadful journey into the very home of the foe” (l. 1460b-3a).

442

Keyworth, p. 100-2.

443

A hill in Dynved, in north-west of island of Åls, Denmark, at turn of the century, was supposed to

be haunted, until a clergyman living on mainland, directly opposite the hill across the water, “one day
... appeared on the hill with a heavy oak stake and a hammer, walked around for a while on the hillside
and finally drove in the stake at a spot where there was nothing in particular to be seen”, after which
there were no more hauntings; forty years later, this spot was excavated (without knowledge of the
tale) and a Viking grave was found, with the stake having been driven straight through the corpse’s
heart; Glob p.76-7.

444

Martin Puhvel, ‘The Ride Around Beowulf’s Barrow’, Folklore, v. 94:1, 1983, p. 109.

445

Rolf H. Bremmer Jr., ‘Grendel’s arm and the law’, Studies in English Language and Literature,

(eds.) M.J. Toswell & E.M. Tyler; Routledge, 1996, p. 124-5.

this chapter, the body of a person who it was feared may return to haunt the living, or

the exhumed corpse of who had, was cremated to prevent any possibility of their

return.

The function of the barrow-dweller may be summarised as consisting of a link

between the living and the otherworld that may be accessed by certain people skilled

in wiccecræft (literally ‘necromancy’), who are thus able to gain knowledge

(especially of the future), and/or promote the health and fertility of the land belonging

to the barrow, and the people dwelling within its borders. With the introduction of

Christianity, the function of the noble barrow-dweller as a spiritual conduit did not

vanish, but was instead transformed within Christianity by the forging of new links

with the Christian otherworld through the ‘passing over’ of Christian barrow-

dwellers. However, the existing connections to the spirits of the heathen otherworld

through the unbaptised generations of barrow-dwellers were no longer the desirable

conduits for spiritual knowledge, and whichever influenced the other first – the

liminal location of the barrow-dweller, the means by which their knowledge was

‘tapped’, or the fact that they were heathens and thus from a Christian point of view in

hell – the actual barrow-dwellers themselves joined the infernal ranks of demons and

sinners and were transformed into malevolent versions of their former selves. Instead

of bringing health and well-being to a land and its people, the draugr is associated

with pestilence and encountering or touching him is an omen of death. He is still able

to foretell the future, but instead of bringing inspiration and knowledge, he brings

curses upon the people who seek him out.

The way in which Grendel and his mother are portrayed in Beowulf cannot be

fully understood outside of the context of pre-Christian Germanic eschatology in

which the elite dead were thought to live on after death in their tomb. However, the

transformation of these barrow-dwellers from being noble intercessionary helpful

entities into malevolent, harmful ones is due to the influence of Christianity, with both

the barrow-dwellers themselves and the location of their tomb being demonised. The

attributes of the barrow-dweller were transferred onto the noble Christian equivalent,

saints and holy royals, while the actual previous generations of barrow-dwellers who

were heathens were metaphorically and literally cast into hell. After the conversions,

there were still heathens present in Anglo-Saxon society, but these were rarely

unbaptised adults, instead heathens were those people who died as criminals or were

excommunicated, or died unshriven. In Beowulf, all of the characters were arguably

heathen, and thus their was fate in hell.

ONCLUSION

Based on the physical evidence of the manuscript, the exemplar from which

the Nowell Codex Beowulf was copied c. 1000 CE, was most likely written in the first

quarter of the tenth century CE, though an earlier date of any time between the early

eighth and early tenth centuries cannot be entirely discounted. Chapter One examined

the evidence for the early tenth century Scandinavian influence on Anglo-Saxon

society, primarily through the settlement of a Scandinavian population within the

lands of the Danelaw, as being an integral part of the background of Beowulf. The

strongest evidence is found firstly in the, apparently hitherto unidentified, loan-words

from Old Norse into Old English of eoten and hold, the use of eorl which reflects Old

Norse usage, and possibly also in þyle, discussed in Chapter Two. Secondly, the focus

on the Scyldingas in Beowulf, whose creation is most unlikely to be dated to before

the mid ninth century, and who would not have been known in Anglo-Saxon England

before the last quarter of the ninth century, also places the composition of the poem,

in the form preserved in the Nowell Codex, in the generations surrounding the turn of

the ninth/tenth century. A synthesis of Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon culture was

effected primarily in the regions of the former people’s settlement, and it is this

Anglo-Scandinavian context which in turn influenced Anglo-Saxon society in the

tenth century as the Danelaw slowly came into the sphere of control of the West

Saxons, who had by now begun to present themselves as the rightful rulers of all the

people who lived in English territory. Chapter Two discussed what evidence of

heathenism may be found in Beowulf, concluding that while it is not much, what the

poet did know can be shown to have been a result of the common knowledge and

perceptions among Anglo-Saxons, of what Scandinavian practices in the first

generation or two of their settlement in England entailed, with the poet “us[ing] the

word ‘heathen’ to condemn distant (Danish), ancient and general paganism.”

446

Finally, the bulk of this thesis was a close study of what the supernatural

beings found in Beowulf were, and where their context lay. Again, in the

characterisations of the barrow-dwellers and the draugar, the parallels with

Scandinavian culture were inescapable, mainly since it is in Old Norse literature that

these beings are to be found. However, the way in which the barrow-dwellers and

446

Cavill, p. 30.

especially draugar are presented in Beowulf owe just as much to Anglo-Saxon

Christian eschatological ideas than to similar Old Norse ideas. This may be shown by

the tentative suggestion of Western Wessex as a place where these concepts have

been preserved in the landscape, in place-names and local legends; arguably the

Anglo-Saxon region farthest from direct Anglo-Scandinavian influences.

No more than a brief treatment of the evidence has been possible in this thesis,

but even so, the evidence presented, to my mind, confirms the theory of not only an

early tenth century exemplar, but also composition, of the Nowell Codex Beowulf,

since the Anglo-Scandinavian influences are so much a part of the language and style

and content and context of the poem, that, as it stands, without them there would be

no Beowulf.

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