Beowulf - Book report                                                                     Trond Michael Dretvik

Based on the translation by Michael Alexander

The poem Beowulf was probably composed by an unknown author somewhere in England between about 521 AD, the year in which the last given death of any of the participants in Beowulf took place, and roughly 1026 AD, the latter being more or less the latest possible date of the longest surviving manuscript itself. Though its place of origin is at large supposed to be England, it is not certain by any standard. It is not known if the poem was composed by a single author, or whether it is the result of the merging together of ballads by different authors, nor whether the poem was significantly altered subsequent to its first written form, which is the direction into which my thoughts lean.

The story of Beowulf which is most likely to be set sometime in 5^th century Scandinavia, opens with an account of the building of a great hall, Heorot, commissioned by Hrothgar, the King of the Danes. One night, following a great feast, thirty of the men sleeping in Heorot were slain by the monster Grendel, dragged away to his lair and eaten. Every night from then on Grendel returned and easily saw off anyone foolish enough to remain in the gold-clad hall after sundown. The years passed by, hope vanished, as did the brave warriors of the Danes, until one day a ship carrying a warband of armoured Geatish men reached the shores of Hrothgar’s kingdom. Their leader, Beowulf, offered to fight Grendel. After a dramatic clash the warrior managed to tear of the monsters arm by the shoulder, and due to this mutilating wound and the apparent strenght and heroism of the opposing combatant, Grendel fled into the mist, seeking one of the marshland’s underwater caves, wherein the mark of death soon sealed his blackening eyes. The apparent peace which now followed however did not last, as in the mist of the following night Grendel’s mother came wandering off the moorlands, from her mere, mind ablaze at the thought of her gluttonous revenge.

The stout Geatish warrior Beowulf is the definite protagonist of the cycle, and even though there are several minor characters forming essential parts of the poem, there are none, not even the great champion and protector of the Franks, Dayraven, that could match his skills at arms nor those in sports. The lack of supremacy in the art of combat compared to Beowulf commanded a steep price for Dayraven, as he was slain by the bare hands of the Geat, before the throng of his own host. He is a man of great viritues and abilities, probably the equal of even Greek Achilles, though possibly not as human in emotions and temper.

Whereas Beowulf is described as young, strong and courageous, Hrothgar is at several stages portrayed as the opposite. The king of the Danes is referred to as the hoary warrior, he seems old, tired and a certain points a bit out of control in his elder years, judging from some of his speeches. His thanes may be good at boasting, but they are unable to protect his kingdom. Still he is most likely to be perceived as a noble king in both stature and act, but now reduced to little more than a memory of former strenght and youth.

Wiglaf is a servant of the heirless Beowulf serving him in his older years as king of the Geats. In several ways Wiglaf is very similar to Beowulf as he once was, on a pre-hero basis that is, but within him lays many hidden qualities, shown in their clarity when he chooses to aid Beowulf and help him fend off and kill the dragon when all others flee in the face of the glowing danger.

The story’s point of view is that of a referring narrator, a chronicler or storyteller, and there is not really much more to state concerning this subject.

Though there are several hidden themes and it must also be taken into account that the theme is dependant upon the reader, most still can agree on that the most probable theme in the epic poem is the classic good versus evil, in Beowulf lies truthful goodness and Grendel is evil personified, which seems to be rather typical not only for Christian but also this pre-Christian period of writing. I choose to define Beowulf as a pre-Christian work because of some rather undisputable, trustworthy evidence. First and mainly the appearances of this religion come in separate short paragraphs or immediately following some pagan ritual. One good example of the latter is found in one of the first verses, positioned just after a description of the Danes desperate sacrifices on the altars of their idols, “Such was their practice, | a heathen hope; Hell possessed their hearts and minds: the Maker was unknown to them, | the Judge of all actions, the almighty was unheard of, they knew not how to praise the Prince of Heaven, | the Wielder of Glory.” Christianity appears also in small phrases woven into the actual verses, but one peculiar thing is if you try to read Beowulf, excluding all of the discussed additions, it is still a fully functional text. It has no lacks in of any kind, and if issues of such kind are perceived, it is probably rooted in pure rewriting.

One could definitely dispute this by simply saying that the author of Beowulf must have been Christian himself, but that possibility can be hastily removed as nearly all Beowulf-studies conclude that it was initially made as early as in the 6^th or 7^th century, probably composed of a number of oral tales of even older origin And here lies also one of my strongest arguments, as to why Christianity was added at a later stage, because the oldest manuscript that has survived to this day, was written somewhere around the year of 1000. As is known, by then Christianity had established a firm grip on Medieval Europe, England for instance, where the mentioned manuscript is suspected to have originated from, had been Christian for some hundred years by then. What characterizes the literature from this period is the fact that it was written by monks, the churches and the monasteries being the places where writing and reading was taught. Centres of knowledge as most would call them, temples of religious rewriting would be a nearly equally correct statement. I do not see it as necessary to give any lectures on the ways of medieval Christianity, but one thing is certain, a monk would not be hindered to rewrite an old text to better suit the new believes, strongly encouraged or given no other option would perhaps be even more suitable descriptions, and I believe that this sole issue should be a good enough fact to strengthen my statement, it was at one point rewritten.

Another issue that strongly adds to my previously stated opinion concerns the appearance of death in the poem. It is at large handled in such an objective, naturalistic and occasionally cold way, which in my opinion cannot be further removed from Christianity.

“…his (Grendel) life had wasted through the wound he had got | in the battle at Heorot. The body gaped open | as it now suffered the stroke after death | from the hard-swung sword; he (Beowulf) had severed the neck.”

The above quote describes the confirmed death of the monster Grendel, but similar objectiveness is found in the rendering of humans passing as well.

“As a first step he (Grendel) set his hands on | a sleeping soldier, savagely tore at him, | gnashed at his bone-joints, bolted huge gobbets, | sucked at his veins, and had soon eaten | all of the dead man, even down to his | hands and feet.”

Apart from having been translated from the original Old English, the writing has been done in a very distinct way, according to the Old English metre, which is in short a recipe for the more or less unique Anglo-Saxon type of literature. It may seem poem-like in its composition, but has this more balanced, if you could say so, pressure to it, making it a strangely fluid text. This issue has been argued for decades, so instead of myself giving a thorough description of this, I have chosen to instead quote one of the greatest Beowulf-scholars of all time, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. The following extract is taken from his appraised essay Beowulf, the Monsters and the Critics. “The very nature of Old English metre is often misjudged. In it there is no single rhythmic pattern progressing from the beginning of a line to the end, and repeated with variation in other lines. The lines do not go according to a tune. They are founded on a balance; an opposition between two halves of roughly equivalent phonetic weight, and significant content, which are more often rhythmically contrasted than similar. They are more like masonry than music.“ The sentences in Beowulf actually follow Tolkien’s phonetical pattern, XX/XIIX/XX, for example, is claimed to appear rather frequently.

A person reading Beowulf will eventually discover that the text actually somehow sounds better when read out aloud, and that was also the intent. As previously mentioned this text was probably written between the 6^th and, at latest possible, 11^th century, a time in which almost the entire European population were illiterates. So naturally stories and tales would be told and passed orally, a direction pointed towards by numerous evidences in the case of Beowulf, which might very well have passed down through speech in long years, perhaps as separate shorter legends which at some point might have been melted into one continuos tale, before the making of the final manuscript, perhaps explaining the discussed way of writing, it was meant to be spoken out aloud.

Beowulf stands as a towering monument in the literary history of Europe and is clearly unparalleled in its epic scale and scope by any work apart from the Iliad and the Odyssey. It has drawn the attention of several studies through the years and is discussed in great detail at the foremost universities of the world. “Beowulf-scholar” has actually grown to become a separate term. New discoveries and theories surface from time to time, and there is little doubt that much still lays hidden in the fading remains of the old manuscript, yet to be spotted.

In my opinion Beowulf has earned the above characterization, and I find it fascinating that an author of the long since vanished period in history was able to create a poem, which is still at this time just as readable and worth the effort as it must originally have been. And even though modern readers are fairly removed from this mythical, early medieval age, the cycle easily transports one into that world of the sword, the helm, the mail and dwellers of dank, hidden caves, long lost in the oblivion of time, and afterwards never completely lets go.

Trond Michael Dretvik

Dear reader, please bear in mind that at the point of writing this essays I was still in the phase of discovering Beowulf, which still is my state, and as a result of this especially my view of Christianity in Beowulf might not have a perfectly solid argumentation. As my knowledge grows I will probably be able to dismiss my current theories, but until that day comes, this is what I can muster at this point.