The Story of Beowulf

As I mentioned before in the introductory post, this one will be about the story of Beowulf - the earliest and one of the greatest works of English literature, written down in West-Saxon by an anonymous Christian scribe around 1000 years ago. What is surprising, the manuscript was in fact unknown until the XVIII century. Icelandic scholar Grímur Jónsson Thorkelín made the first transcriptions of the manuscript in 1786 but he published his results only in 1815!

 

This is the story of Beowulf, the hero of the Geats (Swedes) that comes to help Hrothgar, the king of  Danes, with a monstrous creature named Grendel which was terrorizing the people of Denmark. After having defeated it, Grendel's mother seeks revenge after killing her son. Courageous Beowulf kills her too, after the fight that occurs underwater. Beowulf then returns to the Geatland (now Swedish Götaland) and becomes the king of Geats. Then the story jumps 50 years ahead when our hero engages a dual with a fire-breathing dragon. He manages to kill the dragon but unfortunately, he suffers fatal wounds and dies. 

 

What is the most interesting about this poem it’s the dualism of cultural elements: on the one hand it’s clearly a Christian epic poem - it was written (probably) by a monk in West-Saxon language, we can see a great number of connotations to Christianity as we can notice in the following fragment:

 

Afterwards a boy-child was born to Shield,

a cub in the yard, a comfort sent

by God to that nation. He knew what they had tholed,

the long times and troubles they’d come through

without a leader, so the Lord of Life,

the glorious Almighty, made this man renowned. 

 

On the other hand, the main hero is obviously a pagan as well as the whole Scandinavian tribe. In the poem, we can see many references to Germanic traditions. First of all, the idea of finding glory for oneself. The main reason for Beowulf fighting monsters is to be famous among the other tribes. He is self-absorbed and throughout the poem, we can notice that he is bragging a lot. The guy is too proud and it’s a part of a warrior culture. But, as we know, for Christians pride is one of the sins. Second of all, many of the Germanic traditions has been shown in the poem such as the act of giving the wristband by the king (ring-giver) to the merit fellow, a ship burial of the kings, or the representation of the mead hall (Heorot), a place where the tribe was feasting together. 

 

If you are interested in the culture of Germanic tribes, I strongly recommend a historical drama television series “The Vikings”. The cultural elements of Danish tribes that I picked up from the poem are nicely presented in this TV series. 

 

Or if you want to know more about the poem that I presented briefly; I strongly recommend listening to this podcast: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b0542xt7