If you
haven’t read Beowulf before, it can
be tempting to ignore the inset stories and songs told at various points in the
narrative. But, of course, they’re important, particularly for what they
suggest about the future for the Danes, Geats, Heathobards, and Swedes as their
kinship-based cultures start to evolve into “kingdoms” as we know them in the
more modern sense. For this post, I’d like to look more closely at the passages
we discussed in class on Monday. All foreshadow the future in some way or
another, and what they foreshadow suggests a dark and uncertain future for the
great (and pagan) tribes of Scandinavia as Europe adopts Christianity and tribal
cultures begin to cohere and develop national identities.
The
first is the Sigemund episode that begins on line 874. The story comes from the
Icelandic sagas that were popular during the middle ages and foreshadows, in
part, Beowulf’s battle with the dragon in the final section of the book
(Sigemund was a dragon-slayer as well).
The episode speaks of Heremod, a legendary Danish king:
The king was betrayed,
ambushed in Jutland, overpowered
and done away with. The
waves of his grief
had beaten him down, made
him a burden,
a source of anxiety to
his own nobles:
that expedition was often condemned
in those earlier times by
experienced men,
men who relied on
his Lordship for redress,
who presumed that the part of a prince was to thrive
on his father’s throne and defend the nation...
But evil entered into Heremod
(lines 901-914)
Heremod,
in this passage, is a “burden” and “source of anxiety” to his nobles, exactly
the opposite of what a king should be. The righteous king is a ring-giver, a
leader to his people and their protector. If he fails, he is no good king.
Heremod’s men “presume” that he will play his part—“thrive on his father’s
throne and defend the nation”—because there is only one part for a king of this
time to play. Heremod’s fate as king is intrinsically bound up with the fate of
his people; when he refuses to accept his own fate, his “evil” actions threaten
his people and their way of life as well.
Starting
in line 1700, Hrothgar picks up the story again and relates a cautionary tale
to Beowulf as he congratulates him on killing Grendel’s mother. Whereas the
Sigemund episode was told as part of the larger celebration of Grendel’s
defeat, this time Hrothgar relates the tale as a direct warning to Beowulf
about leadership.
We learn
that Heremod “was different” from heroes like Beowulf, and that his rise
“brought little joy” but instead “death and destruction” to the Danes (lines
1711-1712). Hrothgar catalogs this death
and destruction when he tells Beowulf that Heremod “vented his rage on…[and]
killed his own comrades”; he was a “pariah king” who “grew bloodthirsty [and]
gave no more rings to honour the Danes” (lines 1713-1719).
There’s
an interesting—and significant—difference in the focus of the two episodes.
Whereas the first is more concerned with Heremod’s failure to uphold the heroic
code of honor that marked medieval Danish societies, the second ties Heremod’s
downfall more directly to his failure to be a Christian king:
It
is a great wonder
how Almighty God in His
Magnificence
favours our race with rank and
scope
and the gift of wisdom; His sway
is wide.
Sometimes, He allows the mind of
a man
of distinguished birth to follow
its bent,
grants him fulfillment and
felicity on earth
and forts to command in his own
county.
He permits him to lord it in
many lands
until the man in his
unthinkingness
forgets that it will ever end
for him (lines 1725-1734)
This is
Heremod’s flaw, according to Hrothgar. He forgets that his good fortune is a
gift from God and forgets that he himself is mortal. He becomes selfish—he
“covets and resents’’—and his pride leads him to believe that he is somehow
immortal, that he will be able to hold onto his hoard of possessions even after
death (line1749). In this, he is both a failed Christian and a failed kinsman
and king. Hrothgar ends his cautionary tale by exhorting Beowulf to “beware of
that trap”: “Choose, dear Beowulf, the better part,/ eternal rewards. Do not
give way to pride./ For a brief while your strength is in bloom/ but it fades quickly” (1758-1762).
In the
past, the king’s job was to safeguard his people and his land, both during his
life and afterward, by ties of kinship and loyalty. The unity of the kingdom
lay in the reciprocal relationship between the king and his people; as long as
he was a good king who gave gifts, they would be faithful retainers who would
defend the kingdom and their ruler. In Hrothgar’s telling of Heremod’s story,
though, the king’s role has shifted. His riches come to him not because his
actions have made him deserving, but rather because God favors him. His larger
responsibility is to “eternal rewards,” and it is only by keeping those in mind
that he can hope to pass his kingdom and riches on peacefully to his successor.
Heremod fails in this; he leaves behind a torn kingdom, and the future of his
immortal soul is in question. In other words, he finds peace neither in life
nor in the afterlife.
Although
Beowulf’s days as king are still well in the future, Hrothgar’s telling of
Heremod’s story reads as a warning: if Beowulf hopes to one day be a good king
to his people, he must never forget that he owes his good fortune to God.
It’s
taken quite a bit longer than I expected to get through the Heremod scenes, so
I’ll try to keep my discussion of the Finnsburg and Freawaru episodes short.
What these dark episodes have in common is the failure of custom and tradition
to bring peace to the Scandinavians. In the Finnsburg episode, both marriage—between
the Frisian Finn and the Danish Hildebuhr—and a negotiated truce fail to
preserve order. Later, when Beowulf talks about Hrothgar’s daughter Freawaru,
betrothed to a Heathobard in the hopes that the marriage “will heal old wounds
and grievous fueds,” he predicts that the truce will fail when just one “old
spearman” is able to “stir up trouble” (lines 2028-2046). The result will be
that “on both sides the oath-bound lords will break the peace” (2063-2064).
Taken
together, these scenes all point to some sort of failure of the “old” ways to
effectively deal with the “new” world that is developing in the middle ages. It’s
curious to find so much foreshadowing in a text about the great hero Beowulf,
the only one able to slay Grendel, his mother, and the dragon. And I think it’s
important to consider Beowulf’s reign as king and his battle with the dragon in
light of these things. Is he a flawed hero? Is he a hero because he’s a great
warrior or because he’s a great king? Both? What does the future look like for
the Geats? What responsibility does Beowulf bear for that future?
Beowulf
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