beowulf on gotland

prisca Sapientia- beowulf on gotland

the history

Copyright : Octavia Randolph
www.octavia.net

Beowulf: The Hero, the Story, and its Meaning to Gotland
The epic tale Beowulf is the foundational cornerstone of English literature. It details the exploits and character of a mortal man of super-human strength, a hero endowed with the strength of thirty men. It is a poem of almost 3200 lines, written down in Old English by a monk whose name we do not know. Although the epic is written in Old English for an English audience of warriors and aristocrats, the story takes place wholly in the Nordic world.

Beowulf concerns tribes of Danes, Svear, and Geats. These latter have traditionally been considered to be from Götaland, but more recent scholarship based on geological and descriptive evidence reframes the Geats – of which Beowulf was one – as Gutes. Thus “Götaland” may well be Gotland. It is a belief of the founders of Beowulf on Gotland that this magnificent story is a shared cultural treasure, one which deserves far wider familiarity and a true feeling of kinship amongst Nordic people, and especially by Gotlanders.

The Action and Scope of Beowulf
The poem is much more than a thrilling retelling of feasting in great halls, the deeds of brave warriors, and the mores and aspirations of war-lords and Kings. Great and timeless themes emerge: the nature of courage, and of duty; the requirements of true service demanded of a good and just King; and the ultimate challenge of making for oneself a good death, of facing one’s mortality with a sense of sacrifice fortified by the knowledge that one’s courageous acts live on.

As a young and fearless warrior Beowulf travels with his men to the magnificent hall of the Danish war-lord Hrothgar, where he battles and defeats two bloodthirsty and ruthless monsters. The first is Grendel, who, enraged by the sounds of human camaraderie and celebration, attacks Hrothgar’s noble hall by night and devours its warriors. The second is Grendel’s even more fearsome and powerful mother – so dangerous she cannot be named by the poet – who, grief-stricken by Beowulf’s slaying of her son, attacks Beowulf in her underwater lair, and can only be killed by one of her own weapons. Beowulf is richly rewarded, returns home, and eventually becomes King of the Gutes. He rules justly and well for fifty years. The final great contest of Beowulf’s life is as an old King. A dragon has slept, peacefully guarding an underground treasure for 300 years. A precious cup is stolen from it, and the enraged dragon devastates the countryside in revenge for this violation. None can conquer it but Beowulf, and although he succeeds, he dies doing so.

The Influence of Beowulf
From the first translation of Beowulf from Old English to Modern English in 1805, the story has proven of enduring and compelling interest. For many decades Beowulf was widely taught at the secondary school and college levels, and found its ways into popular culture through countless additional translations, rendered as poetry and prose. Beowulf has been adapted into English-language novels and graphic novels, and been filmed as both live-action and animated features. The Englishman JRR Tolkien, professor of Anglo-Saxon, took the language and imagery of Beowulf as a major source of inspiration for his ground breaking story cycle, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings. (These two works have in turn gone on to exert massive influence in popular culture, echoing through more recent efforts such as George RR Martin’s The Game of Thrones.) Tolkien’s own research and commentary on the poem had a broad and lasting impact on subsequent scholarship, elevating the piece from a mere adventure tale to a more nuanced meditation on human struggle, mortality, and fame. Tolkien also translated Beowulf from OE to ME, a translation published posthumously.

Historical Setting and the Manuscript
Actual historical personages named in Beowulf date its action to the first part of the 6th century. In the poem we hear of Hygelac raiding Frisia; the historian Gregory of Tours, who died 594, dated this event to 521. The earlier, 4th century Kings Eormenric the East Goth, and Offa, the continual Saxon, are also named in Beowulf. But the unique manuscript itself of Beowulf is later, likely written in the 9th or 10th century. It is housed in the British Library, bound in a book known as Cotton Vitellius A XV, for Sir Robert Cotton (1571-1631), who collected and preserved it. On the parchment pages the hands – and spelling – of two different scribes are discernable, one from line 1 to line 1939, the second takes over there and runs to line 3183, the end of poem. The book survived a devastating fire in 1731 by being thrown from a window with other priceless volumes; still, some parchment leaves were fire-damaged.

A chronology of Beowulf’s life can be worked out in the poem: He was born in 495, went to Denmark to aid Hrothgar in 515, was named King of the Gutes in 533, and then ruled “for fifty years” until his death-duel with the dragon. These were of course heathen times in Scandinavia (as they were in much of Britain) but the veneer of Christianity applied by the monk composing the poem is for a later, Christian audience. Grendel is descended from the Biblical Cain, and an earlier race of giants has been wiped out by the flood of Noah’s time. These and other references assume an audience well-versed in the stories of the Old Testament.

It is to be noted that some of the earliest and most valuable scholarship on the poem was performed by an Icelandic scholar. Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin copied the manuscript twice in the late 1780’s, the first time by a professional copyist, the second by himself. These copies are important as the parchment has only continued to deteriorate. Thorkelin had knowledge of Old English, and we might assume saw Beowulf as cut from common cloth with the great Sagas recorded by Snorri Sturluson.

And so Beowulf´s followers
Rode, murning their beloved leader,
Crying that no better king had ever
Lived, no prince so mild, no man
So open to his people, so deserving of praise.