http://wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3308
by Thomas Fleming
Before moving on to Grendel’s lovely and charming dam, let us look briefly at the interesting song performed by the scop at the victory celebration for the http://wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3151 of Grendel. (Roughly 1063-1160). The song relates how Hnaef and his Half-Danes visited his brother-in-law Finn, lord of the Frisians. The Danes are set upon in the night but manage to hold out for days of fighting in which Hnaef and his Finn’s son (and Hnaef’s nephew) are killed. Terms are made according to which the Danes and their new leader Hengest will now swear allegiance to Finn. When Hengest leaves, though, he meditates a terrible revenge on Finn.
Let us discuss the story on its own terms and then how it relates to http://wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2646. Before doing that, however, we should pay some attention to the recent writeback of Kate Dalton Boyer, a former managing editor of Chronicles:
What a pleasure to read Beowulf again—and I have enjoyed this discussion as well.
My eldest daughter (who is nine) has heard every story from the http://wvwnews.net/story.php?id=483 without turning a hair, but she cannot bear to hear me retell the story of Beowulf and Grendel. I think Tom is right that there is a frightening vividness to this story that the Greek myths stand one artistic remove from.
But I want to return to Tom’s question about Grendel (human or monster?). I read through this poem once long ago in Old English, but have forgotten what little I knew. So I may well stand corrected or be making points made long ago by others. I am however struck by the impression that among many other things this poem seems to be a long effort to proselytize. The poet seems more Christian than the world he is describing—and he is interpreting that world in a Christian fashion for his hearers, in an effort to enable them to see it differently.The obvious example of this is the poet’s scornful description of the warriors’ sacrifice to false gods, but throughout the poem, the most Christian elements are often the poet’s descriptions and explanations, not always the words of the king or even Beowulf. “Wyrd is determined!” Beowulf says at one point in my translation, though he softens the necessity of wyrd in a later line (see 572 or thereabouts).
Grendel may perhaps have been a monster to Hrothgar and his followers, but to the poet he is a fallen human, a descendant of Cain, and with a “heathen soul” in my translation, hence damnable in the way presumably an animal-monster is not. The poet takes the view that Grendel’s attributes are not just evil but sinful. His suffering, too, as described by the poet, is human—envy, ostracism, life in the dark.
He is a foil for what is by period standards a selfless champion of a people who are not his own. And I think the fight between Beowulf and Grendel is fought without weapons to underscore that it is a moral battle, one of will against will. Beowulf refuses to use a weapon so as to meet Grendel on his own terms–a fair duel. But that rightness of his moral choice (right even though made with a boast), his willingness to give the devil his due, means Beowulf can in fact defeat Grendel, which he could not have done had he fought less fairly (ie with a sword). In any case I would argue that what is described here is the potential for human good fighting the potential for human evil—and that victory requires, in addition to courage and enormous strength, a willingness to risk seeming advantage in order to fight justly.
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?p=517#more-517