-Caveat Lector-
http://www.best.com/~dolphin//cooper/ch11.html
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After the Flood, by Bill Cooper
Chapter 11
Beowulf and the Creatures of Denmark
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The Beowulf poem survives in a single manuscript copy that was made
in ca AD 1000. Moreover, this manuscript (1) is often stated by
modern critics to be a copy of a mid-8th century Anglo-Saxon (i.e.
Old English) original, now lost. This original is in turn described
as an essentially Christian poem. Yet, the continually repeated
assertion of the supposedly Christian origins of the poem not only
contributes toward a serious misunderstanding of the poem's nature
and purpose, but notably fails to take into account the following
facts.
Firstly, there are no allusions whatever in the poem to' any event,
person or teaching of the New Testament. This is in sharp contrast
to other Anglo-Saxon poems (The Dream of the Rood, and so on) that
certainly are Christian in sentiment. There are definite allusions
to certain facts and personages contained in the Old Testament,
namely to God, the Creation, to Abel and to Cain, but these are no
more than those same historical allusions that are to be met with
in the other preChristian Anglo-Saxon genealogies and records that
we have already studied in chapter 7 of this book. Like those
records, and whilst likewise showing a most interesting historical
knowledge of certain events and personages that also appear in the
Genesis record, the Beowulf poem clearly pre-dates any knowledge
among the Anglo-Saxons of Christianity per se.
In view of this, it is hardly surprising to find that the
sentiments of the poem are strongly pagan, extolling the highly
questionable virtues of vengeance, the accumulation of plunder and
the boasting of and reliance upon human strength and prowess.
Allusions are also made to blatantly pagan oaths, sacrifices,
sentiments and forms of burial. But there are certainly no
exclusively Christian sentiments expressed anywhere in its 3182
lines of text.
Nowhere in the poem is any reference made to the British Isles or
to any British (or English) king, personage or historical event.
This is simply because this epic poem pre-dates the migration of
the Saxons to these isles. And what are we to make of the following
passage?:
'fortham Offa waes geoflim ond guthum garcene man wide
geweorthod wisdome heold ethel sinne thonon Eomer woc
haelethum to helpe... ' (2) (Emphases mine)
Which Alexander (see bibliography) translates thus:
'So it was that Offa [i.e. king of the continental Angles],
brave with the spear, was spoken of abroad for his wars and
his gifts; he governed with wisdom the land of his birth. To
him was born Eomer, helper of the heroes...' (3)
The Offa who is mentioned here was the pre-migration ancestor of
his 8th century namesake, King Offa of Mercia (AD 757-796), whom we
have already met (along with this same ancestor), in the early
Saxon genealogies. We have also met Eomer in the same genealogies,
where his name is rendered Eomer and where he is, strictly
speaking, the grandson, and not the son, of Offa. These ancient
genealogies were clearly fresh in the mind of the writer of
Beowulf, which again tells us something of the times in which the
poem was composed. (4)
There is, moreover, no sycophantic dedication of the poem to any
Christian Anglo-Saxon English king, not even to that King Offa
whose ancestor is immortalised in the poem and under whose auspices
some modern scholars suggest the poem was written. Many other
scholars would plump for an even later date for the poem, yet the
characters in the poem can be historically dated to the late 5th
and early 6th centuries, years that long preceded the adoption of
Christianity by the Saxons. In other words, the poem belongs very
firmly indeed to the pagan times which it describes.
A detailed study of the historical characters contained in the
Beowulf epic and their relationships to each other, is set out in
Appendix 9. But to briefly summarise here, Beowulf, the -character
in whose honour the poem was written, was no mythical figure. His
place is firmly set in history. He was born the son of Ecgtheow in
AD 495. At the age of seven, in AD 502, he was brought to the court
of Hrethel, his maternal grandfather (AD 445-503) who was then king
of the Geatingas, a tribe who inhabited what is today southern
Sweden (and whose eponymous founder, Geat, also appears in the
early genealogies--see chapter 7). After an unpromising and
feckless youth, during which years were fought the Geatish/Swedish
wars, in particular the Battle of Ravenswood [Hrefnawudu] in the
year AD 510, Beowulf undertook his celebrated journey to Denmark,
to visit Hrothgar, king of the Danes. This was in AD 515, Beowulf's
twentieth year. (This was also the year of his slaying the monster
Grendel which we shall examine shortly.) Six years later, in AD
521, Beowulf's uncle, King Hygelac, was slain.
Hygelac himself is known to have lived from AD 475 - 521, having
come to the throne of the Geatingas in AD 503, the year of his
father Hrethel's death. He is independently mentioned in Gregory of
Tour's Historiae Francorum, where his name is rendered
Chlocbilaichus. (5)
There, and in other Latin Frankish sources, (6) he is described as
a Danish king (Chogilaicus Danorum rex), not a Geat, but this is
the same mistake that our own English chroniclers made when they
included even the Norwegian Vikings under the generic name of
Danes. The Liber Monstrorum, however, did correctly allude to him
as rex Getarum, king of the Geats. Saxo also mentions him as the
Hugletus who destroyed the Swedish chief Homothus. Homothus, in
turn, is the same as that Eanmund who is depicted in line 2612 of
the Beowulf poem.
On Hygelac's death, Beowulf declined the offer to succeed his uncle
to the throne of the Geatingas, choosing instead to act as guardian
to Hygelac's son, prince Heardred, during the years of Heardred's
minority. (Heardred lived from AD 511- 533. He was therefore in his
tenth year when he became king.) Heardred, however, was killed by
the Swedes in AD 533 (for giving shelter to the Swedish king's
nephews--see Appendix 9), and it was in this year that Beowulf took
over the reins of kingship. Beowulf went on to rule his people in
peace for fifty years, dying at some 88 years of age in the year AD
583. The manner of his death, though, is particularly relevant to
our study, as we shall see.
But first, we must dispel one particular and erroneous notion that
has bedeviled studies in this field for years. Since the poem's
rediscovery in the early 18th century (although it was brought to
the more general attention of scholars in the year 1815 when it was
first printed), scholars have insisted on depicting the creatures
in their translations of the poem as 'trolls'. The monster Grendel,
it is said, was a troll. And the older female who was assumed by
the Danes to have been his mother, is likewise called by modern
translators a troll-wife.
The word 'troll' is of Nordic origin, and in the fairy-tales of
Northern Europe it is supposed to have been a human-like,
mischievous and hairy dwarf who swaps troll children for human
children in the middle of the night. For good measure, trolls are
sometimes depicted as equally mischievous and hairy giants, some of
whom lived under bridges or in caves. Which would be all well and
good but for the singular observation that the word 'troll' is
entirely absent from the original Anglo-Saxon text of Beowulf! The
poem is full of expressions that we would call zoological terms,
and these relate to all kinds of creatures, (see Appendix 10). But
none of them have anything whatever to do with dwarves, giants,
trolls or fairies, mischievous or otherwise. And whilst we are on
the subject, the monster Grendel preyed on the Danes for twelve
long years (AD 503-515). Are we seriously to believe then that
these Danish Vikings, whose berserker-warriors struck such fear
into the hearts of their neighbours, were themselves for twelve
long years rendered helpless with terror by a hairy dwarf; even a
'giant' one? For that is what certain of today's mistranslations of
the poem would have us believe.
By the time of his slaying the monster Grendel in Al) 515, Beowulf
himself had already become something of a seasoned hunter of large
reptilian monsters. He was renowned amongst the Danes at Hrothgar's
court for having cleared the local sea lanes of monstrous animals
whose predatory natures had been making life hazardous for the open
boats of the Vikings. Fortunately, the Anglo-Saxon poem, written in
pure celebration of his heroism, has preserved for us not just the
physical descriptions of some of the monsters that Beowulf
encountered, but even the names under which certain species of
these animals were known to the Saxons and Danes.
However, in order to understand exactly what it is that we are
reading when we examine these names, we must appreciate the nature
of the Anglo-Saxon language. The Anglo-Saxons (like the modern
Germans and Dutch) had a very simple method of word construction,
and their names for everyday objects can sometimes sound amusing to
our modern English ears when translated literally. A body, for
example, was simply a bone-house (banhus), and a joint a bone-lock
(banloca). When Beowulf speaks to his Danish interrogator, he is
said quite literally to have unlocked his word-hoard (wordhord
onleoc). Beowulf's own name means bear, and it is constructed in
the following way. The Beo-element is the Saxon word for bee, and
his name means literally a bee-wolf. The bear has a dog-like face
and was seen by those who wisely kept their distance to apparently
be eating bees when it raided their hives for honey. So they simply
called the bear a bee-wolf. Likewise, the sun was called
woruldcandel, lit. the world-candle. It was thus an intensely
literal but at the same time highly poetic language, possessing
great and unambiguous powers of description.
The slaying of Grendel is the most famous of Beowulf's encounters
with monsters of course, and we shall come to look closely at this
animal's physical description as it is given in the Beowulf epic.
But in Grendel's lair, a large swampy lake, there lived other
reptilian species that were collectively known by the Saxons as
wyrmeynnes (lit. wormkind, a race of monsters and serpents--the
word serpent in those days meant something rather more than a
snake). Beowulf and his men came across them as they were tracking
the female of Grendel's species back to her lair after she had
killed and eaten King Hrothgar's minister, Asshere, whose
half-eaten head was found on the cliff-top overlooking the lake.
Amongst them were creatures that were known to the Saxons and Danes
as giant saedracan (sea-drakes or sea-dragons), and these were seen
from the cliff-top suddenly swerving through the deep waters of the
lake. Perhaps they were aware of the arrival of humans. Other
creatures were lying in the sun when Beowulf's men first saw them,
but at the sound of the battle-horn they scurried back to the water
and slithered beneath the waves.
These other creatures included one species known to the Saxons as a
nicor (pl. niceras), and the word has important connotations for
our present study inasmuch as it later developed into knucker, a
Middle English word for a water-dwelling monster or dragon. The
monster at Lyminster in Sussex (see table of previous chapter) was
a knucker as were several of the other reported sightings of such
creatures in this country. The pool where the Lyminster dragon
lived is known to this day as the Knucker's Hole. The Orkney Isles,
whose inhabitants, significantly, are Viking, not Scots, likewise
have their Nuckelavee, as do also the Shetland Islanders. And on
the Isle of Man, they have a Nykir.
However, amongst the more generally named wyrmas (serpents) and
wildeor (wild beasts) that were present at the lake on this
occasion, there was one species in particular that was called an
ythgewinnes, (9) evidently a surface-swimming monster if its name
is anything to go by, rather than a creature that swam at depth
like the saedracan. Intrigued by it, Beowulf shot an arrow into the
creature, and the animal was then harpooned by Beowulf's men using
eoferspreotum, modified boar-spears. Once the monster was dead,
Beowulf and his men then dragged the ythgewinnes out of the water
and laid its body out for examination. They had, after all, a
somewhat professional interest in the animals that they were up
against. Moreover, of the monstrous reptiles that they had
encountered at the lake, it was said that they were such creatures
as would sally out at midmorning time to create havoc amongst the
ships in the sea lanes, and one particular success of Beowulf's, as
we have already seen, was clearing the narrow sea lanes between
Denmark and Sweden of certain monsters which he called merefixa and
niceras. Following that operation, the carcasses of nine such
creatures (niceras nigene--Alexander mistakenly translates nigene
as seven) were laid out on the beaches for display and further
inspection.
The last monster to be destroyed by Beowulf (and from which
encounter Beowulf also died in the year AD 583) was a flying
reptile which lived on a promontory overlooking the sea at
Hronesness on the southern coast of Sweden. Now, the Saxons (and
presumably the Danes) knew flying reptiles in general as lyftfloga
(air-fliers), but this particular species of flying reptile, the
specimen from Hronesness, was known to them as a widfloga, lit, a
wide (or far-ranging) flyer, and the description that they have
left us fits that of a giant Pteranodon. Interestingly, the Saxons
also described this creature as a ligdraca, or fire-dragon, and he
is described as fifty feet in length (or perhaps wing-span?) and
about 300 years of age. (Great age is a common feature even among
today's non-giant reptiles.) Moreover, and of particular interest
to us, the name widfloga would have distinguished this particular
species of flying reptile from another similar species which was
capable of making only short flights. Such a creature is portrayed
in Figure 11.1, a shield-boss from the Sutton Hoo burial which
shows a flying dragon with its wings folded along its sides. Its
long tooth-filled jaws are readily seen, and the shield-boss can be
seen to this day in its showcase at the British Museum. Modern
paleontologists, working from fossilized remains, have named such a
creature Pterodactyl.
[Image]
http://www.best.com/~dolphin//cooper/fig11-1.gif
But our attention must now be drawn towards another reptilian
monster which was surely the most fiercesome of all the animals
encountered by Beowulf, the monster called Grendel.
It is too often and mistakenly thought that the name Grendel was
merely a personal name by which the Danes knew this particular
animal. In much the same way as a horse is nicknamed Dobbin, or a
dog Fido, this monster, it is assumed, was called Grendel. But, in
fact, Grendel was the name that our forebears gave to a particular
species of animal. This is evidenced by the fact that in the year
AD 931, King Athelstan of Wessex issued a charter in which a
certain lake in Wiltshire (England) is called (as in Denmark) a
grendles mere. (10) The Grendel in Beowulf, we note with interest,
also lived in a mere. Other place-names mentioned in old charters,
Grindles bee and Grendeles pyt, for example, were likewise places
that were (or had been) the habitats of this particular species of
animal. Grindelwald, lit. Grendelwood, in Switzerland is another
such place. But where does the name Grendel itself come from?
There are several Anglo-Saxon words that share the same root as
Grendel. The Old English word grindan, for example, and from which
we derive our word grind, used to denote a destroyer. But the most
likely origin of the name is simply the fact that Grendel is an
onomatopoeic term derived from the Old Norse grindill, meaning a
storm or grenja, meaning to bellow. The word Grendel is strongly
reminiscent of the deep-throated growl that would be emitted by a
very large animal and it came into Middle English usage as grindel,
meaning angry.
To the hapless Danes who were the victims of his predatory raids,
however, Grendel was not just an animal. To them he was demon-like,
one who was synnum beswenced (afflicted with sins). He was godes
ansaca (God's adversary), the synscatha (evil-doer) who was
wonsaeli (damned), a very feond on helle (devil in hell)! He was
one of the grund-wyrgen, accursed and murderous monsters who were
said by the Danes to be descended from Cain himself. And it is
descriptions such as these of Grendel's nature that convey
something of the horror with which the men of those times
anticipated his raids on their homesteads.
But as for Grendel's far more interesting physical description, his
habits and the geography of his haunts, they are as follows:
At one point in the poem, Hrothgar, king of the Danes, relates to
Beowulf the following information when describing Grendel and one
of the monster's companions:
'Ic thaet londbuend leode mine seleraedende secgan hyde thaet
hie gesawon swylce 1-wegen micle mearcsta pan moras healdan
ellorgaestas. Thaera other waes thaes the hie gewislicost
gewitan meahton idese onlienes, other earmscea pen on weres
waeslmum sraeclastas traed naefne he waes mara thonne aenig
man other thone on geardagum Grendel nemdon foldbuende...'
(11) (Emphases mine)
... the best translation of which is Alexander's:
'I have heard it said by subjects of mine who live in the
country, counselors in this hall, that they have seen such a
pair of huge wayfarers haunting the moors, otherworldly ones;
and one of them, so far as they might make it out, was in
woman's shape; but the shape of a man, though twisted, trod
also the tracks of exile - save that he was more huge than any
human being. The country people have called him from of old by
the name of Grendel. (12)
The key words from this passage, and from which we gain important
information concerning the physical appearance of Grendel, are
idese onlicnes when referring to the female monster, and weres
waestmum when referring to the male. Those Danes who had seen the
monsters thought that the female was the older of the two and
supposed that she was Grendel's mother. She may have been. But what
exactly do the descriptive terms tell us that is of such
importance? Simply this: that the female was in the shape of a
woman (idese onlicnes) and the male was in the shape of a man
(weres waestmum), 'though twisted'. In other words, they were both
bipedal, but larger than any human.
Further important detail is added elsewhere in the poem concerning
Grendel's appearance, especially when the monster attacked the
Danes for what was to prove the last time. In lines 815-8, we are
told, in the most graphic detail, how Beowulf inflicted a fatal
injury on the monster by holding the creature in an arm lock, which
he then twisted - 'wrythan'. line 964). The poem then goes on to
tell us that:
'Licsar gebad atol aeglaeca him on eaxie wearth syndolh
sweotol seonowe onsprungon burston banlocan.'
Which may be translated thus:
'Searing pain seized the terrifying ugly one as a gaping wound
appeared in his shoulder. The sinews snapped and the (arm)
joint burst asunder.' (My translation)
For twelve years the Danes had themselves attempted to kill Grendel
with conventional weapons, knives, swords, arrows and the like. Yet
his impenetrable hide had defied them all and Grendel was able to
attack the Danes with impunity Beowulf considered all this and
decided that the only way to tackle the monster was to get to grips
with him at Close quarters. The monster's forelimbs, which the
Saxons called eorms (arms) and which some translate as claws, were
small and comparatively puny. They were the monster's one weak
spot, and Beowulf went straight for them. He was already renowned
for his prodigious strength of grip, and he used this to literally
tear off one of Grendel's weak, small arms.
Grendel, however, is also described, in line 2079 of the poem, as a
mutbbona, i.e. one who slays with his mouth or jaws, and the speed
with which he was able to devour his human prey tells us something
of the size of his jaws and teeth (he swallowed the body of one of
his victims in large 'gobbets'). Yet, it is the very size of
Grendel's jaws which paradoxically would have aided Beowulf in his
carefully thought out strategy of going for the forelimbs, because
pushing himself hard into the animals chest between those forelimbs
would have placed Beowulf tightly underneath those jaws and would
thus have sheltered him from Grendel's terrible teeth.
We are told that as soon as Beowulf gripped the monsters claws (and
we must remember that Grendel was only a youngster, and not by all
accounts a fully mature adult male of his species), the startled
animal tried to pull away instead of attacking Beowulf. The animal
instinctively knew the danger he was now in and he wanted to escape
the clutches of the man who now posed such an unexpected threat and
who was inflicting such alarming pain. However, it was this action
of trying to pull away that left Grendel wide open to Beowulf's
strategy. Thus, Beowulf was able in the ensuing struggle eventually
to wrench off one of the animal's arms as so graphically described
in the poem. As a result of this appalling injury, the young
Grendel returned to his lair and simply bled to death.
[Image]
http://www.best.com/~dolphin//cooper/fig11-2.gif
But is Beowulf's method of slaying Grendel unknown elsewhere in the
historical record? Are there no depictions to be found of similar
creatures being killed in a similar way? It would seem that there
are, the illustration below being one example (see Figure 11.2). It
is taken from an impression of an early Babylonian cylinder seal
now in the British Museum, and clearly shows a man about to
amputate the forelimb of a bipedal monster whose appearance, though
stylistic, fits the descriptions of Grendel very closely. I know of
no scholar who would venture to suggest that the Old English author
of Beowulf filched his idea from his knowledge of Babylonian
cylinder seals. So we may, I think, safely assume that Beowulf's
method of slaying this particular kind of animal was not entirely
unknown in the ancient world. Nor, indeed, was the Grendel itself
entirely unknown in the ancient world, as is evident from the
following item depicted in Figure 11.3.
[Image]
http://www.best.com/~dolphin//cooper/fig11-3.gif
Here we are presented with a truly remarkable scene. The stone in
which these strange animals are carved, is preserved in the church
of SS. Mary and Hardulph at Breedon-on-the-Hill in Leicestershire.
This church used to belong to the Saxon kingdom of Mercia. The
stone itself is part of a larger frieze in which are depicted
various birds and humans, all of them readily recognisable. But
what are these strange creatures represented here? They are like
nothing that survives today in England, yet they are depicted as
vividly as the other creatures. There are long-necked quadrupeds,
one of whom on the right seems to be biting (or 'necking' with)
another. And in the middle of the scene appears a bipedal animal
who is clearly attacking one of the quadrupeds. He stands on two
great hindlegs and has two smaller forelimbs, and carries what
appears to be armour plating on his back. His victim seems to be
turning to defend himself; but with his hindlegs buckled in fear.
Now it cannot be pretended that these are merely caricatures of
ordinary animals that are indigenous (these days) to the British
Isles, for none of our present native species have long necks or
are bipedal. So how are we to satisfactorily account for them? Is
there a predatory animal from the fossil record known to us, who
had two massive hindlegs and two comparatively puny forelimbs?
There is indeed. In fact there are several such species, but how
was our Saxon artist to know about such creatures if he'd never
seen one? Are we looking here at a depiction in stone of the
creature known to the Saxons and Danes as Grendel? Considering the
close physical descriptions that we find in Beowulf, it would seem
that we are.
The Beowulf epic tells us that as for his haunts and habits,
Grendel hunted alone, being known by the understandably frightened
locals who sometimes saw his moonlit shape coming down from the
mist-laden fens as the atol angengea, the terrifying solitary one.
He was a mearcstapa (lit. a marsh-stepper), one who stalked the
marshes or outlying regions, ('haunting the moors', as Alexander so
powerfully renders it). He hunted by night, approaching human
settlements and waiting silently in the darkness for his prey to
fall asleep before he descended on them as a sceadugenga (lit, a
shadow-goer, a night-walker). Gliding silently along the fenhlith
(the waste and desolate tract of the marshes), he would emerge from
the dense black of night as the deathscua (death's shadow). The
Danes employed an eotanweard (lit. a giant-ward, a watcher for
monsters), to warn of Grendel's approach, but often in vain. For so
silent was Grendel's approach when he was hunting in the darkness
of the night that sometimes an eotanweard himself was surprised and
eaten. On one particular and long-remembered night, no less than
thirty Danish warriors were killed by Grendel. Little wonder then
Beowulf was rewarded so richly and was so famed for having slain
him.
In all, a comprehensive and somewhat horrifying picture o Grendel
emerges from the pages of Beowulf, and I doubt that the reader
needs to be guided by me as to which particular species of
predatory dinosaur the details of his physical description fit
best. Modern commentators who have been brought up on evolutionary
ideas are compelled to suggest that monsters like Grendel are
primitive personifications of death or disease, and other such
nonsense. (It had even once been suggested that he was a
personification of the North Sea!) But really, the evidence will
not support such claims. One modern and refreshingly honest
publication on the poem makes a more telling comment:
'In spite of allusions to the devil and abstract concepts of
evil, the monsters are very tangible creatures in Beowulf.
They have no supernatural tricks, other than exceptional
strength, and they are vulnerable and mortal. The early
medieval audience would have accepted these monsters as
monsters, not as symbols of plague or war, for such creatures
were a definite reality.' (13)
Notes
1. Brit. Mus. Cotton. Vitellius. A. XV.
2. lines 1957-61 (Klaeber).
3. Alexander, M. Beowulf. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth. pp.ll2-3.
4. Which incidentally verifies the pre-Christian origins of the
Mercian, and therefore other pedigrees, proving that the early
Saxon genealogies were in existence before the Saxons migrated to
England.
5. Historae Franconim. Book III. chap. 3. See Thorpe, Lewis tr.
Gregory of Tours: The History of the Franks. Penguin Classics.
Harmondsworth. 1974. p. 163.
6. cit. Klaeber. p. xli.
7. ibid.
8. This is the one flaw that mars Michael Alexander's otherwise
excellent translation of Beowulf. Surprisingly, Klaeber also makes
the same error, having actually edited the original text of the
poem.
9. Ythgewinnes. lit, a wave-thrasher. Its surface-swimming nature
would explain the ease with which the creature was harpooned from
the shore of the mere. It is also probably the ythgewinnes whose
likeness was portrayed so often on the prow of Viking ships. Rather
than being merely a superstitious emblem, perhaps that likeness had
the very practical purpose of deterring other wave-thrashers from
attacking the vessel.
10. Cartularium Saxonicum. (W. de Gray Birch ed.). ii. 363 if.
(cit. also by Klaeber. p. xxiv).
11. Beowulf lines 1345-1355 (Klaeber).
12. Alexander. p. 93.
13. Longman Literature Guides. (York Notes Series). Beowulf. p. 65.
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Bill Cooper is a keen student of Bible history, archaeology and
paleontology. He first introduced he subject of living dinosaurs
in early records in Anglo-Saxon Dinosaurs As Described in Early
Historical Records, Creation Science Movement (England), Pamphlet
Series #280.
Bill Cooper, 87 Convent Rd., Ashford, MIDDX TW15 2HW, England
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Table of Contents and Introduction:
http://www.best.com/~dolphin//cooper/contents.html
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