Beowulf
One of the respondents to a recent Hard Right asked Why I waste time on the election or on celebrity stories. The simple answer is that these subjects allow me to smuggle in a set of subversive arguments that no one would read if I put up a discussion of Augustin Cochin or Orestes Brownson. In this connection, we will be having a brief discussion of Cochin, a translation of whose work on the French Revolution is now available from Chronicles Press. To give you all time to buy the book, I am going to offer an opportunity to talk for two weeks about Beowulf--not the movie, please--as a means of discussing Anglo-Saxon society, its politics and its moral framework.
I've been lecturing on the Anglo-Saxons for three weeks and although a rank amateur in this field, I think I know enough to lead a brief discussion of this wonderful epic. There are dozens of translations and I don't know which one I shall use. If I can find Tim Murphy's recent version, I'll use that because it reads well as poetry and I know Tim worked hard grappling with the text. If anyone is looking for background on the Anglo-Saxons, Sir Frank Stenton's Anglo-Saxon England is still indispensable and very readable.
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Beowulf I
I want to begin with a few bits of basic information, subject to correction from the superior authorities on whom I am counting. Beowulf is generally regarded, Tolkien notwithstanding, as an epic poem written down in its current state mostly in the Wessex dialect of Anglo-Saxon. Traces of East Anglian, apparently, have been detected We can discuss later, if anyone likes, what is meant by “epic” poem and whether or not the length and composition of Beowulf may have been influenced by reading or at least knowledge of the Aeneid
Although the manuscript of Beowulf is generally dated to approximately 1000 AD, the ms. may well be a copy of a work composed much earlier, even before 800. Both internal evidence, apparently, and analogies with other epic poems would suggest that it is the most recent version of a traditional story, polished by generations of perhaps illiterate revisers, before reaching its present form. If there are, indeed, traces of other dialects, the analogy with Homer is useful. The Iliad and Odyssey are written in what is often called the “epic dialect” a literary hodge-podge that is primarily Ionic Greek but with traces of Arcado-Cypriot (reflecting earlier Mycenaean) and perhaps Aeolic.
The story of Beowulf concerns Germanic peoples, primarily Geats, Danes, and Frisians. There is an undoubted historic core: Hygelac is referred to not only in the Liber Monstrorum, and his raid on the Frisians, dated to about 515, is noted by Bishop Gregory of Tours in his history of the Franks. I borrow the rest of this brief and inadequate introduction from a lecture I gave two weeks ago:
“Most students of history inevitably look at the past from a southern perspective, observing the torch of civilization as it passes from Egypt and the Middle East first to Greeks and Romans and then to the French and then, belatedly, to the English. Norman Conquest gives us opportunity to study microcosm of interaction between Germanic barbarians and Roman culture, though not quite so simple: AS’s had been strongly influenced by Latin Christianity and later by Norman culture, while Normans themselves were a Germanic-Nordic people who had only recently adopted French language, Roman Church, and what was left of Gallo-Roman culture. In other words our gaze is fixed between latitudes 30 N to 40 N and then a bit beyond 50 N.
For this discussion we want to turn our perspective upside down or rather upside up and look down from north, shedding feeble polar light of 60 degrees + North upon history. While Greeks were creating and Romans extending civilization in the sunny Mediterranean, their distant IE cousins were eking out a savage and marginal existence in the frozen wastes of Scandinavia, where civilization is known, even today, only as a tall tale told by heroic sea-rovers or Swedish mass-tourists stuffed with cheap pizza, raw wine and burned garlic. (No offense meant to Steve Berg et al.)
Swedes, Geats, Jutes, Lombards, Burgundians, Goths were the northern brethren of the Germanic peoples who lived to the South. They had been living in Scandinavia since roughly 2000 BC during a mild period for Northern Europe, and as the first age of global warming came to an end (complete perhaps by 500 BC), many of the tribes began moving South and eventually took part in the great Germanic folk-migrations that overthrew the Roman Empire. An early hint of what was to come from Scandinavia was the migration of the Teutones and Cimbri, who left their homes and raided their way across Europe and into Italy, where they were stopped by Roman general Marius in 101 BC.
The Jutes and Angles and Saxons who began attacking Britain in the IV C came, roughly from Denmark, Schleswig-Holstein, and northern Saxony. Hrolfe the Walker, the pirate and free-booter also known as Rollo, when Charles the Simple granted him the land to be called Normandy in 911, launched his raids from the territory of the Angles. William the Conqueror was the direct descendant, 6 generations later, of Rollo the Viking. Thus the three contestants for the throne of England in 1066 were all cousins: Anglo-Saxons (whose ancestors included Jutes from Jutland), Normans, and Norwegians (commanded by the most remarkable man of the age, Harald Hardrada). Obviously, there are serious differences among the 3 nations. By 1066 both Normans and Anglo-Saxons had gone a long way from their ancestral roots: They had accepted Christianity, were part of Catholic Europe, had developed more sophisticated agriculture, technology, and trade. Even 11th century Norway had developed the institutions of a national-state. Much of Norway was already Christianized even before Harald’s brother Olaf came to the throne and unwisely attempted to finish the job. Still, it is hard to find a streak of Christian humility or kindness in Harald.
Nonetheless, despite the dangers inherent in extrapolation from later Vikings back to the Angles and Saxons, it is helpful to try to understand a little of primitive Scandinavia, from the time of the Anglo-Saxon raids down to the Viking period. First thing to take note of: very very cold. Climate change for worse had accomplished several things. The tall, blond, rugged Scandinavian type, though not universal, was probably the result in part of adaptation to climate. Conditions varied, of course, and there was good arable land in some parts of southern Scandinavia, but generally at a disadvantage. Fishing, herding played larger role than elsewhere. Thin population—often bled away by migrations—and rough conditions did not encourage large-scale political units.
We have next-to no knowledge of Anglo-Saxon society on even of invasions, but we know a little more about Vikings several hundred years later. At the top of the social order were kings, members of royal kindreds, though power did not pass automatically to eldest son or, failing sons, a daughter, either in Scandinavia or in AS England. The king was primarily warchief and thus a tough and resolute warrior was needed to protect the people. King much more loosely applied than among Goths and other tribes to the South—often claimed by members of royal clan. Under the king were jarls/earls, who enjoyed power and prestige over community or communities, and in Scandinavia were commissioned by the king to represent his government, much like the comites in Carolingian Francia. These nobles, powerful as they might be, lacked the divine sanction of kings who claimed descent from Woden.
“The basic unity in society…was no king or earl but a bondir, a free farmer, roughly equivalent to the Anglo-Saxon ceorl…” [H.R. Lloyn, The Vikings in Britain] The bondir was no little man in our sense of the word. He was at his most typical the head of a household, a man of some property in land and especially in stock. He was a slave-owner. His symbols of rank were his axe and his spear. The mark of the freeman was the right to bear arms. He was oath-worthy and law-worthy… Sturdy and at times savage, independence was a characteristic of this breed, but…his very litigious and squabblesome nature found its outlet in what was essentially communal institutional life, in the folk-court, the local thing held at some traditional spot…”
Anglo-Saxon society developed under Frankish and Christian influence, but it started from roughly the same place and was never fully detached from its foundations. The freemen and Earls were fiercely individualistic, self-assertive, quick to anger; also intensely familial and devoted to kin. Marriage far more egalitarian than among more developed peoples. Free contract between man and woman, dissolvable by either party. Scandinavia and AS societies were not the Playboy Club that Iceland has become, but they were freer and less restricted in their sexual mores and attitude toward women than, say, Mediterranean cultures. This is one more indication of how primitive they were and are.
In Beowulf, the most important social and legal fact to notice is the code of the Germanic warrior. A free man, by definition, was a man who could fight to defend himself, his kin, and his king. Blood revenge and what would later be called dueling were social and moral norms.
In modern times, English law has gone farthest in restricting the individual's recourse to violence. Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, if they were freemen, did not so much take the law into their own hands as exercise the law on their own authority. In avenging a death in the family, they were less interested in the motives and circumstances than in the fact. Blood once spilled cannot be recalled, as the furies say in Aeschylus' Eumenides. Even in a case of accidental homicide, where no negligence is involved, a man is still dead, and--as the legal maxim held--"Legis enim est qui inscienter peccet, scienter emendet", that is a man should knowingly fix the harm he had done in ignorance." In tort law, this principle endured into the 19th century.
For the Saxons, murder as well as accidental homicide were settled by payment of blood-money to the kindred. "Homicide appears in the Anglo-Saxon dooms as a matter for composition in the ordinary case of slaying in an open quarrel. There are additional public penalties in aggravated cases, as where a man is slain in the king's presence or otherwise in breach of the king's peace." [Maitland and Pollock I.52]
Wergeld, as our Saxon ancestors called it, is a custom of many nations, although none, perhaps, has elaborated it into a social system so successfully as the Germanic peoples. The monster Grendel, whom Beowulf kills, is an outlaw not so much because he kills the Danish king's retainers as because his refusal to pay compensation puts him outside society.
“Although it may be assumed that the primitive Germans recognized only the fact of bloodshed, motivation and circumstance did come to play an important part. Of course the slayer's kin could stick to the letter of the law of blood, but "one may almost say that the leading motive in heroic literature is precisely this difference of opinion between the people who hold that under any circumstance it is shameful to come to an agreement with the bana (slayer) of one's lord or friend or kinsman, and the people who are willing under certain circumstances to come to such an agreement." [Beowulf: An Introduction to the Study of the Poem with a Discussion of the Stories of Offa and Finn by R.W. Chambers with supplement by C. L. Wrenn, IIIrd Ed., Cambridge UP, 1963, 276-77.] Liability also extended to one who loaned weapons or was present in a fray.
Much of what underlies the principle of blood-revenge is summed up in the phrase “collective responsibility.” In other words, an individual who killed or maimed or robbed someone was not the only person responsible. If a town rose up against the king, it was not just the guilty parties who suffered. In Medieval Tuscany, Florence in particular, wide networks of kinfolks were held collectively responsible for paying the fines of an offending member, and this gave the Florentine business classes the ability to expel entire noble kindreds. One of King Alfred’s successors made local communities responsible for paying the fines for unpunished criminals—which must have served as a powerful incentive to punish the guilty parties.
This is a very inadequate and amateurish introduction, which can be fleshed out in many directions, but I wanted to begin to show that in the heroic world of Beowulf, we shall not find many things to confirm our modern liberal prejudices in favor of equality, individualism, and universal moral rules.
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Good. This dreadful election is like infernal hammering from the apartment up above.
Seamus Heaney's is quite poetical. I can't vouch for the accuracy of the translation because, Philistine that I am, I can't read the original.
Would you agree that the epic, at the time it was written, depicted an earlier time, as if someone were to write an epic today about the War of the Secession?
I'm looking forward to this. I am fascinated by the contrast between wyrd and providence in the poem.
David Wilson has published work on what the archaeology of the period says. James Campbell's work updates Stenton's.
There have been many advances in particular fields, made by fine scholars, since the last edition of Stenton in 1967. No one alive today, however, is possessed of his magisterial learning or of his clarity of thought and expression. James Campbell is an excellent scholar, especially on the AS political system, but a beginner would be well advised to begin with Stenton. In looking over archeological studies, I am reminded of what one of my colleagues in classics once said of classical archaeologists: They can dig it up, but they need us to tell them what it means. Archaeologists, with very few exceptions, are deliberately incoherent. I have never been a fan of Seamus Heaney, though I could not say why. I can only dabble in Old English and will gladly bow to anyone who has mastered it.
"Would you agree that the epic, at the time it was written, depicted an earlier time, as if someone were to write an epic today about the War of the Secession?"
Mr. Grumpy,
I like your question because it is so rarely asked. Are you wondering why anyone would be interested in "olden times" or if reading a true epic poem has timeless characteristics and revelations about human conduct -- applicable to all human beings in all ages ? It is not true for me that primitive ages were really backward because they were primitive.
I often hear this ---that we are much better, wiser, courageous, etc. than the Greeks, the Romans, the early Fathers. This assertion doesn't seem true to me. Would you disagree ?
PS I'll try to get a copy of Heaney's translation from the library. I don't like to be unfair to a poet whose work is praised by many poets I know. I have ordered Lawrence Chickering's highly praised bi-lingual edition with notes.
Most polished epics are reflective looks backward. The Iliad portrays the world of 3-4 centuries earlier, while the Aeneid filters Homer through the Roman experience. One can see the same thing going on in the Welsh poems and in French Arthurian epic--which is a bit too fantastic for my taste, generally. Roland seems to be written as part of the Crusading spirit, etc. I don't think Beowulf has every been accurately dated, but even if it is early, say, 800, it still looks back imaginatively to the heroic age of several centuries earlier.
Don't underestimate Chronicles readers. Brownson's "The American Republic" is a book that everyone should read. It's a good counterpoint to Locke and Hobbes.
Interesting coincidence: On the commuter train home from Capitol Hill yesterday evening, the man next to me was reading last month's issue of Chronicles. I retrieved the current month's issue from my briefcase and we had a nice chat. Perhaps there's hope for the country, after all.
Occasionally you can find an archaeologist who is deferential to history. Their work is somewhat more necessary for describing the largely illiterate northern peoples. Still, the written word is better than inferences from a few remains. And they can be DULL!!
Tolkein's "The Monster and the Critics" may be useful too. It (along with a number of other essays) can be found in the Norton critical edition.
I recently read David Hume's first volume of History of England, which deals with the Anglo-Saxons. I know that some of his research may be outdated, but it was still a pleasant read.
Mr. Palmer,
I'm sorry to say that wasn't me. I would be traveling via Metro from Farragut West. But I was reading September's tribute issue to Dr. Browne ("End as a man") yesterday. Perhaps we shall cross paths someday.
Warm regards
This topic sounds exciting.
I find Beowulf to be often talked about, but too often underrated and not well understood.
Its standing as THE Old English epic makes it subject to formalism, but the overall message I find in this wondrous work is needed today more than ever before in our history.
Beowulf is worthy of its standing as THE old epic, and I predict that only the fine people posting here, at Chronicles, will get it right.
By the way, Dr. Fleming, I think your acute language skills will allow you to look with some understanding at the Old English original. I imagine you have already done this, but if not, I recommend you buy a fat Bosworth & Toller's, which you can read online here: http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/germanic/oe_bosworthtoller_about.html#images . A shorter online dictionary is here: http://home.comcast.net/~modean52/oeme_dictionaries.htm .
Furthermore, if you learn an old Northern language like Old English, you will have accomplished something which few classicists have done. You will also find that your Greek-English translation technique will have changed slightly and even improved, after you thought that was no longer possible. This would behoove one whiles translating Biblical texts, by fostering the thew and awe of our own English tongue.
How soon can we contribute our thoughts on Beowulf?
What will the ground-rules be?
My point was different--it was to ask whether, at the time the epic was composed, the poet was invoking an earlier age. Dr. Fleming seems to think he was, as did Homer.
I would not claim we are better than "the Greeks, the Romans," and I, at least, am a damn sight worse than the early Fathers. I think the Greeks and Romans were probably more manly and courageous than we are, if only because they had to fight mano a mano and not from keyboards and airplanes. Living in the Church Age, we have the grace to be more merciful and kinder, so that when we fail, as we do, our fault is more grievous.
"Living in the Church Age, we have the grace to be more merciful and kinder, so that when we fail, as we do, our fault is more grievous."
Yes, and it is not always pleasant to be reminded of this -- in this life or the next. My sincere thanks for your always brief, compact, intelligent and full reply.
on 01 Feb 2008 at 12:14 pm10PcH
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This topic sounds exciting.
I find Beowulf to be often talked about, but too often underrated and not well understood.
Its standing as THE Old English epic makes it subject to formalism, but the overall message I find in this wondrous work is needed today more than ever before in our history.
Beowulf is worthy of its standing as THE old epic, and I predict that only the fine people posting here, at Chronicles, will get it right.
By the way, I think the expert language scholarship here will allow many of us readers to look with some understanding at the Old English original. I imagine many have already done this, but if not, I recommend the purchase of a fat Bosworth & Toller’s, which you can read online here: http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/germanic/oe_bosworthtoller_about.html#images . A shorter online dictionary is here: http://home.comcast.net/~modean52/oeme_dictionaries.htm .
Furthermore, if one learns an old Northern language like Old English, he will have accomplished something which few classicists have done. He will also find that your Greek-English translation technique will have changed slightly and even improved, after you thought that was no longer possible. This would behoove one whiles translating Biblical texts, by fostering the thew and awe of our own English tongue.
How soon can we contribute our thoughts on Beowulf?
What will the ground-rules be?
PS - Avoid the movie adaptations. I don't think film treatement is appropriate. I haven't seen the latest version, but I was dumb enough to see one a couple of years ago and, despite good cinematography, it was wretched. Grendel was tragic. I prefer Grendel as evil.
"He told how murderers walk the earth
Beneath the curse of Cain,
With crimson clouds before their eyes,
And flames about their brain:
For blood has left upon their souls
Its everlasting stain."
- Hood
Hume knew as much as anyone knew at the time, and that is more than one might think. It is also highly instructive to see that it was not only Whigs but Tories who cherished the Anglo-Saxon myth. Mel Bradford, on this point, always used to recommend Trevour Colbourne's The Lamp of Experience, which, as I recall, takes up the part played by the AS myth in the American founding. I found it very interesting when I read it about 15 years ago.
David Hume is more critically minded than the more recent popular historian, Sir Winston Churchill, though Sir Winston had the benefit of a great deal more scholarship and less overtly hostile to the Church. I still recommend Hume as an excellent starting point. Tolkien's famous essay was an important corrective at the time and is still a thought-provoking piece of analysis. There is also a popular and somewhat naive book from 1900 by Sir Francis Palgrave on the Anglo-Saxons. It is very entertaining and the stories he repeats somewhat uncritically are, nonetheless, part of a documented tradition and should be known. I wish I had read it 30 years ago.
I do not at all denigrate the value of the work archaeologists have done, but their work, once the heroic age was over, tends to make them as dull as engineers, and that--with all due respect to my friends who are engineers--is saying a lot. This reminds me of one of the funniest off-the-cuff remarks I have heard or rather heard of. My former assistant and good friend is a lady from Nish (southern Serbia) and she is married to an electrical engineer from near Novi Sad (in Vojvodina). One day, as she was busily making dinner and supervising her son's homework, the doorbell rang. Her husband, naturally, was drinking a beer and watching the news and quite close to the door, but being a Serb he called out to his busy wife to answer the door. When she went to the door and was detained talking to someone for a few minutes, he called out "Who are you talking to," obviously anxious for her to get back to the important business of life, namely, making his dinner. When she called back, "It's some Jehovah's Witnesses," the husband cried out: "Tell them I already have a church I don't go to." Then men of Vojvodina are proverbially slow and only unintentionally funny, but the engineer disproved--and not only on this occasion--the stereotype.
Finally, to Scott Palmer: My point was not that Orestes Brownson would be difficult for Chronicles readers but that discussing political trivial was a way of roping in the unwary into a conversation in which they might be exposed to a different point of view. I leave tomorrow morning for two days in Tampa and may be out of touch. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy Beowulf,. if only reading it on line.
Tolkein’s “The Monster and the Critics” may be useful too. It (along with a number of other essays) can be found in the Norton critical edition.
For those who are interested, this would be the translation by
Daniel Donoghue and Seamus Heaney, and not those done by E. Talbot Donaldson. (According to Amazon, both are part of the Norton Critical Editions series.)
I have had the opportunity to study Old Saxon and plough my way through the Heliand, although I would not pretend to be scholar or master thereof. I had first encountered Beowulf in high school, in translation, of course, with a few parallel examples of Old English. I recall listening to a tape of these examples which my English teacher had from some source as lost to me as are the ultimate origins of Beowulf. I then encountered Beowulf in college. There, our professor read aloud in Old English long passages of the text after we had read them in translation. He wanted us to get a feel for the language, at least to the extent that he could reproduce it with fidelity. In my course in Old Saxon in Germany, we struggled not only with the language, using “struggled” in a positive sense, but also with the text of the Heliand which was “easier” because it was a paraphrasing of a story or stories which we knew. My last encounter with Beowulf, outside classroom discussions, came in the context of the Old Saxon class in Germany. Late, on a cold October afternoon as it gave way to evening, our professor took us into a forest in the Taunus not far from the Roman Salburg and the Celtic Ringwall, where we built a fire, broke out fine food and drink, and listened to a local but professional scop or skald render long passages from the Heliand and from Beowulf. As the night deepened, the drink settled in and the words of the bard hit home, the hills were full of monsters and dragons. From this encounter, Beowulf still lingers in my memory.
That's a great story, rmp. An old professor of mine signed my copy of his translation, Saga of the Volsungs: "To Peter, who loves the old stories." I would have loved to have been at that campfire that night. Just beware: now that you have confessed your knowledge of Old English, Old Saxon, German, and possibly Old High German, I might dare quote something again from Old Norse that nobody can read, knowing that you will.
PcH @ 17
In Old High German I have studied and read Abrogans, i.e. studied portions of the word list - Latin/Old High German; the Merseburger Zaubersprüche, Hildebrandslied, and the Wessobrunner Gebet.
My encounter with Old Norse actually came as I studied das Nibelungenlied in Middle High German. Our professor gave us excerpts from the Codex Regius, specifically from the Niflungr, and gave us access to grammars and dictionaries. He wanted us to get a sense of the Norse material associated with the Nibelungenlied.
The Wachau Valley along the Danube is known as die Nibelungenstraße. Several of us hitch hiked from Vienna to Melk, which lies along this way, and spent a long weekend at a farm with a Fremdenzimmer working on the project. There, in addition to spending time in the monastery, we spent time in Burg Dürnstein, the ruins thereof, where Richard the Lionheart was supposedly kept prisoner. Thus did I encounter Old Norse.
When it comes to Old Norse, my Huginn and Muninn still fly, but they are, at least in that context, frail and weak. I still like the poem, however, from Grimnismal:
Huginn ok Muninn fliúga hverian dag
iörmungrund yfir;
óomk ek of Huginn, at hann aptr ne komit,
þó siámk meirr um Muninn.
I can still handle that much Old Norse.
That's fantastic. The Codex Regius is the best manuscript, and the one everyone uses.
You have been many places I would long to see.
But I've had a few adventures. I flew from the West Coast to Amsterdam by Martinair for $95. Later, I flew back on People's Express (awful) for $198. I missed Vienna because on my Eurail Pass I was routed through Italy, and the German train that arrived in each town 20 minutes early became two hours late in Italy. So I stayed the night in Bozen and the next morning fared to Venice: on the first day of Carnival!
Before that I stayed in Southwest Germany, including one night on a German farm on the outskirts of Pforzheim (I think). At that time, I had one quarter (1/3 year) of German, so I spoke babyish. For some reason, I decided to ask the farmer (who knew no English) if he knew anyone with my last name. He said he did, so we drove on the Autobahn through the Black Forest and met them. They looked a bit like me in hide and hue.
Later, I found out that that was indeed the locale whence came my family name. (The same weird thing happened, by the way, when I was driving through the Shenandoah; completely by accident, I mailed out my SCV application from the post office annex in the very village where my forefathers lived and fought, Port Republic.)
Svá varð mér.
Sorry I can't match those neat Norse reflexives:
Highen and Minnen
fly every day
over Ærmenground.
Fear I Highen
that he not come again,
though look I more for Minnen.
Highen and Minnen – two of four beasts at Woden’s throne, ravens who share with him men’s thoughts: Highen, the master of the mind and its desires, Minnen of the heart and its loves (like in Minnesinger).
Ær·men·ground – “ground of the sea-necklace;” the earth, girded by the sea.
Alas I fear lest I've flown far afield off-topic.
King Hrolf's saga is a fun read for those who love the heroic age. The story of Bothvar Bjarki is my favorite part of the saga. Welshman Gwyn Jones did an easy-to-obtain translation. He also discusses both Beowulf and Hrolf's saga in "Kings, Beasts, and Heroes." It's on my to-read list but I haven't gotten to it yet.
I'd love to see a scholarly discussion on the parallels/differences between the two.
It looks as if I have lots of studying to do and little to contribute. As I just told Clyde Wilson in an email, I do not even have amateur standing in the study of Old English or any Germanic language except modern German. I am therefore expecting a greate deal of help from PCH, Mr. Peters, and Bruce.
I'll start by posting a few preliminary remarks on Tuesday, setting the scene for my fellow-ignoramuses. My plan was to spend perhaps a week on each part. Although I am not so sure that knowledge of AS or Old Norse can have much impact on a Hellenist's approach to Greek, I fully agree than an historical understanding of our language must be rooted in the study of the Germanic-Scandinavian, Latin, and Norman-French elements.
All these Chronicles readers on the DC metro? In college, I used to ride the metro into work from College Park and read Chronicles there and back. I still live in DC but now am fortunate enough to be able to walk to work. Should we be organizing a DC Chronicles subscriber happy hour?
PcH @ 19
As I age, my thoughts (Huginn) become weaker, and therefore, my memory (Muninn) becomes sweeter. That is why, I am learning, both are important, but Muninn of the two, for an aging man, becomes more important. I suppose that is why I begin to build stories made of or reflecting those memories. The stories are paladins which fly in formation with Muninn to protect him on his journey. I would suggest, to bring us to topic, that the story of Beowulf, among other things, of course, is just that: a story to protect and nurture memory as he makes his way across the ages. One of our tasks in our cyber quest would be to identify the Old Raven Muninn in the midst of his guardian companions which make up the story. If we find him, he might tell us something new and fresh which in fact is something ancient and profound.
To the quest, thanks to Dr. Fleming!
# 22 Rick Oliver
I would encourage you to begin such a gathering. Just a few folks sipping spirits and conversing about the best and worst things in the world is the beginning -- of friendship, wonder, and perhaps ,G-d willing, wisdom. I don't live in the D.C. area but we have such a group here in the midwest. Sometimes we meet for dinner, sometimes to watch a movie and other times at a Benedictine monastery to pray and work with the monks and to talk about making beer, gardening, building cyprus homes and of course sampling various quantities of wine, beer and mead. Four of five times a year we meet, and sometimes we invite various speakers -- from what is left of our tradition.
I would also encourage you to attend some of the trips , conferences and talks that Chronicles and their folks provide. Contrary to the narrow and mean reputation hurled at them by their lessers of this world, it is usually a broad cast of characters more similar to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, than the diversity twins on most college campuses.
Dr. Fleming @ 21
I await you preliminary remarks. In the mean time, I intend to find a copy of Beowulf in Old English and begin the journey of recapturing the language and the content. I will then, re-read it in translation, a good one if I can find one in these nether regions. I will not get that done by Tuesday, of course.
Doesn't Seamus Haney's translation have parallel translations of Old English and Today's English?
You can find the OE text and a rather kludgey translation online here.
Mr Aitken: Yes, it does. I have had a copy of Heaney's translation for two years or more and never got around to reading it. Now would seem like a good time to do so, if I can find the time.
I also have a cheap $1.00 copy of the Dover Thrift Edition, translated by J.K. Gordon, republished from a 1926 volume of Anglo-Saxon Poetry. This translation, however, is in prose, but it would still work for this discussion.
I remember Dr Fleming leading several discussions like this back in '06, and I couldn't participate because often I was working on weekends and had no time. I even had to work Thanksgiving night and New Year's Eve night. I'll try to keep up this time.
#26 Mr. Aitken: Not sure if it is parallel (probably?), but it is bilingual.
http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/fall00/032097.htm
I was kidding when i suggested what TJF does (because of his own not only excellence but example in life) is below him.
There's a circle forming in my opinion or mind's eye 'say' just for example of rabbis (if not also priests - i don't yet know) and it points to a center wherein sit both TJF and israel shamir.
don't take this literally although it well could be in a 'better' world.
any prodding of tjf is like a roast like with israel shamir in their honor.
would that we were them or are.
(questions?)
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@ 21 TJF. Make that PCH and Mr. Peters. This is a topic that I love and I'd be honored to help if I could, but I'm not trained in the ancient languages and quite an amateur even in the history. I'm going to sit back and let the more learned men write. Maybe if I have questions or a point I'd like to see addressed I'll post them.
sorry the unlikely though appropriate coupling of the excellent in tjf & isy in tandem is counter-blanance. seriously in a 'platonic' or ideal world - what otherwise could 'save' america are twin benign stalins tjf/isy.
but what will save her is how it is actually here in the world - with the input of both of those living icons, - in my opinon. which is the case anyway... so what am I saying? nothing much - just thinking out loud. it's human.
i'm trying to think of a joke now - after all - i wear the BELLS!? - wow, i can't think of one - sorry. i guess the 'bells' will have to suffice. ?! jingle-jingle. me-without a joke? even i'm astonished.
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Hey zurich - i like it -
here's you since you require reflection:
"To give yourself away keeps yourself still,
And you must live drawn by your own sweet skill." -W.S.
No? I hear you ... looks like we're moving - but standing still.
It just comes more and more into focus - don't it?!
cool
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I like the topic and will read the articles and comments because I usually learn much from them. I have read Beowulf twice, though, and I have a couple of questions to help with context. I accept that this is an Anglo-Saxon epic poem written in old/early English. But the poem deals with a Dane and Danes who fight with, among others, Frisians, Swedes, Franks (and a Merovingian king). And, having grown up in Minnesota and North Dakota, where the biggest rivalries (however, never amounting to blows) were between Swedes, mainly in sin-city, and the Norwegians, mostly rural, there are a lot of aspects of this poem that ring true. But, where do the Anglo-Saxons come in? The runes were familiar too as it was almost a farm industry making these things and carefully scattering these things to show that the sons of Leif Erickson had made it all the way to Minnesota!
Think Achilles and Odysseus. Men love a good, heroic story about their ancestors.
The AS connection is pretty simple although the details were lost by our ancestors illiteracy. Bede indicates Saxons, Angles, and Jutes as the culprits. The latter two tribes come from what's now Denmark. There's pretty good evidence that Frisians and lower-Rhinelanders were among the AS founding stock. These peoples are closely related and shared many similar stories e.g. the stories of Bothvar Bjarki the man-bear. According to some etymologists, Beowulf means "bee-wolf" or "bee-destroyer" i.e. bear.
The heroic sagas are especially likely to be OLD memories.
Let us not get too deeply into questions and responses until we actually inaugurate the discussion, which I hope to do briefly today. Shall I post a Beowulf II or continue here until Beowulf disappears from the opening page?
Dr. Fleming,
Let's begin the journey right here. rr
Beowulf I (For the sake of ease I have also posted this at the end of the original entry)
I want to begin with a few bits of basic information, subject to correction from the superior authorities on whom I am counting. Beowulf is generally regarded, Tolkien notwithstanding, as an epic poem written down in its current state mostly in the Wessex dialect of Anglo-Saxon. Traces of East Anglian, apparently, have been detected We can discuss later, if anyone likes, what is meant by “epic” poem and whether or not the length and composition of Beowulf may have been influenced by reading or at least knowledge of the Aeneid.
Although the manuscript of Beowulf is generally dated to approximately 1000 AD, the ms. may well be a copy of a work composed much earlier, even before 800. Both internal evidence, apparently, and analogies with other epic poems would suggest that it is the most recent version of a traditional story, polished by generations of perhaps illiterate revisers, before reaching its present form. If there are, indeed, traces of other dialects, the analogy with Homer is useful. The Iliad and Odyssey are written in what is often called the “epic dialect” a literary hodge-podge that is primarily Ionic Greek but with traces of Arcado-Cypriot (reflecting earlier Mycenaean) and perhaps Aeolic.
The story of Beowulf concerns Germanic peoples, primarily Geats, Danes, and Frisians. There is an undoubted historic core: Hygelac is referred to not only in the Liber Monstrorum, and his raid on the Frisians, dated to about 515, is noted by Bishop Gregory of Tours in his history of the Franks. I borrow the rest of this brief and inadequate introduction from a lecture I gave two weeks ago:
“Most students of history inevitably look at the past from a southern perspective, observing the torch of civilization as it passes from Egypt and the Middle East first to Greeks and Romans and then to the French and then, belatedly, to the English. Norman Conquest gives us opportunity to study microcosm of interaction between Germanic barbarians and Roman culture, though not quite so simple: AS’s had been strongly influenced by Latin Christianity and later by Norman culture, while Normans themselves were a Germanic-Nordic people who had only recently adopted French language, Roman Church, and what was left of Gallo-Roman culture. In other words our gaze is fixed between latitudes 30 N to 40 N and then a bit beyond 50 N.
For this discussion we want to turn our perspective upside down or rather upside up and look down from north, shedding feeble polar light of 60 degrees + North upon history. While Greeks were creating and Romans extending civilization in the sunny Mediterranean, their distant IE cousins were eking out a savage and marginal existence in the frozen wastes of Scandinavia, where civilization is known, even today, only as a tall tale told by heroic sea-rovers or Swedish mass-tourists stuffed with cheap pizza, raw wine and burned garlic. (No offense meant to Steve Berg et al.)
Swedes, Geats, Jutes, Lombards, Burgundians, Goths were the northern brethren of the Germanic peoples who lived to the South. They had been living in Scandinavia since roughly 2000 BC during a mild period for Northern Europe, and as the first age of global warming came to an end (complete perhaps by 500 BC), many of the tribes began moving South and eventually took part in the great Germanic folk-migrations that overthrew the Roman Empire. An early hint of what was to come from Scandinavia was the migration of the Teutones and Cimbri, who left their homes and raided their way across Europe and into Italy, where they were stopped by Roman general Marius in 101 BC.
The Jutes and Angles and Saxons who began attacking Britain in the IV C came, roughly from Denmark, Schleswig-Holstein, and northern Saxony. Hrolfe the Walker, the pirate and free-booter also known as Rollo, when Charles the Simple granted him the land to be called Normandy in 911, launched his raids from the territory of the Angles. William the Conqueror was the direct descendant, 6 generations later, of Rollo the Viking. Thus the three contestants for the throne of England in 1066 were all cousins: Anglo-Saxons (whose ancestors included Jutes from Jutland), Normans, and Norwegians (commanded by the most remarkable man of the age, Harald Hardrada). Obviously, there are serious differences among the 3 nations. By 1066 both Normans and Anglo-Saxons had gone a long way from their ancestral roots: They had accepted Christianity, were part of Catholic Europe, had developed more sophisticated agriculture, technology, and trade. Even 11th century Norway had developed the institutions of a national-state. Much of Norway was already Christianized even before Harald’s brother Olaf came to the throne and unwisely attempted to finish the job. Still, it is hard to find a streak of Christian humility or kindness in Harald.
Nonetheless, despite the dangers inherent in extrapolation from later Vikings back to the Angles and Saxons, it is helpful to try to understand a little of primitive Scandinavia, from the time of the Anglo-Saxon raids down to the Viking period. First thing to take note of: very very cold. Climate change for worse had accomplished several things. The tall, blond, rugged Scandinavian type, though not universal, was probably the result in part of adaptation to climate. Conditions varied, of course, and there was good arable land in some parts of southern Scandinavia, but generally at a disadvantage. Fishing, herding played larger role than elsewhere. Thin population—often bled away by migrations—and rough conditions did not encourage large-scale political units.
We have next-to no knowledge of Anglo-Saxon society on even of invasions, but we know a little more about Vikings several hundred years later. At the top of the social order were kings, members of royal kindreds, though power did not pass automatically to eldest son or, failing sons, a daughter, either in Scandinavia or in AS England. The king was primarily warchief and thus a tough and resolute warrior was needed to protect the people. King much more loosely applied than among Goths and other tribes to the South—often claimed by members of royal clan. Under the king were jarls/earls, who enjoyed power and prestige over community or communities, and in Scandinavia were commissioned by the king to represent his government, much like the comites in Carolingian Francia. These nobles, powerful as they might be, lacked the divine sanction of kings who claimed descent from Woden.
“The basic unity in society…was no king or earl but a bondir, a free farmer, roughly equivalent to the Anglo-Saxon ceorl…” [H.R. Lloyn, The Vikings in Britain] The bondir was no little man in our sense of the word. He was at his most typical the head of a household, a man of some property in land and especially in stock. He was a slave-owner. His symbols of rank were his axe and his spear. The mark of the freeman was the right to bear arms. He was oath-worthy and law-worthy… Sturdy and at times savage, independence was a characteristic of this breed, but…his very litigious and squabblesome nature found its outlet in what was essentially communal institutional life, in the folk-court, the local thing held at some traditional spot…”
Anglo-Saxon society developed under Frankish and Christian influence, but it started from roughly the same place and was never fully detached from its foundations. The freemen and Earls were fiercely individualistic, self-assertive, quick to anger; also intensely familial and devoted to kin. Marriage far more egalitarian than among more developed peoples. Free contract between man and woman, dissolvable by either party. Scandinavia and AS societies were not the Playboy Club that Iceland has become, but they were freer and less restricted in their sexual mores and attitude toward women than, say, Mediterranean cultures. This is one more indication of how primitive they were and are.
In Beowulf, the most important social and legal fact to notice is the code of the Germanic warrior. A free man, by definition, was a man who could fight to defend himself, his kin, and his king. Blood revenge and what would later be called dueling were social and moral norms.
In modern times, English law has gone farthest in restricting the individual's recourse to violence. Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, if they were freemen, did not so much take the law into their own hands as exercise the law on their own authority. In avenging a death in the family, they were less interested in the motives and circumstances than in the fact. Blood once spilled cannot be recalled, as the furies say in Aeschylus' Eumenides. Even in a case of accidental homicide, where no negligence is involved, a man is still dead, and--as the legal maxim held--"Legis enim est qui inscienter peccet, scienter emendet", that is a man should knowingly fix the harm he had done in ignorance." In tort law, this principle endured into the 19th century.
For the Saxons, murder as well as accidental homicide were settled by payment of blood-money to the kindred. "Homicide appears in the Anglo-Saxon dooms as a matter for composition in the ordinary case of slaying in an open quarrel. There are additional public penalties in aggravated cases, as where a man is slain in the king's presence or otherwise in breach of the king's peace." [Maitland and Pollock I.52]
Wergeld, as our Saxon ancestors called it, is a custom of many nations, although none, perhaps, has elaborated it into a social system so successfully as the Germanic peoples. The monster Grendel, whom Beowulf kills, is an outlaw not so much because he kills the Danish king's retainers as because his refusal to pay compensation puts him outside society.
“Although it may be assumed that the primitive Germans recognized only the fact of bloodshed, motivation and circumstance did come to play an important part. Of course the slayer's kin could stick to the letter of the law of blood, but "one may almost say that the leading motive in heroic literature is precisely this difference of opinion between the people who hold that under any circumstance it is shameful to come to an agreement with the bana (slayer) of one's lord or friend or kinsman, and the people who are willing under certain circumstances to come to such an agreement." [Beowulf: An Introduction to the Study of the Poem with a Discussion of the Stories of Offa and Finn by R.W. Chambers with supplement by C. L. Wrenn, IIIrd Ed., Cambridge UP, 1963, 276-77.] Liability also extended to one who loaned weapons or was present in a fray.
Much of what underlies the principle of blood-revenge is summed up in the phrase “collective responsibility.” In other words, an individual who killed or maimed or robbed someone was not the only person responsible. If a town rose up against the king, it was not just the guilty parties who suffered. In Medieval Tuscany, Florence in particular, wide networks of kinfolks were held collectively responsible for paying the fines of an offending member, and this gave the Florentine business classes the ability to expel entire noble kindreds. One of King Alfred’s successors made local communities responsible for paying the fines for unpunished criminals—which must have served as a powerful incentive to punish the guilty parties.
This is a very inadequate and amateurish introduction, which can be fleshed out in many directions, but I wanted to begin to show that in the heroic world of Beowulf, we shall not find many things to confirm our modern liberal prejudices in favor of equality, individualism, and universal moral rules.
" The monster Grendel, whom Beowulf kills, is an outlaw not so much because he kills the Danish king’s retainers as because his refusal to pay compensation puts him outside society. "
Grendel is a law unto himself. My impression is he is a loner, living under the cover of early morning mist, the fog, and on" the edges of the fen." He moves in, and seems to prefer, darkness. He comes and goes as he pleases until he finds himself in the "grip" of a stronger and more determined adversary in Beowulf.
As a digression (a few words off the subject but on the theme ) I once knew a monk who prefered his Abbey Church to be dark so "that sinners would not be afraid to enter."
I would also note that Death Row in Oklahoma is entirely underground where only artificial light enters is spaces. Some where near the beginning of the poem we are introduced to two different cultures: those respectful of the ancients who believed in a creator who gave us light -- the sun and the moon -- and still others who "did not know how to praise him." I asssumed Grendel was of the latter category who prefered darkness to the light.
Although the traditional grouping of Germanic tribes and the languages and dialects which they spoke has come under question and is therefore problematic within certain circles of scholars, it still provides a handy reference as to the unique position of the Saxons. In normative scholarship, Germanic peoples, based on language, artifacts and historical data, have been divided in to North, East and West Germanic groups. Within that structure, the Saxons, are designated as West Germanic, but belong to a subgroup known as the North Sea Germanics, not to be confused with the North Germanics or Scandinavians. The Saxons were originally a distinct tribe within this group; however, the tribe then divided into two groups, not so much linguistically but geographically: with one group going to the British Isles and the other absorbing all or parts of the other North Sea Germanics and, moving inland, also absorbing portions of other West Germanic groups and even Slavs. German scholarship refers to the former as Anglo-Saxons and to the latter as Old Saxons; however, that same scholarship maintains that the Saxon, taken to the British Isles, maintained its fidelity longer than did Old Saxon. Nevertheless, both groups of Saxons were able to share their traditions through a common language at least until the Norman invasion.
Why is this important? The Saxons would share the stories common to Germanic peoples prior to the migrations. More importantly, given their geographic position at the mouth of the Elbe and the Rhine, along the North Sea and up to the Danish Peninsula, they would be in a position, after the migrations, to absorb stories transmitted from south to north and north to south. There is ample evidence of cultural intercourse from the Goths and the Franks in the south and the cultures of the Scadanavians in the north.
We will find portions and snippets of these traditions, some of them quite old, in Beowulf.
However, while the archetype of a Germanic hero can be found in the character of Beowulf, he does not appear, to my recollection -which might not be doing its recollecting - as a character however modified in other Germanic legends or sagas. This would suggest to me that Beowulf, particularly as we focus on the character, does not come out of the primeval, pre-migration past; nor does it come from the stories engendered in the south or the north. If it did, we would meet Beowulf somewhere else. This, of course, does not mean that the story itself is no older than the extant version which we all read in some modified form. It does mean, I believe, that the story is very much post-migration and does not come from distant Germanic traditions but is, in terms of the Saxons local: British Isles, North Sea, Danish Peninsula.
This is merely a frame of reference for me until I get into the work itself.
"Scandinavia and AS societies were not the Playboy Club that Iceland has become, but they were freer and less restricted in their sexual mores and attitude toward women than, say, Mediterranean cultures.This is one more indication of how primitive they were and are."
I can't remember sexual morality being even hinted at in the poem and women seem to have a limited role in it. The discussion was to include moral framework of AS society, so I hope the following isn't too much of a tangent.
Is there (written, because archaelology can only point to what we'd call impropriety of dress) evidence to back up your assertion quoted above? I don't know so I'm asking sincerely. The only source I can remember is Tacitus' Germania. He wrote about the relative chastity of the ancient Germanics albeit in a different time (the pre-migration Roman Iron age) and place (along the banks of the Rhine where there was interaction I assume?). I'm also interested in whether or not it's valid to connect pre-Christian pagan sexual immorality with post-Christian sexual immorality (notwithstanding the reality of man's fallen, carnal nature as a constant over all times past and present ). In other words, are the northern peoples regressing /"reverting to form" or "progressing?" The ancients might have been primitive but they weren't (to borrow your words from elsewhere) "too stupid to live." I've read in Germania (though I can't recall if it's Tacitus or the translator's notes in my version) that unchaste behavior among the Germanics was more limited to nobles.
Note: I'm not engaging in NS style (they Shanghai'd Tacitus for their propaganda) portraying of our ancestors as something they were not. I believe either Adam of Bremen or Saxo Grammaticus described pagan fertility rituals that were most offensive to Christian sensibilities.
If there's one thing I can say in favor of our pagan ancestors versus us, it's that they had a good enough sense to understand sex distinctions. Women behaved and dressed at least "pagan feminine" and accepted their natural role. When did women start wearing trousers anyway?
I'll say again, one hopes for the last time, that I am only an amateur. In my recent readings, though, it seems that some if not most scholars believe the Beowulf story is old. Two serious obstacles to grappling with this question are that 1) we have an infinitessimal amount of AS literature, virtually none of which is heroic except for Beowulf, and 2) there is no parallel early literature in other North-Germanic languages. Imagine we had only the Iliad, no Odyssesy, no Hesiod, no references to or fragments of the cyclic epics, no lyric or tragedy but only some late-ancient and Medieval epics about Alexander the Great or Charlemagne. We would find ourselves in the shoes of the Frankish historian who dated Francus, the mythical Trojan founder of the Franks, to the reign of Valentinian (d. 375), roughly 1500 years too late.
As to the origins and date of the story or the name of its hero, on which so much ink has been spilled, I have no intelligent idea, though it is remarkable how much can be retained by illiterate story-tellers and poets. The Homeric catalogue of ships, written down roughl 750-800 BC, refers to Greek cities that had not existed since Mycenaean times (3-400 years earlier), and there is no prima facie reason to believe that someone like Beowulf did not exist in roughly the period in which the tale is set. Perhaps PCH can help us in this. I am getting a little weary of reading AS history and am moving on to 10th century France
This afternon, I'll try to post a brief entry on the first part of the poem and expect some of you to carry the ball. The great storm of 2008 may bury Rockford in the course of the day, which would put me out of touch.
The evidence for AS and Viking sexual mores can be found in a variety of sources, which have been analyzed--as you can imagine--by social historians and feminists. In what I wrote I was merely trying to summarize what seems to me the current conventional thinking. In general, early Medieval aristocratic women seem to exercise a surprising amount of authority, serving as their husbands' regents and even castle commanders. They could make wills, sell and give property including rings, which had important symbolic value. In other words, a 9th century AS woman had more economic and legal rights than her descendants in 1800. This I take to be a reflection of the times and necessities, not an ideological conviction. A certain independence of married women in particular may be typical of warrior societies where the men, holding all real power, must be away on campaign much of the time. In different ways one might cite the examples of Sparta (as opposed to Athens) and the Iriquois, a people often celebrated by feminists for the power of women, though actual observers thought women were in real terms worse off, for alll their right to veto a war, than other Indian women.
Bruce @ 41
"I can’t remember sexual morality being even hinted at in the poem and women seem to have a limited role in it. "
Yes, I think I will go back and read again in this regard since you have mentioned it, although royal women seem to have a distinguished place in the Mead Hall along side the warriors and earls... Also Grendel's mother is a character of some prominence in the poem and worthy of our attention. Honor holds prominent place throughout the poem for both women and men. Whatever the code of conduct was,one can be sure it was dishonorable to ignore or fail to defend it.
Origins
Richard North has written The Origins of Beowulf: From Vergil to Wiglaf which has been published by the Oxford University Press, 2007. A review thereof has been written by Michael Lapidge of the University of Cambridge and is available on line at the link infra:
http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/paper/lapidge.html
It is quite obvious to me that both Mr. North and Mr. Lapidge have given "Beowulf" and the theories of its orgins much more thought and study than have I.
Mr. Lapidge, in the course of leveling a heavy criticism of Mr. North's assertion that the poem "Beowulf" is an Anglo-Saxon roman à clef’ also mentions and rejects other theories as to the poem's orgins: A.S. Cook, placing Beowulf to the court of King Aldfrith of Northumbria (d. 706); D.R. Howlett, arguing that the poet was Æthelstan who was a priest in the service of King Alfred, with 887–8 representing the years in which he composed the poem; K.S. Kiernan, arguing that it was composed during the reign of King Cnut (1016–35). Mr. Lapidge asserts that his scholarship refutes North's assertion as well as those of the others. This may well be true, for I do not have the knowledge to argue with Mr. Lapidge on the matter of "Beowulf"; however, he does give us some of the theories of the orgins of the poem and some of the problems with those theories.
Some other elements, such as the potential of Latin sources influencing the poet and his poem, are mentioned in the review and might stimulate the discussion here.
The book and the review at least help us understand the state of the scholarship on the poem at least as late as 2007. There might yet be some marrow to suck out of these seemingly dry bones if we will.
http://www.tha-engliscan-gesithas.org.uk/readings/readings.html
For the amateurs in the group, like myself, I found this helpful in understanding and listening to a poem like Beowulf.
On reading the Prologue.
I have ploughed my way through "Beowulf" in Old English a couple of times. Upon beginning to again read it, I encountered at the very beginning of the Prologue the term "þeodcyninga" which I found interesting, something of which I had not taken note before. My observation may range from meaningless to trivial, or, unknown to me, there might be six disserations and four books written on the topic.
The term "þeodcyning" is usually translated, if I correctly recall, "people king," given in the text in the plural. Yet, there is a little more behind it. There are references when indicate that prior to the migrations of the Germanic peoples, there were priestly kings who carried the title of "þeodan." During the migrations, his counterpart, the warrior king or "ric/rik," usually elected emerged. The term "cunig" is a West Germanic rendering of "ric."
Theodoric the Great in fact incorporates both of these terms in his very name: he is a priestly king and a warrior king. Such a claim would be important in acquiring some lasting legitimacy is a volatile world.
Theodoric the Great was known throughout the Germanic world. He appears in the Old High German "Hildebrandslied' and again in the Middle High German "Nibelungenlied." He also makes cameo appearances in various Nordic stories.
Is the use of "þeodcyninga," although in the plural, an oblique but intentional reference to Theodoric himself, conjuring up his power, prowess and fame as a foundations for the kings of this poem. Is there no intended reference to Theodoric but does the post-migration titel or name still carry some weight in the England in which Beowulf was written, i.e. lend legitimacy to the lineage; or is the term simply a poetic remnant of an older version of the story or of a poetic devise from the past?
I do not know, but I found it of interest.
On the power of women in Germanic societies:
In the Icelandic sagas, women are always the instigators of strife and feuds. One common way was to call her husband a sissy in public for not taking revenge or for having less wealth than a rival. Then the killing would begin.
In the Vǫlsunga Saga, women are also manipulative trouble-makers. As usual, men are goaded by making them jealous of rivals, etc., and the key hero, Sigurð, is drugged by a witch woman into forgetting his vows of love with the valkyrie Brynhild (who is also the one nearly flawless character in that epic).
These views then, mean that they had much less structure for women than did the Mediterranean world and were aware of the consequences. This fits with the overall pattern of freedom, little government, and anarchy among our wild ancestors before the advent of Christianity.
Conversely, the Norse punished the crime of seduction. If a couple were proved to have had consensual relations, the man could claim he was seduced, and the woman's family would be fined. (This was a way to enforce familial approval of mates, since marriage into a rival family would lead to strife.)
But your summaries have been two of the best run-downs I have read in a long time. This is becoming an excellent discussion, in my eyes.