3. OE Poetry: Studies of Themes and Topics

Larsen’s love of country, of Christ, and of Grundtvig is made plain in his Krist og Satan: nogle Blade af gammel kristelig Digtning særlig hos Angelsakserne (Cædmon) (Christ and Satan: Some Remnants of Ancient Christian Poetry, Especially Among the Anglo-Saxons [Cædmon]), published in 1903. The eleven-chapter, 240-page book’s frontispiece is a photo of Joakim Skovgaard’s (1856–1933) “Kristus i de dødes rige,” (Christ in the Realm of the Dead, 1891–94), which was inspired by Grundtvig’s hymn 243 in his Sang-Værk, “I Kvæld blev der banket paa Helvedes Port,” which itself is a paraphrase of lines 398–596 of the OE Christ and Satan on the Harrowing of Hell (see chapter 2 above). Larsen moves from Grundtvig’s Danish hymn back to the original OE text itself along with works ascribed to Cædmon, such as “The Dream of the Rood.” Before getting to those, Larsen rehearses how the concept of Christ’s journey came to be, beginning with I Peter 3:18–4:6 and the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, and then summarizes theological opinion on the concept, from Irenæus, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian to Martin Luther and Grundtvig.2 Krist og Satan, pp. 14–32.

Grundtvig’s hymn, which because of its power and beauty (“Kraft og Skønhed”)3 Ibid., p. 13. Larsen regards as the premier hymn in any language about Christ’s descent into the underworld, is Grundtvig’s best-known statement on the subject. Larsen devotes a chapter to examining it. For example, he identifies the herald in the first stanza as John the Baptist (34) and points out echoes from Proverbs, Psalms, Völuspá, and Vafþrúðnismál in the third as Christ makes his descent to deliver the message of salvation to the many children of Adam who died before His advent:4 Ibid., pp. 34–35.

To some, Grundtvig’s hymn could also be dangerous. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1832–1910), the first Norwegian author to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1903), is said to have become a Freethinker because of it and, for him, its indictment of the idea of eternal punishment.7 Ibid., p. 41. Because of that indictment, in fact, the very concept of the Harrowing of Hell was controversial, especially in Norway,8 Ibid., pp. 44–46. so Larsen wanted to return to the OE poem to try to ascertain how it might have sounded to the original audience.9 Ibid., p. 46. He begins by translating, recounting, and discussing great portions of Genesis A and Genesis B up to the birth of Cain and Abel and thereby Satan’s battle against God in heaven and on earth as a prelude to his battle against Christ in the underworld. As he does so, Larsen notes how the OE poem reflects certain Anglo-Saxon cultural norms such as the comitatus in which God functions as the chieftain or king and His angels as his thanes.10 Ibid., p. 104. He also adapts his own method of translation for a Scandinavian audience by employing the ON fornyrðislag meter, a loose, irregular version of which he claims Cædmon originally used.11 Ibid., p. 101. And he points out similarities between the OE paraphrases of Genesis and Milton’s Paradise Lost,12 E.g., ibid., pp. 108, 110, 112, 113, and 130–34. similarities arising from a blind Milton’s having listened to those paraphrases with the help of his friend Francis Junius (1591–1677).13 Ibid., p. 134.

As for Christ and Satan, no other song, claims Larsen, was as beloved by the Anglo-Saxons as that work. It depicts Christ as a glorious, powerful hero who also treats Adam and Eve with mercy. The depiction of Eve, furthermore, indicates the Anglo-Saxons’ noble view of women, a view “doubly natural, moreover, for a monk-poet who had found shelter and retreat, understanding and appreciation in Hilda’s monastery.”14 “dobbelt naturlig for øvrigt for en Munke-Skjald, som havde fundet Ly og Læ, Forstaaelse og Paaskønnelse i Fru Hildes Kloster.” Ibid., p. 143. Grundtvig’s use of the OE poem demonstrates both what he had learned from the Anglo-Saxons and how he managed to create a coherent narrative out of the fragmentary work.15 Ibid., p. 152. Cædmon follows Christ, the King of Victory,

Larsen concludes his study by surveying a range of Old Germanic texts. From “The Dream of the Rood,” which he argues was composed by Cædmon, the dreamer in the poem, and throughout which we hear echoes of the Balder myth,17 Ibid., p. 176. to the OS Heliand18 Ibid., pp. 188–89. to Einarr Skúlason’s Geisli19 Ibid., p. 193. as well as the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus,20 Ibid., pp. 197–233. we see how ingrained and celebrated Christ’s Harrowing of Hell is in the Western tradition lying behind Grundtvig’s famous hymn.

The second and final study of a major theme in OE literature coming out of Denmark in the twentieth century is by Andreas Haarder (1934–2014), who was Professor of English Literature at Syddansk University in Odense (1975–88). Haarder is well known in Beowulf circles because of his important doctoral dissertation, Beowulf: The Appeal of a Poem, which he wrote in English at Aarhus University in 1975, and his and T. A. Shippey’s essential Beowulf: The Critical Heritage (1998).

Haarder’s Det episke liv. Et indblick i oldengelsk heltedigtning (The Epic Life: A Glimpse into Old English Heroic Poetry, 1979; e-book 2022) consists of a foreword, five chapters, and an afterword and offers a look inside the heroic features of OE poetry as reflections of the same features in the lives of Anglo-Saxons. Where names in OE poems are also known in the Scandinavian tradition, Haarder uses the Scandinavian version – for example, Skjold for Scyld21 Det episke liv, p. 7. – a strategy that subtly emphasizes the connections between the OE and Scandinavian traditions. Haarder also stresses the connections between the OE tradition and modernity. In the first chapter on existing and lost OE verse, he emphasizes the oral nature of the poetry preserved in four codices22 Ibid., pp. 9–16. and the close contact that poetry has with Germanic prehistory.23 Ibid., p. 14. Lost OE verse, attested to by such things as the Finnsburg and Waldere fragments24 Ibid., pp. 14, 17. and the William of Malmesbury story about Aldhelm’s performing OE verse as a professional skald on a bridge over the river Avon to attract passersby to Christ, likewise affirm the orality of the poetry.25 Ibid., p. 17. The bond between the performer and listener gives rise to a “narrative situation” (fortællesituation) that occurs frequently outside and inside literature. In The Canterbury Tales, A Thousand and One Nights, and The Decameron, for example, it constitutes part of the fiction itself. In the short stories we are familiar with

The book’s second chapter on “The Poetic Tradition” again emphasizes the connection between the skald and audience. The central position of the skald in Anglo-Saxon society is affirmed both outside and inside the poetry. The story of Cædmon in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History and of Aldhelm in William of Malmesbury are good examples of the former; “Widsith,” “Deor,” and parts of “The Fates of Men” are good examples of the latter.28 Ibid., p. 23. And the poetry itself – song and music – in “The Fates of Men,” lines 165–71) is regarded as relief for the longing and loneliness experienced by every human being.29 Ibid., p. 24. In Anglo-Saxon society, that relief was delivered orally inside the mead hall to a listening audience.30 Ibid., p. 25. How well that oral poetry is conveyed in the written form handed down to us is a matter of debate.31 Ibid., p. 26. Examining the technical features of the verse from the half-line to meter, variation, repetition, and kennings (which link the OE tradition to the Nordic (pp. 27–30) helps move us toward an answer to the question. In the skald’s use of variation, repetition, and refrain, we see a clear connection with song and dance, and the variation and repetition principle “is not just a stylistic phenomenon. It is functional. It is integrated into what transpires between poet and audience. In other words, we are on our way from text to skald.”32 Ibid., p. 33. Oral-formulaic theory derived from studies of Homer, large sections of the Bible, the Poetic Edda, The Song of Roland, The Nibelungenlied, Beowulf, and Yugoslavian song charts that movement.33 Ibid., p. 41. All these works, as Grundtvig pointed out about The Iliad in 1832, were heard before they were read. In all of them, the word was and remains “the living word” (det levende ord).34 Ibid., p. 42.

The living word that is Beowulf, “An Old English Heroic Poem” (Et oldengelsk heltedigt), is the subject of the book’s third chapter. Haarder relates standard details about the poem’s discovery and the scholarly attention it has received since,35 Ibid., pp. 43–44. as well as its importance in the Danish university system for teaching OE in Denmark, an importance arising from the influence of Grundtvig, “whose lifelong enthusiasm for the poem came in a thrilling way to characterize a particularly Danish, popular ‘Beowulf’ tradition.”36 “hvis livslange begejstring for digtet på en spændende måde kom til at præge en særlig dansk, folkelig ’Bjovulf’-tradition.” Ibid., p. 45. The poem is used and venerated in the Danish folk high school, for example, for teaching Danish myth for the spiritual edification of its students. The high school stresses Grundtvig’s belief that only those words that pass from mouth to mouth in saga and song sustain the life of the people. Beowulf does just that.37 Ibid., pp. 45–46. It fulfilled and still fulfills a basic human need for fantasy,38 Ibid., p. 46. and Haarder offers an interpretation of the poem based on the premise that it should be experienced anew in the period in which it is read.39 Ibid., p. 47.

The epic begins with the story of Skjold, familiar to Danes from Grundtvig’s 1834 poem “Skjold,” and from the 1925 poem “Stæren” (The Starling) by Johannes V. Jensen (1873–1950), the recipient of the 1944 Nobel Prize in Literature. In both poems, and in Beowulf, a festive mood and the coming of spring are associated with the arrival and later departure of Skjold.40 Ibid., pp. 47–48. Haarder stresses the importance of the hall, gift giving, the peace weaver, and the skjald or word weaver in Anglo-Saxon society when it is at peace. When it is not, as when the Gendel kin attacks Heorot, those vital social functions cease.41 Ibid., pp. 49–51. They are restored again after Beowulf has slain Grendel and his mother, and the social order remains intact and in harmony inside the hall as he departs.42 Ibid., pp. 52–53. Fifty years later, when Beowulf himself becomes the king ruling inside a great hall, a monster arrives again, this time a dragon spewing fire and death, and suddenly Beowulf’s glorious hall burns to ashes. For the third time, and this time as an old man, Beowulf must prove his worth. Sadness and an increasing resignation to the transience of life permeate the last part of the poem,43 Ibid., pp. 53–54. and it is in Beowulf’s confrontation with the dragon that the meaning of the battles with monsters becomes clear. If we are not vigilant, we humans can become part of the monster world; we can become wolves. The figures of Unferth and Heremod and Thryth all illustrate the point. A man who kills his brother, as Cain did Abel, is condemned to a life of monstrosity; a king who keeps his gifts to himself is not king in his monstrosity; and a queen who violates the rules of reciprocity is a monstrous parody of a true queen.44 Ibid., p. 56. “The monster is, therefore, not just the threat from without. You bolt your door against it, but it’s already there behind you.”45 “Uhyret er altså ikke alene trusselen om angreb udefra. Man bolter sin dør imod det, og så står det der allerede bag ens ryg.” Ibid., p. 56.

We find our meaning in confronting the monstrous; we define our place in an otherwise meaningless world by facing the threat that is the meaninglessness, the confusion, the chaos. No human being can avoid this condition. You can kill the threat by giving in to a Hitler or Stalin or a rigid ideology, but you dehumanize yourself at the same time. Or you can face what threatens you in the hour of the wolf before dawn when you wake up helplessly alone in a world that has lost all proportion, as Marianne does toward the end of Ingmar Bergman’s television series Scenes from a Marriage (1973).46 Ibid., p. 60. Hamlet, too, has to take action so that everything could make sense again, and Christ faces the demon of doubt and hesitancy in the Garden of Gethsemane before his crucifixion. Beowulf, then, largely concerns the nightmare situation that we all find ourselves in. It is epic, and it is

In the fourth chapter, Haarder deals with the meeting of the native Germanic and Latin Christian traditions in the OE elegies, a meeting graphically illustrated by “The Franks Casket,” where one panel depicting the Adoration of the Magi is juxtaposed to another depicting the revenge of Weyland, the Germanic smith.48 Ibid., pp. 69–70. It is also seen in the story of Aldhelm on the bridge over the river Avon reciting OE poetry49 Ibid., pp. 70–72. and in Bede’s story of the conversion of King Edwin of Northumbria, who – like Blaise Pascal (1623–62) and Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)50 Ibid., pp. 72–74. – describes life as “a limited field in the limitlessness of eternity.”51 “et afgrænset felt i uendelighedens grænseløshed.” Ibid., p. 74. These three scenes lead us to a kind of poetry, the elegy, that differs from the heroic.52 Ibid., p. 76. Elements of the elegiac inhere in Beowulf, of course, as in “The Lay of the Last Survivor,” but in the OE elegies “Deor,” “The Ruin,” “The Wanderer,” and “The Seafarer,” something new transpires as a result of the contact between the native Germanic and Christian traditions.53 Ibid., p. 77. In “Deor,” the speaker recollects scenes of defeat and misery from the heroic tradition and observes that his own tragic situation as an exiled poet can resolve itself as well. His despair, then, stops before it truly begins, and he finds consolation in poetry.54 Ibid., p. 79. The other three poems are all anonymous and therefore not bound to a particular situation, and all express the theme of exile.55 Ibid., p. 79. In all three, the hall is absent; it is mere useless rubble in “The Ruin” and a distant memory for the speakers of “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer,”56 Ibid., pp. 79–80. whose alienation is strikingly expressed through their own words and through descriptions of nature and the sea.57 Ibid., pp. 81–82. Both “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer” have “The Ruin” incorporated into them, because in both the speaker seeks a lost hall where all the joys of life can be experienced.58 Ibid., p. 83. Both in this regard are traditional Germanic laments, but both differ from that tradition in that the speakers ultimately see the futility of yearning for earthly, transitory things. The wise man understands that “truly no joy for the alienated is found on this earth. One’s gaze must be turned elsewhere.”59 “virkelig ikke findes nogen glæde for den fremmedgjorte på denne jord. Blikket må vendes andetsteds hen.” Ibid., p. 86. This brings us back to the juxtaposed scenes on “The Franks Casket,” the meeting of two traditions. In the best OE poetry, as in “The Seafarer” and “The Wanderer,” the two unify to create something new, the goal of which is not earthly fame but heavenly consolation.60 Ibid., pp. 92–93.

Haarder returns to the theme of the epic life in his fifth and final chapter on “The Battle of Maldon,” a full translation of which he includes in an appendix to the book. The poem differs from Beowulf in multiple ways, he observes, including the dates of the poems themselves and the dates of what they depict. But each poem is heroic; each reflects social norms and a view of life remarkably similar to that reflected in the other poem61 Ibid., p. 97. and in Tacitus’ Germania 900 years before “The Battle of Maldon.”62 Ibid., p. 121. “The Battle of Maldon” is about action, obviously, but more than that, it is about the resolve, hardness of thought, and strength of spirit behind that action.63 Ibid., p. 116. It is about the power of resistance, the epic life, and that central theme of the poem helps explain its first line – “was broken” – and its last: “That was not the Godric who fled from the battle.” The shield wall was broken, the Anglo-Saxons were defeated at Maldon, but their spirit remained intact except in those like the cowardly Godric.64 Ibid., pp. 116–18. The poem’s form and function, like a sword and the hand that wields it, are one.65 Ibid., p. 119.

Det episke liv is a powerful book. Because it explicitly connects OE and ON poetic traditions, anchors the insights of OE poetry to specific modern works of art from Hamlet to Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage, and ties the central OE and ON epic value of resilience and resistance against the monsters in life – the Grendels, the dragons, the Hitlers and Stalins – it has continuing currency in Denmark. It was understandably reproduced as an e-book in 2022, over four decades after its original publication.

Chapter 4 of Det germanska spåret offers an overview of OE poetry, beginning with gnomic verse, riddles, and charms, examples of which we also find in ON and OHG, and that were part of oral-traditional literature even if they are preserved in manuscripts produced in monasteries.67 Det germanska spåret, pp. 34–35. Of the longer poems, the remarkable “The Dream of the Rood” is reminiscent of some of the riddles in its being a prosopopoeia and contains an unusual representation of Christ’s suffering “almost as a mystical act of love between the Savior – depicted as a young hero – and the ostensibly dead tree that carries Him into death.”68 “nästan som en mystisk kärleksakt mellan frälsaren – skildrad som en ung hjälte – och det endast skenbart döda träd som bär honom in i döden.” Den germanska spåret, p. 36. The elegies also stand out among OE longer poems and have no real equivalents in other European lan guages, even though ON does have similar texts where a heroic person, usually a woman, gives voice to her sorrow. The OE genre’s strength lies in its concrete, dark descriptions of discordant situations, and the most famous of the elegies are “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer.” Both make use of the ubi sunt motif to emphasize the speakers’ sense of loss.69 Ibid., pp. 36–37. Both emphasize the speakers’ achieving consolation by distancing themselves from the world.70 Ibid., p. 37.

Lönnroth also touches on the OE religious epics, such as Andreas, and observes that in them, Christ, the Apostles, and the heroes in both the Old and New Testaments are conceived of as warriors in the same style as Beowulf, Ingeld, and Sigurd Fafnesbane.71 Ibid., p. 38. The heroic characteristics of these narratives lead him finally to discuss short heroic poems such as “Widsith,” in which the narrator functions much as Norna-Gest does for Olav Tryggvason’s army in the Icelandic sagas – he, too, is said to have lived several hundred years72 Ibid., pp. 40–41. – and “The Battle of Maldon” in preparation for a chapter devoted to Beowulf. “The Battle of Maldon,” he writes, is a powerful, gripping text about men defying death and fighting a hopeless battle against fate;73 Ibid., p. 41. in it, “belief in destiny, honor of warriors, and Christian piety unite into an indissoluble whole.”74 “Ödestro, krigarära och kristen fromhet förenas till en ouplöslig helhet.” Ibid., p. 42.

In Beowulf, the only work in all Germanic literature that can be compared in scope and literary luminosity with classical epics such as The Aeneid, we find a similar indissoluble whole. Emerging from an oral-traditional past, the poem has come down to us as a monastic brother’s free, Christian rendition of it. Grendel is a diabolical creature of the race of Cain, the Danes make sacrifices to the pagan gods and do not know the true God, but Hrothgar and Beowulf are noble heathens who know there is a higher, singular power.75 Ibid., pp. 43–44. Grendel and his mother are reminiscent of the heathen cannibals who attack Christ’s apostles in Andreas, the OE verse saint’s life of St. Andrew. And Beowulf’s victory over them is “a divine victory of the damned followers of Satan.”76 “en gudomlig seger över Satans fördömda anhang,” Ibid., p. 47. The dragon is likewise aligned with demonic forces, this time directed against Beowulf’s own kingdom.77 Ibid., p. 48. His and Wiglaf’s slaying of the dragon represents the triumph of good over evil, and the poem thus becomes a clear witness to how easily pagan text and Christian worldview could be united.78 Ibid., p. 52.

Like Haarder’s treatment of OE literature in Det episke liv, Lönnroth’s highlights the connections between it and both the ON tradition and modernity, making that literature relevant to a contemporary audience. The theme of the relevance of OE literature is one that grows stronger throughout the history of the Scandinavian engagement in OE prose and, especially, poetry.