Of the five Nordic countries, only Denmark has produced any extended literary interpretations of
Beowulf. N. F. S. Grundtvig began those interpretations in 1815. In his “Et Par Ord om det nys udkomne angelsaxsiske Digt” (A Few Words about the Recently Published Anglo-Saxon Poem),
1 Translated into English by Mark Bradshaw Busbee as “A Few Words.” Grundtvig primarily responds to a review of Thorkelin’s first edition of the poem. Dependent as the review was on that faulty edition for its description of the poem’s content, it too was faulty. By correcting both Thorkelin and reviewer, Grundtvig produced “the first, mostly accurate published account of the poem’s plot and characters and one of the first deliberations over the poem’s artistic value. These achievements establish Grundtvig’s article as a milestone in
Beowulf scholarship”
2 Ibid., p. 7. and are undoubtedly part of the impetus for Kemp Malone’s having characterized Grundtvig as “[t]he first and greatest of
Beowulf scholars.”
3 Malone, “Grundtvig as Beowulf Critic,” p. 129. As we saw in the Introduction to this book, Grundtvig says of
Beowulf, for example, that “in its plan and execution one traces genuine artistry … It is a beautiful, tastefully ordered and ornamented whole … ”
4 Busbee, “A Few Words,” p. 29, cols. 1027–28. He would move away from such an absolute evaluation of the poem as he grew more familiar with it,
5 Haarder, Beowulf, p. 26. but he maintained his ability to combine his scholarly acumen with his aesthetic sensibility.
Two years later, Grundtvig published his most important literary interpretation of
Beowulf, “Om Bjovulfs Drape” (Concerning the Heroic Praise Poem of Beowulf). In this essay, represented in Shippey and Haarder’s
Beowulf by the summation Grundtvig offers on pp. 271–88 of the original, Grundtvig the scholar identifies Hygelac (Hilac) as Chochilaicus (Chohilac), whom Gregory of Tours claims was killed somewhere in the Netherlands in 512, and thus makes “the most important discovery ever made in the study of
Beowulf.”
6 Chambers, Beowulf: An Introduction, p. 4, note 1.The gain from this small piece of information is considerable for we learn not only that Higelac is a historical person and his Frankish expedition a real event, but we also know in what period the other historical figures and events must belong if they are rightly placed in the poem, and we shall now be pleased to realise that as far as we are able to judge at this stage everything fits together as well as could be expected in any ancient legend. For if Hrodulf is Rolf, he might be expected to reign at the very time when Higelac was killed, seeing that Hrodgar must be supposed to have died before then) [sic], and as we know a son of Ottar (Adils) is thought to have reigned simultaneously with Rolf in Lejre. Now, counting back about fifty years, as we see the poet doing, we get to the middle of the fifth century as the time when the old Hal[v]dan must have died, and it agrees perfectly with this that Hengest, who went to Britain in 449, is mentioned as a hero at the time of Halvdan.
7 Shippey and Haarder, Beowulf, p. 150.Grundtvig had hinted at this identification in 1815
8 Busbee, “A Few Words,” p. 31. and here fully develops it. In a note, he explains that his sources for making the connection were two books by the historian P. F. Suhm.
9 Shippey and Haarder, Beowulf, p. 152. Pointing to Grundtvig’s reliance on secondary sources in 2005, Arne Søby Christensen (1945–), Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Copenhagen, examined the three primary sources on which Suhm based his analysis and found that all three are unreliable. He concluded, therefore, “that Grundtvig’s identification of Hygelac with Chlochilaichus is no longer tenable, and as a consequence the events related in
Beowulf can no longer be placed within a chronology of the sixth century.
Beowulf remains what it always has been: a poem from the past, not a history of the past.”
10 Christensen, “Beowulf, Hygelac og Chlochilaichus,” p. 79. Christensen’s conclusion has not been widely accepted.
Grundtvig the scholar’s insights have withstood the text of time, and so have Grundtvig the poet’s. In the same 1817 article, he reassesses the art of
Beowulf and finds it less perfect than he originally thought. It lacks taste or decorum;
11 Haarder, Beowulf, p. 62. the episodes are tastelessly inserted;
12 Ibid., p. 66. the poem mixes history and folktale producing a lack of internal unity; and the poem consists of two parts producing a lack of external unity.
13 Ibid., p. 73. Nevertheless, in his introduction to his translation of
Beowulf in 1820, Grundtvig states that the poem bodies forth the hostile relationship between truth and falsehood “partly in history, and partly in nature” and that “the stories correspond to this as shadow pictures, in that Grendel functions as the evil spirit of time, the dragon as the evil spirit of nature.”
14 Ibid., p. 75, note 38. In addition, the poem’s style has much to recommend it:
… the language is ingenuous, without the German circumstantiality, and without becoming dark through brevity as so often in the Eddic lays; it is flowery without teeming, like later Icelandic verse, with far-fetched comparisons. Add to this the decency of the poem, its frequent fervour, and its basic religious note, and one will have to grant that it is in every way an excellent monument of the past.
15 Ibid., p. 85, note 64.Haarder cautioned in 1975 that in Grundtvig’s symbolic reading “we are not anywhere near the holistic interpretation advanced by Tolkien, because Grundtvig makes a point of distinguishing between on the one hand
Beowulf, the work of art, and on the other, the poem in which the totality receives a deeper significance” that is mythical.
16 Ibid., pp. 75–76. Tolkien’s famous lecture, therefore, is not “Grundtvig brought up to date,” as Kemp Malone described it.
17 Malone, “Grundtvig as Beowulf Critic,” p. 129. Work on Tolkien’s drafts of “
Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” however, suggests that Grundtvig and Tolkien are much closer in their views of the poem than Haarder believed.
18 Drout, Beowulf and the Critics. Those drafts make clear that Tolkien knew of Grundtvig’s work on the poem and benefited from it in various ways. Busbee summarizes how “through a process of indirect inheritance and direct engagement, Tolkien gathered the most promising seeds of Grundtvig’s thinking on
Beowulf and nurtured them into full blossom. His lecture is both an extension of Grundtvig’s thinking – Grundtvig updated – and a product of his own mind.”
19 Busbee, “Grundtvig and Tolkien,” p. 28.Grundtvig was brought up to date before Tolkien as well. Ludvig Schrøder (1836–1908) was his disciple and published a biography about him as the father of the Danish folk high school in 1900.
20 N. F. S. Grundtvig: Den nordiska folkhögskolans fader: En levnadsskildring (N. F. S. Grundtvig: Father of the Nordic High School: A Description of a Life). He was also a prolific author on other subjects, an influential teacher and administrator, and an imposing man who seemed “brusque and choleric” (
brysk og kolerisk) especially because of his “powerful head that sat so close to his broad shoulders and was surrounded by an abundance of jet-black hair that hid his neck entirely and, as it were, made his bust more immova ble.”
21 “‘det kraftfulde hoved der sad så tæt på de brede skuldre og var omgivet af den kulsorte hårfylde som helt skjulte hans hals og ligesom gjorde hans buste mere ubevægelig’.” Rosenblad, “Ludvig Schrøder.” For twenty-four years, he was co-editor of three periodicals,
Nordisk Maanedsskrift (1871–83),
Historisk Maanedsskrift (1883–88), and
Danskeren (1888–94), and from 1864 to 1906 he was headmaster of Askov, a folk high school that he built into the largest such institution in the Nordic region.
22 Ibid. It was in that capacity that he turned his attention to
Beowulf in his 1875 study
Om Bjovulfs-Drapen: Efter en række foredrag på folkehöjskolen i Askov (The Heroic Poem of Beowulf: From a Series of Lectures at the Folk High School in Askov). This contribution to our understanding of the poem has gone relatively unnoticed.
23 The following discussion of Schrøder’s book is a slightly revised version of my discussion of it in “Nineteenth-Century Scandinavia,” pp. 123–25. Chambers alludes to Schrøder in a footnote;
24 Chambers, Introduction, p. 30. Andreas Haarder alludes in a footnote to Chambers’ footnote;
25 Haarder, Beowulf, p. 97, note 18. Stanley B. Greenfield and Fred C. Robinson in their bibliography list him with a cryptic allusion to Chambers’ note;
26 GR, item 2715. Roberta Frank alludes to Schrøder’s explicating certain scenes in
Beowulf as “foretelling the fall of the house of the Scyldings, the poem’s ominous backdrop”;
27 Frank, The Etiquette of Early Northern Verse, pp. 143–44. and Brad Busbee briefly refers to Schrøder’s work in the context of discussing Grundtvig’s 1820 translation of
Beowulf as a work for young readers.
28 Busbee, “‘A Little Shared Homer’,” pp. 34–35. All but the last deal with Schrøder’s treatment of the Unferth–Hrothgar relationship. The Danish family feud, including the introduction of the treacherous Unferth into the Danish royal household, Chambers claims, was first fully described by Schrøder;
29 Chambers, Introduction, pp. 30–31. In this regard, see Olrik, The Heroic Legends of Denmark, p. 49, note, who was the first to acknowledge the importance of Schrøder’s discovery. Shippey and Haarder agree. Schrøder “was the first modern reader to lay stress on the scene in Heorot in which Unferth is juxtaposed with Hrothgar and Hrothulf, and Wealhtheow addresses her husband, a scene whose implications have formed the basis for almost all twentieth-century criticism.”
30 Shippey and Haarder, Beowulf, p. 372. See also Hall, “England, Denmark, America,” p. 446. Schrøder regards
Beowulf as a work of art comparable to
The Iliad and
The Odyssey, as did Grundtvig before him.
31 Schrøder, Bjovulfs-drapen, p. 48. Despite his dependence on Grundtvig, however, his reading is more elaborate and detailed and convincing than that of his great predecessor, whom scholars such as Malone,
32 Malone, “Grundtvig as Beowulf Critic,” p. 135. George Clark,
33 George Clark, Beowulf (Boston, 1990), p. 11. and S. A. J. Bradley
34 Bradley, “First New-European Literature,” p. 57. have said anticipated Tolkien’s symbolic interpretation of the poem from 1936. Had critics been aware of Schrøder, in fact, 1875 instead of 1936 might have become the traditional turning point in the history of
Beowulf criticism and subsequent scholarship might have become a footnote to Schrøder.
~
Figure 10. Ludvig Schrøder, 1894.
Schrøder’s interpretation is fairly comprehensive. “It is certain,” Schrøder writes, “that there is a connection between the completion of Heorot and the coming of the troll.”
35 “Det kan ikke fejle at der er en sammenhæng imellem Hjorteborgens fuldendelse og troldens komme.” Schrøder, Bjovulfs-drapen, p. 50. He reviews secular and Christian history and finds that the building of such magnificent edifices usually coincides with the decline of a society: the Egyptian pyramids are an example, as are the heathen temples in Athens and Solomon’s temple, which Solomon built in Jerusalem when the glory of Israel was past. The Church of Hagia Sophia was erected in Constantinople as the power of the Greek Church waned and the great monument waited for the Turks “like another Grendel to swallow it.”
36 “Som en anden Grændel for at sluge den.” Ibid., p. 51. And when Leo X built St. Peter’s in Rome, he sold indulgences to help subsidize it, and that was one of the great causes for the Luther’s Reformation.
37 Ibid., p. 51. Heorot is a similar edifice, and Grendel’s descending on it has unmistakable meaning.
Grendel – and this idea actually comes from Grundtvig
38 Haarder, Beowulf, pp. 82–83. – symbolizes sloth or lethargy, which represents the decline of society and which casts sleeping spells over those who inhabit the great hall. Grendel has deprived the Danes not only of Heorot and greatness, but also of the giant sword with its inscription about the flood and the previous owner’s name. That sword represents great deeds past, a symbol of honor captured by sloth;
39 Schrøder, Bjovulfs-drapen, p. 38. Beowulf can return it to Hrothgar, and tries to, but the blade itself melts in Grendel’s blood. This, says Schrøder, means that a time of remarkable achievement will not return to the Danes as a permanent fruit of Beowulf’s great deed.
40 Ibid., p. 41.The dragon’s role in the poem parallels that of Grendel, and his treasure hoard has symbolic value paralleling that of the giant sword.
If the troll broods over the sword, so the dragon broods over the gold. But if the sword is for the Nordic warrior race the natural reflection of their illustrious feats, the gold is the expression in imagery for happiness and joy which can flower under the protection of peace. As the troll Grendel casts sleep on the Danes, the dragon Starkheart casts fire on the Goths. If there is a connection between the sword’s being stolen and sleep’s ruling, there is also a connection between the gold’s being the dragon’s booty and fire’s ruling. The fire may signify evil strife; we still talk, after all, about anger flaring up, about the fire of battle, and about the flame of discord. It is anger and dissension that destroys peace and drives away joy, just as it is sloth that brings achievements to an end.
41 “Når trolden ruger over sværdet, så ruger dragen over guldet. Men er sværdet for Nordens kæmpefolk det naturlige billede på de lysende bedrifter, så er guldet på billedsproget udtrykket for lykken og glæden, der kun blomstrer i fredens skjöd. Når trolden Grændel spyer søvn på de danske, da spyer dragen Stærkhjort ild på Gotherne. Er der sammenhæng imellem dette, at sværdet er røvet, og det, at søvnen råder, så er der tilvisse også sammenhæng imellem det, at guldet er dragens bytte, og det, at ilden råder. Ilden må betyde den onde kiv; vi taler jo også endnu om, at vreden blusser op, om kampens ild og om tvedragts-luen. Det er vreden og splidagtigheden, som forstyrrer freden og fordriver glæden, som det er sløvheden, der bringer bedrifterne til at ophører.” Ibid., p. 43.Schrøder’s reading is holistic, Tolkienesque, and frequently compelling, although also occasionally quaint and fanciful. And it exemplifies Scandinavian Anglo-Saxonism, although it seems not to concern itself with nationalism. It emerged, after all, in the context of Grundtvig’s educational program in the folk high schools that he founded in Denmark, and
Beowulf was being used by Schrøder as the nationalistic reader Grundtvig had hoped it would be. Schrøder concludes his book by affirming its Grundtvigian purpose. Although Grundtvig’s goal of inspiring Scandinavians to embrace
Beowulf was still far from being realized, Schrøder sought it, too, and hoped that “my talk and my writing will contribute a little to that purpose.”
42 “Skulde min tale og min skrift derom gjærne bidrage lidet til.” Ibid., p. 94.The final literary interpretation of
Beowulf from Denmark also marks the chronological end of this history of OE studies in Scandinavia, 2023. Written in Danish, Keld Zeruneith’s
Beowulf: The Tragedy of a Hero: A Reading (
Beowulf. En helts tragedie. En læsning) was first published in the English translation of Paul Russell Garrett. The book consists of five sections that outline the incremental, cumulative argument that Zeruneith constructs based on discussions of the poem, the poet, the hall, Beowulf’s life story, and Beowulf’s legacy. The first two sections concern 1) the poem’s manuscript history as well as aesthetic features deriving from the oral tradition such as ring structure, and 2) the poet, whom Zeruneith considers one of the poem’s two main characters (the other being Beowulf) and “the work’s structuring and compositional consciousness.”
43 Zeruneith, Beowulf: The Tragedy, p. 61. That consciousness is cognizant of the pagan past depicted in the poem, reflected through the prism of the poet’s Christian present, and also “taps into the central characters’ psychological reality.”
44 Ibid., p. 75. The next three sections focus on 3) the hall, 4) Beowulf’s life story, and 5) Beowulf’s legacy. The hall is the arena in which most of the poem takes place and symbolizes the totality of the heroic life. Zeruneith articulates the social norms, such as the importance of the king as ring-giver,
45 Ibid., p. 126. the importance of custom,
46 Ibid., p. 131. and the importance of women, particularly those of high rank as “peace-weavers,”
47 Ibid., pp. 162–73. as he sketches the Scandinavian background of the story, such as its probably taking place in Lejre
48 Ibid., pp. 138–42. and the presence of the earliest Danish kings and their parallels in the ON tradition (for example, Skjöldr/Scyld, Hrólfr Kraki/Hrothulf).
49 Ibid., pp. 142–46. He also discusses “the oscillating semantics” and thematic ramifications of the word
wlenco (daring or pride) in the poem.
50 Ibid., pp. 174–80. See also p. 126. All of the first three richly detailed sections of the book are a prolegomenon to Zeruneith’s intricate, nuanced interpretation of Beowulf, the tragic hero.
Beowulf’s life story is largely an internal one. “Even though psychological insight did not exist in a modern sense in the literature of the time, it is still possible to find something universally psychological in the history of Beowulf’s development.”
51 Ibid., p. 192. It is also possible to find in Beowulf’s story some archetypical patterns. Although details in the poem are sparse, Beowulf seems to have had a traumatic childhood. His nameless mother seems to have died early,
52 Ibid., p. 197. and his maternal uncle Hæthcyn accidentally kills his maternal uncle Herebeald, which leaves his maternal grandfather Hrethel in extreme grief. His grandfather takes him into his home at age seven, and Beowulf’s father, Ecgtheow, then disappears from his life.
53 Ibid., pp. 197–98. He has now lost both parents. Hrethel’s warriors do not think much of Beowulf and humiliate him on the mead bench for his indolence (“
hean wæs længe,” [his humiliation was long], line 2183b), but Hrethel treats him well. Hygelac’s taking over Hrethel’s role with Beowulf after Hrethel’s death prolongs the “loving care he receives from his maternal family,”
54 Ibid., p. 201. which contributes to his inhibition as a child. When he reaches young manhood and hears of Grendel’s depredations in Denmark, he defies Hygelac and sails to Heorot, thus beginning (along with his fighting sea monsters in his youth) a maturation process.
55 Ibid., p. 205. His rejection of the mother (or maternal family) is transformed into the fight with the Terrible Mother (or Grendel’s mother), who tries to destroy the rebel
56 Ibid., p. 207. but fails and is herself killed. Aeschylus’
Oresteia provides proof for the necessity of matricide in the individuation process,
57 Ibid., pp. 209–12. and Hrothgar, whose prideful building of Heorot brought God’s punishment down on the Danes,
58 Ibid., p. 229. is the patriarchal figure meant to be Beowulf’s spiritual father who warns him of the dangers of arrogance, the dangers of
wlenco.
59 Ibid., pp. 232–33. The second part of the poem is a test of whether Beowulf heeded that warning. He did not.
60 Ibid., pp. 237–56.We are left with the impression of a degenerate hero, a king lacking a queen and heir leaving his country to its ruin. From this perspective,
Beowulf is an obituary for the heroic protagonist, whose way of life in its superindividual meaning reflects heroism’s strength and weakness, since is locked in a reactionary pattern of egoism without any transformative ability or even aims beyond increasing one’s reputation. This approach to life, in its reticence, forgoes the possibility of maturing as an individual and ultimately shuns humanity as a whole by following the trails of blood vengeance.
61 Ibid., pp. 275–76.A great strength of Zeruneith’s study is its contextualizing Beowulf within three literary traditions, one a primary source and the other two, secondary: OE with references to a wide range of texts such as “The Wife’s Lament,” the Guthlac poems, “The Voyages of Ohthere and Wulstan,” and Bede; ON with references to a number of Eddic poems, Icelandic sagas, Snorri Sturluson, and Saxo Grammaticus; and classical with references to authors such as Aeschylus, Euripides, and Eumenides and texts such as the Odyssey. Zeruneith also refers to works by Tacitus, Boethius, St. Augustine, and Erich Neumann to help deepen our understanding of his compelling new reading of the poem.