The Women of Beowulf
By Dena Bain Taylor
I’ve been fascinated with the story of Beowulf since I was in second year university. I had fallen madly in lust with a handsome young prof who happened to teach Anglo-Saxon poetry and I took all of his courses over the four years of my degree. Decades later (I won’t say how many), I’m publishing my first novel, Bones & Keeps, a historical fantasy about Beowulf that comes out in October 2020 from Prism Publishers
The story of Beowulf comes down to us in three written sources. The most famous is the epic poem Beowulf, written in Old English in (likely) the early tenth century but telling the story of a sixth century Scandinavian king. I’m fully prepared to argue over drinks that it’s the greatest poem in the history of English literature. In the first 2200 lines of the poem, the noble young Beowulf sails with his warband to Denmark and saves Hrothgar’s kingdom by killing the man-eating monster Grendel, quite spectacularly tearing off its arm and pursuing it to take its head. He follows up by wrestling down and killing Grendel’s equally monstrous mother. In the second part (972 lines), Beowulf is an old king compelled to fight and kill a dragon that has been ravaging his people. He succeeds but is himself killed. There’s an inescapable sadness at the end of Beowulf. For all his greatness as a king and a warden of the land, Beowulf dies alone, deserted by all but one loyal thane. He has no heir to leave his wargear to and he knows that his people, the Geats, are doomed to destruction at the hands of their old enemies the Swedes once they get news of his death.
Ah, but wait, there’s one more person who turns up at the end to weep over the king’s body. An unnamed woman. Stripped of her identity by the poet, we’re left to wonder what her relationship is with the great king. No mother, wives or children are recorded for Beowulf — only this mysterious woman who mourns at his funeral. Wife? Daughter? Lover, perhaps? In Bones & Keeps, where Beowulf navigates a sea of rivals for his throne and a witch-queen sister determined to destroy him, I give him a young daughter named Keana. She is, as he puts it, the only trouble-free female in his life. I’ve imagined that it’s she who mourns his passing, with a love that’s as pure as the love she felt for him as a child.
The saga literature of which Beowulf’s story is a part usually omits the names of women even though they seem to have exercised a considerable degree of ritual and political power in 6th century Scandinavia. Writing the novel gave me much opportunity to reflect on the role of women in the tale of Beowulf.
Events within the political realm are as integral to the Beowulf poem as the monsters who bookend his life. Feuds, wars, invasions, alliances, marriages, the nature of kingship and queenship, all are discussed and illustrated over the course of the poet’s vividly descriptive and exciting account of Beowulf’s heroic battles with his monsters. It’s here that we see the power exerted by women.
For one thing, women had very real power in matters of succession and inheritance. A sister’s son had a greater right to claim the throne than a king’s own son. In Beowulf, Hrothgar’s queen Wealtheow — speaking publicly in the hall before Hrothgar and all his thanes — urges her husband not to adopt Beowulf and make him his heir, as he’s just offered to do, but to favour his sister-son Hrothulf as successor to the Danish throne. And so her husband immediately drops the idea of adopting Beowulf. I couldn’t bring Wealtheow into Bones & Keeps as a character (though she is mentioned) because she belongs to that earlier period of his life. But a central driver of the plot is the fact that Beowulf’s sister-son, Skuld’s son Hring, has at least as much expectation of being named the king’s heir as Beowulf’s own son Siggeir.
Another imposing female presence in Beowulf is Yrsa, a tragic beauty who wields real military and political power as a noblewoman belonging to both the Danish and Swedish royal families. I incorporated her as a character in Bones & Keeps and I think her story alone would make a great Netflix series. It’s complicated but, basically, she unknowingly marries her own father, has a son (the same Hrothulf who’s in line for the Danish throne), flees in horror from Denmark to Sweden as soon as she discovers the truth, and saves herself by agreeing to marry the Swedish king who turns out to be a greedy, grasping asshole. Years later, she must manipulate her husband to save her son from his treachery. It doesn’t end well for anyone.
All the sources of Beowulf’s story share an old problem, that ‘his’tory too often excludes or diminishes the role of women. Luckily, historical fiction and historical fantasy give us the opportunity to dig beneath the surface and bring to light the true agency of our powerful foremothers.