Who was Beowulf and was he real?
By Dena Bain Taylor
Upsalla Helmet
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. 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 young Beowulf sails with his warband to Denmark and saves the kingdom of Hrothgar 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 (1172 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, Wiglaf the son of Weohstan. 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. It’s a weighty counterpoint to the beginning of his tale, where he’s surrounded by loyal companions and welcomed as family by Hrothgar the Shield-Dane and Beowulf’s uncle Hygelac the Geat, two kings at the height of their powers.
The poet devotes exactly ten lines to what happens in between the two stories: Beowulf succeeds his uncle Hygelac as king of the Geats, rules his land well for fifty winters, and grows old and wise. And then the dragon wakes. It was that gap that first got me thinking — what was the turning point in Beowulf’s life and career as a hero-king? I’d also long wondered, is Beowulf just a fictional character in an Anglo-Saxon poem — a 10th century version of a Marvel comics Avenger, if you will? Or does the monster-killing hero in fact represent some real Scandinavian prince?
Hornboro by Viking Ship Prow Carving
For the longest time, everyone assumed he was a piece of fiction. That’s because everyone ‘knew’ history is a recitation of facts about the actions of (mainly) men, recorded in the solidity of documents and images. But as we’ve come to understand the nature of oral traditions of transmitting history, we’ve come to see what a layered enterprise that can be. Oral traditions pass on much more than ‘fact.’ Within the stories of people and events are embedded levels of physical, spiritual, cultural and social reality that frequently include elements of what we would call the fantastic. This is especially true of cultures with shamanic traditions, such as the one the Beowulf poet wrote about. I’m reminded of something some prof at university once told me, about one of the popes who, in the same historical document, relates the story of a visiting envoy right beside the story of a ghostly visitation. His contemporaries wouldn’t have blinked at the juxtaposition, accepting the two accounts as equally true. For the original audience of the Beowulf poem, the juxtaposition of monsters and politics presented no dissonance at all.
So Beowulf’s historical reality has long been the subject of scholarly dispute but there’s a very strong argument that he was in fact a sixth century king whose people, the Gauta, lived in what is now the west coast of southern Sweden and were soon after conquered by the Swedes (or Svea). The argument rests on the presence in the poem of historical events and persons recorded elsewhere; the existence of similar characters in the saga literature; and the accurate navigational information given in the poem.
The story of Bödvar Bjarki, a character who’s very like Beowulf, is told in two sources in the saga literature, the c.14th-century prose Hrolf Kraki’s saga, and the fragmentary Bjarkamál. Widely separated in time and space, the three tales independently transmit an oral history around many of the same characters, settings and events, and all include a heroic warrior whose bearlike name and nature place him within the magical-ecstatic warrior tradition of pagan Northern Europe. Beowulf’s name is an Anglo-Saxon kenning for bear (beo + wulf = bee + wolf = hunter of bees = bear), and his greatest successes in battle come not with the swords that break and betray him but from his crushing strength. In Hrolf Kraki’s saga, Bödvar Bjarki, son of the man-bear Bjorn, shape-shifts into bear form in an unsuccessful attempt to save his people. It echoes Beowulf’s own tragic failure in the fight against the dragon.
In Bjarkamál, Bödvar Bjarki goes into a trance while his spirit, in the form of a monstrous bear, helps his king Hrólf in battle. This was a society in which shamanism had multiple sociocultural dimensions, wielding not only spiritual and social but also military and political power.
The Beowulf poem was written in 10th century England but set in what is now Denmark and southern Sweden, in a distant 6th century past that was at once fabulous and historical. Though his audience was Anglo-Saxon and Christian, the poet assumed they knew the cultural and political history of pagan Scandinavia (and pagan it still was — it wasn’t until 1008 that a Christian king was baptized in Sweden, at the sacred well at Husaby near Lake Vanern.) The monsters who bookend Beowulf’s heroic life are as integral to the historical narrative as are events within the political realm — 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.
Just a quick note on names here—I’m giving you the names as they appear in the Anglo-Saxon poem, but putting in brackets the Old Norse versions that I used in Bones & Keeps.
The Beowulf poem mentions two historical events that are recorded elsewhere and are relevant to my story. First is the death of Beowulf’s uncle Hygelac [Hugl], a king of the Wedergeats who died around 516 or 523 in an ill-advised raid against the Frisians. In Bones & Keeps, I’ve placed his death at 523. As his nephew and one of his chief warriors, Beowulf was present and the poet recounts that he had tried to talk his uncle out of this particular war. Hygelac’s son Heardred [Hardr] is not remembered as a very wise king — even his mother urged Beowulf to take the throne instead. In the novel I’ve treated Heardred’s decision to aid Eanmund [Emund] and Eadgils [Athil] as his first real test as a warrior-king. And he fails the test. Beowulf, who gave Heardred the good advice to stay out of the affairs of the Swedes, succeeds him.
Greby Four Stones
The second relevant historical event recounted in Beowulf is the fall of Onela [Ale], king of Sweden, at the hands of his nephew Eadgils [Athil] during the Battle on the Ice at Lake Vanern:
In days to come, [Beowulf] contrived to avenge
the fall of his prince [Heardred]; he befriended Eadgils
when Eadgils was friendless, aiding his cause
with weapons and warriors over the wide sea,
sending him men.The feud was settled
on a comfortless campaign when he killed Onela.
(ll.2391-2396, trans. Seamus Heaney)
Klaeber, the great Beowulf editor, dated the death of Onela [Ale] at approximately the year 535; I’ve placed it in 543 in Bones & Keeps. History has not treated Eadgils [Athil Ynglingar] kindly. The sources acknowledge his power, the majesty of his court and his supremacy as a horseman and warrior, but he is recorded by Saxo Grammaticus and others as greedy, grasping and miserly — cardinal sins within Germanic societies.
I’m going to leave the geographic and navigational evidence the Beowulf was a real man for another article because that’s an amazing story in its own right. It’s what led me on my own journey to track Beowulf down the west coast of Sweden to Denmark and then back across Sweden, stopping to find the Battle on the Ice at Lake Vanern, and ending with Uppsala and Stockholm.
