Beowulf poem

Epic Anglo-Saxon literature: Beowulf



The Anglo-Saxon poem "Beowulf" celebrates courage, fidelity, and the ancient German wanderlust which led strong, brave men to seek fame and fortune in far lands. Although no one alive today can really know what life was like 1300 years ago, when the poem was probably put into its present form, the world of the ancients was very different from our world today. People had to travel by foot or horseback. There were no televisions, radios, telephones, or even postal services. Entertainment consisted of whatever the local people could amuse themselves with. Men would often plant their crops early in the spring, leave the farm, and come back in the fall to oversee the harvest.

Often enough, the man would fail to return home. Why? He might have been killed, or died of some illness. Or he could have been caught and enslaved by an enemy, or just a random raider. He might have been imprisoned for some minor crime. Or maybe he just decided that life was better somewhere else. But travel was arduous, if not always dangerous, and it entailed considerable expense. Travelers must still eat, sleep, and have clothes to wear.

So rare men who travelled for a living, moving from court to court, town to town, telling stories were often accorded a special welcome. The local men might bring home interesting stories about their fishing and trading ventures, or they might occasionally have some booty from a successful raid. But the scalds and scops, the professional story-tellers, knew the best stories and they would develop their skills to a point where they could keep an audience's attention.

The "Beowulf" poem is generally acknowledged as being very popular among the Anglo-Saxons. It is not, however, a story about Angles or Saxons. It's a tale about their northern cousins, the Geats, and their eastern cousins, the Danes. The Angles came from Denmark originally, and they were a Danish people. So they must have felt an affinity for Hrothgar and his people. Beowulf would therefore be a popular hero in their hearts.

Although "Beowulf" reveals Christian influences, it originated as a pagan story about pagan heroes. If there was a real Beowulf he most likely had never heard of Christians or Jesus. Or, if he had, he probably was still content to believe in his Germanic gods. And in his time (around the 6th century) it's unlikely the Geats of Sweden had a pantheon much like Snorri Sturleson's Viking gods: Odin, Thor, and Baldur. The Norse pantheon was ancient, but we only really know it from poems and sagas written down many centuries after "Beowulf" had fallen out of favor. And Snorri himself was a Christian. So we really have no pagan literature from the ancient Germans and Scandinavians.

But though Beowulf possesses incredible strength and abilities, he is a representative of a warrior society which was undergoing radical changes and evolution in the 8th century, when the poem was finally written down. "Beowulf" looks back to a time when men were men and monsters were afraid. Warriors could travel across the sea and find a welcome rest, and they all spoke the same language. Within a few generations after the poem was written, eastern England, the regions formerly held by the Angles, would be in the hands of the Danes. Anglo-Saxons would be at war with their cousins from across the sea. The comaraderie expressed in "Beowulf" would never again visit the northern world, not even when King Canture of Denmark finally united England with Scandinavia for a few decades.

Mythology forum

Discuss medieval Europe and medieval literature at the Medieval European Studies Forum
[ SciFi Links ]   [ Andromeda ]   [ Beowulf ]   [ Farscape ]   [ SF Worlds ]
[ Hercules and Xena ]   [ Lord of the Rings ]   [ LoTR Movies ]   [ Hobbit Movie News ]
[ Web Sites ]   [ SciFi Sites ]   [ Balrogs ]   [ The Lost World ]   [ Xena ]