R. W. CHAMBERS

Dey mout er bin two deloojes: en den agin dey moutent. Uncle Remus, The Story of the Deluge.

CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1921

TO

PROF. WILLIAM WITHERLE LAWRENCE

Dear Prof. Lawrence,

When, more than four years ago, I asked you to allow me to dedicate this volume to you, it was as a purely personal token of gratitude for the help I had received from what you have printed, and from what you have written to me privately.

Since then much has happened: the debt is greater, and no longer purely personal. We in this country can never forget what we owe to your people. And the self-denial which led them voluntarily to stint themselves of food, that we in Europe might be fed, is one of many things about which it is not easy to speak. Our heart must indeed have been hardened if we had not considered the miracle of those loaves. But I fear that to refer to that great debt in the dedication to this little book may draw on me the ridicule incurred by the poor man who dedicated his book to the Universe.

Nevertheless, as a fellow of that College which has just received from an American donor the greatest benefaction for medical research which has ever been made in this country of ours, I may rejoice that the co-operation between our nations is being continued in that warfare against ignorance and disease which some day will become the only warfare waged among men.

Sceal hring-naca ofer heafu bringan

lāc ond luf-tācen. Ic þā lēode wāt

ge wið fēond ge wið frēond fæste geworhte,

ǣghwæs untǣle ealde wīsan.

R. W. C.

{vii}

PREFACE

I have to thank various colleagues who have read proofs of this book, in whole or in part: first and foremost my old teacher, W. P. Ker; also Robert Priebsch, J. H. G. Grattan, Ernest Classen and two old students, Miss E. V. Hitchcock and Mrs Blackman. I have also to thank Prof. W. W. Lawrence of Columbia; and though there are details where we do not agree, I think there is no difference upon any important issues. If in these details I am in the right, this is largely due to the helpful criticism of Prof. Lawrence, which has often led me to reconsider my conclusions, and to re-state them more cautiously, and, I hope, more correctly. If, on the other hand, I am in the wrong, then it is thanks to Prof. Lawrence that I am not still more in the wrong.

From Axel Olrik, though my debt to him is heavy, I find myself differing on several questions. I had hoped that what I had to urge on some of these might have convinced him, or, better still, might have drawn from him a reply which would have convinced me. But the death of that great scholar has put an end to many hopes, and deprived many of us of a warm personal friend. It would be impossible to modify now these passages expressing dissent, for the early pages of this book were printed off some years ago. I can only repeat that it is just because of my intense respect for the work of Dr Olrik that, where I cannot agree with his conclusions, I feel bound to go into the matter at length. Names like those of Olrik, Bradley, Chadwick and Sievers carry rightly such authority as to make it the duty of those who differ, if only on minor details, to justify that difference if they can.

From Dr Bradley especially I have had help in discussing various of these problems: also from Mr Wharton of the British Museum, Prof. Collin of Christiania, Mr Ritchie Girvan of Glasgow, and Mr Teddy. To Prof. Brøgger, the Norwegian state-antiquary, I am indebted for permission to reproduce photographs of the {viii}Viking ships: to Prof. Finnur Jónsson for permission to quote from his most useful edition of the Hrólfs Saga and the Bjarka Rímur, and, above all, to Mr Sigfús Blöndal, of the Royal Library of Copenhagen, for his labour in collating with the manuscript the passages quoted from the Grettis Saga.

Finally, I have to thank the Syndics of the University Press for undertaking the publication of the book, and the staff for the efficient way in which they have carried out the work, in spite of the long interruption caused by the war.

R. W. C.

April 6, 1921.

{ix}

CONTENTS

PLATES

{xii}

GENEALOGICAL TABLES

The names of the corresponding characters in Scandinavian legend are added in italics; first the Icelandic forms, then the Latinized names as recorded by Saxo Grammaticus.

(1) THE DANISH ROYAL FAMILY

Scyld Scēfing [Skjǫldr, Skyoldus] | Bēowulf [not the hero of the poem] | Healfdene [Halfdan, Haldanus] | .—. | | | | Heorogār Hrōðgār [Hróarr[1], Roe], Hālga [Helgi, a daughter [no Scandinavian mar. Wealhþēow Helgo] [Signy] parallel] | | | .—. | | | | | | Heoroweard Hrēðrīc Hrōðmund Frēawaru Hrōðulf [Hjǫrvarðr, [Hrærekr, mar. [Hrólfr Hiarwarus: Røricus: Ingeld Kraki, but not not Roluo] recognized as recognized belonging as a son of to this family] Hroarr]

(2) THE GEAT ROYAL FAMILY

Hrēðel Wǣgmund | | .—. .—. | | | | | | Herebeald Hæðcyn Hygelāc, mar. Hygd a daughter, mar. Ecgþēow Wēohstān | | | .—. Bēowulf Wīglāf | | a daughter, Heardrēd mar. Eofor

(3) THE SWEDISH ROYAL FAMILY

Ongenþēow | .—. | | Onela Ōhthere [Óttarr] [Áli, not recognized | as belonging to this .—. family] | | Eanmund Ēadgils [Aðils[2], Athislus]

{1}

CHAPTER I

THE HISTORICAL ELEMENTS

Section I. The Problem.

The unique MS of Beowulf may be, and if possible should be, seen by the student in the British Museum. It is a good specimen of the elegant script of Anglo-Saxon times: "a book got up with some care," as if intended for the library of a nobleman or of a monastery. Yet this MS is removed from the date when the poem was composed and from the events which it narrates (so far as these events are historic at all) by periods of time approximately equal to those which separate us from the time when Shakespeare's Henry V was written, and when the battle of Agincourt was fought.

To try to penetrate the darkness of the five centuries which lie behind the extant MS by fitting together such fragments of illustrative information as can be obtained, and by using the imagination to bridge the gaps, has been the business of three generations of scholars distributed among the ten nations of Germanic speech. A whole library has been written around our poem, and the result is that this book cannot be as simple as either writer or reader might have wished.

The story which the MS tells us may be summarized thus: Beowulf, a prince of the Geatas, voyages to Heorot, the hall of Hrothgar, king of the Danes; there he destroys a monster Grendel, who for twelve years has haunted the hall by night and slain all he found therein. When Grendel's mother in revenge makes an attack on the hall, Beowulf seeks her out and kills her also in her home beneath the waters. He then {2}returns to his land with honour and is rewarded by his king Hygelac. Ultimately he himself becomes king of the Geatas, and fifty years later slays a dragon and is slain by it. The poem closes with an account of the funeral rites.

Fantastic as these stories are, they are depicted against a background of what appears to be fact. Incidentally, and in a number of digressions, we receive much information about the Geatas, Swedes and Danes: all which information has an appearance of historic accuracy, and in some cases can be proved, from external evidence, to be historically accurate.

Section II. The Geatas—their Kings and their Wars.

Beowulf's people have been identified with many tribes: but there is strong evidence that the Geatas are the Götar (O.N. Gautar), the inhabitants of what is now a portion of Southern Sweden, immediately to the south of the great lakes Wener and Wetter. The names Geatas and Gautar correspond exactly[3], according to the rules of O.E. and O.N. phonetic development, and all we can ascertain of the Geatas and of the Gautar harmonizes well with the identification[4].

We know of one occasion only when the Geatas came into violent contact with the world outside Scandinavia. Putting together the accounts which we receive from Gregory of Tours and from two other (anonymous) writers, we learn that a piratical raid was made upon the country of the Atuarii (the O.E. Hetware) who dwelt between the lower Rhine and what is now the Zuyder Zee, by a king whose name is spelt in a variety of ways, all of which readily admit of identification with that of the Hygelac of our poem[5]. From the land of the Atuarii this king carried much spoil to his ships; but, remaining on shore, he was overwhelmed and slain by the army which the {3}Frankish king Theodoric had sent under his son to the rescue of these outlying provinces; the plunderers' fleet was routed and the booty restored to the country. The bones of this gigantic king of the "Getae" [presumably = Geatas] were long preserved, it was said, on an island near the mouth of the Rhine.

Such is the story of the raid, so far as we can reconstruct it from monkish Latin sources. The precise date is not given, but it must have been between A.D. 512 and 520.

Now this disastrous raid of Hygelac is referred to constantly in Beowulf: and the mention there of Hetware, Franks and the Merovingian king as the foes confirms an identification which would be satisfactory even without these additional data[6].

Our authorities are: (1) Gregory of Tours (d. 594): His ita gestis, Dani cum rege suo nomine Chlochilaico evectu navale per mare Gallias appetunt. Egressique ad terras, pagum unum de regno Theudorici devastant atque captivant, oneratisque navibus tam de captivis quam de reliquis spoliis, reverti ad patriam cupiunt; sed rex eorum in litus resedebat donec naves alto mare conpraehenderent, ipse deinceps secuturus. Quod cum Theudorico nuntiatum fuisset, quod scilicet regio ejus fuerit ab extraneis devastata, Theudobertum, filium suum, in illis partibus cum valido exercitu et magno armorum apparatu direxit. Qui, interfecto rege, hostibus navali proelio superatis opprimit, omnemque rapinam terrae restituit. The name of the vanquished king is spelt in a variety of ways: Chlochilaichum, Chrochilaicho, Chlodilaichum, Hrodolaicum. See Gregorii episcopi Turonensis Historia Francorum, p. 110, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica (Scriptores rerum merovingicarum, I). (2) The Liber Historiae Francorum (commonly called the Gesta Francorum):

In illo tempore Dani cum rege suo nomine Chochilaico cum navale hoste per alto mare Gallias appetent, Theuderico paygo [i.e. pagum] Attoarios vel alios devastantes atque captivantes plenas naves de captivis alto mare intrantes rex eorum ad litus maris resedens. Quod cum Theuderico nuntiatum fuisset, Theudobertum filium suum cum magno exercitu in illis partibus dirigens. Qui consequens eos, pugnavit cum eis caede magna atque prostravit, regem eorum interficit, preda tullit, et in terra sua restituit. The Liber Historiae Francorum was written in 727, but although so much later than Gregory, it preserves features which are wanting in the earlier historian, such as the mention of the Hetware (Attoarii). Note too that the name of the invading king is given in a form which {4}approximates more closely to Hygelac than that of any of the MSS of Gregory: variants are Chrochilaico, Chohilaico, Chochilago, etc. See Monumenta Germaniae Historica (Scriptores rerum merovingicarum, II, 274). (3) An anonymous work On monsters and strange beasts, appended to two MSS of Phaedrus.

Et sunt [monstra] mirae magnitudinis: ut rex Huiglaucus qui imperavit Getis et a Francis occisus est. Quem equus a duodecimo anno portare non potuit. Cujus ossa in Reni fluminis insula, ubi in Oceanum prorumpit, reservata sunt et de longinquo venientibus pro miraculo ostenduntur. This treatise was first printed (from a MS of the tenth century, in private possession) by J. Berger de Xivrey (Traditions tératologiques, Paris, 1836, p. 12). It was again published from a second MS at Wolfenbüttel by Haupt (see his Opuscula II, 223, 1876). This MS is in some respects less accurate, reading Huncglacus for Huiglaucus, and gentes for Getis. The treatise is assigned by Berger de Xivrey to the sixth century, on grounds which are hardly conclusive (p. xxxiv). Haupt would date it not later than the eighth century (II, 220). The importance of this reference lies in its describing Hygelac as king of the Getae, and in its fixing the spot where his bones were preserved as near the mouth of the Rhine[7].

But if Beowulf is supported in this matter by what is almost contemporary evidence (for Gregory of Tours was born only some twenty years after the raid he narrates) we shall probably be right in arguing that the other stories from the history of the Geatas, their Danish friends, and their Swedish foes, told with what seems to be such historic sincerity in the different digressions of our poem, are equally based on fact. True, we have no evidence outside Beowulf for Hygelac's father, king Hrethel, nor for Hygelac's elder brothers, Herebeald and Hæthcyn; and very little for Hæthcyn's deadly foe, the Swedish king Ongentheow[8].

And in the last case, at any rate, such evidence might {5}fairly have been expected. For there are extant a very early Norse poem, the Ynglinga tal, and a much later prose account, the Ynglinga saga, enumerating the kings of Sweden. The Ynglinga tal traces back these kings of Sweden for some thirty reigns. Therefore, though it was not composed till some four centuries after the date to which we must assign Ongentheow, it should deal with events even earlier than the reign of that king: for, unless the rate of mortality among early Swedish kings was abnormally high, thirty reigns should occupy a period of more than 400 years. Nothing is, however, told us in the Ynglinga tal concerning the deeds of any king Angantyr—which is the name we might expect to correspond to Ongentheow[9].

But on the other hand, the son and grandson of Ongentheow, as recorded in Beowulf, do meet us both in the Ynglinga tal and in the Ynglinga saga.

According to Beowulf, Ongentheow had two sons, Onela and Ohthere: Onela became king of Sweden and is spoken of in terms of highest praise[10]. Yet to judge from the account given in Beowulf, the Geatas had little reason to love him. He had followed up the defeat of Hygelac by dealing their nation a second deadly blow. For Onela's nephews, Eadgils and Eanmund (the sons of Ohthere), had rebelled against him, and had taken refuge at the court of the Geatas, where Heardred, son of Hygelac, was now reigning, supported by Beowulf. Thither Onela pursued them, and slew the young king Heardred. Eanmund also was slain[11], then or later, but Eadgils escaped.

It is not clear from the poem what part Beowulf is supposed to have taken in this struggle, or why he failed to ward off disaster from his lord and his country. It is not even made clear whether or no he had to make formal submission to the hated Swede: but we are told that when Onela withdrew he succeeded to the vacant throne. In later days he took his revenge upon Onela. "He became a friend to Eadgils in his distress; he supported the son of Ohthere across the broad water with men, with warriors and arms: he wreaked his {6}vengeance in a chill journey fraught with woe: he deprived the king [Onela] of his life."

This story bears in its general outline every impression of true history: the struggle for the throne between the nephew and the uncle, the support given to the unsuccessful candidate by a rival state, these are events which recur frequently in the wild history of the Germanic tribes during the dark ages, following inevitably from the looseness of the law of succession to the throne.

Now the Ynglinga tal contains allusions to these events, and the Ynglinga saga a brief account of them, though dim and distorted[12]. We are told how Athils (=Eadgils) king of Sweden, son of Ottar (=Ohthere), made war upon Ali (=Onela). By the time the Ynglinga tal was written it had been forgotten that Ali was Athils' uncle, and that the war was a civil war. But the issue, as reported in the Ynglinga tal and Ynglinga saga, is the same as in Beowulf:

"King Athils had great quarrels with the king called Ali of Uppland; he was from Norway. They had a battle on the ice of Lake Wener; there King Ali fell, and Athils had the victory. Concerning this battle there is much said in the Skjoldunga saga."

From the Ynglinga saga we learn more concerning King Athils: not always to his credit. He was, as the Swedes had been from of old, a great horse-breeder. Authorities differed as to whether horses or drink were the death of him[13]. According to one account he brought on his end by celebrating, with immoderate drinking, the death of his enemy Rolf (the Hrothulf of Beowulf). According to another:

"King Athils was at a sacrifice of the goddesses, and rode his horse through the hall of the goddesses: the horse tripped under him and fell and threw the king; and his head smote a stone so that the skull broke and the brains lay on the stones, and that was his death. He died at Uppsala, and there was laid in mound, and the Swedes called him a mighty king."

{7}

There can, then, hardly be a doubt that there actually was such a king as Eadgils: and some of the charred bones which still lie within the gigantic "King's mounds" at Old Uppsala may well be his[14]. And, though they are not quite so well authenticated, there can also be little doubt as to the historic existence of Onela, Ohthere, and even of Ongentheow.

The Swedish Kings. The account in the Ynglinga saga of the fight between Onela and Eadgils is as follows: Aðils konungr átti deilur miklar við konung þann, er Áli hét inn upplenzki: hann var ór Nóregi. Þeir áttu orrostu á Vænis ísi; þar fell Áli konungr en Aðils hafði sigr; frá þessarri orrostu er langt sagt í Skjǫldunga sǫgu. (Ynglinga saga in Heimskringla, ed. Jónsson, Kjøbenhavn, 1893, I, 56.) The Skjoldunga saga here mentioned is an account of the kings of Denmark. It is preserved only in a Latin abstract. Post haec ortis inter Adilsum illum Sveciae regem et Alonem Opplandorum regem in Norvegia, inimicitiis, praelium utrinque indicitur: loco pugnae statuto in stagno Waener, glacie jam obducto. Ad illud igitur se viribus inferiorem agnoscens Rolphonis privigni sui opem implorat, hoc proposito praemio, ut ipse Rolpho tres praeciosissimas res quascunque optaret ex universo regno Sveciae praemii loco auferret: duodecim autem pugilum ipsius quilibet 3 libras auri puri, quilibet reliquorum bellatorum tres marcas argenti defecati. Rolpho domi ipse reses pugilos

suos duodecim Adilso in subsidium mittit, quorum etiam opera is alioqui vincendus, victoriam obtinuit. Illi sibi et regi propositum praemium exposcunt, negat Adilsus, Rolphoni absenti ullum deberi praemium, quare et Dani pugiles sibi oblatum respuebant, cum regem suum eo frustrari intelligerent, reversique rem, ut gesta est, exponunt. (See Skjoldungasaga i Arngrim Jonssons Udtog, udgiven af Axel Olrik, Kjøbenhavn, 1894, p. 34 [116].) There is also a reference to this battle on the ice in the Kálfsvísa, a mnemonic list of famous heroes and their horses. It is noteworthy that in this list mention is made of Vestein, who is perhaps the Wihstan of our poem, and of Biar, who has been thought (very doubtfully) to correspond to the O.E. Beaw. Dagr reiþ Drǫsle en Dvalenn Móþne... Ále Hrafne es til íss riþo, enn annarr austr und Aþilse grár hvarfaþe geire undaþr. Bjǫrn reiþ Blakke en Biarr Kerte, Atle Glaume en Aþils Slungne... Lieder der Edda, ed. Symons and Gering, i, 221-2. "Ale was on Hrafn when they rode to the ice: but another horse, a grey