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 The Truth Behind
England’s Oldest Myth

Beowulf

eS 44

JOHN GRIGSBY

WATKINS PUBLISHING
LONDON
 First published in the UK in 2005
Reprinted 2006

Watkins Publishing, Sixth Floor, Castle House,

75-76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QH

Distributed in the USA and Canada by Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016

Text Copyright © John Grigsby 2005

John Grigsby has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
without prior permission in writing from the Publishers

3579108642

Designed and typeset by Paul Saunders

Printed and bound in Great Britain

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

ISBN 13: 978-1-84293-153-0

ISBN 10: 1-84293-153-9

www.watkinspublishing.com
 CONTENTS

©)
List ofIllustrations vil
List ofPlates vil
Acknowledgements Vili

Prologue: Where Now the Horse and Rider?

Introduction: The Keenest for Fame

- Part | OLD ENGLAND 17

CHAPTER I Clans of the Sea Coasts 19

CHAPTER 2 Former Days 26

CHAPTER 3 On the Altars of their Idols 40

CHAPTER 4 In Dread Waters 52

Part Il GODS AND MONSTERS 61

CHAPTER 5 Scyld Scefing 63

CHAPTER 6 The Barley God 75
CHAPTER 7 Preyr 85
CHAPTER 8 The Wagon Ran After 93
CHAPTER 9 Elves and Evil Shades IOI

CHAPTER I0 Choosers of the Slain IIo

Part Ill TO KILL A KING I2I

CHAPTER II _ Royal Obligations 123

CHAPTERI2_ The Hall turned to Ashes 138
CHAPTER 13. The Wandering Inguz 150
CHAPTERI4 A Midwinter Game 162

Part IV BARLEY WOLF 169

CHAPTER I5 The Demon’s Head sigs

CHAPTERI6 The Brimwylf 183

Epilogue: People of the Wolf 196

Notes 208

Appendices
Timeline: 8000 BC-AD 1939 226
Chart 1: The Wuffingas 232
Chart 2: The Geats 232
Chart 3: The Swedes (Scylfings) 233
Chart 4: The Danes (Scyldings) 233
Map 1: Southern Scandinavia in Late Prehistory 234
Map 2: The Age of Migrations (c. AD 400-600) 235
Map 3: The Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (c. AD 600-700) 236

Index
237
 ¢

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1 Petroglyph of solar boat from prehistoric Scandinavia 71

2 Egyptian solar barque 71
3 Petroglyph of man with shield from prehistoric Scandinavia 73
4 Osiris as the growing corn 78
5 The Djed pillar 78
6 The statuette of Freyr from Rallinge 131
7 Horned figure from Gundestrup Cauldron 131
8 Boar-helmed warrior from Viking Torslunda helmet 185
9 Wolf-warrior from Vendel helmet 187
10 Wolf motif from Sutton Hoo purse-clasp 187

LIST OF PLATES
1 First page of the Beowulf manuscript
2 The Neolithic passage-grave at Om, Denmark
3 Inside the grave at Om.
4 The Trundholm sun-chariot
5 The Tollund Man
6 The remains of the girl from Egtved _
7 Goddess (Nerthus?) from the Rynkeby Cauldron
8 The goddess Gefion ploughing Zealand from Sweden
9 A Valkyrie on horseback
to The elves dancing, from an English chapbook
11 The Broddenbjerg Freyr
Lemi) The ‘drowning’ scene from the Gundestrup Cauldron
Ritual burial monuments at Lejre
The site of the Viking hall at Lejre, perhaps once the site of Heorot
Plan of the halls at Lejre
The rays of the sun entering Newgrange on midwinter’s morning
Odin as depicted on a Viking helmet
Odin rides his eight-legged horse Sleipnir, from the Gotland stone
Os The helmet of the Wuffinga king Raedwald, buried at Sutton Hoo
Re
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SS
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Vil
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to my agent, Frances Kelly, who believed in my work and

urged me to continue writing at a point I was despondent; to Michael
Mann for taking a risk; to my editor Matthew Cory for his patience,
his unfailingly helpful suggestions and ability to sort the wheat from
the chaff; to Helga Schtitze at the National Museum of Denmark who
was so kind and helpful to us on our brief visit to the land of the
Scyldings, and without whom we would never have found the ruins of
Heorot or the tomb of the giants at @m; to Brian Bates, Kathleen
Herbert and Richard North without whose pioneering and inspiring
works this book would not have been possible to write; to Paul Dev-
ereux for letting me rant; and, finally, to a certain late professor of
Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, JRR Tolkien, whose books first kindled the
northern-fire within me.
On a personal note, I would like to thank Heidi, for once again
putting up with a husband living more in the Dark Ages than the 21st
century. I hope you read this book, and see where I have been the last
six months - if not, at least read the dedication. Thanks to Chloe, who
took her cousin’s place as ‘the wolf in our living-room’ when our
much-missed Siri left us. Your silent companionship makes the hours
of typing less lonely.

Vili
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 PROLOGUE
Where Now the Horse and Rider?

ROM THE LATE I9TH century onwards a series of archaeological

discoveries were made that seemed to confirm as fact much of
what had previously been thought fanciful in ancient myth and
legend. In the 1870s, Heinrich Schliemann discovered the site of
Homer’s “Troy’ at Hisarlik in Turkey, and in 1900, Sir Arthur Evans
located, near Heraklion in Crete, the mythical palace of King Minos at
Knossos, whose labyrinth had reputedly imprisoned the fabled Mino-
taur. Not only did Evans uncover a maze of labyrinthine passages, but
also evidence of a ritual (and possibly sacrificial) bull cult of which the
tale of the flesh and blood monster was a dim memory. More recently,
in the 1960s, Leslie Alcock’s excavations at Cadbury Castle in Somer-
set, a site reputed by some to be King Arthur’s Camelot, revealed that
it had indeed been the stronghold of a Romano-British warlord.
Increasingly, it seemed reasonable to consider that beneath the patina
of misunderstandings and exaggerations that overlaid most ancient
myths (and which had led to their dismissal as valid historical
sources), there may lie an historical core and thereby clues to the
beliefs of the people that had created them.
But where were the great myths of the English? Arthur, if he
existed, was probably a Celt who had opposed the invading Anglo-
Saxon tribes - and other English figures such as Robin Hood and
Hereward the Wake were more folk heroes than the stuff of proper
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

myth. England’s mythology and the pagan religion that had pro-
duced it seemed to have been lost, the victim of conversion, invasion
and suppression.1
England, it has been said, is the most de-mythologized land in
Europe. It is also often said that it was this lack of a native English
myth and tradition that prompted JRR Tolkien to write The Hobbit
and The Lord of the Rings as a replacement ‘mythology for England’
But, as Tolkien, professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, was fully aware,
some tantalizing fragments of this lost tradition had survived.
Aside from the charms and the snippets of herb-lore and leech-
craft that give us glimpses into the world of magic and superstition
inherited from pre-Christian times, there were also a number of sur-
viving poems. Composed after the advent of Christianity, these poems
offered a glimpse into this lost pagan world through the filter of the
later faith. The most important of these was an Old English poem
that told of the dragon-slayer Beowulf, who single-handedly van-
quished the troll-like monster Grendel and his hideous lake-dwelling
mother, thus ending their 12-year reign of terror wreaked upon the
mead-hall of a Danish king. This tale, set in the original homeland of
the English in Denmark, told of a world in which tribal kings were
buried in ships full of treasure, and where mail-clad warriors boasted
of brave deeds over horns of mead. Yet, like the other extant fragments
of Old English lore, this poem (not translated into modern English
until 1892 - and even then regarded by scholars as a minor folktale
compared to other epics) had not entered popular culture as had the
Arthurian myth.?
The main reason for this cultural void, as far as Saxon tradition
was concerned, can be traced back to the Norman conquest. Prior to
1066, tales such as Beowulf were the mainstay of the Old English
aristocracy, but when the conquest introduced a new ruling class
and a new language, the stories of Arthur, derived from Celtic oral
tradition, replaced them. The figure of Arthur provided the Norman
conquerors with a non-Saxon ideal of British kingship to aspire to,
as depicted in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Brittaniae
(‘The History of the Kings ofBritain’) — a kingship which ruled an empire

2;
 PROLOGUE: WHERE NOW THE HORSE AND RIDER?

extending over much of northern France - matching that of the

Normans.‘ Although the Old English tales no doubt continued to be
told amongst native English speakers, they were never translated into
Norman-French or remoulded, as were the Celtic myths, to fit in with
current courtly ideals, so that in time they faded from memory.
It is probable that some of these Anglo-Saxon tales were, like
Beowulf and the fragments of folk-magic recorded by monks, only
finally to perish when the monastery libraries in which they were
housed were destroyed during the Dissolution. Miraculously, the
Beowulf manuscript escaped both the Dissolution and a subsequent
fire — but it was the only complete epic that did. (Just two pages of one
other Old English epic, the hitherto unknown tale of Waldhere -
Walter of Aquitaine - were discovered in Copenhagen, in 1860, in the
bindings of another ancient book. This is a sobering reminder of the
fragility of recorded tradition.’) The Old English poems Deor and
Widsith allude to many more such stories, some of which, like Waldhere,
can be reconstructed tentatively from continental Germanic litera- °
ture, but the majority of which, like the love story of Maethhild
and Geat, are lost forever. One of the handful of surviving ancient
English poems, The Wanderer, the lament of a warrior exiled from his
hall after the death of his lord, perfectly encapsulates for us this sense
of loss:

Where is the horse gone? Where the rider?

Where the giver of treasure?
Where are the seats at the feast?
Where are the revels in the hall?
Alas for the bright cup!
Alas for the mailed warrior!
Alas for the splendour of the prince!
How that time has passed away, dark under the cover of night,
as if it had never been!
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

‘As if it had never been’ - these words could have been written about
the fate of Old English tradition as a whole. Tolkien adapted the lines
in The Lord of the Rings and set them in heroic verse telling of the faded
glory of the Riders of Rohan, a people he modelled on the Anglo-
Saxons:

Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was
blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harp-string, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the
meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into
shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?”

Beowulf and its associated lore might still be unknown to many

outside academia were it not for Tolkien, who dared to stand alone
from the crowd and defend its worth. In a lecture at the British
academy, ‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics’, Tolkien argued
that it should be studied not only for its language, but also as a work
of art in its own right; its monsters, so reviled by academia, should be
regarded as central to the tale, rather than as embarrassing additions
to what was essentially a saga of warring dynasties and family feuds.*
Tolkien’s defence could not have been timelier. Just three years
later, in 1939, at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, archaeologist Basil Brown
unearthed an entire Anglo-Saxon ship buried within a great burial
mound with a wealth of priceless treasure. This discovery, dated to
the early 7th century, seemed to confirm that the boat burials and
material culture such as the helmets and swords described in Beowulf,
once thought to be imagined or exaggerated by the Dark Age poet,
 PROLOGUE: WHERE NOW THE HORSE AND RIDER?

had actually existed." Perhaps, as with Homer’s Iliad, there was some
fact to the tale; perhaps, a real-life warrior might lie behind the
Beowulf of legend.

* * *

In this book, we examine whether, like the Minotaur at Knossos, there

was more to the monstrous Grendel and his lake-dwelling mother of
the Beowulf story than make-believe. Although generations of scholars
have approached the poem from every conceivable angle, every facet
of content and language, none has considered asking whether, like
the heroes of the poem, these characters might also have had a form
of real historical existence. To scholars, the monsters are either alle-
gories or borrowings from folktale; the one thing they are not is real.
In opposition to this, it will be argued in Beowulf and Grendel that the
poem was not just a fantastical piece of fiction, composed to brighten
a winter’s evening, but the recounting in poetic form of a religious
conflict between two pagan cults in Denmark around aD 500.
This conflict occurred because the religion of the ancestral
English, rather than being identical to that recorded in the later
Viking sources, differed from those of other Germanic peoples in
that, above all other divinities, they worshipped a goddess in whose
sacred lakes human victims were drowned in secret rites. Old English
paganism had much in common with that of the ancient Britons,
being similarly rooted in the ancient megalithic tradition of the
Atlantic coasts of Neolithic Europe. It was a tradition based on the
worship of a dying and resurrecting fertility god and his divine
mother, the legacy of which was the practice of ritual regicide, and the
taking of a sacred intoxicant; all this was tied in with the arcane and
menacing symbolism of the wolf (from which, incidentally, the later
werewolf legend was ultimately derived). And it was when this tradi-
tion encountered that of other northern tribes during the age of
migration that conflict ensued.
Just as Sir Arthur Evans discovered that the Minotaur of Knossos
was not a myth but the dim memory of an ancient bull-cult, so too,
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

behind the seemingly fantastic monsters of the poem, lie the divini-
ties of Old English paganism - a dark goddess and her son/lover. This
radical interpretation not only provides a solution to the problem of
why, when and where the Beowulf poem was written, but it also sheds
new light on the coming of the English to Britain and the ultimate
fate of their pagan religion.

JOHN GRIGSBY
Spring 2005
 INTRODUCTION
The Keenest for Fame

HE Beowulf tale begins with the arrival of a mysterious child -.a

foundling, lacking clothing or wealth - sent over the sea to the
coast of Denmark by powers unseen and unknown. But he has a
name, ‘Scyld Scefing’ (Shield Sheafson), and in time all the kings of
the neighbouring sea-kingdoms who sail the ‘Whale’s road’ are under
his lordship.
When his time comes to leave the world, Scyld’s people send him
back to the ocean upon a great ship, a gold standard above his head -
bedecked with armour, swords and a mound of gold. He leaves his
throne to his son Beow, and he in turn, to his son Healfdane - the
father of four children: a daughter Ursula, and three sons, Heorogar,
Halga and Hrothgar, the last a mighty warrior, who is the next king of
the Scylding line when Healfdane dies.
Hrothgar, great-grandson of Scyld, decides to build a great mead-
hall, greater than any known to man, named ‘Heorot’ (Hart). In time,
it will fall to a blood feud, burned to the ground after the ending of
this tale, but for the moment all is merriment - the noise of feasting,
song and harp drifts from the hearth into the wilds - where it will
soon fall on unwelcome ears.
For dwelling in the marshes and swamps beyond Heorot lies a
monster - a descendant of Cain, kin to such evils as ‘eotenas ond ylfe ond
orcneas (ogres and elves and evil-shades). His name is Grendel. Evil

7
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

swells in his breast, and, as night falls, he strides through the marshes
towards the source of the merriment. The Danes are now sleeping,
their mead-horns empty, and in no state to defend themselves when
Grendel bursts into the hall and snatches thirty warriors, and is gone
into the night - a trail of blood behind him.
The day dawns and Hrothgar sits silently in his chair, wracked
with grief and shock - a position he will adopt again the following day
after Grendel returns for a second night’s feasting. Warriors soon
learn to leave Heorot’s hearthside after the evening light disappears
behind heaven’s bright edge. Hrothgar’s great mead-hall stands
empty and Grendel now has the upper hand. Not only for this night,
but for the next twelve years this fiend haunts the mead-benches - his
monstrous form seen at night on the ‘mistige moras’ (misty moors). He
even rests in the hall itself, under Heorot’s golden roof, the night-time
ruler of Hrothgar’s throne. By day, when the hall once more belongs
to man, the council meets, debating how to rid themselves of this
terror. Some pray at heathen shrines for deliverance, but when help
does arrive, it comes, like Scyld, from over the sea.
Across the Whale’s road, a day’s sail north and east of Heorot,
lies the land of the Geats - a land of lakes and mountains ruled by
Hrethel’s son Hygelac. One day, Hygelac’s sister-son hears of the evil
that threatens Heorot. Beowulf is the name of this man, Hygelac’s
nephew, a man keen for fame. He assembles a fourteen-strong crew, to
sail eastwards to the land of the Scyldings.
From Denmark’s seacliffs, the coastguard spots them and chal-
lenges them on their purpose in Hrothgar’s land. Beowulf, son of
Edgetheow, answers that they are there to aid the Shepherd of the
Danes in overcoming his foe - and so the Geatish warriors, their
helmets adorned with the shapes of boars, are permitted to have audi-
ence with the king.
Grey-haired and haggard, Hrothgar welcomes the Geats and their
leader (whom he knew as a child). Beowulf boasts of his deeds - he has
defeated giants and sea-creatures - and declares he will take on
Grendel single-handed. That night, Danes and Geats together fill
Heorot with song, and the mead-horns are emptied. Wealtheow,

8
 INTRODUCTION: THE KEENEST FOR FAME

Hrothgar’s queen, toasts the Geats, and Beowulf swears on her cup to
defend her people, or die in the attempt.
The sun sets, and slowly the company of Danes disappears from
the hall. Hrothgar leaves, giving over control of his hall to Beowulf.
And so the Geats are alone in the accursed hall, settling down to sleep,
not thinking they will ever rise or see their own homes again, while
across the vast dark expanses of marshland Grendel begins his
approach. |
The iron-clad doors of the hall fly asunder at Grendel’s assault,
and he looks over the hall, from his eyes shines ‘ligge gelicost, leoht
unfaeger (an unlovely light, like that of fire). Warriors he sees, and he
laughs at his quarry, not knowing that his days of feasting on men’s
flesh will soon come to an end.
He seizes one unlucky warrior, bolts down great chunks of flesh,
crunches his bones, and eats every last piece. He stretches out his
hand to grasp another Geat, but his arm is wrenched aside by a grip
stronger than that of any man he has met in Middle Earth. His heart
sinks, and he makes to flee, but Beowulf has him in his hands. Heorot
shakes at their wrestling; warriors, roused by Grendel’s unearthly
screams, run to defend their prince, but their ancestral.swords are
turned back by his enchanted flesh that magically repels all blades.
With a ripping of tendons, Beowulf tears the fiend’s arm and
shoulder from his body - only thus is Grendel able to flee the hall of
Hrothgar and crawl back to his marshy den, where his life will soon
ebb away.
Dawn comes and the monster’s arm is hung from the gable of the
hall as proof of the noble deed, and the trail of blood is there to be fol-
lowed, leading those tracking it to the bubbling black waters of a
mere, now stained with gore. Grendel has vanished beneath the water,
and there dies: ‘In fen freoddo feorh alegde haeddene sawle’ (in his fen-lair
he has laid aside his heathen soul).
Hrothgar rejoices at the sight of the bloody limb. To the deliverer
of his hall he gives horses, armour, a standard of gold and the name
of ‘son’. That eve the hall throngs with song and revelry, as it has not
heard in twelve years. While the scop (storyteller) sings of the story of

4
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

Hengist and Finn, Queen Wealtheow offers Beowulf a rich collar of

gold, as fine as the fabled Brising’s necklace, the Brisingamen, (see
page 50), a precious and princely gift.
But the Danes and Geats rejoice too early, for inhabiting the waste-
lands, doomed to dwell beneath the brackish waters of the bog like all
Cain’s kin, is Grendel’s mother. She leaves her lake-dwelling in search
of vengeance for the life of her son. When she arrives, the hall is
peopled with sleeping forms on which she will exact her revenge.
Unlucky it is for them that the prince of the Geats sleeps this night in
separate quarters - an honoured guest; unlucky for Ashere, Hroth-
gar’s most-loved thane, whom she drags from the hall into the night.
Hrothgar grieves for the loss of his friend, and he tells Beowulf
that he knows who is behind the deed: often a pair of these creatures
had been seen haunting the wolf-slopes: one mannish, the other in
the shape of a woman. Her lair is a dark mere, uncannily lit at night
by a fire under the water, and overhung by groves of gnarled, frost-
covered ash trees. A hart pursued by hounds would rather remain on
the shore and be torn apart than plunge into those waters.
Hygelac’s thane sets out and soon reaches those dreaded groves
and the boiling waters they encompass. Ashere’s severed head by the
cliff’s edge marks this as the place. Beowulf, encased in mail and boar-
adorned helm, takes Hrunting, his wave-patterned sword, in hand,
and dives into the mere. A day’s dive below is the bottom of this dank
pool where the ‘brimwylf’ (lake-wolf) marks his arrival, clasps him in
her claws and drags him into her lair - a dry hall, lit by fire.
The water hag looms over him, Hrunting bites, but she is
unharmed by its steel. Beowulf grasps her shoulder, but the water-
witch throws him to the floor. Straddling his prone body she brings
down her knife, but it meets his mail shirt and does him no harm.
Beowulf sees, amid the weapons and armour that litter the hall, a
massive sword — forged by the race of giants in ancient times. Grasp-
ing it by its golden hilt, he swings it in an arc, taking the head off the
mere-wolf. (On the shore of the mere, the Danes, spying blood,
presume the hero is dead, and leave.)
Beowulf finds the body of Grendel, and claims his head before he

Io
 INTRODUCTION: THE KEENEST FOR FAME

begins his ascent, the head in one hand and in the other the golden
hilt of Hrunting - its coil-patterned blade having melted away like an
icicle from the boiling blood of the monsters.

* * *

Beowulf returns to the land of the Geats a hero, and tells his lord
Hygelac of his deeds. But a death in war awaits his liege-lord, who will
fall against the Frisians and Franks on a foreign shore. Though he is
offered the throne by Hygelac’s widow Hygd, Beowulf declines,
instead nominating Heardred, her son. But death in battle is the son’s
fate, too - killed by Onela, the king of the Swedes, in bloody feud, for
harbouring his nephews Eadgils and Eanmund, and so the Geatish
throne falls at last to Beowulf. As king, he helps Eadgils seize the
Swedish throne from his uncle Onela. He rules Geatland well and
wisely for fifty years, until fate sends him one last monster.
On the headland, above the breakers, lies a vast barrow - its
ancient treasure hoard guarded by a dragon. All men fear to enter that
place, save one - a slave, fleeing from a flogging, his hand alighting on
a golden cup that will make a good peace offering for his master. For
three hundred years, the dragon has watched over this heathen gold,
and this theft rouses his anger. Spewing flames, the beast rises from
his underground lair and ravages Geatland with his fiery anger. He
burns buildings to cinders, even Beowulf’s hall he turns to ash. And
so Edgetheow’s son, Beowulf, strides onward to meet the dragon - his
shield newly forged of fireproof iron -knowing that ‘wyrd ungemete
neal’ (fate was all too near).
From the stone arch in the barrow’s curved side flickers the
dragon’s fire. With a war cry issuing from his throat, Beowulf rushes
into the passage. Coiling and flaming, his adversary approaches, blast-
ing fire as Beowulf’s sword finds bone - but not deep enough. Flames
engulf him, and all but one of his retinue flee to the woods in fear.
Wiglaf, Woexstan’s son, of the Waymunding line - kin to Beowulf -
remains by his side. Wielding in his hands the sword he claimed as
battle spoil against the Swedes, he remembers the gifts of gold given

II
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

freely by his lord in his hall, and swears he would rather die alongside
him than return home a coward.
The dreaded worm spies Wiglaf, and lets fly more flame, destroy-
ing his coat of mail and charring to ash his linden shield, so that he
steps behind the iron shield of Beowulf for protection. Emboldened
by Wiglaf’s bravery, Beowulf strikes at the beast with his sword, but
his arm is too strong for such a weapon, and in his ferocity the blade
breaks.
The fire-drake lunges once more, grasping the Geat’s neck in its
fangs, drawing forth his life-blood. But it has left itself open to
Beowulf’s thane; Wiglaf strikes below the head, and the drake’s fire
falters. Released from the jaws of the dragon, Beowulf reaches for his
knife and stabs the beast. Between their two blows, the dragon is
killed.
But Beowulf is mortally wounded - the dragon’s poison boils in
his breast. He bids Wiglaf to build him a barrow overlooking the sea.
In ten days, the people build a mighty barrow about the pyre on which
the Geat is lain. And with him they bury the dragon’s hoard. Twelve
princes’ sons ride around the barrow, they sing a grief stricken dirge:
they praise his manhood, they raise his name.

cwaedon thaet he waere wyruldcyninga

manna mildest ond monthwaerust,
-leodum lithost ond lofgoernost.

They said he was of all the world’s kings

the gentlest of men, and the most gracious,
the kindest to his people, the keenest for fame.!

* * *

It is exceedingly fortunate that we know the story of Beowulfat all. Not

only do no other manuscripts or poems from the Anglo-Saxon period
so much as mention his name, but the one copy of his tale that has
survived has done so against overwhelming odds. Written in what is

I2
 INTRODUCTION: THE KEENEST FOR FAME

known as the ‘classic’ Anglo-Saxon dialect of Wessex, probably in the

first 15 years of the 11th century, it is reasonable to suppose that for
the first 500 years the manuscript was safely housed in the library of
one of England’s many abbeys. Like thousands of other books,
Beowulf was kept safe and sound until the Dissolution of the Monas-
teries (1536-40) when many thousands of precious and unique man-
uscripts were destroyed ~ some deliberately torn apart and used for
mundane purposes such as wrapping fish and as stoppers for wine
kegs. Fortuitously, the Beowulf manuscript survived, falling into the
hands of Laurence Nowell, dean of Lichfield, from where it passed
into the famed collection of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (1571-1631). In
1700, Cotton’s collection was donated to the public by his grandson
John Cotton and relocated to Ashburnham House in Westminster. In
1731, a fire tore through the aptly named Ashburnham collection,
damaging Beowulf and destroying many other volumes. The manu-
script survived intact (though scalded in places) by being thrown out
of a window. Today, one can see that the edges of the manuscript are
in a poor state —- the spine has completely burned away and each leaf
is now mounted on frames of paper.
Cotton Vitellius A.xv, as the manuscript is known (after its loca-
tion in the Cotton collection under a bust of the Roman emperor
Aulus Vitellius), contains more than the tale of Beowulf. Bound
alongside the poem are another poetic work, Judith, and three prose
pieces, The Passion ofSt Christopher, The Wonders ofthe East and The Letters
of Alexander to Aristotle. The subject matter of the latter two pieces,
with their tales of strange beasts and monsters, have led some to
believe that the manuscript was put together as a kind of bestiary (see
page 190).
While scholars disagree on most aspects of the poem, they are able
to agree that it was originally an oral work, and that the author (an
anonymous Christian court poet) did not invent the story but drew
on an existing tale of which at least two versions were available to him
at the time of its composition.? What is more, it is highly probable
that the two sections of the poem - which might be labelled the
‘Danish/Grendel’ (concerned with the Scylding royal house) and the

13
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

‘Swedish/Dragon’ (concerned with the Scylfing royal house) sections

- were also originally separate tales, to be united later by the Beowulf
poet. But with regard to the date and place of composition of the
poem, disagreement, again, is the rule.
The proposed dates of composition range from the 7th to mth
centuries, and Northumbria, Kent, Mercia, Wessex and East Anglia
have all been suggested as the location of the poet. However, the pro-
Danish stance of the poem suggests that it was written before the first
Viking raids (late 8th century) soured the sense of kinship that had
once existed between the Danish and the Anglo-Saxon peoples. This
has lead to a consensus is that it was probably authored (given certain
clues of dialect) in an Anglian court, possibly that of Mercia, East
Anglia or Northumbria, sometime around the late 7th or early 8th
century.
While most study of the poem has concentrated on its use of lan-
guage and its provenance, another fascinating branch has sought to
discover its historicity. Beowulf’s people, the Geats, have been identi-
fied as the Gotar of southern Sweden, and their king, Hygelac
(Beowulf’s uncle), with the Chochilaicus mentioned in the chronicles
of Gregory of Tours (written around 540), who led, and perished in,
an ill-fated raid into Frankish territory around 520. The Swedish king
Eadgils, whom Beowulf helps to the throne, is undoubtedly an early
6th-century king named Athils, whose massive grave- mound can still
be seen in the royal graveyard at Gamla Uppsala in Sweden.‘ But while
such figures seem to place the poem on an historical footing, the
majority of scholars agree that in all probability the hero Beowulf was
not himself historical, given that his name does not follow the Ger-
manic tradition of familial alliteration (as in Hrothgar son of
Healfdeane) and that his actions are clearly superhuman.
One early theory was that Beowulf was an echo of an earlier pagan
sun god and that the events of the poem were corrupted nature-myths
in which Grendel represented the spring floods, his mother the sea,
and the dragon the winter storms that finally overcome the power of
the summer sun.‘ Others saw him as the wind purifying the pestilent
marshes, with Grendel a personification of disease. More recently, the

14
 INTRODUCTION: THE KEENEST FOR FAME

preferred argument has been that he is based on the folkloric motif of

the ‘bear’s son’ or, as it is also called, ‘the three princesses’.®
This tale is found throughout Europe and Asia, and over 200 ver-
sions have been recorded. No two versions are alike, but a basic plot
can be reconstructed. The tale tells of a prodigiously strong boy, often
the son of a bear, who sets off with a number of companions, and
arrives at a deserted house that is haunted by a supernatural foe. The
hero’s companions are worsted by the foe, but the bear’s son manages
to wound him and tie him up, but he escapes. The hero and his band
follow the trail of his blood to a hole in the ground into which the
hero jumps lowered on a rope by his friends. He defeats the foe and
discovers three princesses whom he sends back up the rope, but when
he comes to climb the rope, his friends drop it, seize the princesses
and leave him stranded. Eventually he escapes and takes his revenge.
On the surface, the similarity between this tale and Beowulf are
striking, and it is no wonder that scholars have argued that the Old
English poem is a retelling of the ‘bear’s son’ tale. Beowulf does defeat
Grendel in a deserted hall, does follow his trail of blood, and when he
is fighting beneath the water he is deserted by the Danish, if not the
Geatish, troops who accompanied him there.
But the first point to note is that the three princesses are absent
from the tale. If the poet had no qualms about introducing a purely
folkloric character into his historical saga, why not go the whole way
and include the three princesses? Why not make them Hrothgar’s
daughters? The obvious answer seems to be that the princess motif
did not fit in with the historical tale on which these folktale elements
were later pinned.
It is more likely that they were hung on the story of a real event or
hero, a Geatish warrior (or warriors), perhaps, who came to Denmark
to help out the Scylding dynasty, and whose historical deeds sug-
gested parallels with the monster-slayings of the ‘bear’s son’ story. In
other words, the monster-slaying episode within Beowulf is not just
an idle fancy but based on an actual historical occurrence.
The evidence to argue such a point does not appear in the text of
Beowulf itself, but in the rites and symbols of Germanic prehistory.

IS
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

For it is in seeking out the lost rites and beliefs of our Germanic
ancestors that it is possible to unearth the existence of a tradition that
illuminates the Beowulf poem and reveals that the seemingly fabled
deeds of its hero were not borrowings from folklore, but were rooted
in actual events. To find the first clues to this lost tradition, as a first
step it is necessary to become acquainted with the peoples of pagan
Germania from which the ancestors of the English people sprang.

16
OLD ENGLAND
re

ied
 CHAPTER ONE

CLANS OF THE SEA COASTS

Was it not Scyld Scefing that shook the halls, took mead-
benches, taught encroaching foes to fear him — who, found in
_ childhood, lacked clothing? Yet he lived and prospered, grew in
strength and stature under the heavens until the clans settled in
the sea coasts neighbouring over the whale-road all must obey
him and give him tribute.
BEOWULF, 5-12

HE MODERN-Day descendants of the Old English have little or no

. knowledge as to their own origins. Most modern history books
begin their accounts of English history with the arrival of two broth-
ers, Hengist and Horsa, on British soil (at Ebbsfleet in Kent) some
time in the Sth century. But so little attention is given to where they
and their people came from, that one could be forgiven for thinking
that they appeared in their ships from out of the mist like the myste-
rious Scyld Scefing of Beowulf: Today, the landing point is a mile or so
inland: the Wantsum Channel which once cut through north-east
Kent, separating the Isle of Thanet from the mainland, has silted up
since Hengist and Horsa’s day.' The exact place of the landing is not
marked with any formal monument, though a stone cross close by
supposedly marks where St Augustine arrived a few generations later
to convert Hengist’s great-great-grandson, Ethelbert, to the new faith.
Instead, away on the coast, there stands the dragon-prowed ship
Hugin (named after one of the Norse god Odin’s oracular ravens),

19
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

which was sailed from the continent in 1949 to mark the 1500th
anniversary of the brothers’ arrival. The simple plaque on its side
records where the ship, and therefore by analogy, the two brothers,
left for England: Denmark, land of the Scyldings.
History books may not record the origins of the English, but for
many generations after their arrival in what was to become ‘England’,
the descendants of Hengist and Horsa continued to think of them-
selves as part of the continental Germanic peoples; hundreds of miles
of sea were no barrier to a seafaring folk to whom the ocean was
known as the ‘swan’s road’, as accessible in their minds as a modern
motorway is to us today. While it may seem strange to us that Beowulf,
the nearest thing to an English epic, is set in Denmark and tells of the
deeds of a hero from southern Sweden, to the poet and his audience,
the tale would have been rooted in a tradition they considered their
own, a tradition far more English than we can imagine. For the arrival
of the English in Britain stands not at the start of their history, as we
might presume, but at the end of their prehistory - a vast stretch of
time spent in the lands the Romans knew as Germania (see Map 1); for
the English were by origin a mix of Germanic tribes.

Germania
Like most of the non-literate inhabitants of early northern Europe,
such as the Celts, we are to some extent reliant for our information on
the Germans - the inhabitants of a vast swathe of territory east of the
Rhine extending north into Denmark and its islands and east into
modern day Poland and Hungary - from their literate neighbours, the
Romans.
This source is not perfect, for the Germans both fascinated and
repulsed their ‘civilized’ Roman neighbours, whose accounts tend
towards bias in both directions. Some eulogized the Germans’
uncomplicated lives (along the lines of the ‘noble savage’), while
others demonized a people who in the past had posed a threat to
Rome itself, and might do so again in the future. In 113 Bc, two
nomadic German tribes - the Cimbri and Teutones - had migrated

20
 CLANS SOF THE SEA COASTS

south over the Alps from Denmark and attacked northern Italy.
Though they were defeated by General Gaius Marius, from that time
on the Romans harboured the fear that these barbarians might one
day sack Rome. (The Goths did just this under their chieftain Alaric
in AD 410.) Accordingly, Rome had tried to pre-empt this strike but
had failed to defeat the Germans.
The nomadic tribes that constituted the Germans lived in isolated
temporary farmsteads that made them a more difficult enemy to pin
down and destroy than the comparatively Romanized Gauls with
their static villages and defended hill forts. Caesar, having conquered
the whole of Gaul, was never able to get beyond the Rhine; in ap 9,_
when his adopted son, the emperor Augustus, sought to annexe Ger-
mania, the result was one of the greatest military disasters in Roman
history. Three legions and six cohorts (some 25,000 men), under the
command of Publius Quintilius Varus, were slaughtered almost to a
man in the Teutoburg forest. Stretched out in a thin line, treading a
narrow path between forest and marshland, they were picked off by
German natives using guerrilla tactics during a relentless and horrific
three-day march.
But although the Germans were the bogeymen of the Roman
world, their primitive, non-urban lifestyle also provided Roman
writers and critics a perfect foil to hold up against their own corrupt
city life with its greed and excesses. One such writer was Cornelius
Tacitus, whose Germania (‘On the History and Geography of
Germany’), written in AD 98, provides many details of the Iron Age
tribes who inhabited this land. His comments are illuminating, and
help support the fragmentary archaeological evidence.‘
The name Germania, he explains, was not an old name but the
original tribal name of the Tungri, one of the first tribes to cross the
Rhine into Gaul; the name was later adopted by the Germans as a
blanket term to denote all their peoples. Germania, Tacitus recorded,
was a land of forbidding landscapes and an unpleasant climate,
‘dismal to behold for anyone who was not born or bred there’, a land
of forests and marsh. And its people, like the landscape, were earthy,
harsh and primal.

21
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

The Germans
The Germans, Tacitus tells us, did not live in cities, but in isolated
houses built from wood. They wore no clothes except cloaks or skins
fastened with brooches or thorns (only the wealthy wore tight-fitting
undergarments), and were used to cold and hunger. While they did
plant some cereal crops, it was not in an organized fashion, and they
lived mainly off meat, curdled milk, wild fruit and ale made from
barley. Though this image of the half-naked Germans living off the
land is presented (save for the harsh climate) as an Arcadian idyll,
Tacitus’s portrait generally corresponds with what archaeologists
have discovered of the culture of Germania in the Iron Age.
At most, the settlements were small groupings of farmsteads made
up of basic longhouses, each divided into a living quarters around a
central hearth, and a cattle byre. Cattle were clearly important in the
economy, and despite what Tacitus said about cereal farming being
unimportant, there is ample evidence for the growing of barley (for
bread and beer), einkorn and emmer wheats, oats, millet and flax.5
But it seems that farmland was not owned, as in Rome, by a landed
aristocracy. Caesar records that land was owned by the tribe, and
distributed yearly amongst kin groups to farm. Such a communal
ownership prevented the accumulation of wealth in the hands of any
one individual or group, and this lack of a landed aristocracy may
have lead the Romans to underestimate the importance of cereals in
the German diet.* But it also meant that if wealth was counted in
terms of heads of cattle and not acres of land, then the tribal members
were free to roam where they would and still maintain their social
standing, unlike the Roman gentry who were tied to their land. For
the most part, the Germans seemed content to stay within their tribal
territories, but the freedom to move was always there. This would
prove important in the later history of the Germanic peoples in the
centuries following Tacitus’s account, as the existence of modern-day
England amply demonstrates.
The term ‘German’, like ‘Celt’, was really a linguistic tag rather
than an ethnic one and denoted a shared language and culture, not

22
 CLANS -OPTHE SEA’ COASTS

necessarily a shared genetic inheritance.” One clue to a possible varied

racial background amongst the Germanic tribes is that Tacitus divides
them into three ‘peoples’: the Ingaevones, who inhabited the land
nearest to the sea; the Herminones, who occupied the interior; and the
Istaevones, who made up the rest. These three peoples were named
after the three sons of Mannus, the son of the earth-god Tuisto.
As well as a shared language, one thing that did unite these people
was a common set of political and societal customs, most importantly
those surrounding the figure of the king. As there was no fixed line
of succession, Tacitus states, the German people elected kings from
amongst the nobility, and it was the people that decided matters of
importance in specially convened assemblies. Such assemblies tried
criminal cases and dealt out punishments. Traitors and deserters were
hanged on trees, cowards, shirkers and sodomites were drowned in
bogs under wicker hurdles. It is interesting to note that some of the
Germanic customs noted by Tacitus continued to be practised cen-
turies later in Anglo-Saxon England: one such was ‘wer-gild’ (man-
price), a financial compensation to be paid by the wrongdoer to the
victim or victim’s family in cases of death or injury.®
Another custom found in England was the loyalty to one’s lord in
battle, a convention mentioned by Tacitus but which also appears
in Beowulf, when Wiglaf stays beside his lord’s side during his final
battle with the dragon, thinking it unmanly to flee (see page 11). The
ultimate expression of this custom is the 1oth-century Anglo-Saxon
poem The Battle of Maldon which tells of the last stand of an English
ealdorman (literally an ‘elder-man’: a high-ranking chief usually in
charge of a shire) named Byrhtnoth against the Vikings at Maldon in
Essex in 991.°
In a world of limited material resources, the Germans relied on
such personal acts of courage to define status, and not, as was increas-
ingly common amongst their Celtic neighbours, through the giving
of gifts received through trade. Their world was one of honour, where
to make a name for oneself in battle meant everything, and in which,
despite a certain boyish bravado, an almost chivalric moral code
seems to have existed.

23
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

The Ingaevones
In the Germania, Tacitus follows his portrait of the Germans with a
detailed list of the tribes who make up the country. Of particular
interest is his description of the coastal tribes, the Ingaevones, for
these are the ‘clans settled in the sea-coasts’ of Beowulf. The first of the
coastal tribes he mentions are the Frisii and the neighbouring Chauci,
who he says inhabit an area between the Rhine and Elbe on the North
Sea coast in settlements extending around vast lagoons. To the east of
these are the Suebi, distinguished from the others by their custom
of tying their long hair in an elaborate knot to one side of the head,
and who were, it seems, more of a conglomeration of tribes than an
individual group. Numbered amongst them were the Langobardi”
(long-beards) who in time would settle in Italy, giving their name to
the region of Lombardy, but whose origin was in the southern region
of Sweden known as Scandza. The most important part of the Germa-
nia concerning the origins of the English follows the description of
the Suebi. Tacitus writes about seven tribes inhabiting an area north
of the Suebian tribelands, in the region, it must be assumed, of
modern Denmark:

After them [the Langobardi] come the Reudigni, Aviones, Anglii,

Varini, Eudoses, Suarines, and Nuitones, all of them safe behind ram-
parts of rivers and woods.

These seven tribes were an isolated population and the most impor-
tant names are the Anglii and Eudoses, as these were in all probability
the Angles and Jutes which the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (compiled in the
gth century) records as two of the three main tribal groupings that
formed the English people. The Angles, it says, came from the region
known as Angulus in the neck of the Danish peninsula, (modern-day
Schleswig-Holstein), where today there is a region named Angeln.
Beyond them to the north, in modern-day Jutland, was the land of the
Jutes. The other main tribal group that made up the English, accord-
ing to the Chronicle, were the Saxons, though modern archaeologists
would also add a contingent of Frisians and Franks to the list.

24
 CLANS OF THE SEA COASTS

Tacitus does not mention the Saxons, but a century later Prolemy
in his Geographia does, locating them at the bottom of what is known
as the ‘Cimbric peninsula’ just below the Anglii. Archaeology shows
us that this Saxon culture later spread south-west to between the Elbe
and Weser - the land of the Chauci. As the Chauci tribe disappears
from history at this point, it seems likely that the tribes of this broad
zone had united into a new confederacy under a new name."
What is of particular interest about the tribes that would later
become the English is that they seem to have developed in situ over a
number of preceding millennia. Unlike their later history of exile and
invasion, the archaeological remains of this coastal part of Germania
seem to show that these tribes had been settled in Denmark and
northern Germany for at least 2,000 years before Tacitus mentioned
them by name. This means that though no written texts survive of
their early origins, the glittering finds of prehistoric Denmark are as
much the inheritance of the English as they are of the Danes.

25
 CHAPTER TWO

FORMER DAYS

We have heard of the thriving of the throne of Denmark, how

the folk-kings flourished in former days.
BEOWULF, 2-4

HE HOMELAND of the ancestors of the English peoples, the

slocaae peninsula of the Ingaevones, an area encompassing
modern day Denmark and the Schleswig-Holstein region of northern
Germany, stretched out from the top of Germany into the North Sea
to where its scatter of islands cross to Sweden. This swathe of land was
isolated from the rest of Germania and in many respects was a cul-
tural backwater compared to some of the tribal zones to the south
that had been in direct contact with the civilizations of the Mediter-
ranean. However, in prehistoric times, long before the founding of
Athens or Rome, it lay at the centre of many of the long- distance
trade routes that had connected the cultures of northern Scandinavia
and the coasts of the Baltic to the Bronze Age centres of power such
as Mycenae and Crete. Indeed, in former days there had been a
‘Golden Age’ in this region of Scandinavia, unknown to Tacitus but
remembered by the Germanic peoples themselves.
For them, this area, Scandza, was seen as the birthplace of their
tribal ancestors: the Christian Goth historian Jordanes in his Getica (a
history of the Gothic peoples written in 550) referred to Scandza as

26
 FORMER DAYS

‘vagina nationum’ (the womb of nations).' His own people, the Goths,
had probably originated on the south-west coast of Sweden - an area
still known as Gétland - crossing the Baltic to present-day Poland by
the time Tacitus was writing. It is likely that part of the tribe remained
behind to become the Geats of Beowulf. The Langobards and Bur-
gundians, too, claimed an origin in Scandza, though it is not clear
whether these tribes all originated in this area, or whether the ‘Golden
Age’ provided them with an idealized past. Either way, from the start
Scandza was unique both geographically and socially.
Denmark, its islands and the southern tip of Sweden had proba-
bly formed a cultural whole soon after the ending of the last ice age
(c. 8000 Bc) when we see evidence of Mesolithic (middle Stone Age)
hunter-gatherer groups inhabiting its coasts and wooded river valleys,
such as the Gudena river in Jutland. These groups moved from camp
to camp, following the herds of wild game as the seasons dictated.
This was happening all over Europe, but there was something about
coastal people, as opposed to those living inland, that helped forge a
sense of community and connectedness with the land: the ocean. To
an inland group, the massive wildwood that covered much of Europe
was without boundaries, but to those dwelling on the Atlantic coasts
(including those of northern France and the British Isles) the knowl-
edge that the land was limited, that one could not simply push forever
onwards, created a difference. Here land was scarce, and so it was
important to mark it out as belonging to one’s kin or extended family,
to defend one’s territory, to define boundaries.
It may be that it was here that tribal identities first began to form
in earnest, and there is certainly archaeological evidence that might
suggest this in the cemeteries, such as those at Vedbaek (near Copen-
hagen) on the Danish isle of Zealand (Sjaelland) and across the water
at Skateholm on the southern tip of Sweden. The cemeteries show
that a similar material culture existed in this region at this time, yet
they also show remarkably different methods of burial rite and grave
goods (the Skateholm people, for instance, buried their dogs with
grave goods, affording them the same honours as humans). Such
differences have allowed archaeologists to postulate the existence of

27
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

three major ‘tribal’ zones in Mesolithic Scandza: one in Jutland,

another on the Danish islands, and another in southern Sweden.

Houses of the Dead

It is probably this well-defined sense of tribal identity and land own-
ership that explains, in Scandza as well as in Britain and northern
France and Spain, the appearance of great megalithic structures
during the following Neolithic Age (New Stone Age). The Neolithic
Age saw the arrival of farming practices in northern Europe (around
4200 BC), ultimately from the Middle East, where crops were first
grown around 5,000 years earlier.
Farming societies were much more tied to the land than their
hunter-gatherer ancestors, enabling each member of the tribe to help
on the farm whatever their age or ability. The development of farm-
steads and villages in place of seasonal shelters and camps must also
have had an impact on the nature of society. The more settled com-
munity could now concentrate more effort into expressing its tribal
and ancestral identity and the house of the ancestors - the tombs for
the dead - provided such an expression.
These tombs were usually placed in highly visible positions,
defining tribal boundaries - the ancestral bones within them demon-
strating the occupation of the land by that tribe. But the building of
these tombs seems to have gone far beyond the need to establish land
ownership. The whole tradition shows a preoccupation with the
ancestors and their connection with the earth that was almost fanat-
ical in its fervour. The fact that such effort was put into making these
structures out of the hardiest materials says much for the motivation
of these people, whose own dwellings have long since vanished. Such
tombs were not mere reliquaries but formed the centre of tribal life.
The bones of the ancestors were not hidden away; instead the doors to
these ‘houses of the dead’ (often mimicking the houses of the living
in design) frequently remained open, with the bones of the dead being
carried out for use in certain rites. Thus the ancestors could be taken
from the tomb to be present at special occasions - marriages, perhaps,

28
 FORMER DAYS

or alliances and feasts. And supplications and offerings were made

to the ancestors to ensure the fertility of the land over which they
presided.
The worlds of the dead and the living overlapped. When an indi-
vidual died, his body would be dismembered and placed anonymously
into the tomb where he would become one with the amorphous
throng of ancestors - perhaps, who knows, one day to be reborn into
the tribe.
In Denmark, two major types of mortuary structure once domi-
nated the landscape. The earliest were the great dolmens (dysser)
which consisted of a small burial chamber formed from three or four
upright stones capped with a massive monolith: 3,500 of these are to
be found on the Danish islands alone.? It is thought that such struc-
tures developed from earthen long-barrows with wooden mortuary
chambers, and that the dysser were originally contained within low
mounds. In time, another type of tomb emerged, the passage grave, of
which 600 examples have so far been discovered. Thought in later
times to have been the work of giants - hence the term jaettestuer
(giant’s graves) - these passage graves allowed access to the remains of
the dead.
The tombs reveal the use of both individual and communal burial
traditions, and have been associated by modern authors with the
belief in the ‘great goddess” - the tomb within the green rise of earth
representing the pregnant belly of the goddess into which the dead
were placed for rebirth. While it is not known which gods, if any, were
worshipped at such times, there is ample evidence for ancestor
worship. Indeed, it may be that their beliefs and rituals were not
centred on any specific divinity, but rather on the throng of ancestral
spirits who made the tombs their home.

Stone Age Ceremonies

While little is known of the rites of the megalith builders, archaeology
does provide us with some clues as to the nature of the ceremonies
with which they were associated. In Denmark, the building of the

29
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

megaliths coincided with the arrival of a type of pottery vessel known

as ‘funnel-necked beakers’, long-necked gourd-shaped vessels which
may have been used in a drinking ceremony that accompanied the
newly introduced rites of farming. This is only supposition, but evi-
dence does exist in Britain, where the first grain to be found was not
grown locally but imported from the continent, and was used not to
make bread, but, so it seems, a kind of ritual drink. Evidence from
Skara Brae, a Neolithic village in the Orkneys, and two other ritual
sites in Fife reveal that barley grain was brewed into a hallucinogenic
beer containing meadowsweet for flavour, and deadly nightshade,
known in Old English as dwale (trance), along with henbane, both of
which contain psychoactive alkaloids. It may be that the brew (such
‘drinks’ were in reality more like a kind of fermented porridge than
modern beer) once drunk from the funnel-necked beakers was simi-
larly spiked.
At Tustrup in East Jutland, we get some idea of the ceremonies
that may have once accompanied the taking of this hallucinogenic
‘drink’. Built around 3200 Bc, Tustrup appears to have been a kind of
necropolis consisting of three tombs (two dolmens and a passage
grave) and a temple, all in use during a single period within one com-
munity ~ a fact that argues against different grave types being indica-
tive of different eras or tribes.’ The temple complex fell within the
triangle formed by the three tombs; it was a horseshoe-shaped struc-
ture of stones forming a 5-m sq internal area open to the north-east.
The whole structure may have been roofed, with its apex on a massive
pillar at the centre of the open end - an opening whose orientation
suggests it was built to face the rising sun on the morning of the
summer solstice, or the setting sun of winter solstice for those look-
ing towards the temple, as was the case at Stonehenge. The temple
may have been a mortuary temple, perhaps where the newly dead were
placed before joining the rest of the ancestral bones in the tombs. At
the centre of horseshoe was a pit surrounded by 28 vessels and 100
vessels were found around entrances of the tombs.
The tradition of leaving offerings to the ancestors may have
continued well into the modern age - the Danish archaeologist PV

30
 FORMER DAYS

Glob reports that even in the last century, at the passage grave at @m
near Roskilde, farmhands were sent to clean out the passage at mid-
winter so the farmer’s wife could leave a bowl of porridge for the
‘giants and the spirit that dwelt there’.” Similar observances survived
into the last century in connection with the so-called ‘cup-markings’
- shallow bowls carved into Neolithic and Bronze Age stone monu-
ments, which were used as depositories for food or drink for ‘the elves’
(see page 102).
What is intriguing is that these temple structures were ritually
burned: that at Turstrup was burned after a single rite, while there is
evidence that a temple site at Ferslev was cleared and re-used a second
time before being burned. It is here that we may see the first expres-
sion of the custom of lighting midsummer and midwinter fires that
continued to be practised throughout northern Europe until recent
times.®
The collective burial of nameless individuals found in the major-
ity of megalithic tombs is often seen as evidence of a kind of Neolithic
‘communism’, but the fact is that the number of bodies accounted for
in the tombs can only have been a small percentage of the total pop-
ulation; there was clearly some kind of ‘selection’ process at work,
although it is not possible to say whether this was political or if it
points to the existence of an elite. Whatever its origins, around 2000
BC the communal burial rite comes to an end and we begin to see a
rise in the number of individual graves.

Beakers and Battle Axes

Much argument has raged over whether the change in burial tradi-
tions found throughout Europe at this time was brought by a new
invading population or whether it was the result of a shift in ideas. In
recent times, the latter view has become predominant. Although there
was undoubtedly some movement of individuals, including, no
doubt, skilled artisans bringing new ideas and techniques with them,
there was not a huge migration of people. And since there is no evi-
dence for any major incursions of peoples into Denmark after this

31
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

point (until a possible invasion of the Danes around AD 300), it is safe

to assume that the people who were buried individually in low round
mounds in wooden coffers were: a) the descendants of the builders of
the megaliths, and b) the ancestors of the English people. In other
words, like the Celts who are now their neighbours, the English were
in origin a megalithic people.
To archaeologists, the individuals who are found buried in single
graves are known as the ‘Corded Ware’ people after their innovative
pottery that was decorated by making elaborate impressions with
hemp cords (that some suggest betray the contents of these drinking
vessels: a cannabis-based brew).? This solitary inhumation did not
necessarily mean that the ancestors were no longer important to man;
on the contrary, it may have been that the nameless throng of ances-
tors had been joined by named individuals who could be supplicated
directly by their descendants. These named ancestors who, in time,
would perhaps be able to grant their people supernatural help, when
all personal memory of them had faded and they had begun to
acquire superhuman attributes, became what might be termed ‘gods’.
(Hence the idea of being able to trace one’s lineage back to a god, as
reflected in Anglo-Saxon genealogies that link the royal houses back
to the Germanic god Woden, or, in Christian times, to a biblical figure
such as Adam.) .
The new pottery and funerary techniques seem to have spread
across western Europe in two main ‘waves’ - those of the Corded-Ware
(or ‘Battle-Axe’ cultures as they are also called) to the north, and the
‘Beaker traditions’ (which saw the drinking of alcoholic beverages and
the first use of metalworking), to its immediate south. While the
Beaker cultures to the south began to use metal, crafting the first
bronze swords and daggers, and forming a military elite to use them,
the peoples of Scandza were left out on a limb. With no sources of
metal of their own, they exported the amber that was washed up on
their beaches and maybe fur in return for a few items of these new and
highly-prized crafts.
With so little disposable wealth and prestige goods, the tribes of
Scandza developed no real warrior aristocracy, their chieftains

32
 FORMER DAYS

remained just heads of families, of the farming landscape, and their

power lay in the wealth of the soil. Hence the terms ‘lord’ and ‘lady’ in
Old English were blaford (loaf-guard) and hlafdige (loaf-kneader).
However, the developments of new trade links during the Bronze
Age changed all this. Denmark suddenly found itself at the crossroads
of a massive increase in trade between the Baltic and the Rhine,
Danube and Oder rivers. For one short Golden Age, the chieftains of
Denmark, the middlemen in this trade, were buried in huge domed
round mounds, kitted out with swords and spears.

The Mound People

The ‘Mound People’ as PV Glob termed them, flourished for some
200 years around 1500 Bc. And, luckily for us, the construction of their
domed tombs, made from layers of turf and clay, protected them from
the elements and kept them hermetically sealed so that many of them
are well preserved today. Among them are the ‘family’ from Borum
Eshgj, in East Jutland, whose burial goods were not the richest ever
found, but whose unity in death presents us with a glimpse of an
ancient ‘English’ family.
Buried within a massive earthen mound in split and hollowed oak
trunk coffins, the old man, woman and possibly their son had been
preserved by the tannic acid in the oak bark that had leached into
the waterlogged graves. The old woman had been buried in a long
woollen skirt, an elaborate hair net on her head, and with bronze
jewellery and a dagger. Her husband, aged in his late 60s, was simply
buried wearing a woollen skullcap, a cape and a loincloth. Their son
(whose wisdom teeth were just emerging) was buried with greater
wealth, wrapped in a hide shroud with a bone comb, in his scabbard
a six-inch dagger - his sword, it is supposed, inherited from his
weaponless father and passed on to the one who ordered the mound
to be built and who led the funeral rites. Although by some standards
these were not rich goods, the sheer volume of earth in the mound
that enclosed them was a testament to their status.

33
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

Ancestors of the Anglii tribe were also found preserved in their

graves. Perhaps the most interesting find was that of a ‘princess’ of the
Mound People from Egtved in the neck of the Cimbric peninsula (see
plate 6). She was aged 18-20, 5 ft 3 in tall, with a 23-inch waist, sported
a shoulder-length blond bob, and a corded short skirt with no under-
garments beneath. At her side lay a bucket of wheat and honey beer
flavoured with cranberries. A beautifully engraved circular bronze
disk lay on her otherwise bare belly, and some yarrow flowers lay at her
left knee, showing she died in the summer. At her feet lay the body of
a girl aged about 9 or 10, possibly a serving girl robbed of her young
life to accompany her mistress into the world beyond.
It is likely that her revealing attire with the solar symbol over her
womb was a type of ritual costume - similarly dressed Danish figurines
have been found, depicted leaping and dancing (from Grevensvenge,
South Zealand, and Kaiserberg in Holstein). The sun image is found
on many items from the Bronze Age, most impressively borne on a
model wagon drawn by a bronze horse from Trundholm, Zealand
(see plate 4). In later Norse myth, we find the image of the sun drawn
across the heavens by a horse, so it is possible that this image
appeared in their rites. These people were the children of the sun —- and
the myriad carvings they made on rocks throughout Scandza give
some fleeting idea of their rites: there are images of a circle with a
cross inside (symbolizing the sun), the horse and, above all, the
ship. There are also figures playing huge curved trumpets (urs) and
what seem to be men and women engaged in sexual acts to promote
fertility.
At Kivik in Sweden there is a rare stone sarcophagus carved with
images of darker rites associated, most probably, with the funeral of
the individual whose grave it is. Figures in long robes process towards
a large vat or altar, while bound figures are being led by a swordsman,
perhaps to be sacrificed. There is an open grave, a chariot, stallion
fights, the blowing of lurs, and drumming.
After only a few generations, the Mound People declined and cre-
mation in urns became the normal rite of burial. But even though
their Golden Age was brief, the aristocratic Mound People presaged

34
 FORMER DAYS

the later Iron Age ‘Folk-Kings’ such as Hrothgar. Quite why the
Golden Age ended is open to question but it is most probably linked
with the general collapse, occurring around 1200 Bc, that saw the fall
of many of the great Bronze Age civilizations, including those of
Minoan Crete, Mycenae and, further afield, the Indus Valley. Whether
the collapse was brought about by a deterioration in the climate or
another factor, the knock-on effect for a powerful ruling class
founded ultimately on trade was catastrophic. But, for the majority of
the farming peasantry, little would have changed. It was at this period
that the Trundholm sun-chariot (see page 34) was placed in a bog,
suggesting that the deposition of the chariot may have been a suppli-
cation to the gods for the return of a stable climate. By Tacitus’s time,
the ritual deposition of goods (mainly weapons) in lakes and bogs had
become the main ritual expression of northern Europe.

Folk on the Move

During the closing years of the Bronze Age and the following Iron Age
there was less emphasis on building communal ritual structures and
instead the widespread emergence of more defensive structures as
populations grew and pressure on land increased, so leading to inter-
tribal tension. It is during this period (perhaps catalyzed through
trade with Rome) that we first begin to see the mass relocation of
tribes from overpopulated areas, including that of the Cimbri and
Teutones, possibly from Denmark. And it is was as a result of their
contact with a literate civilization that their names began to be
recorded, although we will never know how far back these tribal
names went.
Tacitus mentions seven tribes in Denmark (see page 24), whereas
later Anglo-Saxon records identify just the Danes, Angles and Jutes,
with the Saxons to their south. In all probability this was due to the
formation of larger tribal units; it may have been that, in a growing
population, small tribes of extended kin were no longer able to exist
independently within the same landscape. This was especially the case
as there were major folk movements from the east, where tribes were

35
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

being driven westwards by nomadic interlopers such as the Huns, who

were pushing eastern Germanic tribes, such as the Goths, into Roman
territory."
It is not clear whether the appearance of a people named the
Danes, Hrothgar’s people, in former Anglian territory was due to an
influx of new people, perhaps from the southern tip of Sweden, or
whether, like the Saxons, they were essentially a later confederation of
aboriginal tribes. That Hrothgar appears in Beowulf under the title
‘Lord of the Ingwine’ (friends of Ing) could support either theory; his
people were either descended from the Ingaevones (which means the
same as Ingwine) or they achieved dominance over them. Archaeolog-
ically, there is increased evidence of prestige goods (especially gold)
associated with trade in Denmark around the 4th and Sth centuries,
as well as a massive increase in iron production that went beyond local
demand. This could be taken as evidence that a number of tribes in
this area became, as had the Mound People before them, middlemen
in trade between the Roman provinces and the Baltic, and developed
into a rich confederacy we know as the Danes. If this is the case, it may
be that these Danes put pressure on the Jutes and Angles, forcing
them either to join their confederacy or leave their homeland. This is
clearly suggested in Beowulf: Scyld, it says,

.. Shook the halls, took mead-benches, taught encroaching foes to

fear him ... until the clans settled in the sea coasts neighbouring over
the whale-road all must obey him and give him tribute. (Beowulf, 5-12)

It addition, there was also an element of environmental pressure on

the coastal tribes at this time. Archaeologists have shown that during
this period the sea levels were rising, and that many coastal sites, such
as the Saxon village of Feddersen Wierde,” at the mouth of the Weser,
were abandoned (c. 450). With the sea encroaching on one side, and
nomadic warring tribes on the other, it is no wonder that the now
inadequately defended Britain to the west seemed a more than tempt-
ing proposition.

36
 FORMER DAYS

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 449 records:

Martianus and Valentinian received the kingdom and reigned for

seven years. In their days the Angles were invited here by King Vor-
tigern, and they came to Britain in three longships, landing at
Ebbesfleet. King Vortigern gave them territory in the south-east of this
land, on the condition that they fight the Picts. This they did and had
victory wherever they went. They then sent to Angeln, commanded
more aid, and commanded that they should be told of the Britons’
worthlessness and the choice nature of the land. They soon sent hither
a great host to help the others ... Their war leaders were two brothers,
Hengest and Horsa, who were Wihtgils’ sons. First of all they killed
and drove away the King’s enemies; then later they turned on the King
and the British, destroying through fire and the sword’s edge.

This part of English history is relatively well known. The coming of

the Anglo-Saxons (Adventus Saxonicum) to Britain, has been much dis-
cussed by historians, and for the most part their theories have been
confirmed by archaeologists, who have been able to show that mate-
rial goods from the relevant tribal regions of Germania match those
of the respective parts of England. Types of brooches common in
Jutland, for example, appear in Jutish Kent; Saxon pottery found in
Wessex matches exactly that of Saxony (some examples may even have
been the work of the same potter).
No contemporary records for this period exist, the nearest being
that of the West Country monk Gildas, whose De Excidio Britanniae
(‘The Ruin ofBritain’) was written in the second quarter of 6th century,
and whose descriptions of the Adventus Saxonicum were written in a
deliberately apocalyptic style.
The arrival of the Anglo-Saxons was probably a gradual affair.“
Saxon pirates had been harrying British shores for at least a couple of
hundred years, prompting a number of defensive shore forts to be
built along the Channel coast around ap 280. In 407, the would-be
emperor Constantine III left Britain, taking the remaining Roman
legions with him in an attempt to stabilize the western Empire, but

37
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

his defeat in 410 meant the troops never returned, leaving a vacuum.
The Saxons, pressured by loss of land in their homeland, but also
other more local barbarian peoples, such as Irish and Pictish raiders
(from Scotland), took advantage of this.
Eventually, under tremendous pressure from continued barbarian
attacks, the Christian Roman ruling class, headed by an individual
bearing the title Vortigern (Celtic for ‘Overlord’), made the decision to
grant a number of Germanic warriors land in Kent in return for
acting as federate troops (foederati) to defend against the Picts. These
warriors were led by the Jutish Hengist and Horsa mentioned by Bede,
and are represented by a number of Germanic military-style burials
found in the south-east dating from the mid-sth century. That there
seem to have been earlier burials in this area suggests that in reality
Vortigern was not granting new lands to the Anglo-Saxons but legit-
imizing land that had already been occupied by them after 407.
This measure, probably based on established Roman policy, seems
to have been effective, as after this date the Picts are not mentioned as
a problem. However, it also had the result of establishing a strong Ger-
manic warrior presence in the south-east, so that when the foederati
did rebel (perhaps over the payment of food rations) they were already
armed and established in prime military positions. It was at this point
that the major Anglo-Saxon advance took place, checked for half a
century around 490-500 when the Britons were able to win a major
victory at a place called Mons Badonicus (Mount Badon), probably
under a leader named Ambrosius Aurelianus (though legend would
attribute it to King Arthur). The rest, as they say, is history.
Although the general picture of the Adventus that portrays Saxons
replacing Britons is a massive oversimplification of a long process of
piecemeal settlement, integration, acculturization and some violence,
by the 7th century most of lowland Britain was speaking a Germanic
tongue within one of seven Germanic kingdoms. In time, the varied
tribes that made up the Adventus - Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, Franks and
Angles - would take the name of the latter, then the most powerful
faction, and become the Angelcyn - the English.
To all intents and purposes, the period between the sth and 6th

38
 FORMER DAYS

centuries saw the pagan Germanic inhabitants of Denmark and

north-west Germany shift a few hundred miles westwards over the
sea, bringing their culture and language with them. It was a land not
unlike their old one - a maritime province that once had formed part
of the megalithic zone of the Atlantic coasts. But the centre of their
imaginative world remained in Germania, in ‘Old England’, and
would continue to do so for many generations, and it is there that
Beowulf is set.

39
 CHAP ECER-HREE

ON THE ALTARS OF THEIR IDOLS

They prayed aloud, promising sometimes on the altars of their

idols unholy sacrifices if the Slayer of souls would send relief to
the suffering people. Such was their practice, a heathen hope;
Hell possessed their hearts and minds: the Maker was unknown
to them, the Judge of all actions, the Almighty was unheard of,
they knew not how to praise the Prince of Heaven, the Wielder
of Glory.
BEOWULF, 173-82

S THE Beowulf poet was aware, his tale was set in the pagan days
A before the Word of God had been spread north beyond the
lakes and forests and into the land of the sea-going Ingaevones. And
though willing to tell of the pagan virtues of heroism and personal
glory, the Christian poet had no desire to fill his work with details
of the idols to which the Danes offered sacrifice in return for protec-
tion against foul Grendel. It is therefore necessary to turn to other
sources gain some idea of the lost rites that the Anglo-Saxon tribes
practised in their original homeland and brought with them across
the North Sea.!
Although the Anglo-Saxons, like their cousins the pagan Celts,
possessed a written alphabet (see page 98), its use seems to
have been
mainly for magical purposes such as casting spells and divina
tion.
Tacitus notes that the Germans committed information
to song

40
 ONS eyMetAR Ss O.F eb Her DO Ls

alone, and there may in fact have been certain prohibitions regarding
the committal of these traditional songs into writing. Accordingly,
such records came into being only after the religion that informed
them had been cast aside, meaning that no pre-Christian vernacular
source for Old English paganism exists.
The surviving vernacular literature, dating to after the conversion,
is fragmentary (see pages 2-3) but is bolstered by evidence from church
laws (dictating what practices were no longer acceptable under the
new religion), genealogies, and the magical and medicinal charms
found in a number of magico-religious manuscripts dating to around
950-1050.? Archaeology provides us with some limited clues, and place
names provide another kind of evidence, although, as the English
were mostly converted within just 200 years of St Augustine’s arrival
in 597, such names are limited.
Our only written sources on Germanic paganism are the scant
commentaries of the Romans, written 500 years before the Adventus,
and the Icelandic literature written some 500 years after. And, since
they reflect an unwritten set of beliefs amongst a fluid population
within a massive territory over a period of 1,000 years, the portrait
painted by each is markedly different. Our first shard of evidence -
that of the heathen calendar - comes from the very end of the pagan
period in the writings of the 8th-century monk Bede. The ‘Venerable
Bede’ as he is known, was born in 673 on monastic land at Wear-
mouth, Northumbria, and at the age of seven he was sent for educa-
tion with the local abbot. He later moved to the monastery at Jarrow,
where he spent the rest of his life. Bede is best known for his Ecclesias-
tical History of the English People, which he completed around the age of
60, and which is our main source for the early history of the Anglo-
Saxons, especially their conversion to Christianity. It also provided
the details of the Adventus in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle.

The Pagan Year

Bede’s comments on the heathen calendar are found in De Temporum
Ratione, a work dealing with the calculation of Christian feast days.* It

4I
 BEOWULF AND @GREN DEE

was never Bede’s intention to describe Old English paganism; in fact,

he only gives what information is necessary to put over his point.
His real aim was to describe the difficult process of calculating the
Christian festivals such as Easter by reference to the old pagan year.
According to Bede, the year started on 25 December in the month
of Aerra-Geola (Before Yule) with a festival Bede records as Modranicht
(Night of the Mothers), but of which he gives no details. January was
A5ftera-Geola (After-Yule) and February Sol-Monath (Mud(?) Month),
when, he records, cakes were offered to the gods. March and April,
Hreth-Monath and Eostre-Monath respectively, were named after a pair
of goddesses, and May was Thri-Milce (Thrice Milking), the month
when in former times cattle could be milked three times a day. June
and July were #erra-Litha (Before Litha) and 4ftera-Litha (After Litha)
~ the meaning of Litha not being explained; August was Weod-Monath
(Weed Month), September Halig-Monath (Holy Month) and October,
Winterfyllith (Winter Full-Moon): the first full moon of winter. Lastly,
came November, Blot-Monath (Blood Month), when cattle were offered
to the gods.
The heathen year, Bede records, was split into two halves, summer
and winter, the latter starting in October, and the former, we must
assume, in April. This corresponds closely to the Celtic ‘Coligny
calendar’, found near Marseilles, which divided the year into dark
and light halves.’ But it seems clear that each of the two seasons was
subdivided into six ‘moons’ apiece, the year being seen to hinge on the
two major festivals in December and June, namely Geola (Yule) and
Litha. ‘Yule’ (Jol in Old Norse) may be related either to the Old English
hweal (wheel) or to the modern word ‘jolly. The Icelandic scholar
Snorri Sturluson, writing in the 13th century, recorded it as a three-
day feast beginning on midwinter’s night. The name might refer to
the concept of the turning wheel of the year or, perhaps, to the sun
or the moon, which sometimes were thought of as wheels rolling
across the heavens. With regard to the opposing summer festival, it
can be surmised that Litha means ‘moon’ from the name of October -
Winterfyllith — that is Winter-fyl-lith - ‘Winter Full-Moon’.
Aside from the major festivals, the rest of the calendar reflected

42
 ONP TEE ALTARS: Ol] THEIR tTDOLs

the farming year. The cakes given to the gods at Sol-Monath were
probably interred in the first furrow when ploughing began in Febru-
ary. This rite is recorded in an 11th-century charm known as Aecerbot
(field-remedy), as part of a complicated, and only nominally Christ-
ian, ritual to restore fertility to the land (see page 96). There are also
reflections of the farming year in Halig-Monath (Holy Month) - no
doubt a time of rejoicing over the harvest - and in Blot-Monath (Blood
Month), when surplus cattle were slaughtered to provide meat for
winter. Unsurprisingly, it is a calendar that reflects a close relationship
with nature.
The name of Hreth, (or Rheda), goddess of March, can be linked
with the Old English word Hreth (triumph or glory), this being the
month of the spring equinox, the triumphal return of vegetation and
the sun’s victory over winter. Eostre-Monath stems from a linguistic
root that gives us both ‘east’ and the Greek eos (dawn); it also gives us
the present-day word ‘Easter’.
But, although useful, Bede’s calendar presents us with an anom-
aly. Neither Rheda, Eostre nor the ‘Mothers’ worshipped on Modranicht
are to be found in any later written source. Instead, there is a very
different pantheon that does not appear in the calendar at all, but it
is one for which there is ample evidence, both in place names and in
the names given to the days of the week.

Groves and Gods

When the Anglo-Saxons came to ‘translate’ the days of the Roman
week into the vernacular, it has been assumed that they substituted
the names of the Roman gods with those of their own gods that
seemed to fit best with the qualities of the other. Thus, Dies Solis (Sun-
day) and Dies Lunae (Mo[o]n-day) are obvious equivalents; the next,
Dies Martis (the day of Mars), became Tuesday, dedicated to Tiw, whose
rune, tiwaz (}), is found on weapons - hinting that, like Mars, he was
a god of war. Dies Mercurii (Mercury’s day) became Wednesday -
Woden’s day; Dies Jovis (Jupiter’s day) became Thursday - Thunor’s
day (Thor in Norse); and Dies Veneris (the day of Venus) became Friday

43
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

- Frig’s day. As Dies Saturni (Saturn’s day) remained as Saturday, it may

be that the Saxons had no equivalent to this god.°
This presents us with the names of four divinities whose functions
can be guessed at: Tiw, a war god; Woden, a god of trade and perhaps
of the dead; Thunor, a storm god, like the thunderbolt-wielding Jove,
and Frig, a goddess of love and fecundity. Each of these god’s names
occur in heathen place names and this is significant because such
place names usually contain two elements - not only the name of a
possible divinity associated with the place but also the type of shrine,
for instance, whether it was a natural grove or a man-made shrine.
There are found to be at least four main types of site in evidence:

Hearh/Hearg - a hilltop sanctuary;

Leah -a clearing or grove in a wood;
Weoh - a holy place;
=TCS
yey Ealh - a wooden temple.

The most widespread name associated with holy sites is that of

Woden, commonly associated with mounds or earthworks, such as
Woodnesborough (Woden’s barrow) in Kent and the Wansdyke
(Woden’s dyke or ditch) in the vale of Pewsey, Wiltshire, and numer-
ous places named Grimsdyke after ‘Grim’, a nickname for Woden
meaning ‘the hooded one’. Thunor is found at Thunoreshlaew
(Thunor’s mound) in Thanet, and Thundersley (Thor’s grove) in
Essex, to name but two of the many places containing his name that
attest to his popularity. Tiw can be evidenced at Tuesley (Tiw’s grove)
in Surrey; and, finally, Frig, the goddess, may be remembered in Froyle
(Frig’s hill) and Freefolk (Frig’s people) both in Hampshire, and
Friden (Frig’s valley) in Derbyshire.’
As their Celtic neighbours, it seems that it was natural features
that provided the Anglo-Saxons with their places of worship - a
worship, as St Gregory put, it ‘of sticks and stones’. Later Church law
forbade anyone to practise divination or ‘evocation’ at springs, stones
or trees, and so it follows that they must have played a part in the Old
Religion. This seems to fit in with what Tacitus wrote about Germanic
paganism:

44
 ON THE ELAR SOF THEIR IDOLS

They judge that the gods cannot be contained inside walls ... they
consecrate groves and woodland glades.

One such grove, in the territory of the Suebic Semnones tribe, was the
site of bloody human sacrifice, possibly dismemberment, ‘for the
public good’. It was not permitted to enter the grove unless bound,
and if one fell during the rites (possibly hinting at the use of trance
states), one could not attempt to stand up within the grove, but had
to roll out of it. Tacitus says this grove was the cradle of the race, and
the dwelling place of the ‘supreme god’.
Of the ealh (wooden temples) - only two place names survive (both
in Kent) - but the remains of such a structure have been excavated at
Yeavering in Northumbria, a 17 x 35 ft rectangular timber building,
with three post-holes near the entrance, perhaps for idols.* Bede refers
to ‘idols’ associated with heathen temples (possibly akin to the
crudely carved phallic figure found at Broddenbjerg in Denmark,
made of a forked oak branch - see plate 11) in his description of the
destruction of a shrine at Goodmanham in Northumberland by its
own high priest, Coifi. Bede writes that Coifi offers to destroy the old
shrines and the ‘pagan idols’ that have done him no favours:

So he formally renounced his pagan superstitions and asked the king

to give him arms and a stallion - for hitherto it had not been lawful
for the Chief Priest to carry arms or to ride anything but a mare - and,
thus equipped, he set out to destroy the idols. Girded with a sword
and with a spear in his hand, he mounted the king’s stallion and rode
up to the idols. When the crowd saw him, they thought he had gone
mad; but without hesitation, as soon as he reached the shrine, he cast
into it the spear he carried and thus profaned it. Then, full of joy at
his knowledge of the true God, he told his companions to set fire to
the shrine and its enclosures and destroy them.

If they were anything like their Norse counterparts, such temples

would have been quite plain. They were empty save for a ring (proba-
bly an arm ring) on which to swear oaths, a bowl to hold the blood of

45
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

sacrificed animals, and a switch of branches to scatter the blood on

either the congregation or the idols.° Evidence is sparse, but it is pos-
sible some were re-used, as suggested in the letter of Pope Gregory to
Abbot Mellitus in 601 with instructions on conversion for St Augus-
tine. Gregory had come to the conclusion that:

The temples of the idols should on no account be destroyed. The idols

are to be destroyed, but the temples are to be aspersed with holy water,
altars set up in them, and relics deposited there. For if these temples
are well-built, they must be purified from the worship of demons and
dedicated to the service of the true God. In this way, we hope that the
people, seeing that their temples are not destroyed, may abandon
their error and, flocking more readily to their accustomed resorts,
may come to know and adore the true God. And since they have a cus-
tom of sacrificing many oxen to demons, let some other solemnity be
substituted in its place ... on such occasions they might well construct
shelters of boughs for themselves around the churches that were once
temples, and celebrate the solemnity with devout feasting.

Archaeology has shown the nature of the sacrifice at such sites. Adja-
cent to the Yeavering temple was a pit full of ox skulls (and some other
bones), and Harrow (‘Hearg’) on the Hill similarly had a pit contain-
ing more than 1,000 ox skulls. As to the identity of the idols that
Gregory wishes to be destroyed, Bede does not mention their names.
But generations of scholars have sought for clues to these lost gods
within the medieval Norse sources that, unlike their English counter-
Parts, survive in good order in the prose sagas, historical sagas, and
mythological poems that were written down in Iceland between the
11th and 13th centuries.”

The Norse Gods

First among the gods of the Norsemen was Odin (the Old English
Woden), described as blue-cloaked, grey-haired and one- -eyed; he held
a spear, Gungnir, or a staff in his hand, wore a wide-brimmed hat on

46
 ON Ee ALLA RSAOF TBR VD OLS

his head, and on his shoulders perched two ravens, Hugin and Munin
- ‘thought’ and ‘memory’. Odin was known as All-Father, a hint at his
role as an ancestral figure and chief deity of the family of the gods, the
Aesir. A god of battle, and of poetry and inspiration, his name means
‘mad’, ‘inspired’ or ‘seer’. Odin’s chief act was to sacrifice himself to
himself on the World Tree, Yggdrasil, around which hung the three
worlds: the underworld, Niflheim (the world of the dead), ‘Middle
Earth’, Midgard (our own world), and the upper world, Asgard (the
dwelling place of the Aesir, the gods). This is pure shamanic imagery,
and it is clear that Odin, able to journey through the worlds on his
eight-legged horse Sleipnir and gain occult knowledge, bears many
traits of a shaman.
Odin’s wife is Frigg (Frig), daughter of Fjorgynn, Mother Earth,
and their son is Balder the beautiful, who was killed with a mistletoe
spear by his own brother, the blind god Hodr, at the instigation of the
trickster god Loki, and sent to the underworld. The goddess Hel,
Loki’s daughter, agreed to release Balder if all creation wept, and all
did, even the trees and rocks - save for a giantess named Thokk - who
proved to be Loki in disguise. Balder remains in hell until Ragnarok,
the final battle between the gods and monsters, when the wolf Fenrir
will break his bonds and destroy the world, whereupon a new world
will be ushered into existence.
Thor (Thunor), probably the most popular of the Aesir with the
majority of worshippers, is depicted as red-haired, bearded, and
immensely strong. Thor wrestled with Jormagund, the oceanic ser-
pent that encircled Middle Earth, and fought giants with his hammer
Mollnir. The rumbling of his wagon across the sky was the sound of
thunder.
Tyr (Tiw), like Thor, was a son of Odin. Originally a god of battle,
he became one-handed as a result of helping bind the wolf Fenrir. He
placed his hand in the wolf’s mouth as a guarantee that when the
gods bound him they would release him afterwards. Of course, the
gods did not intend to, and so Tyr lost his hand.
The Icelandic literature that depicts these gods was heavily influ-
enced by other European literature and tradition. The Norse gods

47
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

were not portrayed as forces of nature but as heroes who might not
seem out of place in one of Homer’s epics - indeed the Icelandic poet
and statesman Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241),"" whose works provide us
with perhaps the greatest insight into Norse myth, says in his Prose
Edda (c. 1220) that Thor was King Priam of Troy’s grandson. In this
way, the gods were humanized - Odin is said to have come from Asia
(an attempt to explain away the term Aesir) - and thus rendered valid
for a Christian world. Snorri presents a divine family more like the
figures of a modern soap opera than forces of nature. But we are not
to see the real divinities of Germanic paganism in this light - indeed
just the opposite. As Tacitus writes:

The Germans do not think it in keeping with the divine majesty to

confine gods within walls or to portray them in the likeness of any
human countenance. Their holy places are woods and groves, and
they apply the names of deities to that hidden presence which is seen
only by the eye of reverence.

Even so, one may give a name to an elemental force such as thunder
and conceive of it in human form without believing it to be in any way
human or placing an image of it in a temple. However, it does seem
likely that in certain areas of Germania, if not all, some of these ele-
mental forces were beginning to be depicted in human form by
Tacitus’s day.

The Influence of Roman Religion

The origin for the personification of elemental forces may have
sprung from contact with the Romans or the neighbouring Celtic
tribes.’* There have been many debates on the differences between the
Germans and the Celts, but in reality these peoples seem to have been
closely related both genetically and culturally, their chief difference
being one of language. Their minor differences were exaggerated
when the Celts established close trade links with Rome and, subse-
quently, their territories became part of the Empire, leading them to
develop a more affluent and urbanized culture than the Germans.

48
 ON Eee AEA RS~ © Fe HER: FDiO:Lss

The Celts, like the Germans, seemed to possess a nature religion of

polymorphous deities until they were influenced by the Roman cos-
mology. Caesar wrote that the Celts did not depict their gods as
human forms, but the hundreds of images from the Roman period
testify that this was soon to change. What is more, the many hundreds
of different god names from cult statues and shrines show the rigid
Celtic ‘pantheon’ of medieval Welsh and Irish literature to be a liter-
ary conceit.
Caesar’s description of the Celtic gods is very close to Tacitus’s list
of Germanic deities. Mercury, Caesar records, is their chief god, fol-
lowed by Apollo, Mars, Jupiter and Minerva. Apart from Apollo, these
seem very close to Woden, Tiw, Thunor and Frig. The Celtic Mercury
was in all probability a god named Lug - depicted with ravens, he was
a god of magic and the underworld and he possessed a magical spear.
In one Irish epic, he stands on one leg and closes one eye - a druidic
posture that might explain the single eye of Odin (see page 46). This
divine figure was most likely the same god as Odin, a fact that has
prompted some to speculate that Odin was borrowed wholesale from
Celts.!* But such supposed ‘borrowings’ were in all probability based
on an underlying similarity of god-concepts between the two peoples.
The Gallic Jupiter, for instance, named Sucellos (the ‘good striker’) and
depicted with a hammer, was known in the Rhineland as Taranis (the
thunderer) mentioned by the Roman poet Lucan as one of three main
Celtic deities. Taranis is undoubtedly the same being as the Thunor/
Thor of Germanic myth.
However, whether gods were borrowed or not, it was perhaps the
Romanized Celtic influence in the Rhineland that catalyzed the
Germans to begin personifying their deified natural forces, for the
early Germanic religion seems to have been an animistic nature reli-
gion devoid of such imagery. As Caesar writes:

The only beings they recognize as gods are things that they can see,
and by which they are obviously benefited, such as Sun, Moon, and
Fire; the other gods they have never even heard of.

49
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

This seems to reflect Bede’s calendar, with its solar and lunar empha-
sis, more than the gods of Asgard found in Norse literature. But
perhaps the fact that such elemental forces of nature and fertility
seem so at odds with the later Norse pantheons is because they were
actually an entirely different family of gods. It might be that Bede’s
Anglo-Saxon calendar with its sun and moon worship and its unique
goddesses were a survival from isolated Denmark of an older order of
worship.

The Vanir: the Older Gods

The Norse myths inform us that the Aesir were not the only divine
beings in the cosmos. There had once existed an earlier race of gods,
and especially goddesses, known as the Vanir. The Vanir were gods of
joy and fertility, of the earth and waters; of growth and increase. The
Vanir and Aesir, so the legends say, were once at war, but hostages were
exchanged and peace was made; indeed many of the Aesir took brides
from the Vanir.“4
First amongst the Vanir were the twin gods Freyr (‘Lord’) and
Freyja (‘Lady’), said to be the twin children of Njorthr, a god of the
oceans. Freyr owned a magical ship and a golden boar, and rode
around the countryside on a wagon bringing fertility. His sister (said
to be his lover) was a mistress of magic; about her neck hung the
fabled necklace of the Brisings - the Brisingamen. Freyr ruled Vana-
heim (home of the Vanir) but was also linked to Alfheim (the home of
the elves), the elemental or ancestral spirits of the landscape. These
were not gods ‘up there’ but forces in the natural world - the sort of
numina one might perceive in a grove of trees or a spring, forces of the
fructifying earth: Caesar’s ‘things that they can see, and by which they
are obviously benefited’ (see pages 44-45).
Given the evidence of the Anglo-Saxon calendar, with the god-
desses and ‘Mothers’ not found in the later Norse Aesir pantheon, it
might be that the Aesir played a relatively minor role within the Old
English religion, and the religion of the seven tribes of the Cimbric
peninsula. The ancient paganism of the Old English, who were less

50
 ON-THE AEFARS OF THEIR IDOLS

culturally forward than their southern German (Roman-influenced)

neighbours, is likely to have been more concerned with the Vanir and
with rites to ensure a good harvest, at least in Tacitus’s day, than with
gods of battle. The festival of Modranicht (Night of the Mothers) cer-
tainly suggests this: The Vanir had among their ranks goddesses with
names that can be translated as ‘the giver’ such as Gefn (another name
for Freyja) and Gefion, (also likely to be Freyja in another guise). This
same element has been found in the names of a number of goddesses
to whom shrines were set up in the Roman period in the eastern
Rhine area (and in Celtic areas, too). Bearing titles such as Gabiae
(richly giving), the images carved of them usually show three beings,
often associated with horns of plenty and fruit, known collectively as
‘Matronae’ (the Mothers). The Modranicht mentioned by Bede
suggest that in the Old English religion it may have been the
‘Mothers’, the giving goddesses of the Vanir, who had the upper hand.
If the Aesir were indeed the foremost gods amongst the warrior aris-
tocracy which constituted a small percentage of the invaders, at the
same time countless anonymous shrines may have existed to other
tutelary deities whose names we do not recognize as those of gods, such
as the mythical giant Wade whose name probably lies behind Watling
Street. Alternatively, it might be that Woden, depicted by Snorri as a
latecomer to the Norse pantheon (as was his Celtic counterpart Lugh
in Irish myth), arrived in England later than the Vanir cult.
In either case, the presumed Vanir religion of the Anglo-Saxons is
one that can be traced back to their continental ancestors who, in
turn, were the descendants of the mound-builders of the Neolithic
and Bronze Ages. As Tacitus pointed out, there was something unique
about the religion of the tribes of Old Denmark that set them apart
from their contemporaries - and this something was of great import
to the themes of Beowulf.

S51
 CHAPTER FOUR

IN DREAD WATERS

Grendel’s mother herself, a monstrous ogress ... had been

doomed to dwell in dread waters, in the chilling currents,
because of that blow whereby Cain became the killer of his
brother ... to inhabit the wastelands.
BEOWULF, 1258-65

O THE AUDIENCE who first heard Beowulf'as a spoken poem in its

a] ee: tongue, the land of the sea-coasts of Denmark and its
inhabitants would have been as familiar as the characters in modern
soap-operas are to us today. This early English audience still consid-
ered themselves a Baltic people - the centre of their world was Old
Germania, its stories were their stories, and the Ingwine were their own
ancestors. Accordingly, they would have been intimate with the back-
ground details of the tales which are no longer available to us. And
elements of the poem that would have seemed obvious to them may
go unnoticed by us - ironies and puns that pass us by might have left
them gasping or howling - and this might include the original iden-
tity of the lake-dwelling fiends of the poem.
In the poem, Beowulf journeys to Denmark and encounters two
monstrous creatures whose abode is a dark, mysterious body of water.
This lake, over which bend ash trees thick with hoar frost, is littered
with discarded armour and weaponry, with which Beowulf is able to
kill Grendel’s mother. While these could simply be imagined locations

52
 IN DREAD WATERS

and creatures - the invention of the scop, the storyteller - what Tacitus
tells us of rites of the Ingaevones makes this doubtful; the audience
are likely to have known of such weapon-filled lakes (see page 35)
and the major part they played in the heathen rites of their Vanir-
worshipping forebears, so recently put aside.
According to Tacitus, the Anglii and their neighbouring six tribes,
isolated behind their ramparts of rivers and woods, had something
in common that made them stand out from the other tribes of
Germania: ,

They share a common worship of Nerthus, or Mother Earth. They

believe that she takes part in human affairs, riding in a chariot among
her people. On an island of the sea stands an inviolate grove, in which,
veiled with a cloth, is a chariot that none but the priest may touch.
The priest can feel the presence of the goddess in this holy of holies,
and attends her with deepest reverence as her chariot is drawn along
by cows. Then follow days of rejoicing and merrymaking in every
place that she condescends to visit and sojourn in. No one goes to
war, no one takes up arms; every iron object is locked away. Then, and
then only, are peace and quiet known and welcomed, until the
goddess, when she has had enough of the society of men, is restored
to her sacred precinct by the priest. After that, the chariot, the vest-
ments, and (believe it if you will) the goddess herself, are cleansed in
a secluded lake. This service is performed by slaves who immediately
afterwards are drowned in the lake. Thus mystery begets terror and a
pious reluctance to ask what that sight can be which is seen only by
men doomed to die.

Roman writers have often been accused of fabricating or exaggerating

accounts of barbaric atrocities, most often by those seeking to remove
their perpetrators (most usually the Celts) from any reports that
might tarnish their idealized image.’ Perhaps because writers on Ger-
manic paganism have never been inspired to filter out the atrocities of
these peoples in order to make them more palatable to a modern
audience, the accounts of Germanic sacrifice found in contemporary

53
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

sources have never really been questioned - and probably rightly so. In
Uppsala in Sweden, according to the 11th-century Adam of Bremen,
sacrifices were held every nine years in which nine of every kind of
animal was sacrificed; he reports seeing dogs, horses and men
hanging in the same bloody groves. A similar rite is recorded in
Denmark: every nine years, reported Thietmar of Merseburg, possibly
aping Adam’s numbers, ninety men were offered with horses, dogs
and cocks to the powers of the underworld at a site known as Lejre, on
Zealand.’ This site, which had been an important centre of ritual
activity since the megalithic age, had later become the capital of the
Scylding dynasty, according to Danish legend. This is supported by
excavations of massive feasting halls dating from the early Viking
period. It will become evident why there is good reason to connect
Lejre with the location of the hall of Heorot in Beowulf (see page 7).

The Bog People

The remains of numerous Iron Age bodies recovered from the ‘dread
waters’ of peat bogs throughout Denmark suggest that Tacitus’s ref-
erence to the drowning of the slaves who took part in the Nerthus rite
was based on reality. Such individuals are preserved by the acidic
tannins in the peat bogs: although often dissolving the bones, they
cure the skin into a leathery hide. The soft tissue is preserved to the
extent that not only can the features be distinguished, but also the
hair, expression and fingerprints; indeed, save for the bronzed colour
of the skin, these individuals would look as if they were sleeping
peacefully - were it not for the evidence of ritual murder?
The serene expression of the man found at Tollund in Jutland in
1950 (see page 5) belies the fact that he died a violent death: a 5-ft noose
was plaited about his neck, from which he was hung before being
placed in the bog. Tollund man allows us to come face to face with
what is probably a Jute, an ancestor of the men of Kent. He was found
lying on his side, wearing nothing but a leather girdle, the noose
about his neck, and a pointed leather cap, like that of a pixie
- a bog
elf. He was clean shaven, his chin and top lip peppered with red

54
 IN DREAD WATERS

stubble; his short hair hidden by the cap. The hair of such ‘bog-
people’ is usually a fiery copper or red, tanned like the skin, against
which it shows up well. Indeed, the figure of Iron John in the Grimm’s
fairy tale of the same name, with rust-red hair, found when a pool in
a forest is drained, suggests that such remains have turned up
throughout history.‘
After the discovery of the Tollund man, PV Glob (already men-
tioned in connection with ancestor veneration and with the Mound
People; see pages 30 and 33), an archaeology professor from Aarhus
University, was called to the scene. He describes in his book The Bog
People how the man was placed in a wooden case and lifted on to a
horse-drawn cart from where he journeyed by train to the National
Museum of Denmark at Copenhagen. The box was very heavy, and
one of the workers collapsed with a heart attack. Glob writes:

The bog claimed a life for a life; or, as some may prefer to think, the
old gods took a modern man in place of the man from the past.

Glob was also called in two years later, following the discovery of
another body, found in Nebel Mose by workers from Grauballe (after
whom he is named). Initially, Grauballe man was just a head sticking
out of the peat, his features twisted, throat slit from ear to ear, nearly
severing the gullet. He too was naked. He has recently been carbon-
dated to 291 BC.
Of the many hundreds of bodies that have been found, some were
strangled and cut - such as the man at Borremose, who was buried in
an old peat cutting in a cross-legged position: he had a triple-knotted
hemp rope around his throat, severe injuries to his skull and a slit
jugular; this mirrored the death of the Lindow body, found in
Cheshire, which revealed this also to have been a rite amongst other
Iron Age north-west European peoples.‘
Debate has continued over whether these people were the victims
of human sacrifice or had died from other causes. Clearly, some of the
many remains found in peat bogs would have been victims of acci-
dental drowning or of crimes of passion, or even offerings to the gods

55
 BEOWULFAND (GRENDEL

of prisoners of war (such as the severed head from Osterby, Old

Anglia, wearing the knotted hairstyle of the Anglii’s southern neigh-
bours and foes, the Suebi). Others, like the girl found at Windeby in
Schleswig Holstein, blindfolded and drowned with half her hair
shorn, might have been victims of capital punishment. Tacitus
records that if a wife was found to be adulterous, her husband shaved
her head, stripped her naked and flogged her through the village.
Both the Windeby girl and the remains of a man nearby were pressed
down into the bog with birch branches, matching what Tacitus
records as the punishment for a sexual crime. Alternatively, some have
suggested that her blindfold marks her out as a seer, a shaman. There
are, however, a number of distinguishing signs that point to possible
victims of sacrifice. They are usually naked, often exhibit more than
one single method of death and, pointing away from them being
common criminals, the victims have smooth hands. This lack of the
calluses associated with either manual work or the use of weapons (at
least not for some time prior to their deaths) points either to an aris-
tocratic or a priestly caste, rather than slaves as Tacitus described.

The Last Supper

One final but significant clue that these victims have in common is a
shared ‘last meal’. Analysis of the stomach contents of some of the
more recent bog finds shows that their last meals consisted of a veg-
etable gruel made from grains and seeds. As there were no traces of
fruit in this porridge, it is widely assumed that these people did not
die in the spring, summer or autumn. They had met their deaths in
the winter, perhaps at the midwinter festival itself. One other sub-
stance of note discovered in the stomachs of both Tollund and
Grauballe man was a large amount of a poisonous parasitic fungus
named ergot (Claviceps purpurea). This fungus grows on barley and rye
in regions with a damp climate, and not only gives the seeds an
unpleasant look, but, more importantly, it is so toxic as to cause vaso-
constriction, sensations of burning and, if ingested in any quantity,
death. Major outbreaks of ergotism, as the illness caused by this

56
 IN DREAD WATERS

fungus is known (or ‘St Anthony’s fire’ as it was called in the Middle
Ages after the horrendous burning sensations its sufferers experi-
enced), were once common in the past. In 994, some 40,000 people
died in Aquitaine alone after eating bread made from ergotized grain.
Those who did not die experienced convulsions and massive vasocon-
striction leading to gangrene and the loss of limbs. The toxins also
produced mind-altering effects such as the sensation of flight or of
changing into an animal. This was due to the hallucinogenic alkaloids
the fungus contains, including lysergic acid (LSD). The fungus was
not only ingested accidentally. In the medieval period it was used to
induce labour, or, in greater doses, abortion.’
The presence of ergot in the stomachs of the bog victims brings to
mind a number of intriguing possibilities. Were these people pur-
posely sedated before being killed? Did the inclusion of the toxic
grain suggest a failure of the harvest for which reason the individual
was being offered up to the gods to solicit their help? Or was the ergot
~ taken specifically for its hallucinogenic qualities? (This last question
is examined at some length later; see page 82.)
Glob was adamant that the ‘bog people’, as he called them, were
the ‘slaves’ reported by Tacitus as meeting their end in the rites of the
goddess Nerthus. Putting aside for the moment their possible identi-
ties, there is more evidence for this cult than the bodies alone - the
peat bogs of Denmark have also offered up the very wagons on which
the goddess was processed throughout the land.

The Wagon Goddess

The most striking of these ritual wagons are from Dejbjerg on the
west side of Jutland, where two wagons were discovered in a bog in the
1880s - and thought to date to around aD 200. The bronze mountings
and fine detail on these wagons show that they were not used for
transporting grain or for casual farm use. One wagon contained an
elaborate alder-wood stool for the ‘goddess’ to sit on, and part of a
loom was found in one of the many pots deposited with the vehicle,
suggesting a female occupant or, at the very least, female symbolism.

Es
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

Another richly ornamented wagon was found accompanying the 9th-

century boat burial of a high-ranking lady, together with a female
attendant, at Oseberg. Found with nuts and apples, items commonly
depicted in the laps of the divine ‘Mothers’, this was accompanied by
tapestries depicting a man and woman standing beside a wagon.
But it was at Rappendam in the north of Zealand that the great-
est deposit was found. This major find consisted of 28 wheels and 13
hubs deposited over a period of time and was associated with the
remains of a male skeleton and the bones of animals, including cattle,
horse, wild pig and sheep. Near to the Rappendam lake is a place
named Jgrlinde, which perhaps derives from the name Njorthr - the
father in Norse myth of Freyr and Freyja, the chief gods of the Vanir.
Njorthr was also a fertility deity associated with water, whose name is
directly related to Nerthus (see page 53). Another place name on
Zealand - Niartharum (modern-day Naerum, north of Copenhagen)
- also suggests a connection with this deity?
Zealand is mentioned in the Norse Edda of Snorri Sturluson in a
tale named Gylfaginning (the trickery of Gylfi). Gylfi was a Swedish
king who offered a vagrant woman, in exchange for ‘entertainment’,
as much land as she could plough with four oxen in one night. Unbe-
known to Gylfi, this lady was the goddess Gefion (possibly a form of
Frejya, see page 51). She took four magical oxen from the land of the
giants in the north (they were her four enchanted sons from a union
with a giant), and they drew a plough that cut so deep that it sepa-
rated the land from Sweden, the land floating west to form Zealand.
Here she is said to have lived with Skjold, son of Odin, at Lejre; Skjold
being the same figure as Scyld Scefing of Beowulf - head of the
Skjoldung dynasty of Denmark (see chart 4). It seems that Gefion’s
Lejre, where Thietmar of Merseburg reported mass sacrifice (see page
54), may have been the cult capital of Nerthus’s island, and that
Nerthus and Gefion were one goddess - Gefion (‘the Giver’), like
Freyya, (‘the Lady’), being a title rather thana personal name. Also, the
name Gefion is related to the Old English geofon, a word used to
suggest bodies of water such as rivers, lakes or the sea. It is feasible
that this word was derived from the title of the lake goddess in the

58
 IN DREAD WATERS

same way that our modern word ‘ocean’ is derived from the fish-tailed
Titan Okeanos of Greek myth, who controlled the seas.”
Anyone studying Beowulf cannot help wonder whether the dread
lake of Grendel and his mother into which Beowulf dives might not
be such a sacred lake or bog as we find both in Tacitus’s written record
(see page 53) and archaeologically in the ritual depositions of Old
Denmark. Intriguingly, the poet himself seems to leave us a veiled clue
to this possibility: Before Beowulf sets off to seek Grendel’s mother,
the Geatish hero comments that even though she may try to hide he
will find her. He describes the locales she will flee into:

I can promise you this, she will not protect herself from hiding in any
fold of the field, in any forest of the mountain, in any dingle of the
sea, dive where she will! (Beowulf, 1391-4)

But the actual words the poet uses, translated here as ‘dingle of the
sea’, are gyfenes grund, a phrase that could literally be translated as
‘Gefion’s ground’, in other words the abode of the water goddess. The
use of this turn of phrase may provide evidence, albeit in the form of
a pun, that the lake-abode of Grendel and his kin were the same
sacred lakes of the goddess Gefion/Nerthus and that the Beowulf
poet and, perhaps, his audience, knew enough of the old religion to
make sense of this.

* * *

In Part I we have seen how the English people, amongst whom the
tale of Beowulf developed, were immigrants from Denmark and
the German coasts - members of a tribal network known as the
Ingaevones - and that their ancient religion seems to have been more
goddess-oriented than that of the later Vikings as suggested by Norse
myths. They celebrated an ancient festival called ‘Night of the
Mothers’ within a ritual calendar dealing with the farming year, con-
necting them both to the ‘triple mothers’ of archaeology and to a
family of gods known as the Vanir, who seem to have been more

59
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

ancient divinities than the Thor and Odin of later Norse myth. Cut
off from the rest of Germania by forests and streams, it seems that the
Vanir cult had remained strong amongst the ‘English’ Ingaevones.
And ritual sites, such as the lake of the wagons at Jorlinde, point to
the fact that just 250 years before they crossed the channel and entered
the history of the British Isles, the English were still taking part in
sacrificial rites to an ancient Vanir goddess whose sacrificial victims
may have been hung and drowned at midwinter.
But what were the origins of this Vanir cult and what is its impor-
tance to the tale of Beowulf’s struggle with Grendel and his mother
in the ancient goddess lakes of Old Denmark? Might the heroic elegy
that is Beowulf really be concerned with the cults and gods of a long-
lost religion? The first clues to such a possibility come in the form of
the figure of Scyld Scefing, with whom the poem starts and who, in
Norse tradition, was husband of Gefion. And it is the true identity of
Scyld Scefing - who was not really a mortal hero at all - that tells us
much about the real background to Beowulf.

60
 Part Il

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GODS AND MONSTERS
 7

CHAPTER FIVE

SCYLD SCEFING

CYLD (SHIELD), the child brought by the sea to the shores of

Denmark, appears in Beowulf as the eponymous ancestor of the
Danish royal line, the Scyldings. It is with him that the poem begins,
setting the scene for the events of his great-grandson Hrothgar’s rule
(see page 7).
He who arrives from the sea eventually returns to it - his body set
adrift in a boat, surrounded by swords and armour; on his breast
great treasures; above his head a gold standard. Thus he returns back
to those mysterious and unnamed powers that set him adrift many
years before.
The image of the wave-born prince is a powerful and dramatic one.
It is thought that Tennyson made use of it in his Idylls of the King when
he imagines Arthur arriving at Tintagel on the Cornish coast not
from the womb of Ygerna, but from the dark sea itself}! and, in his
hour of passing, when his body is taken away by ship, Sir Bedivere
hears this mysterious phrase:

From the great deep to the great deep he goes.

From the start, the figure of Scyld, like that of Arthur, seems to pos-
sess a quality more than human. Scyld, at least in the manner of his
arrival into and departure from this world, was no mortal man. There
is something mythical about him and clearly we are not intended to
take Beowulf at face value and see Scyld as simply a warrior ancestor, a
man under whose rule the Danes achieved dominance over the kings

63
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

of neighbouring tribes. Fortunately, the name and deeds of Scyld do

appear outside of the poem, and what they suggest is most intriguing.
In King Alfred’s day, during a renaissance in education and learn-
ing, the royal genealogy of Wessex was extended so that it contained
as many generations as that of the house of David, thereby enabling
the royal house to trace its ancestry all the way back to Adam rather
than to the god Woden of their heathen forefathers.? To achieve this,
the original list had to be extended and numerous gaps in the royal
Wessex line somehow filled. To this end, figures from existing Anglo-
Saxon tradition were used - figures who were considered worthy
enough to be described as ancestors of the king. The three figures that
topped the list of newcomers were the strangely named Scef (Sheaf),
Scyld (Shield) and Beow (Barley).
The proximity of this list to the genealogy of the Scyldings in
Beowulf is clear - here, too, Scyld (Scefing) is the father of Beow. But
who is Scef (Sheaf), whose name appears above that of Scyld in the
Wessex family tree? A 975 gloss on this figure, found in the genealogy
of ealdorman Aethelweard, contains some details about him:

This Sheaf came to land in a light boat, surrounded by weapons, on

an island in the ocean which is called Scani. He was indeed a very
young child and unknown to the folk of that land. However they took
him up and looked after him as carefully as if he were one of their own
kin and afterwards elected him king.

From this it is apparent that the figure called Scef (Sheaf) in the
Wessex genealogy fulfils the same role as attributed to Scyld Scefing
(Shield Sheafson in Beowulf). It seems that the son has inherited the
father’s myth - a myth that was cunningly used to link him into the
biblical family tree, by recording that Scef had been born in Noah’s
Ark.’ In 1140, William of Malmesbury recorded a little more about the
figure he also calls ‘Sheaf’:

He was brought as a child in a ship without oars ... he was asleep and
a sheaf of corn lay at his head. Therefore he was called Sheaf...

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 SEVGLDeS:CEEEING

William records how Sheaf was brought to an isle of Germany called

Scandza and went on to reign in Hedeby in Old Anglia: “... from it the
Anglii came to Britain.’ In other words, Scef was an ancestor of the
English, too.
But although the characters of Scef and Scyld seem to share a
common story, Scef’s absence from Beowulf is remarkable. To explain
this, it has been suggested that perhaps he was merely an invention.
And at first glance, it is tempting to conclude that he was indeed an
invented character. Scyld in Beowulf, as we have seen, bears the second
name Scefing - a name that can be interpreted as meaning ‘with a
sheaf’. However the suffix “ing, in both Old English and the early
Germanic languages, can also play the same role as the word ‘mac’ or
‘mab in the Celtic languages; it was the patronymic, meaning ‘son of’.
In other words, Scef-ing can be read as either ‘with a sheaf? or ‘son of
Sheaf’. So it is possible that the royal genealogist (the thylas) who con-
structed the Wessex genealogy interpreted his source as meaning the
latter, and inserted at the head of the list a wholly fictitious Scef.
Such an argument would be convincing if it were not for two
things. Firstly, would a completely fictional character, invented
through a linguistic slip-up, have been allowed to head a royal geneal-
ogyif it were common knowledge (at a time when the English oral
tradition was still strong) that it was Scyld who was truly the pro-
genitor of the Wessex line? Secondly, the poem Widsith (predating
Beowulf), mentions one Sceafa as an ancestor the Langobards, who
believed their origins also lay in Scandinavia (see page 27).5 From this
early clue, it must be supposed that the Wessex thylas was correct and
was drawing on ancient traditions when he made Scef and not Scyld
the progenitor of their royal line.
In the case of Beowulf, the poet (or his immediate source) has
deliberately removed the name of the original foundling-hero
Scef/Sheaf in order to fit his story into what was known of the Danish
sources, which, like Beowulf, do not mention Scef. Their version of
Scyld, known in Danish as ‘Skjold’,* does not arrive or depart on a
boat: the primary role of this thoroughly land-locked youth is that in
childhood he wrestles with a bear and is said to be either the son of a

65
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

man named Dan (the progenitor of the Danes - likely to have been
invented solely for this purpose) or the god Odin.

Crying the Neck

The names Scef and Beow suggest these characters are not human
ancestors at all but, instead, some kind of personification of the crops:
the sheaf of barley, which when cut down at harvest-time yields the
seed from which next year’s barley will grow. In practical terms, the
harvested sheaf really is the ‘father’ of next year’s barley crop.
Until recent times, in farming communities in England and north-
ern Europe, the last sheaf of corn or barley to be cut during the
harvest was regarded with a certain reverence, or played a role in one
of many farming customs.” Often the sheaf was shaped into a basic
human form and dressed as a person, or as an animal (such as a wolf),
and regarded as the personification of the ‘spirit of the corn’. Some-
times the sheaf was kissed as it was placed on the cart that would
bear it to the farm, or regaled with song and merrymaking. In parts
of England, where this sheaf was called the ‘neck’, it would be sung
to in a ceremony known as ‘crying the neck’ (‘neck’ stemming either
from the idea of the resemblance of the sheaf to a neck and head,
or from the Norse word ‘nek/neg’ meaning sheaf).
Sometimes the personified sheaf was burned or thrown into water;
a custom that may have been a faded memory of a pagan rite con-
cerning a divinity of the crops. It is reasonable to speculate that the
last sheaf in ancient times may have been similarly regarded with
special favour as the spirit of the crops, thus entering the imagination
and, in time, becoming a deity itself - whose life story mirrored the
seasonal death and rebirth of the corn. We find sucha personification
of the sheaf in the folk song John Barleycorn, which is worth quoting
in full as it contains many significant images and themes:

There was three kings into the east,

Three kings both great and high,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn should die.

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 SCYLD SCEFING

They took a plough and plough’d him down,

Put clods upon his head,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn was dead.

But the cheerful Spring came kindly on,

And show’rs began to fall;
John Barleycorn got up again,
And sore surpris’d them all.

The sultry suns of Summer came,

And he grew thick and strong,
His head weel arm’d wi’ pointed spears,
That no one should him wrong.

The sober Autumn enter’d mild,

When he grew wan and pale;
His bending joints and drooping head
Show’d he began to fail.

His colour sicken’d more and more,

He faded into age;
And then his enemies began
To show their deadly rage.

They’ve taen a weapon, long and sharp,

And cut him by the knee;
Then ty’d him fast upon a cart,
Like a rogue for forgerie.

They laid him down upon his back,

And cudgell’d him full sore;
They hung him up before the storm,
And turn’d him o’er and o’er.

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 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

They filled up a darksome pit

With water to the brim,
They heaved in John Barleycorn,
There let him sink or swim.

They laid him out upon the floor,

To work him farther woe,
And still, as signs of life appear’d,
They toss’d him to and fro.

They wasted, o’er a scorching flame,

The marrow of his bones;
But a Miller us’d him worst of all,
For he crush’d him between two stones.

And they hae taen his very heart’s blood,

And drank it round and round;
And still the more and more they drank,
Their joy did more abound.

John Barleycorn was a hero bold,

Of noble enterprise,
For if you do but taste his blood,
*Twill make your courage rise.

Twill make a man forget his woe;

"Twill heighten all his joy:
"Twill make the widow’s heart to sing,
Tho’ the tear were in her eye.

Then let us toast John Barleycorn,

Each man a glass in hand;
And may his great posterity
Ne’er fail in old Scotland!

68
 SiGaae Bair Fl

So powerful is the imagery that perhaps Scef/Sheaf and Beow/

Barley were originally vegetation gods rather than human ancestors.
Such vegetal connections were clearly known to the Beowulf poet, as
demonstrated by the subtle pun he uses concerning Beow, Scyld’s
son (In 18):

Béow wes bréme, bled wide sprang

Beow was renowned, far and wide his glory spread

This may also be rendered as:

Barley was renowned, far and wide his leaf spread

There are a number of possible traces of a ‘barley spirit’ in myths. In

Norse myth, there is a figure known as Byggvir (‘Barley man’) who is
mocked by the god Loki for being a parasite ‘by Freyr’s ear’, by which
it appears that the Vanir god Freyr was conceived of as wearing a bar-
ley wreath on his head in which the barley spirit dwelt. The cult of this
otherwise unheard of figure may have moved with scattered Norse
settlers into Finland, where a figure named Pekko appears (related
phonetically to Byggvir) who promoted the growth of barley. Depicted
as a child in a corn bin, a wooden image of Pekko was taken into the
fields at sowing time. Pekko had two feasts, on moonlit nights in
spring and autumn, reminiscent of the Litha feast of the Anglo-Saxon
calendar. Also, in the Finnish epic The Kalevala, there is mention of a
character named Sampsa Pellervoinen, a vegetation deity recorded as
coming as a boy from an isle in the ocean, in a ‘corn-boat’ - just like
Sheaf.
It seems likely that Scef and Beow were related to these mytholog-
ical figures and were personifications of a corn spirit. If this is the
case, the question remains as to what Scyld (Shield) was doing
between the two in the later genealogies, and why he came to supplant
his father in Danish tradition, and as a result, in Beowulf: The answer
may lie in a long-forgotten ritual and image.

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 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

The Sheaf on the Shield

During the reign of Edmund I (941-6), a dispute over a certain piece
of land the monks of Abingdon Abbey claimed as theirs was resolved
in a very odd manner:

Appealing to the Judgement of God, the monks put a sheaf of corn,

with a lighted taper at its head, onto a round shield and launched the
shield into the Thames.

The shield with its sheaf on board circumnavigated the disputed

lands (which had flooded) and this therefore ‘proved’ the land
belonged to the Abbey.* Not only was this a remarkable way of settling
a land dispute, it is also a clue as to how the confusion over Scyld and
Scef may have arisen. The ceremonial act undertaken by the monks at
Abingdon may have originated in the ancient iconography of the
arrival of the corn-spirit. If this is the case, there is a valid reason why
a figure named ‘Shield’ should be associated with these cereal deities,
for it refers not originally to a person, but to the mode of transport of
the god. But why should the corn deity be imagined as arriving on a
boat or shield at all?
There is a possible literal interpretation, in which this deity is
somehow connected with the arrival of farming traditions during the
Neolithic period, bringing with him the knowledge and practice of
cereal farming. Such a god could easily be imagined as arriving by
boat, and in the case of the Danish islands and much of Scandinavia,
and Britain, this is exactly how knowledge would have arrived. Boats
would have sailed from the continental mainland with their hulls full
of seed - exactly as in the Kalevala myth.

The Solar Boat

There is perhaps an alternative, more symbolic meaning to the image
of the shield. In Part I, it was shown that rock carvings in Scandinavia
depict the ship above all other religious symbols (see page 34); this

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 SCVEDTSCEF ENG

image clearly had a religious function. The ship often is accompanied

by the ‘solar disc’ pattern — a circle with a cross inside. A similar motif
appears in Egyptian iconography, where it represents the solar and
lunar barques that sail across the sky bearing the heavenly bodies.
While there is an obvious connection between the sun and the
growing of the crops, there is also a connection in ancient thought
between planting and the phases of the moon, and this was demon-
strated by the use of the moon to calculate dates of planting. The
crops can, therefore, be said to be brought by the sun or moon, in a
process depicted figuratively as the plant arriving in the solar or lunar
barques - crossing the blue waters of the heavens.
In a similar fashion, the arrival and departure of the sea-born hero
in the boat mirror the daily rising of the sun and its setting. This is a

@
Petroglyph of solar
boat from prehistoric
Scandinavia.

Egyptian solar barque.

71
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

particularly strong connection to those living in a coastal zone, such

as Scandinavia, where the sun seems to rise from the ocean itself and
return thence at night: from the great deep to the great deep he goes.
The image of the solar boat helps explain the manner of the cereal
god’s arrival, but not, at first sight, the use of a shield as a boat. One
obvious connection is that the shield in shape does resemble a boat -
especially a coracle. In Sumerian myth, the moon god Sin was said to
traverse the heavens in an early type of coracle known as a quffah which
is hemispherical in shape. His choice of the quffab as a symbol is
apparent to anyone who has seen a half moon sailing over the
horizon. If the solar and lunar barques were originally conceived of as
hemispherical quffahs, in later times, or in distant regions where such
craft were unknown, this hemispherical transport could be imagined
as a shield.* !°
But the link between the shield and heavenly barque is not mere
conjecture: indeed, it seems to be an ancient image, for the solar
symbol found on the ships in ancient Scandinavian rock art also
appears carried as a shield by the figures of male warriors. This
ship-shield connection is also found in northern myth: in the Edda,
Snorri tells us that ‘Ull’s ship’ is a kenning (a poetical image) for a
shield, as UIl, a Norse god, used his shield as a boat. In Welsh myth, King
Arthur’s shield bears the same name as his ship, ‘Prydwen’: Prydwen
meaning ‘fair aspect’ or ‘white/shining face’, a suitable name for the
lunar/solar disk. The name of Arthur’s ship appears in Taliesin’s
poem The Spoils of the Abyss (see page 130),"! in which Arthur and his
men sail into the underworld to rescue a prisoner and to steal a won-
drous cauldron. Similarly, in Egyptian myth the solar barque was
thought to enter the underworld in the west each night, do battle
with the forces of darkness and emerge triumphant at dawn in the
east the next morning.
All these parallels seem to suggest that the figures of Scef and
Beow at the start of Beowulf were not human ancestors but ancient fer-
tility gods and that the figure of Scyld, as found in the Danish
genealogies and in Beowulfitself, stems from the image of the heavenly
shield-boat that brings the crops.

72
 a

SYED SCEFING

Petroglyph of
man with shield
from prehistoric
Scandinavia.

Rejecting Sheaf
Scyld rather than Scef seems to be the ‘invented’ figure: an anthropo-
morphized image of the corn-bearing ship. But why did the Danes
not recognize the figure of Sheaf in their genealogies? It seems as if all
notion of Sheaf the fertility god was erased deliberately from the
Danish version of the Scylding family tree and in his place there was
elevated the ‘invented’ figure of Scyld (Skjold, son of Odin), whose
name suggested a more fitting ancestry for the military aristocracy of
the Danes.
When the English Beowulf poet draws on Danish tradition he is in
a position to know all about Scef and the true ancestry of Scyld as the
vessel in which the corn god arrived, but rather than impose his own
country’s traditions on to those of the Danes, he makes a compromise.
He too makes Scyld a man, the ultimate ancestor of the Danes, but he
gives him Scef’s sea-borne arrival, referring to the veiled existence of
Scef by calling Scyld the ‘Scefing’. And, in time, when the Wessex
genealogist compiles his new family tree, he reinstates Scef to his true
position, but follows Beowulf in giving Scyld a human identity.
This foray into the quagmire of genealogical invention and corn
gods (what Tolkien referred to as ‘a most astonishing tangle’) helps
us conclude that although influenced by Danish tradition, Beowulf

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 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

begins with the veiled tale of the arrival and departure of an ancient
god, a cereal deity known as an ancestor by the peoples of Scandi-
navia, including the English, but whom the Danes had purged from
their royal family tree.
While on the surface this may not seem relevant to the deeds of the
monster-slaying Beowulf, in the next chapter it becomes apparent how
the worship of Scef/Sheaf was based on an ecstatic Neolithic farming
religion whose use of a sacred intoxicant reveals parallels with the last
meal of the bog men and the wagon ritual of Nerthus. In fact, the rites
of Sheaf have everything to do with the dreaded lakes of pagan
Denmark, and there is good reason why the Danes sought to distance
themselves from this deity.

74
 CHAPTER'SiLX

THE BARLEY GOD

ha FIGURES OF SHEAF and his offspring Barley of Old English

tradition are not alone in myth as personifications of cereal gods.
A number of divinities in the ancient world had lives mirroring the
seasonal death and rebirth of vegetation. Complex mythologies grew
up around these divine figures, but they all keep to the basic pattern
found in the folk song John Barleycorn (see page 66). The earliest
recorded forms of the Barleycorn myth are in the Mesopotamian
story of Tammuz and Inanna (or Ishtar), in which the young god
Tammuz is killed, bringing on the winter, and prompting his wife
Inanna to descend into the underworld to beg for his release.!
This motif reappears in the search of the Egyptian Isis for her
green-skinned husband Osiris, and in the Greek goddess Demeter’s
search for her daughter, Persephone (revealing that the vegetation
spirit was not necessarily a male figure). What is known of Tammuz’s
rites shows that they were accompanied by a great public outpouring
of grief, a fact even mentioned in the Bible (Ezekiel 8:14):

Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the Lord’s house which
was toward the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for
Tammuz.

The myth of Tammuz closely resembles that of the Norse Balder (see
page 47). Balder (whose name also means ‘lord’ as well as, possibly,
‘the swollen one’), son of Odin and husband of Nanna, is slain by his

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 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

blind brother Hodr, resulting in the loss of Earth’s fertility. Hel, the
goddess of the underworld, agrees to release him if all creation weeps
for him, but Loki in disguise does not and he remains Hel’s prisoner
until the day of doom.
One of the best-known forms of the vegetal god is the Greek
Adonis — from the Phoenician Adon (Lord) - a Middle Eastern god
who entered Greek myth as the lover of Aphrodite. Adonis, normally
represented as a beautiful youth born from a myrrh tree, was gored in
the thigh by a boar while hunting on Mount Lebanon and sent down
into the underworld. The land above, however, became blighted in his
absence, and following the outpourings of grief by all creation, he was
allowed to return to the upper world for a period of each year but
must return to the underworld every winter.”
The Phrygian form of Adonis was the goddess Cybele’s castrated
son/spouse named Attis, who was either killed by a boar or self-emas-
culated while standing under a pine tree. His death and resurrection
were celebrated in ancient Rome at the spring equinox (21 March)
when a pine tree was brought in from the woods, bedecked with
flowers, and an image of the god placed on it. On 24 March, the god
was seen to die, symbolized by his priest (named Attis after the god)
drawing blood from his arms. On 25 March, Attis was seen to rise
again, so providing later Christians with the traditional date of
Easter.’

Farming Metaphors
The origin of the imagery found in these myths is clear. The wound-
ing of the god in the thigh or his self-emasculation (like Attis) is
derived from the act of harvesting the corn: it is the separation of the
generative organ (the seed) from the main plant. (Just as John Barley-
corn is cut down ‘at the knee’, so the wound dealt to the god is to the
thigh.) When the god is in the underworld (the seed in the soil), the
land lies barren for the winter. The image of castration is perhaps the
earlier image, arising as it does from the idea of a self-seeded plant.
The wounding of the god by the tusks of the boar is a later farming-

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 FHE BARLEY. GOD

based metaphor, the curved tusk of the boar representing the curved
blade of a sickle.
It is important to recognize that while the folk song John Barley-
corn was simply a metaphor for the crops, the gods of the ancient
fertility religions were more than symbols for vegetal growth: they
were the forces of nature - the force of continued creation itself.
Ancient man did not worship the corn but rather the spirit that ani-
mated it, the same spirit that animated the ever-turning sun, the
waxing and waning moon, and, ultimately, the death and resurrection
of mankind.
Osiris is the most evocative of vegetal deities, perhaps because of
his numerous portrayals in Egyptian art as green-skinned and serene,
seated on his throne, with a tall white crown on his head. With his
wife, his twin sister Isis, he is said to have brought the gift of cereal
farming to mankind, journeying around the world (presumably by
boat) spreading the knowledge of farming and of pacifism. His
demise comes when he is tricked into a coffin by his jealous brother
Seth and cast adrift on the Nile. The coffin washes ashore at Byblos in
Syria and grows into a sycamore tree that is cut down and used as a
pillar in a local palace. When Isis discovers its whereabouts, she travels
to Byblos and becomes the nurse to the young prince of the palace. By
day, she secretly burns the prince in a fire to give him immortality,
while at night she flies in the form of a hawk around the pillar
containing her husband. Eventually, she obtains his release, takes
his body and hides it in the marshes of the Nile, begetting by it the
hawk-headed god Horus. The evil Seth, however, stumbles upon his
brother’s body while hunting a boar during the full moon and dis-
members the corpse into 14 pieces, which Isis collects in a corn sieve
and puts back together. Using her magic, she resurrects her husband,
who goes on to rule in the underworld, where he becomes the judge
of the dead.*
Like those of Attis and Adonis, the rites of Osiris are reminiscent
of the Germanic Sheaf. His annual festival began with the ploughing
of land and, after his death, on the third day of the festival a boat was
taken down to the waters of the Nile, and a golden vessel filled with

Vhs
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

Osiris as the growing corn.

Nile water. A paste was made out of this water and a certain type of
vegetable mould, and fashioned into a sickle shape, which was then
clothed, placed in the boat, and brought back to the temple, whereon
all shouted ‘Osiris is found!’ The resurrection of Osiris, whose prone
body is often shown with corn springing from it, was symbolized by
the erection of the Djed or ‘stability’ column, a symbolized bound sheaf
of corn, showing that in Egypt, as amongst the Germans, honour was
given to the newborn ‘sheaf’ in a boat.$

NLL CRETE NCTC.

The Djed pillar.

78
 THE BARLEY GOD

While these gods may appear far removed from the Dark Age
Beowulf and the monstrous Grendel and his mother, there is no
doubt that Osiris and the rest have a great affinity to the figure of
Sheaf/Scyld. The similarity is more than coincidental. As this mythol-
ogy is clearly linked with the practice of growing crops, we can surmise
that its observance spread with farming and arrived in Scandinavia
from the Middle East in the Neolithic age. The well- documented cults
of the Middle East provide us with a window into the rites that would
have been practised in the prehistoric chambered tombs of Denmark
by the ancestors of the Ingaevones. We can almost be sure that the
families of the Mound People and the girl at Egtved (see page 34)
would have known a form of this myth; the solar disk on her belly and
the barley drink by her side indicate this. But it is the Greek god
Dionysos who reveals that there was a link not just between this cereal
deity and Sheaf but also the wagon-borne Vanir goddess Nerthus,
whom the Mound People’s descendants worshipped in the Iron Age.

Dionysos
Dionysos (the Bacchus of the Romans), whose cult reached classical
Greece from Anatolia, was a god of wine and ecstasy. Born of the
goddess Semele (a name related to an old Greek word for earth) and
Zeus, he was torn apart by the Titans and his body parts boiled in a
cauldron. Subsequently, he was rescued and reconstituted by Rhea,
his grandmother. Other versions of the myth call him ‘son of
Demeter’, and state that it was she who brought him back to life.°
Dionysos was credited with the invention of wine on Mount Nysa
in Libya, and was depicted as an effeminate man with flowing curly
locks. He was driven mad and wandered throughout Asia on a chariot
accompanied by wild women named maenads, and by satyrs, spread-
ing knowledge of winemaking just as Osiris had spread knowledge of
cereal farming. He journeyed to Egypt, India and, eventually, Boeotia
and then to Thebes, where King Pentheus opposed him and tried
to imprison him, but ended up being rent apart by the possessed
maenads - his head torn from his body by his own mother Agave.

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 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

Dionysos continued his journey through the Aegean, now on board a

ship, and caused the oars to become serpents, himself a lion, and a
vine to grow up the mast. Eventually, he ascended to heaven to live
amongst the immortals, the Olympian gods.
The origin of Dionysos is complex. In the person of the god of
wine, he is a late arrival in classical Athens, though it seems that he
and his cult of ritual intoxication were ancient. What was new was his
championing of the sacramental vine, for he had existed much longer
as a cereal god. Some scholars have traced his worship back to
Neolithic Crete, where he was known as Zagreus. When Arthur Evans
excavated the site of Knossos, he unearthed small cups decorated with
ears of barley which may have been used in ceremonies to Zagreus. It
is clear that barley beer preceded wine as the ritual drink of the ‘mys-
teries’, as the rites of these dying and resurrecting gods were known;
this was the same cereal intoxicant found in Skara Brae and in the
beakers of megalithic Europe. The connection between Dionysos
and the cereal intoxicant is indicated in a number of his epithets,
including ‘Bromios’ and ‘Sabazios’. Bromios, often thought to mean
‘fire-born’ actually means ‘oat-born’ or ‘wheat-born’ and Sabazios, so
the Greek historian Amianus Marcellinus tells us, is derived from
Sabaia, a barley intoxicant.’
Scholars have long held that the rites of Dionysos - performed
before an audience - were the true origin of theatre, the word ‘tragedy’
stemming from the word tragos meaning goat, after the goat-satyrs who
accompanied him on his revels. But a more plausible suggestion, espe-
cially in view of the fact that the satyrs were latecomers to the god’s cult,
is that the word stems from another meaning of tragos, ‘spelt’,
which is
a cereal, a relative of wheat, used at the time for brewing. In
reality, the
tragedy was the ritual enactment of the life and death of the cereal
god.
It is plain that the original Dionysos was not the son of Zeus and
Semele but, as the god of cereals and intoxicating cereal drinks,
the
son of Demeter. The name Demeter most likely derives from
a Cretan
name, ‘Deo-Meter’ (barley mother), and her rituals provide
us with a
striking connection between the fertility religions of the Middle
East
and the Nerthus rites of the Ingaevones.

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 THE BARLEY GOD
€

The Mysteries
The mysteries of Demeter and her daughter Persephone were cele-
brated annually at Eleusis near Athens for some 2,000 years, until
Alaric the Goth sacked the sanctuary in aD 396. The myth behind the
rituals that were performed followed the same basic divine pattern:
Persephone is abducted by Hades, lord of the underworld, and her
mother Demeter goes to find her so that the winter that has
descended on the world might end. Like the Egyptian Isis, Demeter
becomes the nurse of a child (here named Demophoén) whom she
burns in a flame in order to endow him with immortality, and is even-
tually successful in freeing Persephone, at least for a portion of the
year. The mysteries at Eleusis make clear that the rites of the corn
deity were not simply enacted to guarantee a good harvest, but they
also appeared to grant a personal spiritual revelation, offering a sense
of immortality to their celebrants.®
Although it will never be known exactly what this experience
was, it was achieved during the observation of a ritual drama based
on the death and rebirth of the god, and by performing a ritual act
involving sacred objects. What may have played a part in this trans-
forming experience, however, was the mental state caused by a
nine-day preparatory fast followed by the taking of the ritual drink
called kykeon. The initiates spoke the following words of this act:

I fasted; I drank the kykeon; I took out of the chest; having done
my task, I put again into the basket, and from the basket again into
the chest.

What exactly did the initiates put into the ‘basket’? The most proba-
ble explanation is that it was a symbol of Dionysos, a wooden phallus.
While this might seem slightly laughable, to the ancient Greeks the
image was suggestive of a lot more than lewd humour. The phallus in
the basket is better understood when it is realized that this was a win-
nowing basket, known in Greece as a liknon, the corn sieve in which Isis
assembled the dismembered body parts of Osiris. The winnowing

8I
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

basket was used in farming to separate the seed from the chaff, and it
contained the new seed reaped from the body of the parent plant; it
was also commonly used as a cradle for newborn babies. The phallus
placed in the basket by the initiates at Eleusis was the ‘seed’ of the
cereal god, threshed from the sheaf, and represented the new life come
from the death of the old. In his reborn form, Dionysos was known as
Liknites, ‘he of the winnowing basket’, and was depicted in Greek reli-
gious art as a newborn baby sitting in the basket accompanied by the
cereal crop.
The winnowing basket was a shallow shield-shaped object, and this
in itself suggests that the idea of the arrival of the newborn Sheaf in
the shield/boat may also have been derived in part from this ancient
farming practice of winnowing.

Ergot
There is further evidence to link the practices at Eleusis with those of
ancient Denmark aside from the obvious link between Sheaf and
Liknites. The kykeon (‘mixed drink’) drunk by the initiates at Eleusis
was more than a simple barley beer. Evidence suggests that it had
an
active ingredient that aided the initiates to see more in the winnow-
ing basket than a simple wooden object. It is known that the secret
of
Eleusis was linked to the kykeon, as some of this drink was stolen
by
Alcibiades in 415 Bc and served to his dinner guests — an act that
was
seen as both scandalous and sacrilegious.
It is now thought that the kykeon was made using ergot - the
toxic
fungus containing hallucinogenic alkaloids that grows
on barley and
rye grains (see page 56). Ingestion of ergotized grains was very
danger-
ous, but in small, measured, doses the kykeon may
have offered its
imbibers quite a ‘trip’.®
Large doses of ergotized grains were also found in the
stomachs
of the Danish bog men, those individuals who may have
died as sac-
rificial victims to the wagon-deity Nerthus in her
sacred lake (see
page 57). Together, this constitutes firm evidence
that the ancestors of
the English were worshipping the same kind of gods
as the more

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 THE BARLEY) GOD

‘civilized’ peoples of Rome and Greece far to their south. Where they
may have differed, however, is in how these gods were represented.

Wagons, Ships and Drownings

In their rites, the fertility gods of the Near East were usually depicted
by wooden images: Attis was a carved wooden figure hung on a pine
tree, Osiris was either a wooden statue or a carved Djed pillar, and
Dionysos was also either a wooden carving or a phallic pillar. What
links these gods more firmly with the Nerthus rite described by
Tacitus is the way these images were carried.
In Athens, the wooden image of Dionysos was paraded through
the streets on either a common cart or a ship on rollers - as befitting
a god who spread the knowledge of wine by both land and sea - and
in Eleutherai (a village on the Boeotian border), a phallic cult symbol
representing the god was pulled through the streets in a wheeled ship.
Osiris, like all Egyptian gods, when represented in the form of a cult
temple image was placed inside a portable model barque housed
within a shrine representing the primeval mound that had first arisen
from the primal lake at the start of creation. It seems as if ship and
wagon were interchangeable symbols; this is significant because not
only does it suggest that the wagon-borne divinity and the boat-borne
Sheaf may have been equivalent images but also it helps explain some-
thing Tacitus writes about the Seubic tribes to the south of Denmark,
some of whom later became the Saxons.

Some of the Suebi sacrifice also to Isis. Ido not know the explanation
of this foreign cult; but the goddess’s emblem, being made in the
form of a light warship, itself proves that her worship came in from
abroad.

It may be that what Tacitus was recording amongst the Suebi was a
variant of the worship of the wagon-borne Nerthus of the Ingaevones,
who like Dionysos could have been depicted as travelling in both
types of transport. And though, technically, he may have been right in

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 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

suggesting the Suebic ‘Isis’ had come from abroad, since this boat-
born fertility deity had arrived in Scandinavia from the Middle East
some 4,000 years before he wrote his account, it could hardly be called
‘foreign’. The ‘light warship’ was undoubtedly an indigenous vessel,
the ancestor of the Viking warships of the Dark Ages.
What makes Tacitus’s description of the Nerthus rite stand out is
its description of ritual drowning, but a look at the life cycle of the
Near Eastern fertility gods shows that this was a motif in their myths
too. In one myth, Dionysos is said to have drowned in the Alconyian
lake - and was summoned reborn from the water with trumpet blasts.
Osiris is said to have been drowned by Seth in the Nile.” Adonis was
also said to have drowned and in his rites, the image of the slain god
was either set adrift in the sea or placed in the waters of a spring - just
as the harvest sheaf was drowned in English farming customs. But
perhaps the most clear link between the fertility gods of the Near East
and the Nerthus rite is the fact that three days after the ritual death
of Attis, the image of his mother/lover, the goddess Cybele, and the
bullock-drawn cart in which she sat were ceremonially washed in the
river Almo - an act reminiscent of the washing of Nerthus mentioned
by Tacitus (see page 53).
The fertility gods of Greece and Rome, paraded on boats and carts
and then cast into the waters, were represented by wooden images. In
stark contrast, the lakes of ancient Denmark, littered with human
corpses, bear witness to a more macabre offering. It seems that in
ancient Scandza, isolated and out ona limb, an older form of the
fer-
tility cults had survived; a form in which men, not images, embodied
the gods. And the chief of the Vanir deities of this region was the
barley-wreathed god Freyr, the brother/lover of the fertility goddess
Freyja, whose myths appear to support the idea that in the dark
northern forests and wind-tossed seas of Scandinavia the fertility
god
once lived and died in the form of flesh and blood men.

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 CHAPTER: 7

FREYR

3 aie HAD discovered that the final meals of the victims

preserved in the Danish bogs comprised the same hallucino-
genic barley brew as used in the mysteries of Eleusis. The existence of
this ritual drink provides physical proof that the ancestors of the
English were practising an ancient fertility cult, derived from the
Middle East, concerning the life cycle of a barley deity who, as late as
the 9th century, appears prominently in Anglo-Saxon genealogies as
Scef. The ceremonies connected with this god included the bearing of
his/her image on a wagon/ship, its drowning in sacred waters and an
act of ritual washing - all of which are suggested in the Tacitus’s Ger-
mania as applicable to the rites of the Danish goddess Nerthus, in
whose sacred lakes, the Beowulf poet hints, Grendel and his mother
dwelt. However, unlike the wealth of accounts concerning the gods of
Greece, Rome and Egypt, the only contemporary written evidence
concerning the Danish rites is the single paragraph in Tacitus (see
page 53) and he makes no mention of a dying and rising god accom-
panying the wagon-rite.
However, the later Norse myths mention a deity named Njorthr -
the father of the chief Vanir deities, Freyr and Freyja. Not only is the
name Njorthr the exact form the name of the Danish goddess would
be expected to take (minus its suitably Latin ending) were it to be
written in Old Norse, Njorthr is referred to in the Icelandic Snorri
Sturluson’s Skdldskaparmdl (The language of poetry) as ‘the god of
wagons’.

85
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

Njorthr, so Snorri informs us, was associated with the oceans and
ocean-going vessels; his home was Noatun (ship enclosure, harbour)
and he controlled the winds and the fruits of the sea. Immediately,
then, it is possible to link him to the ship-borne deities such as Sheaf
and Dionysos. Snorri writes of him: ‘To him one must pray for
voyages and fishing’. Njorthr seems to have been worshipped along
coasts, fjords and also inland lakes and waters, some of which were
associated with sacred islands much like that of his Danish name-
sake. His name was most probably derived from the Indo-European
root word ner meaning ‘below’ that appears as an element in the
modern words ‘beneath’ and ‘nether’. This is an apt name for a divin-
ity who dwelt under the waters of the world and, if he was akin to
Dionysos/Osiris, may have lived part of the year in the underworld,
the land of dead - and who was connected to the underworld through
his daughter Freyja, who possessed the ability to raise men from
the dead.
Given that the names Nerthus and Njorthr are identical forms of
the same name, some scholars have assumed that over time the Iron
Age goddess Nerthus underwent a change of gender to appear in
Viking times as a god.! But this may be an unnecessary complication.
The farming rites of the Near East suggest that the fertility gods were
always depicted in pairs, such as Attis and Cybele, Isis and Osiris, and
so the wagon that toured the land may originally have been occupied
by embodiments of both the god and goddess (which would explain
why the tapestries of the wagon in the Oseburg ship showed both a
man and a woman beside the vehicle (see page 58). And besides, the
seeming change from one sex to another over time might simply be
explained as a result of a misunderstanding on the part of Tacitus.
The word Nerthus is actually a masculine noun, and this has led
some to believe that Tacitus’s source (possibly an earlier Greek work)
mentioned two divinities: a god Nerthus/Njorthr who was parade
d
around the countryside in a wagon like Dionysos, and a goddes
s
‘Mother Earth’ who was, like Cybele, washed after the proces
sion in
the sacred lake. The suggestion is that Tacitus misunderstood
the
source and attributed the name of one to the other. Such confus
ion

86
 FREYR

might have been compounded by the fact that the Germanic deities
often had very similar names.? For instance, the name of Thor’s
mother, Fyorgynn (earth/mountain) was almost identical to that of
Fyorgyn, his father; and Freyr is not far away from Freyja. In a similar
fashion, the name of Njorthr’s partner ‘Mother Earth’ might have
been almost identical to that of her husband, so allowing a confused
Tacitus to record her as Nerthus and ignore the presence of the god,
believing that the ‘Nerthus’ borne about the land and the similarly
named ‘Mother Earth’ washed in the lake were a single entity. Such
a mistake may have been coloured by Tacitus’s own religious back-
ground.
Tacitus was a priest of the goddess Cybele, whose wagon-borne
image was bathed in the river Almo on 27 March. Given the similarity
of the rites, it would have been easy for him to colour unconsciously
the Danish rite with what he knew of the Roman one.’ In this final
ceremony in the rites of the castrated Attis, the god did not play any
role at all (having already been killed and resurrected) and so Tacitus
would already have had preconceived notions that the god would not be
present in the equivalent Danish rite. Having already confused the
god’s name with that of his wife, his knowledge of the unaccompa-
nied. bathing of Cybele meant that even had mention been made in
the earlier Greek source of the god Nerthus’s presence in the lake cer-
emony, he would have read it as referring to the goddess.
Arguably, the god was present, and like his Near Eastern counter-
parts was drowned, but Tacitus, accustomed to wooden depictions of
deities, failed to see the drowning of the ‘slaves’ (whose preserved
bodies show no sign of having performed manual labour) as in any
way connected with the drowning of the god.
The masculine ending of the word Nerthus gives some weight to
the theory that the god Njorthr was present, if unseen, in Tacitus’s
account of the wagon rite. (For clarity’s sake, the name Nerthus will
continue to be used to refer to the goddess whom, as suggested, may
have borne a very similar name to her husband.) Either way, there is
no confusion if it is accepted that on the tour of the land to promote
fertility, the wagon ritual was enacted by the necessary pairing of

87
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

divinities: a god later known as Njorthr and a goddess who may have
had a similar name, but equally may have been known as Gefion or
Freyja (see page 51), but recorded simply as ‘Mother Earth’. It was a
sacred marriage of earth and sky, of sun and land, of grain and soil
through the uniting of male and female.
Itis Njorthr’s son, Freyr, however (whose name, like that of Adonis,
simply means ‘the Lord’), who provides the closest parallel to the
wagon-rite of Danish prehistory and the cereal gods, as he is also asso-
ciated with a wagon tour around the land. Indeed, since the epithet
‘wagon god’ applied to his father in the Edda is more applicable to the
son, it suggests that the two were not originally separate entities at all
but differing aspects of what may originally have been a single deity.

God of the World

Snorri makes it clear that Freyr was principally a ‘fertility god’:

He decides when the sun shall shine or the rain comes down, and
along with that the fruitfulness of the earth, and he is good to invoke
for peace and plenty.

Freyr ~ ‘god of the world’ as Snorri calls him - was principally a deity
of the sun and of the fertile earth, of peace and prosperity. From the
start an affinity with the Middle Eastern vegetation gods is suggested,
but a closer look at his attributes makes it plain that Freyr can be no
other than the north-west European equivalent of Osiris or Dionysos.
The solar nature of Freyr is reflected in his two cult animals: the horse
(which drew the solar chariot across the sky), as stallion fights and
horse sacrifice were part of his worship; and the boar.‘
The boar might seem an odd animal to connect with the sun,
although in the barley god’s myth it does play the part of the creature
that gores him in the thigh. Freyr’s boar, however, was a magical crea-
ture named Gullinbursti (golden bristles), fashioned for him by the
dwarves, which accompanied him in his chariot. The boar was said to
shine brightly, especially its golden bristles, and could outrun a horse

88
 FREYR

and ‘ride across the sky’. This boar was clearly a solar symbol, its bris-
tles being the rays of the sun.
This solar connection no doubt led to the boar being the sacrifi-
cial offering made at the midwinter solstice amongst the Germanic
tribes. Norse warriors swore oaths concerning the coming year at Yule
over a sacrificed boar - the origin both for our New Year’s resolutions
and the medieval ‘boar’s head feast’ still celebrated at Queen’s
College, Oxford.
But perhaps the most important connection between Freyr and
Sheaf, suggesting that the two were a single deity, is that Freyr was
depicted as a child journeying over the sea on a boat and returning
thence after death. Snorri records that Freyr had a magical ship
Sk’6bladnir that could house all the gods yet which could be folded up
like a cloth and kept in a pocket when not in use. This suggests that
this was either an image of a ship on cloth or a wooden cult-image of
a ship like the ritual barques kept in the temples of the Egyptian gods.
This connection is only one amongst many:

1. Like the Egyptian god Osiris, who lived on ‘after death’ within his
tomb, Freyr was also believed to live on after his death within his
burial mound. He was reported to have been buried in a great
burial mound with a door and three windows: one for offerings of
gold, one for silver and another for copper. It was said the people
continued to give him offerings, believing he was still alive within
the mound.

2. Just as Osiris was associated with spreading the idea of pacifism, so

Freyr’s temples were free of weapons; it was illegal carry weapons
into them, let alone to shed blood in them or in the sacred fields
that stood nearby. Indeed, at Ragnarok - the final battle where the
gods are destroyed before the world is renewed (see page 47) - Freyr
has no sword. When he fights a figure named Beli, he does so using
a stag’s antler.

3. Like Dionysos, who was often depicted as both phallus and snake,
Freyr was associated with the serpent and portrayed in a state of

89
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

sexual excitement. Aldhelm of Sherborne, in the 8th century, men-

tions pagan shrines in Wessex where:

Once the crude pillars of the same foul snake and the stag were
worshipped with coarse stupidity in profane shrines.®

Since Freyr’s weapon was the stag’s antler, it is a possibility that

this shrine mentioned by Aldhelm was sacred to him. Adam of
Bremen writes that the statue of Fricco (Freyr) at the great sacrifi-
cial temple at Uppsala was ‘indecent’ (in other words, phallic). And
his sexual nature is also borne out in his name which, though
meaning ‘Lord’, is also connected to the Sanskrit word priya (the
beloved), and the English word ‘prick’.” An image possibly of Freyr
survives in a statuette from Rallinge in Sweden which dates from
around 900. It depicts a male figure sitting cross-legged, with an
erect phallus, with one hand stroking his beard. He is also wearing
a pointed hat like a gnome or, perhaps significantly, like that worn
by Tollund Man. Another image, found on a cauldron (possibly of
Thracian origin but depicting north European cult images) dis-
covered at Gundestrup, Jutland, depicts a similarly cross-legged
figure bearing antlers and holding a snake - the two animals men-
tioned by Aldhelm (above). Normally regarded as depicting the
Celtic horned god Cernunnos, given its location the figure might
just as easily be a depiction of Freyr (see page 131).8

. Like those Dionysos, Freyr’s rites were accompanied by some

kind of theatre or mime, which the Danish historian Saxo Gram-
maticus (Saxo the Learned, c. 1150-1220) describes as obscene, with
much ‘ringing of bells’ and ‘effeminate gestures’. Such mimes (pos-
sibly the ultimate origin of the dances of mummers and morris
dancers, which often involve death and rebirth symbolism) may
have been the northern equivalent of the ritual drama of the god
that in Greece became the theatrical ‘tragedy (see page 80). Just as
morris dancers often include cross-dressing men, so too the priests
of Freyr, like those of Attis, were seen as sexually ambivalent and
‘uncanny’?

90
 FREYR

5. Like the vegetation gods of the Middle East, Freyr was believed to
have died. Unlike the later Aesir (with two notable exceptions) and
the Greek Olympians who seemed neither to mature nor age,
having appeared almost ‘fully formed’, the Vanir gods seemed to
undergo birth, growth and death. This is their enduring charac-
teristic.
6. Freyr’s death may have been accompanied by weeping, as was that
of Adonis, Tammuz and their ilk: Freyja, Freyr’s sister, is said to
have cried tears of gold at the death of her husband, a mysterious
deity named Od. And, since Norse myth suggests that Freyr and
Freyja, though sister and brother, were, like Isis and Osiris, lovers
(and like Isis she could assume the shape of a falcon), it is likely
that Od and Freyr were one and the same.

7. Freyr was associated with a ritual wagon tour of the land (see
Page 50).

A cursory examination of Freyr’s attributes reveals that Freyr and

the Vanir were undoubtedly derivatives from the same prehistoric
farming cults celebrated throughout Europe and the Middle East in
the Neolithic age. They survived well in Scandza, not only because of
its isolated location from the rest of Germania, but also maybe
because the megalithic landscape still connected its people to the
ancestral spirits of the land. In fact, Freyr’s burial mound with its
open door and windows strongly evokes the passage graves of
Neolithic peoples with their open doorways that allowed communi-
cation with the ancestors. It is entirely possible that the Norse Freyr
had been worshipped in the north, relatively consistently, for some
5,000 years, this worship coming to an end only shortly before Snorri
composed his Edda.

The Wooing of Gerthr

Despite their great age, by the time most of the Norse myths were
recorded, the worship of Njorthr and his children Freyr and Freyja

OI
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

had been superseded by the cults of the Aesir. Only a single myth con-
cerning Freyr appears in Snorri’s Edda. Skirnismal (The Lay of Skirnir),
tells of Freyr’s seduction of the giantess Gerthr, the daughter of
Gymir, and their tryst in the grove of Barri (barley)."
Gerthr (‘enclosed field/farm’) is first seen by Freyr as a great
shining light far to the north, as he sits on a high throne in the land
of the gods. Immediately, Freyr falls for her. He gives his stallion and
sword to his servant Skirnir (‘shining one’) and sends him to woo her
for him. Behind this charming tale, it is possible to discern a farming
metaphor - the preparation of the field, the fertile earth ready for
planting. Gerthr is initially wary, and Skirnir threatens her with a
kind of possession, a ‘love-sickness’, and so she yields, agreeing to
meet Freyr in nine days time in the barley grove. The poem ends with
Freyr musing on the length of those nine days, when but one day
seems to him a month.
This single surviving myth of Freyr is important, as it suggests the
enactment of a fruitful union between the god and the earth goddess
that caused the crops to grow. And there is evidence from other
Viking sagas that suggests this ‘sacred marriage’ played a major part
of the wagon tour of the god.

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 ¢

CHAP TER“ GH F

THE WAGON RAN AFTER

a HE BEST EVIDENCE for the sacred marriage and the wagon

tour of Freyr is found in the sagas of the Norwegian king Olaf
Tryggvason (968-1000).' Tryggvason played an important part in
Anglo-Saxon history; according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle he was
the leader of the Viking fleet that attacked Maldon in Essex in 991. The
Battle of Maldon, after Beowulf perhaps the most famous Anglo-Saxon
poem, tells of the last stand of the Saxon nobleman Byrhtnoth, its
theme being the willingness to die alongside one’s lord in battle that
we find at the end of Beowulf (see pages 11-12).
Although Olaf’s presence at Maldon is the subject of some
dispute, he was definitely in England in 994 at the head of a fleet of 94
Viking ships. Around this time, Olaf was converted and baptized in
England, under the sponsorship of King Ethelred II (‘the Unready)
and he swore no longer to raid England. Instead, he married the wife
of the deceased Viking king of Dublin and divided his time between
Ireland and the north of England. While in Dublin, his royal relatives
in Norway sent news that in his absence an earl named Hakon had
reverted to paganism and seized the throne, taking many women as
concubines. Olaf returned to Norway to oust him, only to find the job
done already - Hakon’s disgruntled subjects had murdered him. Olaf
was asked to occupy the throne in his stead.
Olaf comes across in the sagas as a fair and politically adept king,
ending his life heroically during a sea battle at Swold. He was attacked
at sea by Svein Forkbeard, king of Denmark, and Earl Eric, the murdered

93
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

Earl Hakon’s son. When Olaf saw he was outnumbered and the battle
lost, he jumped from his ship Long Serpent into the sea, putting his shield
over his head so that his enemies could not pull him from the water.
During Olaf’s reign (995-1000), according to the Heimskringla, a
subject named Gunnar Helming fled from Norway after being
accused of murder, and his exploits in neighbouring pagan Sweden
tell much of the worship of Freyr that was still popular at this time -
only 70 years before the Norman conquest of England, and some 500
years after the English themselves had converted to Christianity.
The story? is told tongue in cheek, written to satirize the provin-
cial pagan Swedes, but its contents rest on some truth. Freyr was
worshipped as an idol through which ‘the devil’ was said to speak. He
had also been given a pretty young priestess who had ‘dominion over
the temple’ and it was believed they were lovers. On arriving in
Sweden, Gunnar asks for shelter in Freyr’s temple; the priestess warns
him her god does not like him, but he can stay three nights. Gunnar’s
charms, however, begin to win her over and he is allowed to stay for a
little longer.

After some time, he talked again with Freyr’s wife. She said: ‘People
like you well, and I think it is better you stay here this winter and
accompany us when Freyr makes his annual journey.’ ... Gunnar
thanked her well ... Now the festival time came, and the procession
started. Freyr and his wife were placed in the carriage, whereas their
servants and Gunnar had to walk beside.

Journeying through the mountains, the cult-wagon and its party

become trapped in a snowstorm during which the servants of the god
flee to find shelter. Gunnar and the priestess, however, remain with
the vehicle. Gunnar tires of driving the cattle when there is a perfectly
good seat beside the priestess, so he gets into the wagon, which angers
Freyr so the two begin to fight. As the pair wrestle, Gunnar calls on
King Olaf’s Christian god, promising that if he gives him victory he
will renounce his pagan ways, return to Norway and be reconciled
with Olaf. With this, the ‘spirit’ of Freyr is seemingly exorcised from

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 THE WAGON RAN AFTER

the wooden idol, and Gunnar and the priestess decide that Gunnar
should now impersonate the god, so he dresses in its clothes and takes
his place beside her for the rest of the ritual progress.
The gullible Swedes are happy to see their god looking so well and
happy:
They wondered how he went about among them and talked like other
men. Thus Freyr and his wife spent the winter going to festivals. Freyr
was not more eloquent towards people than his wife, and he would
not receive living victims, as before, and no offerings except gold, silk
and good clothing.

They also noticed the priestess had become pregnant, which was a
good sign for their crops. Indeed, the land had never been so fruitful.
News of Freyr’s miraculous vigour spreads to Norway where King
Olaf begins to suspect what is really happening. Olaf now knows that
Gunnar did not commit the murder and sends Gunnar’s brother
Sigurd to Sweden to fetch him back. Gunnar, his wife and newborn
child flee to Norway with the god’s offerings and are baptized.
Although satirical, the story of Gunnar’s deceit provides a number
of startling links with the Nerthus rite of a millennium earlier: the
yearly sacred progress of a deity in a cattle-drawn wagon associated
with fertility of the land. Behind the humorous facade lie traces of a
misunderstood rite in which, on certain specific occasions, the god
Freyr may have been represented by a mortal man. Such an epiphany
would be quite understandable - if the spirit of Freyr could enter a
wooden image then it could also enter a man.
We know that Freyr was associated with wooden images as two are
mentioned in Ynglingatal as being kept in Freyr’s grave mound. These
‘wooden men’ were taken out of his tomb and carried to a shrine in
Sweden and another at Trondheim in Norway, perhaps as part of a
ritual progress. In design, the wooden idols may have been akin to
that found in the bog at Broddenbjerg (see page 45), with its huge
phallus and its legs formed from two roots (see plate 11). Just as in
Gunnar’s tale, the idols were seen to be possessed by the spirit of

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 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

Freyr, so in Flateyjarbok King Eric of Sweden was able to detect the

presence of a wagon-borne god named Lytir by an increase in the
weight of the god’s sacred wagon. The name of the god probably
stems from the Old Norse Lyta meaning ‘disgraceful’, and is likely to
be a Christian appellation for a god thought to be obscene - the sex-
ually promiscuous and possibly ambivalent (given the effeminacy of
his priests, see pages 191) Freyr.?

Blessing the Fields

The tour of the land by the divinity meant that the act of sacred con-
summation could be enacted in many locales; the farms and fields of
every region could be blessed, the marriage celebrated in every first
furrow that was ploughed. We get an idea of these rites from a very
late ‘ceremony’ enacted in Anglo-Saxon England under the eyes of the
church, but whose symbolism is far from Christian.
This was the Aecerbot, a ‘field remedy’ which was an early mth-
century charm used to help improve fields that yielded poorly.4 The
enactment of this charm was a day-long affair which begun with four
sods being cut from the four quarters of the field at night, and then
taken to church for a mass to be sung over each. Prior to this, a por-
ridge containing yeast, honey, oil and milk, together with a part of all
species of plants from the locality (save buckwheat and all hard-
woods) was applied three times to the underside of the turfs - a mix-
ture evoking the plant-rich porridge of the Danish bog men. Having
been returned to the field before sunset, each bearing a wooden cross,
the turfs were then sung over by a healer who faced the direction of
the rising sun, turned three times clockwise, and called on the ‘holy
guardian of the heavenly kingdom’ to ‘fill the earth’ and make the
crops grow. A plough was then anointed with a ‘hallowed’ mixture of
oil, paste, frankincense, salt and fennel, and a chant sung over them
including these words:

Erce, erce, erce eorban modor

Erce, erce, erce, Mother of Earth!

96 :
 THE WAGON RAN AFTER

(The word erce may mean ‘great’, being probably linked linguistically
to the word ‘arch’ as in ‘archbishop’).

Great Mother of Earth, may the Almighty, the eternal Lord, grant you
fields growing and thriving, increasing and strengthening, tall stems
and fine crops, both the broad barley and the fair wheat.

Then the field was ploughed, as these words were recited:

Hal wes pu, fira modor,

Beo pu growende on Godes fedme,
Fodre gefylled firum to nytte.

Hail to you, earth, mother of mortals,

may you grow big in God’s embrace,
filled with food for the use of humankind.

Then the healer placed a loaf made of every type of grain into the first
furrow. Despite the Christian imagery, the rite was pagan in origin, and
made use of the symbols of the marrying of the solar god with the
earth mother to make the fields fruitful. Similar rites, though possibly
enacted sexually between the god and goddess in human form, proba-
bly accompanied the wagon tour of Nerthus and Freyr amongst the
continental ancestors of the English country folk who used the charm.

Ing
The rites of Freyr in turn of the millennium Sweden closely resembled
those of Nerthus 1,000 years earlier, thus providing a significant clue
to the rites of the ancient English - the members of the Ingaevones
whose descendants were the original audience of Beowulf: For the very
name of these coastal tribes - the Ingaevones - betrays the presence of
Freyr in Denmark.‘
Freyr was known as Yngvi-Freyr in Sweden, where he was seen as the
progenitor of a line of Swedish kings called the Ynglinga - ‘the sons of

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 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

Yng/Ing’ - and the name Ingaevones contains a reference to the same

god.° The Roman historian Pliny the Elder (ap 23-79) offers an alterna-
tive spelling of Ingaevones - Ingvaeones - and it is probable his form is
the correct one, for minus its Latin ending it yields Ingvaeon, the same
word as Ingwine (‘friends of Ing’) used in Beowulf to denote these tribes.
The word ing, as well as forming the patronymic (‘son of’, see page 65),
is thought to be derived from ingwaz, a proto-Germanic word for man.
Ing appears in a fascinating set of verses known as The Old English
Rune Poem found in George Hickes’s Thesaurus of the Old Languages of
the North (1705). Though the original poem has long disappeared, lin-
guists have been able to suggest a date of composition some time
around the 9th century.
Runes, at least in common parlance, were the angular characters of
the Germanic alphabet - (known as the futharc from its first six char-
acters f, u, th, a, r and c) that were principally used for rituals and
divination. (The word ‘rune’ is really a term meaning ‘magic’ and it
was not originally applied to the letters themselves.)’ The first docu-
mented use of runes seems to have been in Jutland, where runic
amulets dating to around ap 250 have been uncovered. Rune poems
have been found throughout the Germanic world, and they usually
give the meanings of each rune, which seem to be symbols for all
manner of pagan and natural imagery. In The Old English Rune Poem, a
composition in which the various properties, origins and meanings of
the runes are discussed in verse, however, all pagan reference seems to
have been removed, or cunningly hidden in puns - save for the verse
concerning Ing. It reads:

Ing waes aerest mid Est-Denum

Gesewen secgum, oth he siddan est
Ofer waeg gewat; waen aefter ran;
Thus heardingas thone haele nemdun’

Ing was among the East Danes

first seen among men, till he later departed [east? back?]
over the sea; the wagon ran after
thus the hard-men [warriors?] named the hero.

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 THE WAGON RAN AFTER

This short verse proves most illuminating. Ing, like Sheaf, was first
seen by mortal men in the territory of the East Danes - arguably
the isle of Zealand, sacred to Nerthus/Gefion. The words ‘first seen’,
however, point to the fact that subsequently his cult and influence
had spread, perhaps to England. His return journey east over the sea
followed by his wagon is once again suggestive of the return of the
wagon to its sacred precinct after the completion of the Nerthus rite,
as well as the mysterious nautical peregrinations of Sheaf. The word
for the direction of his return is, however, ambiguous. Est can mean
either ‘east’ or ‘back’ (as in the words ‘aft’ or ‘astern’). Either way
makes sense, as it could refer to his return to his shrine, or, if we see
Ing as the sun rising from out of the east and traversing the sky in a
wagon, returning back to the eastern horizon to rise again the fol-
lowing day.
If the verse does obliquely refer to a god once found in east
Denmark moving from Scandza to England, the presence of this deity
might have been allowed to remain in the otherwise Christian poem
on the grounds that by this time Ing was regarded (as in some Anglian
genealogies) as a great continental ancestor. Ingui, for example,
appears in the royal genealogy of Bernicia and was probably once seen
as the progenitor of all Anglian kings.®
The English could be said to have enjoyed a particular relationship
with this god in both their continental homeland, where they formed
part of the confederacy known as the ‘friends of Ing’, and in the new
lands they migrated to in the sth and 6th centuries. In time, they
would name these lands Angle-land, and it is tempting to speculate
that the word Angle was derived from, or thought of as a pun on, the
name of Ing.
Such a special connection might shed light on why the figure of
the boat-borne baby Sheaf, ultimately derived from Freyr/Ing, played
such a major role in English tradition, while the Danes themselves
had already replaced him with the bear-killer Skjold in their royal
family tree.
The question remains as to why the Danes may have wanted to
purge the figure of the fertility god from their genealogy. The most

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 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

obvious clue is the fact that the sacred lakes of the land of the
Ingaevones, so intimately tied in with the rites of the wagon-god and
goddess, were depicted in Beowulf as the abode of a pair of horrific
monsters. Where we would expect to find the presence of two fertility
deities, a god and goddess associated with sacred waters and wagons
along the lines of Attis and Cybele, as suggested to us by Roman
sources, comparative myths and archaeology, the Beowulf poet instead
provides us with two superhuman blood-curdling fiends. This sug-
gests two possibilities: firstly, that Grendel and his mother were purely
poetic inventions and had no connection with the old gods save for
a coincidental use of the same subaqueous dwelling place (Gefion’s
ground); or, secondly, that there was perhaps a more sinister side to
this ancestral farming religion (as its practice of human sacrifice
suggests) and that these Vanir deities possessed a darker side that was
correctly remembered in the poem.

I0O
 Sl

CHAPTER NINE

ELVES AND EVIL SHADES

So the company of men led a careless life, all was well with
them: until One began to encompass evil, an enemy from hell.
Grendel they called this cruel spirit, the fell and fen his fastness
was, the march his haunt. This unhappy being had long lived in
the land of monsters since the creator cast them out as kindred
of Cain. For that killing of Abel the eternal Lord took
vengeance ... From Cain came down all kinds misbegotten —
ogres and elves and evil shades.
BEOWULF, 99-I12

NE OF THE MOST interesting facets of Beowulf is that it presents

iC). with a glimpse into the world of the Anglo-Saxons for whom
it was composed and who, having only very recently left paganism
behind, lived in a very different world from us. Despite their conver-
sion to Christianity, mentally they still dwelt in the Middle Earth of
their forebears, a world, like that popularized by Tolkien, populated
with ‘ents’ (giants), elves, dwarves and ‘orcs’ (evil shades). Belief in the
unseen forces of nature did not vanish overnight - indeed aspects of
such beliefs continued in rural areas into modern times - but what
had changed was the way such beings were conceived.
Beowulf provides us with the re-categorization of these supernatu-
ral creatures within a Christian framework. Formally, the origin of
such beings had been firmly explained in myth: the dwarves were
created from the maggots bred in the flesh of the frost giant Ymir;

IOI
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

giants themselves were formed from the primal ice that co-existed
with the primal fire at the start of creation; man himself had been
licked from the ice by a cow named Audumla.! None of this cosmol-
ogy fitted in with the events of Genesis, and so for the converted Old
English the universe had to be re-visioned.
This re-visioning is painted clearly in Beowulf. Far from dismissing
such supernatural creatures as superstitious nonsense, the metaphys-
ical creatures of the Germanic heathen world were given a make-over,
enabling them to slip effortlessly into the Judeo-Christian world as
‘fiends from hell’, devils and demons. They were re-imagined as the
descendants of Cain, the brother-killing son of Adam, and like this
outcast, exiled from man for his heinous deed, the heathen monsters
were cast into the wastelands on the edge of society in dark forests,
misty moors and haunted meres.
For the original audiences who first heard the poem, the ‘orcs’ and
‘elves’ it mentions were no fairytale creatures but actual entities which
everyone present would have both believed in and feared. Perhaps the
same was true in relation to Grendel and his mother, who were clearly
thought of by the Beowulf poet as kin to these other ‘kinds misbegot-
ten’. If these monsters were considered to have been real rather than
mere fictional creations intended to amuse and entertain, it may be
that Grendel and his mother were dim memories of ancient pagan
divinities. And there is good evidence that the Vanir gods of the old
cults underwent such a relegation in status to be numbered amongst
the descendants of Cain, for Norse mythology makes clear the Vanir
were also known as the alfar - they were the elves.

The Shining Ones

To the pagan Germans, elves were not the flimsily-clad cherubs with
bluebell bonnets of Victorian romanticism, nor the playful sprites of
medieval fairy lore, but powerful spirits that could appear in many
shapes and guises. The word ‘elf? comes from the Indo-European alba
(white/fair) and these ‘shining ones’ were the spirits of the landscape,
the forces of nature, the fertility gods themselves.

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 ELV ESSAN DEVIL SHADES

In Norse myth, the elves are associated with Freyr: he is said to -

have been given Alfheim, the home of the elves, as a gift from the Aesir
when he cut his first tooth, and throughout the Edda the customary
phrase ‘Aesir and Vanir’ is often rendered as ‘Aesir and Alfar’.2 Once
accepted, the link between the elves and the Vanir becomes obvious.
The Vanir’s dislike of weaponry (Freyr allowed no weapons in his
temple) and the dislike of iron (in Nerthus’s rites all iron was locked
away) led to a belief that carrying iron averted the elves and other fairy
beings.’ (From here on, the term ‘elf? is used for Old English/Scandi-
navian derived spirits and ‘fairy for Celtic and later generalized
folkloric spirits, amongst which the elves were numbered but not
exclusively.) The Vanir were widely perceived as collective beings, a fact
supported by the numerous shrines to the ‘Mothers’ that tend to
depict these beings in groups (usually twos or threes), often accom-
panied by small, hooded beings known as genii cucullati (hooded
spirits).* Similarly, the tribes of British and Danish elves and fairies
are seen as collective in nature: in Britain they are most commonly
depicted as dancing in groups, forming fairy rings, which is of inter-
est given the collective burial rites of the Neolithic ancestor cult from
which the Vanir cults may have been derived (see page 31).
The connection between elves and the ‘Matronae’ (the Mother
Goddesses of the Vanir) is especially clear in Celtic fairy lore: in Wales,
the fairies were known as Bendith y Mamau (the Mothers’ Blessing).
And in Ireland they were said to be descended from a prehistoric
divine race, the Tuatha De Danann (People of the Goddess Danu).
There is one school of thought that argues that these spirits, who
are sometimes depicted in folklore as ‘fallen angels’, were originally
seen as elemental spirits of landscape. They appear in certain Anglo-
Saxon treatises as wudu-elfen (wood elves), water-elfen (water elves),
dun-elfen (hill elves), s-elfen (sea elves) and wylde-elfen (moor elves),
thus emphasizing their connection with the natural world.‘ This der-
ivation of the elves is certainly supported in Icelandic saga, where we
hear of landvaettir (land wights), the spirits of the landscape, who were
thought to have inhabited Iceland prior to the arrival of man.°
In addition, there is strong evidence to suppose the elves were

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connected with the human dead. In British fairy lore, elves and fairies
are often associated with hills and mounds (see plate 10), especially
prehistoric burial mounds, which suggests that the elves were, at least
in part, derived from the spirits of the ancestral dead. In Irish fairy
lore, after their defeat at the hands of the incoming Gaels, the Tuatha
De Danann were given the sidhe - the burial mounds of Ireland - as
dwelling places, having had to relinquish the ‘upper world’; again, this
is suggestive of an origin as tomb-dwelling ancestral spirits. In time,
they became synonymous with the mounds themselves and took their
name: they became the sidhe - the people of the hills.

People of the Hills

The chief god of the Tuatha was called the Dagda (‘Good God’: indi-
cating great versatility, not morality). After their defeat by the Gaels,
he was said to be have been given the most splendid sidhe of them all:
Brugh na Boinne (Palace on the Boyne) which is known today as New-
grange, in County Meath. Newgrange is a massive Neolithic Passage
grave, whose spectacular corbelled passage is aligned to allow the first
rays of the midwinter sunrise to penetrate a slot above the doorway
and send a beam of light into the burial chambers. This seasonal use
of the chamber is reminiscent of the passage grave at Om on Zealand,
where two farm workers were sent to clear the passage annually at
midwinter, and left porridge there for ‘the spirits’ (see page 31).
The Dagda can be closely linked with Freyr. He was a sexually
prodigious and overtly phallic deity who mated with a nightmarish
goddess named the Morrighan (great queen) over a stream, just as the
phallic Freyr enjoyed a union with the giantess Gerthr (see page
92), a
form, perhaps, of the watery Nerthus. Freyr, like the Dagda,
lived
within a burial mound with its doors and windows left open for
‘offer-
ings’, and the orientation of the ‘sun window at Newgrange links
the
Dagda to the solar imagery we find in Freyr’s rites. The Dagda
has also
been connected to the Celtic horned god of plenty, Cernunnos,
who
is possibly depicted on the Iron Age Gundestrup cauldr
on seated
cross-legged (like the Rallinge Freyr; see page 131), holding
a snake and

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 PEVES SAND EVIL SHADES

wearing stag’s antlers, both symbols sacred to Freyr (see pages 89-90).
The Dagda and Freyr seem to have been cast in the same mould.
If the Vanir were the spirits of the dead, how did they become con-
ceived of as deities? One possibility is that this was a gradual process
over time as the personalities of the ancestors faded from memory to
be replaced by the idea of a collective ancestral being. However, an
example found in Norse tradition shows that the process of the dead
becoming alfar might have been more direct. It concerns a Norwegian
king named Olaf who, following his death and burial, is said to have
lived on within his burial mound, continuing to exert an influence on
the affairs of men and the fertility of the land: offerings were made to
him as supplications so that he might favourably influence events.
Within a very short period of his death, Olaf was already conceived of
as an elf, becoming known as the ‘Elf of Geirstad’.”
Such deified ancestral spirits would then have the potential to
become tribal and even national gods. This brings into question
whether the fertility cults that arrived with the practice of farming
necessarily brought with them the idea of a ‘god’ in the form of a non-
human entity, rather than the concept of the deified ancestor. This
might then explain the sudden adoption of the megalithic rite and
the massive expenditure in terms of labour and resources in the build-
ing of houses for the dead. To the Neolithic people of the Atlantic
coasts, whose lives were relatively short and hard, it is small wonder
that effort was deployed on the houses of eternity than those of the
living. They would inhabit their earthly homes, built of wood and
thatch, for a much shorter period.
This may have been of even greater significance if they also
believed in a form of reincarnation, as is suggested by an anecdote
concerning the ‘Elf of Geirstad’. This appears in the Saga of St Olaf of
Norway (King Olaf Haraldson) who owned the sword of the earlier
King Olaf, Elf of Geirstad, as it was taken from the latter’s grave on
the birth of the saint. St Olaf’s followers, when passing the mound of
the elf, asked St Olaf whether he had been buried there, which Olaf,
being a Christian, denied. That such a question might be asked,
suggests that reincarnation was deemed a possibility, and, despite the

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 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

saint’s protestations, the fact that he had been named after the earlier
Olaf, and had been given his sword, suggests that at least someone had
this idea.
The strong links between the fairy lore of Ireland and the Vanir
cult of Scandinavia comes as no surprise when a number of common
features shared by these locations are taken into account. Both were
located on the Atlantic coasts, where their megaliths had been crafted
in stone, remaining as permanent features of the landscape, and both
were isolated geographically, neither having been conquered by Rome.
Even so, it does come as a surprise just how strong these ancestor
cults must have been to survive, in the guise of the fairy traditions, the
introduction of a new religion. Their demise was eventually brought
about, not by religious intolerance or deliberate suppression, but
through the urbanization and industrialization of the last century,
divorcing the population from their agricultural heritage.

Alfablot and Elfshot

One of the last vestiges of the fairy faith was the leaving of milk or
porridge for the fairies. This took many forms: the pouring of milk
into ‘cup’ marks on prehistoric stones, the leaving of foodstuffs in the
fields or by the hearth, especially on special days such as Halloween,
Midsummer’s Eve and Christmas Eve.* The act appears to have beena
debased version of a rite once called alfablot (elf-blood), when the
blood of sacrificed animals, or ritual cereal brew, was left at megalith
ic
tombs for the spirits (as with the multitude of vessels left for the dead
at the Tustrup necropolis; see page 30). In the Icelandic Cormac’s Saga
we find a description of alfablot:

There is a knoll a little way from here where the elves dwell; thou
shalt
take hither the ox that Cormac slew, and sprinkle the blood of the
ox
on the outside of the knoll, and give the elves a banquet of
the meat;
and thou shalt be healed.

The idea that the elves could affect the health of individuals
is one
that survived into the Anglo-Saxon age; though with a negati
ve slant

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 ELVES AND EVIE SHADES

as elves were seen to cause certain illnesses. In Christianized medico-

religious manuscripts, elves are identified as the cause of such
colourful illnesses as alfsogodda (‘elf juice’: possibly dyspepsia or
hiccups) and ‘water-elf-sickness’, the symptoms of which included
localized swellings on the skin suggesting it may have been measles.
These diseases could be warded off or cured by the reciting of charms
and the taking of herbal remedies.
In the charm for use ‘against a sudden pain’ (wid ferstice) found in
the Lacnunga manuscript, a 1oth-11th-century document containing
healing lore (now housed in theBritish Library), we see both elements
of this healing. To cure the illness - caused by invisible spears cast by
a group of supernatural women - the patient had to take a potion
containing feverfew, nettle and plantain (all have spear-shaped leaves)
boiled in butter, and to repeat a verse that would counteract the effect
of the ‘spears’ by removing them from the body and casting them
back at the hags.

Loud they were, lo, loud, when they rode over the burial mound;
They were fierce, when they rode over the land.
Shield yourself now so that you this evil attack might survive.
Out, little spear, if here any be within.
I stood beneath a linden-shield, under a light shield,
Where the mighty women revealed their power,
And they, yelling, sent forth spears;
I to them another one back will send,
A flying arrow straight towards them.

The connection in the charm between this group of women and the
burial mound clearly suggests they were Vanir spirits - elves. Indeed,
the charm ends with a rousing plea to be made safe from the ‘elves’
arrows.
Despite what might seem to be the ‘quack’ nature of this remedy,
there are some significant insights into disease: the advised use of
feverfew, for instance, does have a real effect on fevers by reducing the
temperature, and the idea that disease was caused by invisible entities

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 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

attacking the body, is paralleled by our present knowledge of infec-

tions. Also, the use of the charm seems akin to the modern technique
of ‘visualization’, a mental tool used to help overcome certain ill-
nesses (such as some cancers), by which one visualizes the disease as a
foreign entity being overcome by one’s (personified) immune system.
Although this wholly negative portrayal of the elves may have been
_ promulgated by the Church in order to curtail the continued pagan
worship in rural areas, it is probable that the elves were thought
capable of bringing bad luck even in pagan times. That the elves were
given offerings to help heal an individual clearly shows they were con-
ceived of as having power over disease, and so, by extension, they
might also have had the propensity to harm. Spirits of the dead in all
cultures are things to be feared and placated, but this does not mean
the Vanir were ‘evil’ - more that they were morally ambiguous, bene-
ficial if appeased but vengeful if ignored or offended.
Elves were thought to be behind a number of aberrant mental
states such as madness and ‘demonic possession’, and this may offer
a clue as to the original nature of their rites and the behaviour of its
celebrants. To the early Christian Church such illnesses may have been
linked to the elves as they bore a great resemblance to the deliberately
invoked trance or possession states that seem to have played a role in
the rites of the afar.

Possession

As the word itself explains, the Old English adjective ylfig, for instance,
roughly translatable as ‘elfy or ‘elfish’ and meaning mad or deranged,
was seen as a state of mind caused by elves.*° Was this in origin the
state of being possessed by the alfar - perhaps deliberately invoked
through the taking of the sacred cereal intoxicant? This is also sug-
gested in the word ‘giddy’ - meaning light-headed or dizzy, but which
originally was ‘gidig’ - the feeling of being possessed by a ‘gid’ (god).
This ritual potion is likely the reason the worshippers in the grove
of
the Semnones may have fallen, giddy, to the floor in their
groves (see
page 45).

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 ELVES AND EVIL SHADES

Another term for possession that is found in the Old English

‘leech-books’ is aelfsiden.' The word siden is related to the Old Norse
seithr, a word denoting a magical tradition based on elements of
shamanism and clairvoyance, said to have been taught to the Aesir by
Freyja and practised by the priestesses of the Vanir. The practitioners
of this Vanir-based tradition, like the maenads, traditionally were
groups of women known as Volva who toured the land in wagons, once
again linking them with the fairies, who also tend to appear in folk-
lore as groups of females rather than individually or as males. In fact,
the wagon-borne Volva may represent the last remnants of the fertil-
ity goddess’s progress around the land.
The main role of these seithr priestesses was to foretell the future.”
The term seithr is related to the word ‘seat’ - it was a sitting, a séance.
A Volva is usually portrayed as going into a kind of trance, like a
modern medium, answering the questions of the crowd who assem-
bled around the platform on which she sat.
With such abandoned states at the heart of the Vanir cults, it is
small wonder that they were rejected by Christian Church, and that
the gods of this religion, the elves, were deliberately demonized as
descendants of Cain, associated with ills and evils until they faded
into demons haunting the old monuments, to be propitiated and
feared, but not worshipped. But, while this may indeed have been the
case, these creatures may have possessed a darker side from the very
start, and that it is in this ‘alter-ego’ that we at last get to the heart of
the monstrous lake-mother of Beowulf.

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 CHAPTER TEN

CHOOSERS OF THE SLAIN

UMBERED AMONGST the descendants of Cain in the Christian-

N ized Anglo-Saxon cosmology found in Beowulf were the gods of
the old heathen religion. Since the poet makes it clear that Grendel
and his mother are amongst such fiends, it can be deduced that this
pair of monsters were originally divinities too - namely the fertility
god and his lover/mother of ancient Denmark. At first glance, the idea
might seem preposterous. Grendel and his dam are described using
horrific imagery: they are ‘cursed spirits’, ‘demons’, ‘shadow-walkers’:
he is ‘God’s adversary’, she is ‘monster of the deep’, ‘water-witch’.
Though in the shape of man and woman, these beings are man-eating
demons that either gobble down their prey immediately or drag them
back to their watery lair. Yet a closer look at the Vanir reveals a darker
side to these divinities that in every way matches the description and
the modus operandi of the two nightmarish creatures.

The Keres
The first clue to the dual nature of the Vanir comes from the parallel
traditions concerning similar ‘spirits’ in Greece. Early Greek religion
recognized spirits known as Keres (singular: Ker) that, like the elves,
were in origin spirits of the dead.! The Keres were depicted on Greek
vases (our best source for Greek religious imagery) as small winged
beings, akin to the winged sprites of later fairy lore. Like the Egyptia
n

IIo
 CHIOOSERS OF THE SLALN

Ka with which they are linked, not least linguistically, the Greek Ker -
the inner fate or ‘genius’ of the individual - was seen to live on in the
underworld or the burial mound after death. The Keres were offered
food, usually barley grain in the form ofa porridge named pelanos, link-
ing them with the porridge left for the fairies in Irish tradition. As with
all spirit beings of this kind, as long as they were honoured and pla-
cated all was fine - but the problem was that they were easy to offend.
As with the elves of north-west Europe, we can trace the develop-
ment (or rather the demise) of the Keres. In pre-classical times, the
Keres were conceived of as the spirits of the dead, but in due course
the idea arose that they were sinister entities that brought illness
and disease as well as madness, blindness and nightmares. There are
portrayals on vases of heroic figures such as Herakles fighting Keres
(where they appear as diminutive, ugly, winged creatures), and the
Hymn to Herakles reads very much like the Anglo-Saxon charm against
illness:

Come blessed hero, come and bring allayment of all diseases. Bran-
dishing thy club, drive forth the baleful fates; with poison shafts
banish the noisome Keres far away.

It is interesting that these spirits were reduced to being carriers of

disease from the lofty state of ancestral souls not by Christianity, but
by the Olympian religion of the Immortals that preceded it. Like the
Aesir, with whom they have much in common, the worship of the
Immortals of Mount Olympus clashed with the aboriginal farming
cults that involved the worship of local spirits in local shrines - a clash
represented in myth by the victory of the gods, led by Zeus, over the
monstrous Titans, whom they cast into the underworld (see page
189).? In these clashes, the old gods lost the fight and were relegated to
the position of nightmarish bogeys. They haunted the grave mounds
of yore like the Irish sidhe, still sensed by the people closest to the land,
but now feared more than before.
The transformation of the Keres into the stuff of nightmares was
not a difficult process as it seems they were already associated with
bringing death. The winged Keres were perceived as coming to take

Til
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

the spirits of the recently departed to the grave. As Odysseus says of

them in the Odyssey:

Howbeit him whom the Death-Keres carried off to Hades’ House.

From this image stemmed many of the ‘monsters’ of ancient Greek

myth - the winged Furies, Harpies and Sirens - creatures that would
lure you to your doom. The monstrous water-witch and her son in
Beowulf seem to have been of similar pedigree.

The Valkyries
The Keres were shown hovering around battlefields waiting to satiate
themselves on the blood of the slain and in Norse myth we see identi-
cal spirits, the Valkyries, who we can confidently link with Freyja. The
Valkyries, meaning ‘choosers of the slain’, were often imaged as
armoured women riding through the sky on horses or wolves, or as
ravens, bearing the souls of those killed in battle to Valhalla, the ‘Hall
of the Slain’ (see plate 9). The Valkyries’ names associate them with
spears ~ ‘spear goddess’, ‘spear brandisher’, ‘spear of battle’. They are
the same grave spirits casting their spears in the charm against a sud-
den stitch, yet in their true guise before the new religion had demoted
them from goddesses to disease-bringing sprites. The role of choosing
the slain on the battlefield originally belonged to Freyja (see page 50)
and it is likely the Valkyries, in later myth depicted as Odin’s daugh-
ters, were originally an aspect of the Vanir goddess herself.
In Irish tradition, the equivalent of the Valkyries is the Morrighan;
the name given both to an individual, the mate of the Dagda (see page
104) and a trinity of battle goddesses who appeared on the battlefield
as winged ravens that took the souls of those slain in battle to the
otherworld. (She later appears in Arthurian lore as Morgan le Fay - the
fairy - who with two other queens bears the wounded Arthur to
Avalon.)
In origin, the animal attributes of both the Morrighan and the
Valkyries originated in the carrion-eating ravens and wolves
that

II2
 CHOOSERS OF THE SLAIN

visited the battlefield and devoured the slain. In an age when it was
believed that by eating something one absorbed its ‘essence’ or ‘soul’,
it was natural to see a blooded crow or wolf as an emissary of the
goddess, come to take the soul of the dead to the underworld. And
scavengers such as dogs and pigs enjoyed a similar status.
The idea of these goddesses as death omens was just one short step
further. If such beings took away souls then it was logical to believe
that to see one of these spirits presaged a death - perhaps one’s own
or a family member. In the Vita St Gregory that tells of the conversion
of the Northumbrian King Edwin to Christianity (whose chief priest,
Coifi, destroyed his own shrine, see page 45), an incident is related in
which Edwin and his men hear the cawing of a crow ‘from a less pro-
pitious corner of the sky and presumably take this as a death omen.
Bishop Paulinus, who is with them (and is in the process of convert-
ing them), has the bird shot with an arrow.’ He says:

‘Since that insensate bird did not know how to avoid death for itself,
still less might it foretell men anything of the events to come.’

In Irish lore, there is the image of the ‘washer at the ford’ - a vision
dreaded by warriors for it was of the raven-goddess Morrighan‘
washing the clothes of those who were to be slain in the forthcoming
battle (see page 112), and even today belief in the banshee as an omen
of death persists in Ireland. The Valkyries also seemed to act as death
omens. In Njals saga, relating to the battle of Clontarf at Dublin in
1014, we hear of three hideous women seen before battle weaving on a
loom made of the entrails of slain men and weighted with severed
heads; while they weave they sing how the ‘Valkyries have power to
choose the slain’.
These three goddesses were known among the Norse as the Norns
or ‘daughters of the night’, who spun the life-threads of mortals. One
sister wove the thread, another measured it, and the last, named
Skuld, cut it - bringing death. These were the three ‘wyrd’ sisters who
appeared to Macbeth in Shakespeare’s play to foretell his destiny,
which is what wyrd means. The pieces of a loom found with the

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 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

ritually deposited chariot at Dejbjerg (see page 57) suggests a link

between such death-heralds and the goddess Nerthus.

Black Dogs and Blue Hags

It is significant here that the Greek Keres of the battlefield are referred
to as the ‘hounds of Hades’, for the phantom black dogs of English
folklore are also thought of as omens of death. These large black
shaggy hounds, the size of calves, with huge glowing eyes, go by many
different names depending on the locality: Black Shuck, Skriker,
Bargest and Padfoot, to name a few.” Dogs regularly appear in myth-
ology as being connected to the land of the dead, either as guardians
or as psychopomps (soul-guides), so there is a tradition that following
a black dog is, in effect, following the path to the underworld. In
Egyptian myth, the dog-headed god Anubis acts as a psychopomp, _
and in Greek myth the three-headed dog Cerberus guards the
entrance to Hades. In view of the honour granted to the dogs buried
at Skateholm in Sweden during the Mesolithic period (see page 27),
this tradition is one of utmost antiquity. Black dogs, like ravens,
crows and wolves (from which they are descended and who are the
carrion eaters par excellence of the Norse world), are connected to the
idea of carrion eaters who have, by extension, become omens of por-
tending doom.
When such carrion-eating spirits were depicted in more human
form they yielded the image of cannibalistic hags. The Black Annis of
Leicestershire, a lean, blue-faced hag with long iron fingernails who
lived in a cave in the Dane hills and stole (and then ate) children
who slept near open windows can be traced back to such beginnings.
Not only is blue-black the colour attributed to the death-Keres in
Greek tradition, but it is also the colour of the plumage of the raven.
The cannibalistic blue-black hag is surely an extension of the fused
concepts of the carrion-bird and death-Keres, a fact seemingly com-
pounded by the Germanic hag figures known as Frau Holda or Frau
Perchta, which are depicted with huge hooked iron noses sugges
tive
of beaks.®

114
 CHOOSERS OF THE SLAIN

Such hags abound in British folklore. In Scotland and Ireland she

is known as the Cailleach (Old Woman), a goddess closely associated
with winter, being reborn at Halloween and blighting the land with
frost and snow. On May Eve she turns to stone, awaiting rebirth at the
summer’s end. In some versions of the story she is transformed in the
spring into a beautiful maid - in other words, the barren, blighted
winter earth becomes transformed into the abundant spring soil,
ready for impregnation. The Cailleach as ‘mother nature’ has two
sides - summer and winter, death-bringing and life-restoring — like
Freyja, who is both goddess of the fruitful earth (the earth as womb)
and the chooser of the slain (the earth as tomb).
The hag is associated with open water, wells and streams. One
such water-hag is Jenny Greenteeth, said to haunt the streams of Lan-
cashire and to drag down children who get too close to the edge. The
hag of the river Ribble was known as Peg O’Nell (who was said to
claim a victim every seven years), while that of the river Tees was Peg
Powler; but in Yorkshire she went by the familiar-sounding name of
Grindylow.
It has been suggested that these nightmarish creatures are merely
‘nursery bogeys’ - monsters invented to scare children from playing
near deep water or from wandering off alone. Now while there may be
some truth to this, the question arises as to why they are all women
and display such unified characteristics. An alternative explanation
would be that these water-hags are pagan deities in origin, fertility
goddesses like Nerthus, in whose lakes men were ritually drowned.

The Devouring Goddess

Just as the Keres of Greek tradition and the elves/Vanir gods pos-
sessed a dual nature, it is probable that since the Danish Nerthus was
a fertility goddess cast in a similar mould, one would expect to find
that she, too, possessed a negative side. This darker aspect would be
associated with the infertility and barrenness of winter (when we know
her victims died, see page 56), and, coloured by the symbols of carrion
animals, it would find expression as a bloodthirsty cannibalistic

115
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

monster dragging men to their watery deaths. Arguably, the figure

of Grendel’s mother as found in Beowulf was the sinister side of such
an ancient deity - the winter aspect of the fertile earth; she was the
tusked sow who cuts down the barley god and devours him (see page
76) - a role remembered in Syr (sow) one of Freyja’s many alternative
names.
Although at odds with our modern concept of how a divinity
should look and behave, the description we find in Beowulf of the
Valkyrie-like ‘bone-cruncher’ that is Grendel’s mother does not
exclude her in any way from being of divine origin - in fact, precisely
the opposite.
Nowhere is this devouring attribute made clearer than in the
Welsh tale of Taliesin. This story tells of a witch named Ceridwen,
who dwelt under a lake (Llyn Tegid) with her husband, Tegid Voel.
There, using her magical arts, she brewed a cauldron of ‘awen’ (inspi-
ration) for her ugly son Morfran, while a young lad named Gwion
Bach tended the fire. While the potion was being stirred, three drops
flew onto this lad’s finger, burning him. Without thinking, he placed
them in his mouth, and received the inspiration intended for
Morfran. In her anger, the goddess chased him, but using the magical
knowledge acquired from the cauldron, Gwion transformed himself
into a hare and sped away. Ceridwen, however, became a greyhound,
and each shape he took she followed him until finally he became a
grain of corn and she a hen; she ate him, and nine months later gave
birth to him. Unable to harm him, she sent him adrift on the ocean
in a
leather bag or a coracle. He was found in a salmon trap by aman named
Elffin who named him Taliesin (radiant brow), and in time he became
the foremost bard of Britain.
Though a relatively late tale (first appearing in medieval Welsh
poetry), the myth of Taliesin preserves a number of interesting
paral-
lels with Sheaf: he is a grain of corn (Sheaf/Beow) set adrift
on the
waters as a newborn baby - having been devoured by the
water-
goddess. Not only does his tale recall the floating of the corn
on the
shield, and the drinking of the initiating kykeon of the mysteri
es, but
his name ‘radiant brow’ is also suggestive of the ‘shining
face’ of the

116
 CHOOSER'S OF THE SLAIN

sun. Most intriguing in light of Beowulf is the reference to a cannibal-

istic witch and her ugly son dwelling under the lake. This tale captures
the essence of the dual goddess myth.
The rebirth of the ‘radiant brow’ from the mother reveals that
solar symbolism also became associated with the carrion-goddess.
The sun, plunging into the underworld at night, was also seen as
entering the maw of a giant monster. In Norse myth, this monster was
usually the wolf, as in the myths concerning Ragnarok, the final battle
in which the gods are slain. Not only are the sun and moon swallowed
by a pair of wolves, but Odin is swallowed whole by the giant wolf
Fenris. The motif of the man between two wolves on a purse, in the
Sutton Hoo find, is suggestive of this myth (see figure 10, page 87). It
seems to represent a solar being between two wolves with open jaws -
the sun escaping at dawn only to be swallowed again at night.
The Welsh figure of Ceridwen suggests that the ancient Earth-
mother, the wife of the barley god, did have such a negative side.
Though there is no direct connection made between her and the
winter earth, the fact that Taliesin is born on May Day suggests he was
in the womb all winter, having been eaten at harvest time. This wintry
aspect, however, is better illustrated in a myth concerning the Greek
barley goddess Demeter. In this, we hear how Demeter is chased by the
god Poseidon and hides as a mare amongst horses, but Poseidon finds
her and mates with her as a stallion. This violation infuriates her and
she takes on the aspect of ‘Demeter Erinys (Demeter the Fury).? She
wears black and retires to a cave on Mount Eleaus in western Arcadia
where she was known (and worshipped) as the Black Demeter of Phi-
galia, and depicted as having a mare’s head (a symbol associated with
kingship and sovereignty; see page 126).
During Demeter’s sojourn in the Phigalian cave, the earth goes
black and all fertility ceases - clearly the Black Demeter, like the Cail-
leach, is a metaphor for the dark barren winter earth. This vengeful,
dark goddess is only calmed from her terrible fury when she is bathed
in the waters of a local river (the Ladon).
This myth illuminates much about what is going on in the
Nerthus cult of old Germania. It is significant that Demeter’s

117
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

‘husband’ is Poseidon - god of the sea - whose name simply means

‘husband of the lady’: he is an exact equivalent to the Germanic
Njorthr. What is more, her rage and her hiding away in a cave in the
mountains to become a winter goddess might explain the actions of
one of Njorthr’s wives, the goddess Skathi (ski-goddess) who, unable
to bear living in Njorthr’s coastal home, returns to the cold moun-
tains, leaving her husband behind." It seems that Skathi was in fact
the winter aspect of the goddess Nerthus. It is possible that the ritual
bathing of Nerthus in the sacred lake after her ‘secret rites’, as
reported by Tacitus (and linked to the bathing of Cybele after the
death of Attis), was like that of Demeter in the river Ladon, an act to
calm and cleanse this vengeful mother after the act of love.
Demeter’s myth bears all the traits of the winter goddess,
although the cannibalistic motif is missing. It does, however, appear
in the tales of other horse-Keres - as such entities might be termed. In
the Dionysos myth, one of his maenads, Leucippe (white-mare), kills
and eats her son Hippasos (foal), for which punishment she and her
three sisters are turned into birds." And in Welsh myth, the horse-
goddess Rhiannon (associated with the underworld and with three
magical birds) is accused of eating her son Pryderi. This connection to
horses also appears in the triune Irish Morrighan, who included in its
trinity a goddess named Macha (Battle), a horse-goddess who dies
giving birth to twin foals. The devouring horse-Keres, it would seem,
is a potent figure in European myth, not least in the carrion-god-
desses of the north, the horse-riding Valkyries.

Hag-riding
Unsurprisingly, there is also negative imagery concerning the horse
and the goddess in Norse myth. It is often to be found with regard to
the acts of the priestesses of the Vanir, the Volva (see page 109). As well
as acting as clairvoyants and seers, when these women took on the
seithr power of the goddess Freyja, it could be put to malevolent use.
We find them connected to hag-riding - a terrifying nocturnal assault
said to have been caused by a witch; it was an event also linked to the

m8
 Boi

Plate 1. The first page of the Beowulf manuscript — the only surviving source for the
deeds of England’s oldest hero. (Tiustees of the British Library.)
Plate 2 (left). The Neolithic passage-grave at @m, Denmark. Such sites were the
abode of ancestral spirits that played a major role in the fertility religion of the ancient
English peoples. (John Grigsby.)

Plate 3 (above). Inside the grave at @m. Offerings were left here at midwinter for the
spirits until recent times. (John Grigsby.)
Plate 4. The Trundholm Sun-Chariot. The symbols of sun and steed were
paramount in
the pagan fertility religion of Denmark, from where the ancestors of
the English originat-
ed. (National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen.)

Plate 5. The Tollund Man — archaeological evidence of the sacrificial

cult of the goddess
Nerthus, as reported by the Roman historian Tacitus? The sacred intoxican
t he had taken
before his death yields clues as to why he died. (John Grigsby.)
Plate 6. The remains of the girl from Egtved — a Continental ancestor of the English
people. (National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen.)

Plate 7. A goddess (Nerthus?), from the Rynkeby Cauldron. Is the terrible Grendel’s
mother in Beowulf a dim memory of this lake-dwelling goddess? (John Grigsby.)
Plate 8. Two faces of the goddess: 1. The goddess as giver — Gefion ploughing Zealand
from Sweden. (John Grigsby.)

Plate 9. Two faces of the goddess: 2. The goddess as taker — a Valkyrie on horseback.
Such spirits chose those who were to be slain on the battlefield, (John Grigsby.)
Plate 10. The elves
dancing, from an English
chapbook. The elves
were derived from the
fertility gods of the
pagan English, and like
them could be both
helpful and malevolent.
(John Grigsby.)

Plate 11. The

Broddenbjerg Freyr.
Freyr was a dying and
rising fertility god akin
to the Greek Dionysos.
Did the sacrificial vic-
tims of pagan Denmark
die embodying this god?
(National Museum of
Denmark, Copenhagen.)
 SS

aeap

Plate 12. The “drowning” scene from the Gundestrup Cauldron — depicting either ritual sacri-
fice or an initiation rite. (National Museum ofDenmark, Copenhagen.)

Plate 13. Ritual burial monuments at Lejre — once the centre of the Goddess cult in Denmark,
and later the dwelling place of the Scylding dynasty, whose tragic history is recounted in
Beowulf
and other Northern sagas. (John Grigsby.)
 Plate 14. The Viking hall at Lejre, possibly built on the site of Heorot, the feasting hall
terrorized by Grendel and his mother in Beowulf. (John Grigsby.)

Plate 15. Plan of the Viking halls at Lejre. (John Grigsby; based on plans by Tom
Christensen.)

0 10m
eres coeneaee acme eo

eee ee fC RKS S ,
Plate 16. The rays of the sun entering Newgrange on midwinter’s morning. Do the
tales of the midwinter deaths of kings in both Germanic and Celtic myth have their
roots in ancient sacrificial ceremonies? (Martin Byrne; www.carrowkeel.com)
 , LE
34Pr 8 1;

Nom/ IY, \
sf 4
DA PSK
BB <)
=A
=
Plate 17. Odin as depicted on a Viking helmet. Does the usurpation of the old sacrifi-
cial fertility cult by the worship of Odin in 5th-century Denmark lie behind the deeds
of Beowulf? (John Grigsby.)

Plate 18. Odin rides his eight-legged horse Sleipnir, with a cup of mead in hand, from
the Gotland stone. Odin’s mythical theft of the mead of knowledge offers clues to the
events depicted in Beowulf. (John Grigsby.)
 Maney
a
Pag

Plate 19. The helmet of Raedwald, the Wuffinga king buried at Sutton Hoo. Might
the
Beowulf poem have been composed for the Wuffinga dynasty? (Tiustees of the British
Museum.)
 CHOOSERS OF THE SLAIN

term ‘nightmare’ in its original sense. Hag-riding was (and is) the sen-
sation of waking up paralyzed, unable to breathe, with a weight on the
chest - in the half awake state it is imagined that this is a demon
(known as a succubus if female, or incubus if male - beings whose vis-
itations were usually sexual in nature). The word ‘haggard’ is derived
from this, being the description of the victim’s appearance after being
‘hag-ridden’. An early Swedish king of the Yngling line is reported to
have been trampled to death by a ‘nightmare’ - a Volva in the form of
a horse. ‘Riding’ men to death in such a manner was often an accusa-
tion made against ‘witches’ practising seithr. Robert Kirk says a similar
thing of the British fairy women:

There may be many fair Ladies of the aerial order, which do often
tryst with lascivious young men, in the quality of Succubi, or light-
some paramours or strumpets, called Leannain Sith, or familiar
spirits: so do many ... as ifin a strangling by the Night MARE, pressed
with a fearful dream, or rather possessed by one of our aerial Neigh-
bours, rise up fierce in the night.¥

Importantly, here he is linking the orgiastic fairy-lover and the night-

mare into one image (see page xxx), bringing to mind the maenads
who are at first sexually voracious, then cannibalistic. It is as if the
carrion-goddess, the night-mare, killed her mate after their union,
_ strangling him after their tryst, a mode of death that brings the bog
victims of Nerthus to mind.
It may be that one of the roles of the Vanir priestesses, as the
embodiment of the carrion-goddess, the nightmare, was to kill the
representative of the god while they straddled him, just as Grendel’s
Mother is described in the poem as straddling Beowulf:

Ofseet pa pone selegyst, ond hyre seax getéah

She then bestrode the hall-guest [Beowulf] and drew her dagger

Even if the Beowulf poem had not survived, it would have been appar-
ent that Nerthus, as a fertility goddess akin to Demeter, would have

119
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

had a nightmare side and that she might appear in a monstrous form.
And Beowulf seems to describe such a creature, in the right location, at
the right time - even down to the ritual position that the nightmare
should take - astride her victim. Grendel’s mother is no invention or
interpolation of a folktale motif into a tale of warring tribes. Her part
in Beowulf is, as Tolkien said, as central as that fertility god Sheaf who
begins the poem.
The Christian author of Beowulf may not have recognized in this
hideous water-hag her original divinity, turning this Vanir goddess
into ‘just’ a monster, a water-hag — a Grindylow (Grendelow?). In either
case, his hero performed an amazing feat when he dived into her
waters and emerged unscathed - unlike the bog victims such as
Tollund and Grauballe man who, drunk with the god’s sacred-brew,
went to their doom ‘elfig’, ‘gidig - possessed by the god, indeed gods
themselves - fully believing in the rebirth that would follow.
These men were enacting the death of the wagon-borne fertility
god Freyr, Ing, Njorthr, Sheaf or Dionysos - whatever names they
knew him by - who died in the winter to be reborn in the spring; he
was represented in other lands by a wooden image, cast into the
waters, but in Denmark plainly by flesh and blood mortals.
It is possible that these individuals who willingly went to their
deaths were priests, but there is another likelihood hinted at in the
surviving stories. And this may tell us why Hrothgar feared these
monsters, and why his people removed the name of Sheaf from their
family tree, as if trying to distance themselves from the old Vanir
religion and its dying god: at certain times the person to be killed was
the king himself.

I20
 Part Ill

TO KILL A KING
 *

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ROYAL OBLIGATIONS

HF OR THE 12 YEARS that Grendel haunts Heorot he sits at night on

Hrothgar’s throne like the shadow of the king, the lord of an
empty hall. Hrothgar is powerless to prevent the desecration of this
symbol of his kingship. There is a sense that Grendel’s appearance
somehow reflects on Hrothgar’s rule. To what does Hrothgar owe the
presence of this uninvited guest? The truth of the matter, however,
lies not so much in what Hrothgar has done rather than what he has
not done. For the clues in the poem indicate that Grendel’s appear-
ance has to do with a lapse in kingly function - an obligation tied in
with the seasonal wagon tour of the elf-god Freyr and his mate the
dark goddess.
Many myths of the wagon-god Freyr were derived, in part, from
the seasonal peregrination of a man who it was thought was either
possessed by, or embodied, this spirit of fertility. The most likely can-
didate for such a role was one thought suitably dignified or holy to act
as a vessel for the divine presence: he would have been either a priest
or the king himself.!
A suggestion that he may have been the latter is found in an
account concerning Childeric III, the last Merovingian king (deposed
in 751) in the Vita Carolini (c. 829-36) of the Frankish chronicler
Einhard. Childeric is described as being borne on a cattle-led wagon:

Whenever he needed to travel, he went in a cart which was drawn in

country style by yoked oxen, with a cowherd to drive them. In this

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 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

fashion, he would go to the palace and to the general assembly of his

people, which was held each year to settle the affairs of the kingdom,
and in this fashion he would return home again.

It is possible that this was the last vestige of the seasonal peregrina-
tion of the fertility god. The Merovingians (whose kings were famed
for their long hair, which many contemporaries spurned as ‘effemi-
nate’ - like the priests of Attis who aped the appearance of their god)
were descendants of the Frankish tribes of the Low Countries, who
originally may have been counted amongst the Ingaevones. The
Merovingians claimed Messianic descent and the wearing of long hair
was said to be in imitation of Christ, but this was likely a later Chris-
tianized form of the original regal imitation of another ‘Lord’:
Freyr/Ing.
While no historical records survive, there are examples from myth
and legend to suggest that it was the king himself who was involved
in enacting the fertility god’s progress. The Danish sources, for exam-
ple, tell of many kings who bore the title Frothi (wise/fruitful)? - the
origin of Tolkien’s name Frodo* - who were clearly conceived as
embodiments of Freyr, for Snorri tells us that “inn frodd? (the fruitful)
was one of Freyr’s names. Of the many kings who bore this name, the
son of Skjold in the Danish genealogy (who takes the place held by
Beow in the Anglo-Saxon genealogies) was especially famed. This King
Frothi was said to have reigned around the time of Christ and during
his lifetime there was great peace, known as ‘Frotha-frith (the peace of
Frothi). Such peace was a feature of Freyr’s worship, for he allowed no
weapons in his temples or blood spilled on his lands. King Frothi’s
death is illuminating: he was killed by a sorceress in the guise of a sea-
cow - very reminiscent of the Volva night-mare (see page 119). As with
Preyr, when King Frothi died it is said the truth was kept from the peo-
ple and they continued to worship him asa king, though he was dead:

For this reason they would carry his lifeless body about, not, so
it
seemed, in a hearse, but a royal carriage, pretending that this was
a
service due from his soldiers to a feeble old monarc
h not in full

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_ possession of his strength. Such was the pomp accorded to their ruler
by his friends even after his decease. [My italics.]

Both the wagon-borne figures of Childeric and the Frothi kings of

Denmark suggest that in pagan Germania kings themselves were con-
ceived of as embodiments of the fertility god Freyr. But this sacred
enactment did not consist solely of riding in the wagon. They were
thought of as ‘husbands’ of the fertility goddess and part of their rites
included a ritual sacred marriage between themselves and an individ-
ual enacting the role of the Earth-mother. This was the same act that
had been depicted on rock carvings from Scandinavia since the
Bronze Age and that formed the basis of the myth of Freyr’s wooing
of Gerthr.

The Mare of Sovereignty

Perhaps the best example of the enactment of the sacred marriage of
a monarch and the land is found in the sagas relating to Olaf Tryg-
vasson, which tell of the many ‘liaisons’ of Earl Hakon. Hakon was the
man who seized power in Norway and tried to reintroduce paganism
to a people falling under the spell of Christianity, while the future
King Olaf was in Britain (see page 93).
Hakon is recorded as spending the majority of his reign travelling
around his kingdom and bedding other men’s wives, sisters and
daughters. While these acts can be seen simply as a powerful man
abusing his authority, it may be that he was enacting a type of ritual
droit du seigneur’ based on the marriage of Freyr with Gerthr. He is said
to have sent his servants to find suitable girls and this may have been
consciously based on the deployment of Skirnir by Freyr to woo
Gerthr. His bedding of these girls may have been a ritual act to fruc-
tify his kingdom; one of these girls seems to have borne a symbolic
name associating her with Gerthr, who is first seen with arms blazing
like the sun, and who sleeps with Freyr in the grove of Barri (Barley) -
she was named Gudrun lundasol (sun of the groves).
The goddess represented the earth, the land itself, and in the act

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of sexual union with her, the king was ‘marrying’ himself to his
kingdom. There is evidence for this in Ireland in a rite called the ‘feis’
in which the king was wed to the goddess of sovereignty of the land.
While no specific evidence exists for an equivalent to the feis in
Germanic kingship, there is equivalent symbolism in many other
Indo-European societies, which suggests that it may have been wide-
spread in the ancient world. In most of these cases there is connected
to such rites the symbolism of the horse - a symbol of kingship and
sovereignty.
The horse was inexorably linked to land ownership in ancient
Indo-European society. Such a connection is suggestive of a time when
new territory was taken or land disputes were settled by the releasing
of horses onto the land - the area circumnavigated by the horse
belonged to its owner.‘ For instance, it is safe to view the chalk carved
image of the Uffington White Horse (c. 1200-800 BC) as a sacred
glyph that acted as a permanent territorial marker to the tribes of pre-
historic Berkshire.? This symbolism also suggests that the names
‘Hengist’ (‘stallion’) and ‘Horsa’ (‘horse’) were ritual titles taken by the
Jutish princes signifying that they were performing the ancient act of
taking of new territory (England) under the guidance of the sacred
horse of sovereignty. Even today, the place of their arrival, Kent, bears
the totemic badge of the horse as its county symbol. Such ritual acts
of land acquisition also help explain why in Irish Gaelic the word for
invasion (gabala) stems from that of horse (gabal).
Above all, the preoccupation with the horse as an embodiment of
the land and sovereignty helps explain the presence of horse symbol-
ism in the many accounts of the sacred union of the king with the
Earth-goddess where either he or she takes on a horse form. It is
possible that such an image lies behind the bizarre incident in rth-
century Donegal, related by Gerald of Wales, in which an Irish king
has intercourse with a mare and then (after it is slaughtered) bathes
in a broth of its flesh.§ Although such a rite may have been thought
of
by Gerald as an amusing anecdote lampooning the primitive Irish,
it
closely parallels a kingship ceremony from India known as
the
Asva-Medha (Horse-Feast).

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 ROYAL OBLIGATIONS

In the Asva-Medha it was the queen and not the king, however,
who symbolically mated with a slain stallion that had previously been
allowed to wander over the king’s lands for a year, thus confirming the
extent of his kingdom. During the Asva-Medha rite, the horse was
suffocated and following its mock-intercourse with one of the king’s
four queens, was cut into three pieces and then burned.

Killing the King

The stallion in the Asva-Medha, who as mate of the queen is repre-
senting the king, is clearly perceived of as being ‘ridden’ (in a sexual
sense) and strangled, bringing to mind the Volva who ‘trampled’ the
early Swedish king to death in the Ynglingatal (see page 119). What these
rites reveal is that the sacred marriage between the goddess of sover-
eignty and the king was also fundamentally linked with a sacred
death, in which the goddess, sometimes in the form of the horse-
Keres (see page 118), took his life. This dual aspect of sovereignty is
reflected in Irish tales where her embodiment is usually depicted as
both a hideous hag and a beautiful young maid. The true king,
worthy to marry her, is one who sees through her ugliness and does
not spurn her advances, evidence that they are willing to embrace
death itself as part of their kingship.
The king took on grave responsibility in assuming the kingship
for he was taking upon himself the very health of the land. As an
embodiment of Freyr, the fertility spirit, and by marrying himself to
the land, the king’s health and that of the land became symbiotically
entwined. In Irish myth, a king of the Tuatha De Danann named Nuada
is forced to abdicate because of the loss of an arm in battle, which sug-
gests that kings were required to be without injury or illness.
Twinned with this concept would be the idea that kings should also
be young and virile - the human vessel in which the kingship resided
would need continual renewal for the land to stay inn froddi - fruitful.
There is a story from Snorri’s Ynglingatal that links the sacrifice of
a king with fertility. This is the tale of the Swedish King Domaldi of
the Yngling line who is cursed by his stepmother with ‘sgessa@ (bad

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luck). Domaldi is ritually killed during a famine to ensure a good

harvest. His people did not kill him without trying all other alterna-
tives. First, they offered oxen to the gods, and then, when this did not
have the desired outcome, human victims; finally, when the famine
had still not abated, it was decided that it was the king’s turn to die:

The sword-bearing men reddened the earth with the blood of their
lord, when eager for harvest the Swedes killed the enemy of the Jutes.

The word used in this passage for the act of sacrifice is actually
‘sowing’, clearly linking him with the cereal gods whose death he was
presumably aping. In the anonymous 12th-century Historia Norvegiae
(‘History of Norway’) based on an earlier (and lost) history of the
Ynglings by a 9th-zoth-century poet, Tjodolf of Hvin, Domaldi is
reported to have been hung to Ceres, the corn mother, ‘for the fertil-
ity of the crops’.
That such regicide seems to have been most widespread among the
Dark Age Swedish monarchs, the Ynglings - the ‘sons of Yngvi-Freyr’
~ is no surprise. Nor is the fact that its occurrence in Denmark seems
to parallel the floruit of the Ingaevones - the ‘friends of Ing’.
Archaeologists have dated the numerous bog bodies found in
Denmark and have discovered that the practice of placing humans
into the bogs, which began in earnest around 900 Bc (although there
are earlier Neolithic examples) seems to have come to an end around
AD 300. Although based on only a handful of samples,
the pattern
shows that ritual drowning was most common in the time of Tacitus
,
but by a later period, the age of migration, the ritual seems
to have
been in decline." Since no systematic study of the bogs
has been
undertaken - the 500 or so bodies found so far ate all acciden
tal dis-
coveries, and there may be very many more -the pattern
of bog
deposits seems to match what we know of the political
upheavals
going on in Denmark at the time. The demise in the bog rite
seems to
coincide with the assumed date of the establishment of the
Danish
tribes, the royal house of the Scyldings, the tribe who appear
to have
removed Sheaf from their genealogy and annexed the Ingaevo
nes.

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As the killing of the king had become mostly obsolete in Scandi-

navia (save for the Swedish kingdom of the Ynglings) by the sth
century, it is unlikely that when Earl Hakon attempted to re-establish
paganism in Norway in the roth century, he would have decided to re-
introduce this element of Freyr’s cult. It is ironic, then, that he met his
death through an attempted ‘liaison’.
After Hakon had sent a servant to ‘woo’ Gudrun lundasol, she, like
her mythological counterpart Gerthr, initially refused. But Hakon did
not have the persuasiveness or the charisma of Freyr. When his mes-
senger asked her again, she and her kin killed him and then set out to
lynch Hakon who was forced to hide in a pig sty with one of his slaves.
When Olaf Trygvasson heard of this (having newly arrived back in
Norway), he offered a reward for Hakon’s head. Hakon rightly believed
that his own slave who had hidden with him would try to claim the
reward, so for two days Hakon fought to stay awake. Eventually,
Hakon collapsed with exhaustion and his slave beheaded him” - an
apt end for one who would be Freyr, husband of Syr (‘sow’ - an epithet
of Freyja’s) to die as the midwinter boar, beheaded in the pig sty.

The Noose and the Neck-Ring

One aspect of the accounts of ritual regicide found in the Ynglingatal
and elsewhere that connects them with the bog men of Denmark is
the use of strangulation as the means of death. The demise of the
Yngling King Agni is a case in point. Agni’s wife Skjalf (‘ski-elf - a
name linked to Skathi, the winter-wife of Njorthr) strangles the king
with his golden neck-ring. When he is asleep in his tent in the shade
of the forest, she ties a thick rope to the neck-ring; her followers pull
down the tent and hoist the rope over a branch of a tree and hang the
king. They then burn the body and flee by boat into the night. What
connects his death to the fertility god at the hands of the winter
carrion-goddess is the mention of the neck-ring.
Glob was the first to suggest a link between the neck-rings found
deposited in bogs in Denmark, the images of dancing goddesses
wearing neck-rings common in Scandinavia from the late Bronze Age

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onwards, and the bog men who had been strangled to death.¥ But
why should the goddess be linked with the sinister image of the rope
and cord and with the act of strangulation? One suggestion is that in
the weapon-less temples of Freyr, the victim could not be beheaded
with a sword or stabbed with a blade, and that strangulation (and
drowning, too) not only offered a weapon-free mode of death, but also
ensured blood was not spilled in the temple.
Another possible explanation is suggested by the imagery used in
a medieval Welsh poem, The Spoils of the Abyss. Here, a prisoner named
Gweir lies bound in the underworld by a heavy blue cord or chain. It
has been convincingly argued that Gweir is Pryderi, the son of the
horse-goddess Rhiannon, under his childhood name of Gwri Gwallt
Euryn (golden-haired hay), whom she is accused of having eaten.
Some take the image of the blue chain to be a metaphor for the ocean,
but if the child in the underworld is being used as a metaphor for the
grain awaiting rebirth in the pregnant earth, the blue cord that holds
him in the Earth-mother’s womb is plainly the umbilical cord.
The connection between the umbilical cord and strangulation
would have been obvious to the ancients: in the days before modern
medicine it was more common than now for babies to be strangled by
their own umbilicus during birth. It can only be imagined how the
birth of such a child would have struck primitive man: the mother
was both giver and taker, and when she took life, she did so with the
strangling cord, the twisted ‘blue chain’. It is hard to conceive that
the
deaths of the strangled bog men, placed in their watery graves,
were
not in any way influenced by this image. The symbolism was
clear -
they were returning to the amniotic fluid of the Mother’s
womb for
rebirth as they had first emerged from it - attached by a twisted
cord.

The Love-Death
It has already been mentioned that strangulation or asphyxiation
were associated with the visits of the night-mare - or Volva in horse
form. A possible alternative origin to the word seithr, usually thought
to derive from ‘seated’ (see page 109), is that it comes from an Indo-

130

aD
eT
 ROYAL OBLIGATIONS

European root meaning ‘to bind with a cord/bond/magical force’.

The image of the night-mare also contained an erotic content sug-
gesting that the death of the god was both an act of love and death (see
Robert Kirk regarding the ‘Ladies of the aerial order’, page 119). And it
may be significant that the act of hanging or strangulation can
produce intense sexual excitement (as the practice of auto-erotic
asphyxiation has demonstrated) leading to ejaculation.
Bizarre as it may seem, in the ancient rites of the fertility god and
goddess, the strangulation of the victim may have been as much
sexual as murderous in nature. Its purpose was to promote sexual
excitement so that at the moment of the victim’s death he would ejac-
ulate, and the ‘seed’ of the fertility god would leave his body and enter
that of the goddess ready for rebirth. This is why the priestess playing
the part of the goddess mounted the male. A man being strangled
would not be able to bear his own weight; instead, he would have
played the passive role. He would be strangled while lying on the floor
(or seated, assuming the position of the Rallinge Freyr or the torc-
wearing horned god on the Gundestrup cauldron, see below and page
90) - hence the image of the goddess or night-mare riding him, as
Grendel’s mother does in Beowulf.

The statuette of Freyr Horned figure from

from Rallinge. Gundestrup Cauldron.

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 oe acean

BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

It is of interest that Gefion’s myth contains an identical image

linking the neck-ring with lovemaking. Norse myth records how she
obtained her necklace: like Freyja, who slept with four dwarves, who
offered her the Brisingamen necklace in return, Gefion was said to
have obtained hers in exchange for an act of love witha youth in which
she is described as having her ‘thigh over his’ - in other words, she was
riding him.'S The connection between the act of love and the neck-
ring sheds new light on Wealtheow’s gift of the neck-ring to Beowulf
on the eve of his confrontation with Grendel’s mother (see page 10).

‘Ornate gold was presented in trophy: two arm-wreaths, with rings

and robes also, and the richest collar I have ever heard of in all the
world. Never under heaven have I heard of a finer prize among heroes
~ since Hama carried off the Brising necklace to his bright city, that
gold-cased jewel’ (Beowulf, 1193-200)

The gift seems to ‘dedicate’ Beowulf to the goddess, marking him out
as Freyr/Ing, and in all probability he was wearing this neck-ring when
the water-witch straddled him. Certainly it can be linked with watery
deaths: Beowulf’s lord, Hygelac, dies on the shoreline of Frisia
while
Wearing it (see page 11) and a 3rd-4th-century neck-ring found in
a
hoard at Pietroasa in Gothic Romania demonstrates the connection
to Ing: it is inscribed with Gothic runes that read ‘sacred to Ingwa
of
the Goths’.¢
Beowulf is underwater - ‘in Gefion’s ground when the water-hag
bestrides him, and in Egyptian tradition the body of Osiris is taken
to
the Nile marshes where Isis mounts the corpse and conceives
the god
Horus on him. Celtic sources also show this ritual of love-d
eath
occurring near or in water.
In one Irish story, CiRoi Mac Dairi, king of Munster, is
killed on
the banks of the river that runs through his fort in Sleevemish
by his
wife and her new lover CaChulainn. She is clearly in bed with
him at
the time, as she binds his hair to the bedpost, pours milk
into the
stream as a sign to her lover who is waiting outside that her
husband
is vulnerable, and CuChulainn rushes in and behead
s him.

132

e
=>»
 ROYAL OBLIGATIONS

In another tale, one Lugaid kills his foster-brother Fergus Mac

Roich while the latter ‘sports’ in the waters of a lake with Queen Medb
of Connacht. She is described as being ‘on the breast of Fergus’ at the
time and has her legs ‘entwined about him’ (again, she is riding him),
when he is killed. The key point here is that Lugaid, like Hodr, who
kills Balder in Norse myth, is the brother of the slain man and is also
described as blind. King Ailill has to aim Lugaid’s throw, as Loki
guides Hodr. It may be that such an act occurred in the rites described
by Tacitus. In the Nerthus myth, Tacitus mentions that a secret rite
took place at the end of the wagon-tour that, he seems to suggest, was
so sacred that the ‘slaves’ who observed it were killed:

After that, the chariot, the vestments, and (believe it if you will) the
goddess herself, are cleansed in a secluded lake. This service is per-
formed by slaves who are immediately afterwards drowned in the
lake. Thus mystery begets terror and a pious reluctance to ask what
that sight can be which is seen only by men doomed to die.

It seems unlikely the ‘slaves’ were killed because they had seen the
goddess naked - like Actaeon killed by his own hounds for seeing
Diana bathing. Since Tacitus implies in the text that there is a reluc-
tance to ask what the sight is, it must presumably be more than the
bathing itself: something that is so secret that Tacitus’s source did
not, or could not, record it. But what could be more sacred than the
conjoining of the king and the land in a ritual love-death? The hidden
rite seen only by ‘men doomed to die’ was the sacred marriage during
which the king was killed. He was strangled, presumably, and then
drowned, after which the goddess was washed just as Cybele was in
the Almo followed the death and resurrection of Attis, and as
Demeter bathed in the Ladon following her rape by Poseidon.

The Brother’s Bane

The motif of the washing of the goddess after the killing of the god-
king that is mentioned in these sources is also suggested in the

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myth of Gerthr and Freyr, where it appears in parallel with another

motif: the murder of the brother. In Skirnismdl, Gerthr is referred to as
having shining arms, reflecting light as they are wet. When Skirnir
arrives to woo her, she initially balks at letting him in, but eventually
consents:

Though I am afraid it may be my brother’s killer outside.

This seems a strange thing to say, were it not for the myth of Idunn,
the goddess who owns the apples of immortality - and is arguably the
same figure as Gerthr. Idunn is described as placing her ‘splendidly-
washed arms around her brother’s killer’” What these tales seem to
suggest is that the goddess’s ‘brother’ is killed after which she washes
and then embraces her brother’s killer. But who is her brother and
why is she so duplicitous?
In many versions of the tale, the goddess does not do the deed
alone - she has an accomplice. In Welsh myth, the hero Lleu is killed
while half-standing in a river, by a man named Gronw ‘Pebr’ (‘the
fiery’) after being betrayed by his wife Blodeuwedd. The Greek
Agamemnon was killed in the bath by his wife and her lover
Aegisthus. But in other accounts the relationship between the killer
and the killed is made quite clear: Osiris is slain by his brother,
Seth;
Balder by his brother Hodr and Fergus by his foster-brother Lugaid.
In
the Bible, Joseph’s brothers throw him into a well after he
tells them
of a dream in which they bow down to him as a sheaf of corn.
In the
Grail myth we find the warring brothers Balin and Balan, who
stem
from two antagonistic Celtic deities, the brothers Bran and Beli,
The fact is that all these examples rest on the original idea
that the
god is the twin brother of the goddess. Osiris is the brothe
r of Isis,
Freyr of Freyja and thus, by extension, the king is the brothe
r of sov-
ereignty. Whoever becomes king after the demise of the
old becomes,
by his ‘marriage’, the brother of the goddess and so the brothe
r of the
old king - although, as the spirit of the crops, in essenc
e he is the
same being, albeit in a new body. The tales of Gerthr and Idunn
reveal
that the goddess embraces the new embodiment of fertili
ty after the

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 ROYAL OBLIGATIONS

death of the old. Perhaps she has just been ritually washed in the
waters of the grove, having consented to ending her spouse’s life -
washing the blood of her husband from her arms, washing his bloody
clothes, as did the ‘washer in the ford’ in Irish lore.
This cyclical regicide appears in Saxo Grammaticus’s version of
the Balder myth, in which he depicts the fight of the brothers
Balderus (who was wont to travel the land in a wagon) and Hotherus
over the nymph Nanna. Hotherus kills his brother, and places him in
a burial mound, but is in turn slain by another brother named Bous
- and so the yearly cycle continued."
This sounds very close to the ritual pattern observed at the ‘little
woodland lake of Nemi’ where ‘stood the sacred grove and sanctuary
of Diana Nemorensis, or Diana of the Wood’ recorded by JG Frazer in
The Golden Bough:

In this sacred grove there grew a certain tree round which at any time
of the day, and probably far into the night, a grim figure might be
seen to prowl. In his hand he carried a drawn sword, and he kept
peering warily about him as if at every instant he expected to be set
upon by an enemy. He was a priest and a murderer; and the man for
whom he looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold the
priesthood in his stead. Such was the rule of the sanctuary. A candi-
date for the priesthood could only succeed to office by slaying the
priest, and having slain him, he retained office till he was himself
slain by [one] stronger or a craftier ...
Within the sanctuary at Nemi grew a certain tree of which no
branch might be broken. Only a runaway slave was allowed to break
off, if he could, one of its boughs. Success in the attempt entitled him
to fight the priest in single combat, and if he slew him he reigned in
his stead with the title of King of the Wood (Rex Nemorensis).!9

Accordingly the drowned bog men of Denmark may have been killed
at the hands of the embodiment of the goddess and her new ‘lover’,
the next year’s king, who would have known that he would in turn
suffer the same fate the following midwinter.

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 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

Frazer’s description of the ‘King of the Wood’ - ‘far into the night,
a grim figure might be seen to prowl’ - brings to mind the appearance
of Grendel at Heorot. The monster stalks the mead-benches, yet he
remains unchallenged by Hrothgar for 12 years until one man,
Beowulf, is brave enough to slay him and suffer the consequences - a
tryst with the lake goddess. The monstrous Grendel does have a direct
link to the brother-slaying myth:

‘Grendel’s mother herself, a monstrous ogress ... had been doomed

to dwell in dread waters, in the chilling currents, because of that blow
whereby Cain became the killer of his brother, (Beowulf, 1258-65; My
italics.)

Grendel and his mother were the kin of the ‘brother-slayer’ (see page
102). Their very evil stemmed from their connection to this heinous
deed that the later poet ingeniously connected to the act of the
biblical Cain. But the ultimate origin of this image was the ancient
regicidal cycle: the Vanir cycle of sacrificial kingship that the Danes
sought to end, in which king killed king, brother killed brother —
until Hrothgar’s failure in ancient royal obligations brought the cycle
to a halt.
In this chapter, after examining many mythical motifs, there
seems to be a reasonable consensus on certain points:

1. In Denmark, the king representing the god Freyr enacted a ritual

marriage with a priestess embodying the land itself.

2. At the end of the king’s reign, he was ritually killed (presumably at

midwinter) during a sacred marriage to the priestess by strangula-
tion, after which the goddess was washed and, if the myths are to
be believed, took the new king’s ‘brother’ as a lover.

3. The night-marish Grendel’s mother, who mounts Beowulf under-

water, is a memory of the carrion-goddess of winter, whose lovers’
lives were usually ended, strangled in peat bogs following a meal of
ergotized porridge.

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 ROYAL OBLIGATIONS

4. The Danes may have been in the process of establishing a heredi-

tary kingship, rather than the earlier rule by the strongest, thus
ending the practice of ritual regicide and establishing a dynasty
known as the Skjoldungs (Scyldings in Beowulf).

If the arrival of the ‘brother-slayer’ Grendel at Heorot is to be seen as

a Germanic form of the ‘King of the Wood’, then one would expect his
appearance to be intimately connected to midwinter and the sacrifi-
cial rites of that time of year. Beowulf does not provide any such
information but there are a number of other existing variants of the
Scylding saga in Norse sources that help shed light on this aspect of
the Old English poem.

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 CHAPTER TWELVE

THE HALL TURNED TO ASHES

Boldly the hall reared its arched gables; unkindled the torch-
flame that turned it to ashes. The time was not yet when the
blood-feud should bring out again sword-hatred in sworn
kindred.
BEOWULF, 81-5

a HROUGHOUT Beowulf, the great hall of Heorot remains standing,

yet there are many clues in the poem pointing to its eventual
fiery destruction, a result, so the poet tells us, of blood feuds.
However, other surviving Norse sagas reveal more of the nature of this
destruction, and at the same time show that the events that led to
Hrothgar’s hall being turned to ashes were not just political conflicts
but had a religious element tied in with the death of the king at the
hands of the winter-goddess.

Hrolf's Saga
The prose saga of King Hrolf ‘Kraki’ (‘the lean/tall’, a name given to
him because his face was ‘thin and angular, like a ladder carved from
a pole’) was written in 14th-century Iceland and tells of the deeds of
the man who appears in Beowulf as King Hrothgar’s nephew Hrothulf.
Hrolf (Hrothulf) nephew of Hroar (Hrothgar), with his 12 compan-
ions, was a popular figure in Icelandic lore, where he appears
as a

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 THE HALL TURNED TO ASHES

Danish Arthur or Charlemagne figure. Though late (and based on a

collection of earlier sagas), the saga deals with many of the same figures
and events that appear, or are alluded to, in Beowulf, though not to such
an extent as to suggest that it was based on the English poem. Rather,
the close relation between the two tales suggests the existence of an
earlier version or versions of the tale (that for convenience will be re-
ferred to as the proto-Beowulf), existing most probably in Scandinavia,
from which both were independently drawn. From the very start, Hrolf’s
Saga illuminates much that is unclear or only hinted at in Beowulf.
The first important fact that the non-English sagas offer is the
location of Hrothgar’s Heorot. All that is gained from the English
poem is that the hall stands somewhere in the territory of the Danes,
and close to the sea. The Icelandic and Danish sources are adamant
that Hrolf’s capital was at a place named Hleidargard - that is, modern
Lejre on Zealand - the place of the nine-yearly ritual sacrifice men-
tioned by Thietmar of Merseburg and the centre of Nerthus/Gefion’s
cult (see page 54). Lejre would be the capital of the Danish kingdom
during the Viking age and it is reasonable to suppose that the site of
Hrothgar’s Heorot was also at the same location. The large numbers
of prehistoric burial mounds and ritual monuments surrounding
Lejre suggest that it was a cult centre from very early times, and
archaeologists have discovered great feasting halls built here from the
7th century onwards. However, the clues from the tales seem to
suggest, perhaps bizarrely, that Heorot belonged more to the former
class of monuments rather than the latter.
In the saga, Hrolf gathers around him a band of champions, and
heroes from all over the North flock to Hleidargard to join his
company. One such is the son of Bera and Bjorn - a hero named
Bodvar Bjarki (Battle-Bear cub), who will become the greatest cham-
pion of Hrolf’s retinue.
As with many heroes, Bodvar’s birth is far from ordinary. His father
Bjorn (Bear) is transformed by witchcraft into a bear when he rejects
his stepmother Queen Hvit’s advances. The queen calls for the bear to
be hunted, but he manages to spend his last night on Earth with his
lover Bera (She-Bear) and from the doomed union of this couple are

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born the three brothers Bodvar Bjarki, Elk-Frodi and Thorir-Hound’s

Foot. Like Hygelac, in time Thorir will become king of the Geats.
While pregnant with Bjorn’s children, Bera is forced by Queen
Hvit to eat the flesh of her slain lover, an act that accounts for the odd
nature of her children - Elk-Frodi is elk from the waist down, and
Thorir Hound-Foot’s name speaks for itself. Bodvar’s first act as a
man is to slay Queen Hvit and so avenge his father. This done, he
draws a sword from a stone left for him by his father in a cave, and
heads off to see his brother Elk-Frodi. Frodi cuts his calf and allows
Bodvar to drink his blood, an act that makes him more powerful. It is
Elk-Frodi who suggests that he journeys to the court of King Hrolf.
Bodvar arrives in Hleidargard and immediately defends a man
named Hott, whom Hrolf’s retainers have taunted and ridiculed,
throwing bones at him during their feasts. Bodvar seats Hott beside
him, and when the heroes start throwing bones again, Bodvar seizes one
and throws it back, killing the man who launched it. News of this deed
travels to Hrolf in his fortress, who only then discovers how his retain-
ers have been treating Hott. He asks Bodvar to join his warriors, but he
asks that only Hott and he be allowed to sit nearer the king in the hall.
Yule approaches and Bodvar notices that Hrolf’s warriors are
becoming increasingly gloomy. Hott informs him why:

Hott told him that a huge, monstrous beast had come there the past
two winters ... causing much damage. No weapon can bite into it, and
the king’s champions, even the best among them, do not return home.

The creature seems to be a large dragon-like winged creature that

Hott describes as not an animal but ‘rather it is the greatest of trolls’
(the word troll, in this era, being an all-encompassing term for super-
natural creatures).
That Yule, Bodvar and a reluctant Hott confront the beast
on the
moor outside the hall. Bodvar’s sword becomes stuck in his scabba
rd,
but he is eventually able to release it and he kills the creature. Bodvar
cuts out the beast’s heart and makes Hott eat it, whereon he become
s
filled with its courage.
 THE HALL TURNED TO ASHES

They then decide to trick Hrolf and his warriors, who have not
witnessed the deed. They prop the beast up and early next morning
cry out that the hall is under attack again; the warriors fear to go
forward, save Hott, who rushes forward and appears to kill the beast,
thus earning the respect of the warriors. Hrolf, however, sees through
the trick, but nevertheless sees a change in Hott and grants him the
name Hjalti (‘hilt’), after the golden hilt of the sword with which he
did his ‘brave’ deed. Bodvar becomes the best of Hrolf’s warriors, and
marries his daughter Drifa. .
It is Bodvar who suggests to Hrolf that they journey to Sweden and
claim his father’s stolen treasure from King Adils. King Adils had
killed Hrolf’s father Helgi, and married his mother Yrsa - seizing his
wealth in the process. The Danes leave for Sweden, where they enter
the hall of King Adils, king Hrolf disguised as a normal warrior. Adils
lights a massive fire within the hall, attempting to burn Hrolf to death,
knowing that the Danish King has promised to flee ‘neither fire nor
iron’. He hopes to flush Hrolf out, as he is unsure which of the many
armoured warriors is the king. But, as the flames leap higher, Bodvar
and the warriors spring into action, throwing those making the fire
into the flames and then rushing to burn Adils too; but he hides in a
hollow tree at the centre of the hall and survives the conflagration.
Adils flees outside the hall and sends against the Danes “a troll ... in
the likeness of a boar’ that cannot be harmed by swords. The beast
bursts into the hall, where Hrolf’s dog Gram tears its ears off and the
beast flees. But outside, Adils and his men are setting light to the hall.
Hrolf’s warriors push against its wooden planked sides and manage to
free themselves. There is a great battle, during which Adils flees, and the
victorious Hrolf returns to the hall and receives his father’s treasure
from Yrsa, his mother. On the way back to the coast, they are ambushed
by Adils, but Hrolf casts a ring given to him by his mother to the floor;
when Adils bends to scoop it up, Hrolf slices off his buttocks - and the
ambushers are routed. The war party returns to Denmark.
But Hrolf is soon to meet his fate. Hrolf has a sister named Skuld
- a half-elvish woman, who was the wife of one King Hjorvard, who
was once tricked by Hrolf into sending him a yearly tribute. Skuld,

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 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

however, incites Hjorvard to stop paying tribute to her brother, call-

ing him a weakling for being subservient. Skuld, a sorceress, has a plan.
_ She tells Hrolf she will pay three years tribute in one go, and arranges
to bring it to the hall at Yule. She then secretly amasses an army con-
sisting of ‘Norns, elves and countless other vile creatures’. Yule arrives
and the army gathers outside Hleidargard. The alarm is raised by
Hjalti who realizes the violent intentions of the gathered crowd.
The warriors go to battle - all save Bodvar - but a great bear leads
the troops, killing many of Skuld’s retinue. Hrolf’s men have the
upper hand, and victory seems assured but Hjalti realizes Bodvar is
not present in the fray and rushes to find him. When Hjalti enters the
king’s chamber, he discovers Bodvar seated ‘idle’, and berates him.
The roused Bodvar rebukes Hyalti for this ill-deed: the bear, it seems,
was Bodvar in spirit form. He had been sitting in a trance using his
magic against the queen, but now the magical bear has gone and
Queen Skuld is better able to use her dark powers: looking down on
the battle from her witch’s platform, she casts spells that bring her
slain warriors back to life. Her magic means that her army is invinci-
ble, as Bodvar knows:

‘Deep are the ranks of Skuld’s army. I suspect that the dead are wan-
dering about. They rise up again to fight against us, and it becomes
difficult to fight with ghosts.’

Skuld now joins her army of zombies in the battle - and a storm
of
enchantments sweeps over the champions, who are defeated to a man.
Thus perish Hrolf Kraki and Bodvar Bjarki. Skuld seizes the kingdom,
but Bodvar’s brothers, assisted by Queen Yrsa, manage to drive her
from the throne and destroy her. Then great burial mounds are
built
for the champions and their king!

Grendel and the Yuletide Troll

Though the action has shifted on a generation, the events
of the
Icelandic saga clearly parallel many of those of the Englis
h poem.
Both tales tell of the political machinations of the Swedes
, Geats

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 THE HALL TURNED TO ASHES

and Danes, of family conflict, honour and blood feud. Yet both also
present a set of strange supernatural occurrences that at first seem at
odds with the historical background. And the nature of this super-
natural incursion is almost identical in both tales.
It is apparent from Hrolf’s Saga is that the royal hall of the Scyld-
ings at Lejre is threatened by a troll-like creature. The monster that
enters the site each Yule is clearly the equivalent of Grendel, but it has
acquired not only wings and the ability to fly (like the Keres) but also
its arrival is not over a period of twelve years but of two successive
years at midwinter. Like Grendel, the monster is struck twice: in
Beowulf, the first strike is made without the use of weapons, while in
Bodvar’s initial inability to draw his sword may be a dim memory of
the spells Grendel uses to make himself immune from weapons. (This
magical ability seems then to be passed onto the magical boar that
Adils sends into his hall.) The second striking of the monster occurs
when the foe is already dead - as a propped-up beast in Hrolf’s Saga
and while lying dead on a bed in the underwater cave in Beowulf. In
both cases, the weapon used to strike for the second time is a ‘golden-
hilted’ sword, the object Beowulf first notices when he finds the
ancient sword in Grendel’s underwater cavern.’
Obviously, the two accounts have much in common, excepting the
date of the attack. It seems as though the Yuletide attack, integral to the
argument that Grendel’s arrival was part of the regicidal cycle, was omit-
ted by the English Beowulf poet in order to suggest that Grendel’s threat
was a constant evil spanning a number of years rather than something
that had happened twice on one specific calendrical date - thus increas-
ing the sense of menace and drama for the audience (see page 8).

Beowulf and Bodvar

The most obvious parallel between the tales is the nature and deeds of
the heroes, Beowulf and Bodvar - especially given the usual etymology
of Beowulf from ‘Bee-wolf’, a kenning for bear (to which an alterna-
tive will be offered in Part IV). Both heroes have a close kin relation-
ship with the king of the Geats - (in Bodvar’s case brother, in Beowulf’s

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nephew). Both journey to Denmark and liberate the hall of one of the
Scylding clan from a supernatural foe and are then instrumental in
wars in Sweden revolving around the figure of King Adils. But while
King Adils is the villain of the Icelandic saga, Beowulf is depicted as
helping Adils (Eadgils) seize the throne of Sweden from his uncle Onela,
the slayer of Hygelac’s son Heardred. There is a seeming ‘rootless-ness’
of the Beowulf/Bodvar figure: unlike the other characters in the tales,
the hero is the only one who seems to be able to jump a generation and
his allegiance to the Swedish monarch; he is associated with a certain
period of Danish history, but not firmly located at a set point. It is to
him that the monster-fight belongs, not to Hrolf or Hrothgar, and so
when he appears in Hrolf’s Saga so does the monster.
Although offering parallel views of the same events, the sagas
differ in other important respects, showing clearly that one was not
derived from the other. The Icelandic saga is rife with the motif of the
killing of the king; twice there is an attempt to burn the king to death in
4 hall before he finally succumbs to the machinations of his half-elvish
sister Skuld, whose attack on Heorot has something ritualistic about
it. In fact it is a magical attack. She herself is a practitioner of seithr,
and casts her spells while seated on her witch’s platform. Hrolf’s
‘sister’, who bears the same name as the Norn who cuts men’s
life-
threads, is none other than a Vanir priestess playing the role of the
carrion-goddess, the ‘chooser of the slain’- the grim-reaper of this
harvest king to whom, one imagines, she had once been wed. And like
that of Grendel’s mother, her attack on the hall comes after the
first
attack of the twice-slain ‘troll’. And yet, vitally, in Hrolf’s Saga, unlike
Beowulf, it is made plain that the appearance of this nightmarish
woman is closely connected with the wars over the Danish throne.
Her arrival in the story, rather than being an aside, is integral to
the
theme of the killing of the king.

Something Rotten in the State

Hrolf’s Saga deals with the deeds of the Scyldings the gener
ation fol-
lowing the death of Hrothgar/Hroar, the king who is the
builder of

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 THE HALL TURNED TO ASHES

Heorot and who appears in Beowulf. In this saga, a number of charac-

ters only hinted at in Beowulf play a major role, not least that of
Hrothulf/Hrolf himself. But clues in the Old English poem suggest
that there is ‘something rotten in the state of Denmark’ as there is
another side to King Hrolf that the later saga glosses over: he becomes
king by killing Hrothgar’s heir.
On the night that Grendel has been slain, Beowulf is sitting
among the youths with Hrothgar’s young sons, Hrethric and Hroth-
mund, when their mother, Wealtheow, speaks these words to their
father, concerning their cousin Hrothulf/Hrolf, the son of the king’s
dead brother Halga:

‘T hear it is your wish to hold this warrior [Beowulf] henceforward as

your son. Heorot is cleansed, the ring-hall bright again: therefore
bestow while you may these blessings liberally, and leave to your
kinsmen the land and its people when your passing is decreed, your
meeting with fate. For may I not count on my gracious Hrothulf to
guard honourably our young ones here, if you, my lord, should give
over this world earlier than he? I am sure he will show to our children
answerable kindness, if he keeps in remembrance all that we have
done to indulge and advance him, the honours we bestowed on him
when he was still a child.’

Although on the face of it this passage seems straightforward, the

Danish and Norse sources prove otherwise. Hrothgar and his nephew
Hrothulf appear together in the poem Widsith, but here, too, is a hint
at future trouble:

Hroth(w)ulf and Hrothgar kept peace for a very long time, uncle and
nephew, when they had driven away the race of the Vikings and over-
come the array of Ingeld, destroyed at Heorot the host of the
Heathobards. [My italics.]

The poet’s use of the words ‘for a very long time’ suggests an eventual
falling out, for it becomes clear that Hrothulf/Hrolf did not ‘guard

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honourably his young cousins. The actual sequence of events is

unclear, but it would seem that after Hrothgar’s demise, Hrothulf
kills his son Hrethric, though what happened to Hrothmund, who
does not appear in any other source but Beowulf, is not known. One
theory states he may have fled to England.
Hrolf Kraki, who is depicted in Icelandic saga as an ideal and
heroic king, achieved his elevated position by murdering his cousin(s)
and defying his uncle’s and aunt’s wishes. But this is not the only
intrigue in the Scylding court concerning a nephew of Hrothgar’s. In
Beowulf, Beowulf is not only granted the title of ‘son’ by Hrothgar, but
he is also given the armour due to Heoroweard, Hrothgar’s other
nephew, the son of his late brother Heorogar (see chart, page 233). It is
not known why the nephew was shunned. It would seem that Heo-
roweard’s father, Heorogar, was king before Hrothgar, but had died
young, and his son was not old enough to reign effectively. If this was
the case, then it was poetic justice that Hrothgar, who had seized the
throne in place of his nephew Heoroweard, should eventually lose his
own offspring at the hands of his other nephew, Hrothulf/Hrolf.
Hrothgar shuns both his brothers’ sons so that his own will
inherit the kingdom after his demise. Both nephews, Heoroweard and
Hrothulf, are fully-grown men; both would no doubt have been able
fighters and good leaders, but Hrothgar seems more interested in
establishing a hereditary line. To this end, he gives away Heoroweard’s
birthright to Beowulf, and forces his other nephew Hrothulf to be
‘baby-sitter’ to the future monarch. In this light, the old king’s death
was bound to result in bloodshed. Hrothulf will murder his cousin(s
?)
and seize the throne, and Hrothgar’s other wronged nephew,
Heo-
roweard (the King Hjorvard of Hrolf’s Saga, the husband of the
Valkyrie Skuld) will eventually attack and kill King Hrothulf and
his
men at Yule.
The Scylding/Skjoldung saga is an epic of inter-family feuds,
of
cousin against cousin, all seemingly based on the machinations
of
Hrothgar to make his sons king after him, and his brother
s’ sons
determination that this will not to happen. But there seems
more to
this than the squabbles of a dysfunctional family.
eee
 THE HALL TURNED TO ASHES

Behind these machinations, it is possible to glimpse the religious

conflicts of the age, and the struggles for the establishment of a hered-
itary kingship over the sacral kingship of the brother-killers, based
on rule by the strongest, that was the norm in Germania during the
Iron Age.

Political Wars and Ritual Murders

The brother-slaying motif is pronounced in the figure of Hjorvard.? In
Beowulf, Hrothulf/Hrolf and Heoroweard/Hjorvard are cousins, both
sharing a grandfather in Healfdene, but their family link is forgotten
in Hrolf’s Saga, where they are brothers-in-law through the marriage of
Hjorvard to Skuld, Hrolf’s half-sister, fathered on an elf-woman by
Halga/Helgi. This elf-woman was said to have appeared as an ugly
beggar, but when Helgi allows her into his bed through kindness,
she turns into a beautiful maid, like the figure of sovereignty in
Irish myth. Skuld, therefore, is no human relation, but like her elf-
mother she is the sovereignty of the land - or at least a priestess
playing that role.
Hjorvard, as should be expected in the tradition of ritual regicide,
matries the ‘sister’ of the king (ie, the goddess), thus becoming the
king’s ‘brother’ - and then slays him at midwinter, accompanied by
Skuld, a very clear portrayal of the winter carrion-goddess. What
Hrolf Kraki’s death overtly demonstrates is that the old ways were still
practised in Beowulf’s day. It also shows that any previous idea that
Beowulf was merely a tale concerning the political machinations of a
Danish royal house onto which an incongruous monster story had
been laid are a fallacy. The political ‘historical’ family saga itself is rife
with the symbols of the ritual killing of the king in which the ‘mon-
sters’ are integral (as Tolkien had suggested).
Just as the later Icelandic saga of Hrolf recalls that the troll
Grendel’s arrival was at midwinter, so too it preserves the connection
between the arrival of the goddess and the rites of kingship better
than the English Beowulf poem, where Grendel’s mother is depicted as
a purely supernatural entity, divorced from her role as king-slayer and

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mate of the young pretender. Skuld is remembered as sovereignty, and

when she came to Heorot, she brought a new king with her.
At this point, it might be thought that too much is being read into
the Scylding story - that the attacking and burning of Heorot by
Hjorvard and Skuld only coincidentally parallels the events of the
brother-battle and the rites of sacred kingship. But one has only to
look a little further into the Scylding drama to discover proof. In
Widsith, Heorot is threatened by a Heathobard named Ingeld and
Hrothgar and Hroth(w)ulf repel the attack. Ingeld was a son of a king
named Froda, who apparently had killed Healfdene, Hrothgar’s
father.‘ In retaliation, so the Icelandic sagas relate, Hroar/Hrothgar
and Helgi/Halga burn Froda to death in his hall! In Beowulf, Hrothgar
attempts to mend the feud by marrying his daughter Freawaru to
Ingeld, Froda’s son. And though the success of this venture is not
mentioned in Beowulf, the Old English audience would have known its
unfortunate outcome, at which Beowulf himself seems to hint, as if
gifted with foresight. On his return to Geatland, he says of Freawaru
to his lord Hygelac:

‘She is betrothed to Ingeld, this girl attired in gold, to the gracious

son of Froda. The Protector of the Danes has determined this and
accounts in wisdom, the keeper of the land, thus to end all the feud
and fatal wars by means of the lady. Yet when a lord is dead it is
seldom the slaying-spear sleeps for long - seldom indeed - dear
though the bride may be.’

Ingeld indeed tries hard to keep peace for the sake of his wife, but in
the end the family feud overwhelms him and he takes his revenge. In
Widsith, it is stated that the Scyldings repulsed his attack, but in Saxo’s
account the attack is successful. The true nature of Ingeld’s threat,
however, is apparent — he is the son of a Danish Frothi-king, a fertility
god-king of the Ingaevones. For who are Froda, Ingeld and his wife
Freawaru other than Freyr, Ing and Freyja?
In Beowulf, Froda and Ingeld are described as Heathobards -
neighbours to the Danes - yet in the non-English sources they are

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 THE HALL TURNED TO ASHES

integrated into the Scylding clan. Froda is seen as Healfdene’s brother.

This would make the latter’s attack on the former a kind of brother-
battle over kingship. Given this alternative family connection it is
tempting to see the Heathobard Ingeld as a title of Heoroweard, as in
Saxo Grammaticus’s Danish History, where Ingeld, like Hjorvard, is
successful in attacking and destroying Heorot. Perhaps these charac-
ters were once identical, only to become split into two characters in
later tradition. Both Ingeld and Heoroweard are the cousins of
Hrolf by marriage with a daughter of one of the sons of Healfdene:
Freawaru, who does not appear in the Danish or Norse sources, in the
case of Ingeld; and Skuld, who does not appear in Beowulf in the case
of Heoroweard. Both women were linked to Freyja, the first by name,
the second by her deeds and her ability to resuscitate the dead on the
battlefield.
Whether or not Ingeld and Heoroweard were originally the same
person, the killing of kings in burning buildings by brothers wed to
Freyja-wives is suggestive of a lot more than blood feuds. Chapter 13
examines a Celtic tale that makes this kingship ‘cycle’ of the
Ingaevones much clearer. Not only is another man bearing the name
‘Ing- involved in the killing of a pagan king within a feasting hall, but
there is evidence that the burning of such ‘halls’ was not an act of war,
but an act of a winter ritual once celebrated throughout north-west
Europe.

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 CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE WANDERING INGUZ

HE CLEAREST EXAMPLE in Celtic lore of a ritual death associated

pdae the winter feast and a feasting hall is a tale called The
Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel. It is set at the feast of Sambain, the
precursor of Halloween, on which night the veil between the worlds
was thin and there could be intercourse, malign and otherwise,
between the mortal world and the otherworld. Samhain was seen as
the start of the Celtic year and its symbolism was identical to that of
the Germanic midwinter. On this night, the fairy folk had great influ-
ence over mankind, and there was a resurgence of a state of chaos. It
seems that it was on this night that the king was killed.
The tale tells of the ritual death of an historical king named
Conaire Mor. As with all Celtic kings and heroes, his life is bounded
by a strict sense of taboos, or geassa, which, if broken will bring about
his doom. (This is akin to the Norse concept of osgeassa (bad luck) that
Domaldi’s stepmother places on him, resulting in his sacrifice for the
health of the crops).
The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel begins with King Conaire settling
a dispute between two of his servants, which is one of his geassa. By the
end of the day, Conaire has broken them all, through being placed
in
situations that leave him no choice but to break one geassa or another
.
The day seems engineered to end with the king’s death in such a fash-
ion that he himself causes it through his limited choices.
As the disastrous day draws to its close, Conaire and his men seek
shelter within a feasting hall, a ‘hostel’ owned by an elusive figure

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 THE WANDERING INGUZ

named Da Derga (Red God). But from the start we see that there is
something odd about this hostelry. Three horsemen dressed in red,
the Celtic colour of death, precede the entourage - breaking another
geassa. They tell Conaire they are men of the sidhe (fairy folk). ‘Though
we are alive we are dead’, they say, chillingly. Their appearance
parallels the ‘elves, norns and vile creatures’ who are present in
Skuld’s army.
Conaire’s party then witnesses to the arrival of two hideous
figures. The man’s name is Fer Caille (Man of the Wood), and his
wife’s Cichuil. Fer Caille is described as a hideous black giant with
spiked hair, a single eye, foot and arm, and brandishing a club. His
wife is similarly immense and ugly:

A huge, black, gloomy, big-mouthed, ill-favoured woman; if her snout

were thrown against a branch, the branch would support it, while her
lower lip extended to her knee.

Conaire knows they spell his doom and he begs them not to visit him
in the hostel that night. They do not relent.
Fer Caille has been linked by generations of Celtic scholars to a
figure known as the ‘Wild Herdsman’, a one-eyed shamanic figure who
appears in a number of tales as a master of animals - an equivalent
to the horned god depicted on the Gundestrup cauldron surrounded
by beasts (see pages 90 and 131).? This monstrous couple are usually
accepted as forms of the Dagda and his mate the Morrighan (see page
104), the Celtic Freyr and Freyja, but the pair are reminiscent of
nothing more than Grendel and his mother. But there is another link
between them and these Vanir gods. Fer Caille is carrying on his
shoulder a ‘singed, black-bristled pig’ - not only a symbol of the Vanir
gods, but also of the god slain by the boar.
Conaire’s reign has been good - the crops have grown - but by
entering the hostel he has sealed his fate:

‘May God not bring that man here tonight. It is grievous. It is a pig
that falls before acorns. It is a child who is aged. It is grievous his
shortness of life.’

ISI
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

So says Fer Rogain, Conaire’s foster-brother, who is amongst an army

approaching the hall with the intention of destroying it. That evening,
as the hosts of Conaire enter the hall, Fer Caille arrives with his pig.
Then alone woman appears at the door. It is not stated that she is Fer
Caille’s wife Cichuil, but as he arrives alone and she immediately after,
she is conceivably the same creature. Her beard reaches her knees, her
mouth was on one side of her head, and she leans on the doorpost and
asks Conaire for entry, thus asking him to break another geassa. She
is asked for a name, and gives him many including ‘Samhain’ (Sum-
mer’s end) and ‘Badb’ (Battle crow), variant names of the Morrighan.
As with the appearance of the Vanir demons Grendel and Skuld in the
halls of Denmark, they presage the death of the King.
Conaire is now doomed. The hall is attacked by a massive army of
plunderers - led by his foster-brother and a one-eyed warrior named
Ingcel who is described as a raider from the sea. Da Derga’s hall is set
alight and extinguished three times. The attacker’s druids cause
Conaire to thirst, and he sends his most loyal warrior, Mac Cecht, to
fetch water, but the rivers of Ireland dry up before him. When he does
manage to find water he returns to find his lord is being beheaded -
but he gives water to the head and the head thanks him for it. Mac Cecht
is then killed by a wolf.

A Winter's Tale
The links between this ancient Irish tale and the tales surrounding
the Scylding dynasty are striking. In both cases, we see the arrival ofa
monstrous ‘man’ and ‘woman’ (in that order) at a winter festival who
threaten the person of the king. Then the hall is burned down - in the
Irish tale by Ingcel and in the Scylding saga by Hjorvard and Ingeld.
The proximity of these names - Ingcel and Ingeld ~ suggests that
the parallel motifs in these tales go beyond pure coincidence.
However, the possibility that one is a direct borrowing of the other
seems to be ruled out by the fact that too many themes in each are
paralleled in their native traditions; both seem firmly rooted in
their
own cultures.

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A similar story appears in the Welsh Mabinogion - the tale of the

death of Bran the Blessed, king of Britain. Bran, a giant, crosses
the Irish channel to rescue his sister Branwen, who is enslaved by
her husband, the Irish king. Like the Dagda, Bran is the owner of a
magical cauldron received from a pair of figures who are identical to
Fer Caille and his wife - only they are described as dwelling beneath a
lake, exactly like Grendel and his dam. They are portrayed as having
melyngoch (‘yellow-red’) hair, the same fiery orange hair as found on
the bog people.‘ In this source, there is a link between the bog people
and the fertility gods whom they were imitating in death.
Because Bran is so large, he is housed in a specially designed ‘hall’
which is subsequently destroyed around him when the forces of the
Irish king Matholwch (Bran’s brother-in-law) attack. A fire is lit and the
Irish king’s son is thrown upon it by his uncle Efnissien. Battle ensues
and the Irish dead, like the dead warriors of Skuld, are able to regen-
erate by being placed in Bran’s magical cauldron of rebirth, which has
fallen into the hands of the Irish, until Efnissien enters and destroys
it, forfeiting his life. Bran is killed (wounded in the thigh) and beheaded,
but his head continues to entertain his men after his death.
There are many close parallels between this Welsh tale and that of
the demise of both Conaire and Hrolf. Bran is killed in a feasting hall
by an attacking army led by his sister’s husband (like in Hrolf’s Saga),
and his enemies have a method of regenerating their dead (originat-
ing from a pair of monstrous lake-dwellers), as has Skuld with her
seithr magic. Bran’s severed head, like that of Conaire, speaks after his
death, and Bran’s name means ‘raven’, comparable with that of Hrolf
in Saxo Grammaticus’s Danish History, where Kraki is said to mean
‘crow’, not ‘lean/tall’.
The existence of this Welsh variant of the regicidal myth, contain-
ing elements of both the Irish and Danish tales yet not necessarily
derived from either, further suggests that these are not borrowed tales
but ancient shared myths. These Celtic parallels show that far from
being an anomaly, the killing of Hrolf by Skuld and Ingeld/Hjorvard
and the arrival of Grendel and his ugly mother in Heorot all fit a
pattern of events surrounding the ritual death of a monarch common

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in both the Germanic and Celtic worlds. These are therefore most
likely derived from a shared tradition - that of the midwinter rites of
the Neolithic fertility religions.
Although the Celts seem to have had no midwinter festival (or, at
least, none that left any traces in their myths), and any knowledge of
a midwinter feast may have been forgotten or obliterated with the
adoption of Christmas, their Neolithic ancestors certainly did. We
know this from the orientation of many of their megalithic struc-
tures, the most obvious of these being Newgrange - the home of the
Dagda - which was built so that on the morning of the winter solstice
the rising sun would penetrate the ‘sun window’ above the doorway
and enter the back chambers (see page 104).
To ancient man, winter was truly a time of hardship. What was
most anticipated in this dark season was the return of light and
warmth and the first sign of this was midwinter’s day: it was the day
of the death of the old year’s sun and its rebirth as the sun of the new
year. And what better day to kill the old king, the old year, the old sun
and instate the new than the day the heavens were doing the same?

Macc Oc
There is a connection between the Dagda and the New Year, aside
from the architecture of his home, that explains the presence of Ing in
these tales. The Irish story The Wooing of Etain relates how the Dagda
took a fancy to Boand (White Cow), the goddess of the river Boyne,
who was the wife of Elcmar, the resident of Brugh na Boinne (New-
grange) before the Dagda (though some argue that Elcmar and the
Dagda are one and the same). The Dagda bewitches Elcmar so that he
is unable to perceive the passing of time: consequently, the nine
months he stays away from Newgrange seem to be but one day. During
this time, the Dagda impregnates Boand, who gives birth to a son she
names Macc Oc (Young Son), ‘for young is the son’, his mother said,
‘conceived and born within one day!” '
When the youth is grown, he asks his foster-father, Midir, to
tell
him the identity of his real parents. When he discovers he is the

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Dagda’s son, he asks his father to recognize him and grant him land.
The Dagda tells him that he is destined to rule in Newgrange, and
that he must therefore confront Elcmar, its present occupier. The
Dagda tells him that he must:

‘Go into the Brugh at Samhain, for that is a day of peace and friend-
ship among the men of Eriu [Ireland], and no one will be at odds with
his fellow. Elcmar will be in ... the Brugh with no weapon but a fork
of white hazel in his hand.’

Macc Oc must then:

‘Go to Elemar and threaten to kill him.’

But, he is told, it will not be necessary to kill him if Elcmar agrees to

his request - that Macc Oc be allowed to be king of Newgrange for
one night and day. This all goes to plan, but when Elcmar comes
to reclaim his kingdom, Macc Oc tells him that as time is made up
of nights and days, Elcmar has effectively given him the Brugh in
perpetuity. When Elcmar complains to the Dagda, the chief of the
Tuatha says:

“He [Macc Oc] hewed at you menacingly on a day of peace and friend-
ship, and since your life was dearer to you than your land, you
surrendered the land in return for being spared.’

Elcmar is given a new home and Macc Oc receives Newgrange. For a

while there continues to be tension between Elcmar and Macc Oc, and
in trying to broker peace, Midir, Macc Oc’s foster-father, loses an eye,
which Macc Oc is able to heal with the help of Diancecht, the Tuatha
physician.®
The usurpation of Elcmar by the ‘Young Son’ at Newgrange is
clearly related to the usurpation of the old king at the winter feast. As
with the ‘peace’ of Freyr in Germania and the weapon-free wagon ride
of Nerthus, this rite occurred within a time of ‘peace and friendship’.

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 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

At this time, the old king gives up his land and his kingship for the
young pretender, who comes threatening to end his life. He is the New
Year Freyr, come to oust the old.
But there are other clues in this story that such identification is
not without substance. For one thing, like Freyr, Macc Oc is a god of
love and liaisons. He looks after the two lovers Diarmuid and Grainne,
whose tale is a retelling of the death of the god. Diarmuid runs off
with Fionn MacCumhal’s wife Grainne (‘Sun’), but Diarmuid is killed
by a boar who is his brother under enchantment.’ And, in a parallel to
the myth of Frothi, when Diarmuid is killed he is taken to Newgrange
on a wagon. Macc Oc is able, when he so wishes, to send a spirit into
his body and make him talk, just as the heads of Bran and Conaire
Mor can speak after their deaths, and Odin is able to converse with the
severed head of Mimir when the former offers him his eye.
If this connection between Macc Oc and Freyr was not enough, the
principal myth concerning Macc Oc is about his dreaming of, and
pursuit of, a maiden named Caer Ibormeith, a myth which bears
many similarities to the wooing of Gerthr by Freyr. This was the
subject of a poem by WB Yeats, whose title contains the Young Son’s
other name: The Dream of the Wondering Angus. The name may be
written Oenghus, Aengus or plain Angus. Whichever way, it is clear
that, given his pedigree and mythos, his name is a Celtic equivalent of
‘Ing’, derived from the Indo-European root Inguz and recorded in
Gothic as Enguz. The Inguz/Angus name parallel is not just coinci-
dental. The name ‘Macc’ found in ‘Macc Oc’ is the Celtic patronymic,
meaning ‘the son’, the exact Celtic equivalent of ‘Ing’.
The wealth of imagery concerning day, night and birth suggest
that the ‘Young Son’ Ing/Macc Oc, conceived and born in a day, is the
‘New Year’ sun that achieves victory over the old on midwinter’s
morning. The one-eyed Ingcel of the Da Derga myth is the solar disc
itself, the great unblinking eye that is the sign of the victory over
winter glimpsed through the roof box at N ewgrange on midwinter’s
morning, the appearance of which signifies that the old year, the old
king, the old sun is defeated.? The death of the old king takes place on
midwinter’s night after the sun has sunk into the sea in the west.

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 THE WANDERING INGUZ

Thus the god dies in the water - he drowns - but the next morning
the new sun arises, coming from out of the sea in the east like a child
from the amniotic fluid.
The blaze of the new sun illuminates the names of the god-killers
of myth: Beli (Brightness) kills Bran; Lleu (Light) is killed by Goronw
Pebr (the Fiery), and, at the end of time at Ragnarok, Freyr, wielding
his antler weapon (having lost his sword ‘Belisbani’ — Beli’s bane), is
overcome by Surt, afire giant, who burns the cosmos and destroys the
hall of the gods. And Balder is killed by the ‘blind’ Hodr, while Fergus
Mac Roich is killed ‘sporting in the water’ by the blind Lugaid (Light).
Perhaps these ‘blind’ gods were originally one-eyed.
This is why Hrolf Kraki is attacked by Ingeld (if Saxo Grammati-
cus is correct); Hrolf is attacked by Hjorvard and Skuld and his hall
destroyed (in Hrolf’s Saga); Conaire Mor is killed at Samhain by Ingcel,
the one-eyed raider from the sea; and why Macc Oc achieves victory
over Elcmar at Samhain though conceived and born in but a day. Ina
practice rooted in the megalithic age, the kings of the ancient North
enacted the midwinter demise and rebirth of the sun.

The Hall with Seven Doors

One change that does at first seem to have taken place is the location
of the winter rites. In Neolithic Ireland, the victory of the Young Son
took place within megalithic passage graves - and in Denmark at the
passage graves such as Om (just a few kilometres from Lejre) as well as
the horseshoe temples at Turlstrup and Ferslev, which were oriented
to the midwinter sunset (see pages 30-31). The horseshoe temples, like
the feasting halls of the sagas, were destroyed by fire after an unknown
ritual (perhaps concerning the rebirth of the dead). Initially, these
seem at odds with the ‘secular’ banqueting halls of Celtic and Ger-
manic myth, but this is illusory. There is good evidence that what
were described by later Christian writers as halls were, in reality, ritual
structures.
Da Derga’s hall is described as having seven doors and seven apart-
ments and a road running through it - clearly an uncomfortable place

1$7
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

to stay the night! The house of CuRoi Mac Dairé, the man betrayed
by his wife Blathnat and her lover CuChulainn, had a river running
through it and was said to revolve like a millwheel. These structures
appear to be more like open-air temples. The main hall of the men of
Ulster at Emhain Macha was said to have twelve apartments, designed
by thirty seers, and the pillars were erected by seven men. These
numbers clearly have a calendrical significance, suggestive of specifi-
cally designed ritual sites rather than banqueting halls. In fact,
archaeologists seeking to uncover evidence of the feasting halls men-
tioned in Irish literature, such as Emhain Macha and Dun Ailinne in
Leinster, have so far been unsuccessful. Instead, on the very sites men-
tioned in the sagas, they have uncovered wooden ritual enclosures
consisting of rings of posts suggestive of Neolithic sites such as
Woodhenge near Stonehenge, where many concentric posts formed
‘doorways’ through which calendrical observations could be made.”
These doorways were the descendants of the sun window of New-
grange. Woodhenge, like Stonehenge, was oriented to the midwinter
sunset, and at the centre of the site archaeologists found a child with
his head cleft in two by an axe: a midwinter sacrifice."!
Conaire, it must be concluded, met his death at a ritual site -
perhaps a wooden grove of posts constructed, like Bran’s hall in the
Welsh myth, to be burned down. And not only at Turstrup and Ferslev
is there evidence for such ritual conflagrations, for Emhain Macha
and Dun Ailinne were also deliberately burned to the ground, in an
act not of violence or war, but of ritual.
The motif of the burning of the king in his hall, found in both
Germanic and Celtic myth, is an ancient ritual process - and not an
uncommon one, as can be gathered by reading the chapter headings
of Snorri’s Ynglingatal:

King Visbur’s sons burn him in his hall;

Solvi burns King Eistyn in his hall;
King Ingjald burns six district kings in his hall; :
King Ingjald burns King Granmar and King Hjorvarth in their hall:
King Ingjald and his daughter burn themselves in their hall.

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 THE WANDERING INGUZ

A simular list of deaths can be compiled from Celtic sources — includ-

ing a king who is burned jin his hall and drowned in a vat of mead.
King Diarmuid, son of Fergus, is attacked in the hall of Banban;
he
hides in a vat of ale and is drowned when the hall is set alight and the
ridgepole crashes onto his head.? Muirchertac dies in the same way -
hiding in a vat of wine while the hall is destroyed by the sons of the one-
eyed Cormac.
A similar mode of death is suggested in the Ynglingatal, where
Fyolnir, son of Yngvi-Freyr, who is king at Uppsala, drowns in a vat of
mead in the house of his friend, the peace-loving King Frothi of
Lejre.* The drowning of Freyr’s son at the future site of Heorot,
indeed within the hall itself, shows that the deaths in feasting halls
can be connected to the drowning in the sacred lakes of Nerthus. It
was not necessary for the king to go to the lake - the lake could go to
the king.
While the original drowning rite may have taken place in a ‘temple
of Nerthus’ consisting of a ring of posts (which were subsequently
burned) beside or over a stream, or on an island in a lake, perhaps the
vat was used when a lake was not available - a portable drowning
device. Such deaths are depicted on the Gundestrup cauldron, where
a female figure is shown, accompanied by a wolf, plunging a man head
first into a vat (see plate 12). This act of killing, however, seems to have
been magical, for the warriors portrayed lining up to be ‘drowned’
seem to spring up again, mounted on horseback. It is a scene of ritual
regeneration, reminiscent of the Irish warriors in the tale of Bran,
who enter the cauldron for rebirth - like the cut corn they will spring
up anew. Thus, through drowning, the old king lives on as an elf in
the burial mound, or like King Frodi on the wagon, touring the land
as a corpse awaiting rebirth once more.
The clues given in the sagas suggest that Heorot was a ritual site,
but while archaeologists excavating Lejre have uncovered massive
feasting halls on the site, the earliest found so far dates to some I50
years after the events described in Beowulf. Was there once a hall
similar to the massive 43.3-m long and 11.5-m wide 9th-century Viking
hall that stood on this spot," or were the later poets projecting their

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own knowledge of such sites on an oral tradition involving ‘feasts’ and

‘killings’ and ‘burnings’ that actually took place at ritual enclosures?
On balance, the evidence points to Heorot originally having been a
ritual structure - a structure within which the appearance of hideous
Vanir spirits might not seem so out of place when they arrived on the
longest night; the kind of structure that would be easy to build and
easy to burn. If the image of a ritual structure, potentially on a sacred
island, which is yearly rebuilt with accompanying human sacrifice,
sounds fanciful, one has only to read Strabo’s account of a rite carried
out by Gallic priestesses:

In the ocean, he [Poseidonios] says, there is a small island, not very far
out to sea, situated off the outlet of the Liger river; and the island is
inhabited by the women of the Samnitae, and they are possessed by
Dionysus and make this god propitious by appeasing him with
mystic initiations as well as other sacred performances; and no man
sets foot on the island, although the women themselves, sailing from
it, have intercourse with men and then return again. And, he says, it
is a custom of theirs once a year to unroof the temple and roof it again
on the same day before sunset, each woman bringing her load to add
to the roof; but the woman whose load falls out of her arms is rent to
pieces by the rest, and they carry the pieces round the temple with the
cry of ‘Ev-ah’, and do not cease until their frenzy ceases; and it is
always the case, he says, that someone jostles the woman who is to
suffer this fate.

These women ‘possessed by Dionysos’ are evocative of the priestesses

of the Vanir, the Volva. It could be that Nerthus’s shrine near or at
Lejre would have been similar to this.

The Worst of Winters

The midwinter rite not only helps elucidate the killing of the kings
and the burning of their ‘halls’, but also suggests an origin for that
most famous of Norse myths, Ragnarok - the doom of the gods, the

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final battle at the end of time in which the Aesir are defeated. Not only
would Ragnarok occur in winter, it would be fimbulvetr = ‘the worst of
winters’. From the underworld, the giant wolf Fenrir would burst his
chains and swallow Odin whole (though his son Vidar would tear the
wolf apart in recompense). Thor would kill the world serpent but die
of his venom, Freyr would be slain by the fire giant Surt, and Valhalla
would be burned to the ground by him; the cosmos itself would
be destroyed and renewed, rising from the primal ocean as a green
mound on which the world tree Yggdrasil still stood. Balder would
be reborn from Hel, and two humans, Lif and Lifthrasir, who survived
Ragnarok by hiding within Yggdrasil, would repopulate the world
(much as the wily King Adils hides in the central pillar of his burning
hall in Hrolf’s Saga, and by doing so survives its burning).'®
While later Norse myth makes it clear that this event will occur at
the end of time, the rituals reveal that this renewal of the cosmos was
once a yearly event. Each year saw the ‘time of the wolf’ and the killing
of the king. The message was clear to the king - your sacrifice by the
one-eyed one at midwinter will mean rebirth in some future spring.
The figures of Grendel’s mother, Skuld and the Morrighan are the
representatives of sovereignty come to claim the life of the old king,
who will be killed in his ‘hall’ by the embodiment of the one-eyed sun
god. And Grendel, too, not only his Valkyrie-mother, fits into this
pattern.
It was suggested earlier that Grendel’s arrival at Heorot (reminis-
cent of the arrival of Fer Caille in Conaire’s myth, and linked through
Hrolf’s Saga to the midwinter festival) could be tied in with the figure
of the ‘King of the Wood’ who, as sovereignty’s old champion, waits
for a successor to challenge his kingship at Yule - a challenge that
Hrothgar, but not Beowulf, fails to take up. This suggestion finds
support in another English poem concerning a midwinter feast, inter-
rupted by an apparition as hideous as that which faced the men of
Heorot in the days of Hrothgar: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

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 CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A MIDWINTER GAME

T IS THE FEAST OF New Year at Camelot - and into King Arthur’s

hall bursts a giant figure, green in colour, bearing an axe in one
hand and a holly branch in the other. He challenges Arthur’s knights
to a ‘Christmas game’- that he will receive a blow to the neck with his
axe if the champion is willing to have the blow returned in a year and
a day’s time. Gawain, Arthur’s nephew, accepts on the king’s behalf.
He takes up the axe and cuts off the head of the Green Knight, think-
ing that would be the end of the matter, but the Green Knight takes
up his severed head and asks Gawain to journey to the ‘chapel green’
in a year and a day’s time.
Just under a year later, Gawain sets off to meet his doom. He
travels north to the Wirral and is in the wilds on Christmas Eve when
a castle appears magically and its owner, Sir Bertilak, welcomes him.
He asks Gawain to spend Christmas with him before he journeys to
the chapel green, which is only a few miles away. Gawain feasts with
Bertilak, noticing two ladies - Bertilak’s beautiful young wife and an
ugly old hag.
Bertilak goes out to hunt each day and he sets Gawain another
Christmas game - each will give to the other whatever he receives that
day. Gawain soon finds this uncomfortable as he is being seduced by
Bertilak’s wife, and each night he has to give his host the numerous
kisses he has received from the temptress.
On the last day before his departure, Gawain nearly succumbs

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to the lady’s advances, but his piety and morality win over. When
Bertilak returns with a paltry fox’s skin from his hunt, Gawain still
only has welcoming kisses in return — but he has hidden from his host
one thing. Lady Bertilak has given him a green silk girdle that she says
will protect him from the axe of the Green Knight.
The next day Gawain comes to the chapel green, a cave or barrow
beside a stream, and he hears the sharpening of an axe - it is the Green
Knight. Heroically, he offers his neck, but flinches and is berated by
the Green Knight. Once more, the giant moves to strike, and seeing
Gawain is ready he swings his axe down a third time. This time he
grazes the skin - no more - and Gawain jumps up, having fulfilled his
promise.
Then the truth comes out. The Green Knight is Sir Bertilak under
enchantment. The whole thing has been a test by the ugly hag - in
fact, Arthur’s sister Morgan le Fay - who has sought to bring dishon-
our to Camelot, and thus has been foiled. Gawain has passed the test,
save for failing to mention the green girdle - hence the chiding nick
on the neck he receives.!
This 14th-century poem contains many of the elements of the
midwinter rite.? The Green Knight, coloured an appropriately vegetal
hue, arrives at a feasting hall at New Year and, though beheaded by Sir
Gawain, like the Vanir deities he is able to be reborn through the
magic of Morgan le Fay (the Morrighan) - as were the warriors of
Skuld in Hrolf’s Saga. Gawain, like the ‘Young Son’, kills the fertility
god, only to undergo (albeit symbolically) a ritual killing himself a
year later. Not only is this a myth based on the yearly cycle, there are
also striking similarities to the Beowulf story:

1. The monstrous Green Knight, like Grendel, enters the hall of the
king at Yule (deduced from Hrolf’s Saga; see page 143).

2. Like Grendel, the Green Knight is magically impervious to

weapons. Although his head is cut off with his axe, he is unhurt.

3. The Green Knight is beheaded by the king’s champion, just as

Grendel is injured in the hall by Beowulf; and just as Grendel flees,

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 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

so the Green Knight lives to fight another day, riding out of the
hall with his head in his hand.

4. While awaiting the journey to the monster’s lake(-side) home, both

Beowulf and Gawain are guests in the hall of a ruler and receive
from each ruler’s wife a gift. Lady Bertilak gives Gawain a garter
that offers him the magical ability to survive the beheading and
Beowulf is given a neck-ring by Wealhtheow, Hrothgar’s wife (see
page 132). The neck-ring is the mode of death of the sacral king, but
to wear the neck-ring dedicated the victim to the goddess and, pre-
sumably, secured him a place as a god in the otherworld, as Freyr
in the burial mound. This might also be the origin of the magical
properties of the ‘girdle’ in the Gawain poem.

5. Like Beowulf, Gawain follows the ‘fiend’ to his lair - a ‘cave’. In Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight, this is a burial mound, in a craggy
ravine associated with nearby water that ‘bubbles as if boiling’, and
in Beowulf a cave in the depths of ‘swirling waters’ ‘turbid with
blood’ below ‘hoary rocks’ and ‘dark cliffs’.

6. Both Gawain and Beowulf survive the life-threatening attack at

the lake.

7. Both Gawain and Beowulf overcome the attempts of a hag to bring

about disaster.

These are the similarities, but there are also discrepancies. Firstly,
Grendel’s beheading, unlike that of the Green Knight, occurs at the
lake rather than in the feasting hall; and secondly, the role of the ‘god-
dess Morgan’ in Gawain is downplayed and much more passive than
that of Grendel’s mother in Beowulf. It may be that these differences
can be attributed to the fact that the Gawain poem is a composite
crafted from two Irish tales.
The first of these is Fled Bricrend (Bricriu’s Feast), which tells of the
attempts of three Ulster warriors, CaChulainn, Leoghaire Baudach
and Conall Cernach, to decide which of them should receive the prime
cut of boar at the feast, the right of Ulster’s ‘champion’. The three

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 A MIDWINTER GAME

undergo a series of tests to determine who should be champion,

including two versions of the ‘Christmas game’ previously proposed
by the Green Knight. Two figures (this seems to be the same incident
multiplied by the storyteller for effect) offer their heads for the heroes
to strike. The first is Uath Mac Imoman (Fear, Son of Terror), who
emerges from a lake and whose challenge only CaChulainn accepts - on
the following night the axe blade that is brought down on the hero’s
neck magically turns away, leaving CiChulainn unharmed. The sec-
ond figure is a Bachlach (Churl), a huge ugly figure with a tree in one
hand and an axe in the other. When CiChulainn wins the contest for
the second time, the Bachlach reveals himself as CURoi Mac Dairi.3
Sir Bertilak (or Bercilak in some translations) is evidently a name
derived from the Irish Bachlach, and his entrance to Camelot paral-
lels the arrival of CuRoi at Bricriu’s feast holding an axe in one hand
and a tree in the other. Like CUChulainn, Sir Gawain survives the
beheading attempt, though his recompense comes a year and a day,
not a single day, after the supernatural foe has been struck.
The second tale that the Gawain poet has used is The Death of CuRoi
(see page 132), a midwinter king-killing myth, in which CaChulainn
and Blathnat, CiRoi’s wife, conspire to behead the Munster king
in
his own hall, bound to his own bed, beside the stream.
The combination of the two tales allows the poet to extend the
time scale of the ‘Christmas game’ and to add in the motif of seduc-
tion by the host’s wife. Gawain, a good Christian, unlike the pagan
CuChulainn, is not seduced, and so the Green Knight is not murdered
by the young upstart as would have ritually been the norm. Instead, it
is Sir Gawain who has to undergo his part of the bargain by the lake.
These Irish tales are close enough in terms of characterization and
plot lines to suggest that they were originally versions of the same
myth in which the spirit of fertility itself was killed and reborn each
midwinter (in the person of the king). Anyone bold enough to strike
the head from the old king would have to be sufficiently brave to face
the same fate the following year - although safe in the knowledge that
as husband of the goddess, he would become a god after death. The
‘beheading game’, it transpires, is shorthand for the fertility cycle.

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 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

Grendel's Challenge
It is evident that the Green Knight is a form of Fer Caille, ‘Man of the
Wood’, who journeys to the ‘feasting hall’ at midwinter in order to be
slain by the new representative of the god, the future husband and
champion of sovereignty. The Green Knight is the old vessel of the fer-
tility spirit, the Rex Nemorensis, and like the ‘King of the Wood’ bears
a weapon in one hand and a branch in the other, the ‘Golden Bough’
in Frazer’s version (see page 135), the holly branch in the English poem.
As the one-eyed Bachlach he represents the weak sun of the old year,
declining in strength, black as the winter earth. Grendel is such a
figure - his abode, like that of Uath Mac Imoman, a lake - who visits
Heorot every Yule until a suitable champion can better him. This
champion is Beowulf, who like Gawain acts in place of the king, wres-
tles with the monster (as Gunnar Helming did with the image of Freyr
in the wagon; see page 94), thus injuring Grendel — rendering him, like
the armless Irish King Nuada (see page 127), unsuitable to rule. He
then wears, like Gawain, a magical talisman ‘sacred to Inguz of the Goths’
that guarantees immortality, yet - finally bringing the regicidal cycle
to an end ~ he kills the lake-mother and does not die himself.4
Both Beowulf and Gawain offer a version of a pagan myth that is
skewed to present a whole new image. The Gawain poet under the
influence of his Christian morality had his hero resist the temptations
engineered by the goddess Morgan and, similarly, Beowulf does not
become the goddess’s husband and victim. But this skewing of the
myth was not due to Christian influences, but those of another cult.
And this was the same cult that led to the wiping of Sheaf from the
Danish genealogy - the cult of Odin.

New Cults
Something had happened at Heorot during the age of migration that
made the poets take note and tell, and retell, the events of these times.
In sth-6th-century Denmark, after years of pressure on. the land,
encroaching sea and political strife, a strong people called the Danes

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 A MIDWINTER GAME

emerged into history. It may be that one factor enabling the Danes to
become a military and political force from amongst the other Iron
Age Ingaevones was that they had developed a concept of hereditary
kingship. Unlike previous tribes, whose kings were potentially sacri-
ficed each year or reigned for a limited span of time, the Danes
established a royal dynasty - the Scyldings. A social system based on
regicide or on elected kings where there is no land ownership (as
described by Caesar; see page 22) can be neither stable nor strong,
particularly when pitched against invading or warring tribes. Only in
hereditary kingship is there the accumulation of wealth and land
needed to build a loyal aristocracy and a strong warrior elite tied to a
particular geography, not liable to flee in the face of opposition.
The tale of Hrothgar suggests that the political upheavals of his
reign lie in his attempt, through nepotism or from concern for his
people, to guarantee the rule of his children. But while the ruling
family and the warrior aristocracy might have rejected an older set of
beliefs based on fertility rites and replaced them with the worship of
the warrior deities, the Aesir, the average Ingaevonian farmer would
no doubt have continued with his ancient beliefs.
The tales of Beowulf and Hrolf Kraki might refer to a crisis point in
this‘conversion’ when the old cults were being overtaken by the new.
In troubled times, the priests of the Vanir may have wanted Hrothgar
to make the ultimate sacrifice — believing that for twelve (or two) years
the land had needed such a sacrifice, as had always been required.
Perhaps Hrothgar had not celebrated the ritual marriage with the
land and the priests of the Vanir were applying pressure on him, and
the people themselves were demanding the ultimate offering. It might
have been that other scions of the Scylding dynasty were not as willing
as Hrothgar for the kingship to become hereditary - perhaps they
were willing to become a sacral king in the old fashion; after all, Hrolf
(Hrothulf), Hrothgar’s nephew, was to become a victim of the old
regicidal system, being killed as his hall burned, wed to the sover-
eignty of the land as embodied by Skuld.
In Hrothgar’s time, it seems that the Danes were in trade contact
with the Geats, who were the enemies of the Ynglings of Sweden. It is

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not known why the Geats and Ynglings were enemies, but it could
have been religious. If the Geats worshipped the Aesir and had given
up the ritual regicide of the Vanir cult that still persisted amongst the
Ynglings, perhaps this was why it was the Geats who answered the cry
for help that went out from Demark. In this case, the coming of
‘Beowulf the Geat’ may not have been so much military in nature as
religious.
And if Beowulf the ‘Geat’, the hero from over the sea, was not a
mortal warrior as portrayed in Beowulf, this would explain why he
exists in no genealogy, why his name does not alliterate with the other
members of the Geatish family tree, why he can shift from one gener-
ation to another, and why folktale elements gather around him. What
if Beowulf was not a man at all, but a god?

168
~ BARLEY WOLF
 #

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE DEMON'’S HEAD

The Geat champion did not choose to take any treasures from
that hall, from the heaps he saw there, other than that richly
ornamented hilt and the head of Grendel ... The carrying of
the head from the cliff by the mere was no easy task for any of
them, brave as they were. They bore it up, four of them, on a
spear, and transported back Grendel’s head to the gold-giving
hall... Then was the head of Grendel held up by its locks.
BEOWULF, I612-I5, 1635-9, 1647

We BEOWULF Has at last defeated Grendel’s mother and

Y struck her head from her body, he searches her underwater lair
until he finds the remains of Grendel, who has died of his wounds,
beheads him, and takes the severed head to Heorot. While such behav-
iour can be credited to primitive ‘trophy taking’ appropriate to the
ancient world, it would be unwise in light of the many-layered nature
of this poem to be dismissive of this act: for the beheading of a
demonic opponent forms a major part in the hero-deeds of many
Indo-European gods, a fact that leads to questioning whether
Beowulf was really a human hero at all.

War of the Gods

While Sir Gawain’s victory over the scheming goddess Morgan was
credited to his Christian faith, we know that Beowulf the Geat lived
and died a pagan in the darkest years of the Dark Ages. In seeking a

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motivation for Beowulf to seek to end the tyranny of the dark goddess
and her hideous son, it is the actions of Odin, the chief god of the
Aesir, whose victory over the Vanir was well known throughout the
North, that provide the prototype for the heroic deeds of Beowulf in
vanquishing the power of these nightmares.
Snorri is our main source for this conflict. In Ynglingatal he relates
how Odin was a great warrior chief who had come from the lands east
of the Don river (in other words Asia - an attempt by Snorri to
demythologize the name ‘Aesir’), the capital of which was Asgard.!
Odin had conquered many peoples and was always victorious in
battle, and when he turned his face to the lands to the west of the
Don, Vana-land, he came into conflict with its rulers, the Vanir.?
In other versions, the war between the gods is precipitated when
the ‘witch’ Gullveig (‘lust for gold’ or ‘gold-brew’), also known as Heid
(‘shining one’), enters Asgard.? Gullveig, so most scholars agree, was
the Vanir goddess Freyr, associated in many tales with gold and with
dark magic. Perhaps because of her lust for gold, or more likely,
because of her magical powers, she is hoisted on a spear by the Aesir
and burned three times on a fire in the hall. But the witch, adept in
powerful Vanir magic, steps out of the fire reborn each time. The con-
flict begins between the two families of gods the moment Odin casts
his spear amongst the Vanir.
Eventually, after both Asgard and Vanaheim are wrecked by the
war and neither side is victorious, offers of truce are made and
hostages are sent from both camps to ensure peace. Kvasir, a Vanir
god, accompanies Njorthr and his twin children, Freyr and Freyja, to
Asgard, and gods named Hoenir and Mimir go to Vanaheim. (Snorri
states that Kvasir was not a Vanir god but was created from the spittle
of the two families of gods who spat into a bowl - kvas means strong
beer.) Also, as part of the truce, the Aesir take some of the Vanir god-
desses as wives. Hoenir does not turn out to be a great hostage -
seemingly wise, but only when under instruction from Mimir - so the
Vanir behead Mimir and send his head back to the Aesir, where Odin
preserves it in spices and oil, places it in Mimir’s Well, and later con-
sults it as an oracle.

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 THE DEMON'’'S HEAD

This and similar myths were once thought to symbolize the van-
quishing of the old local farming gods by the warrior gods of incom-
ing ‘Indo-European’ tribes, who it was believed had blazed a trail
throughout Europe from the Russian steppes at the beginning of the
Bronze Age, slaughtering and taking over non-Indo-European cul-
tures as they did so. But while the idea of a nomadic warrior way of
life did indeed filter out from the steppes at this time, it is more likely
that the Indo-European languages and their accompanying myths
had arrived much earlier with the practice of farming (see page 28).
In fact, what these myths seem to portray is not the arrival of a new
people and language, but a fundamental shift in the makeup of
society.
In earlier times, the main gods had been those associated with
farming rites and food production. But when tribes became more
mobile and under increasing military pressure to defend their land
from attack, the importance of the farmer waned in favour of the
warrior. And just as the warrior band and the war leader now domi-
nated the tribe, so too the gods themselves followed suit and became
ruled by a warrior god.
Such changes required a massive shift in the outlook of the tribes,
and the myths of the warring families of gods not only helped explain
the changes but also clarified the new divine ‘pecking order’. Such
myths were no doubt crafted by the priests of the warrior gods, and
so it is no surprise to find the once supreme farming gods depicted as
inferior to their replacements. The ‘losers’ are demonized and down-
graded as they lose their potency.
This is not to say that the old cults were totally eradicated. In clas-
sical Greece many of the old rites coexisted side by side with those of
the Olympians; the mysteries of Dionysos, though mistrusted by the
state, were allowed to continue, as were those of the barley-mother
Demeter at Eleusis. It is likely that this was also the case in barbarian
Europe, though remote enclaves of Vanir-dominated tribes - of which
Denmark was presumably one - would have remained relatively
untouched by the Aesir cults, until the age of migration.
This ‘divine war’ myth helps to explain why the warrior gods,

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 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

always portrayed as violent and victorious, always seem to form truces

with their opponents, and even marry into the family of the old gods.
This is not a myth of total annihilation of old traditions, merely a
jostling for position and, in some cases, the adoption by the new
ruling classes of many of the elements of the previous regime. Despite
a change in the dominant function of society, everyday farming rites
would have continued much as before amongst the rural population,
although perhaps overseen by the new pantheon. The old traditions
were not so much cast out as adapted to suit the new cult.s And
perhaps the major example of this was the adoption of the ritual
intoxicant of the fertility religion by the warrior gods, as is made clear
in Norse mythology.

The Demon Drink

The god Kvasir, created from the saliva of the gods, was said to have
contained all the combined wisdom of the gods in his being, but this
power was coveted by two dwarves, the brothers Fjalar and Galar. The
brothers invite him to a feast and murder him, letting his blood (and
the wisdom it contained) flow into three vessels, where it mixes with
honey and ferments into the ‘mead of wisdom’ or ‘mead of inspira-
tion’. The brothers later give the mead to a giant named Suttung in
recompense for having killed his parents. He takes it to Jutenheim
(giant-home), where he hides it in the mountain of Hnitbjorg, where
it is guarded by his daughter Gunnlod. Odin hears of this and, dis-
guised as a man named Bolverk, secretly slays the farm labourers of
Suttung’s brother Baugi, and then bargains with Baugi that he will do
their work in the fields for the harvest if in return he is offered a
draught from Suttung’s mead.
Baugi is unable to get a draught from his brother, but he bores a
hole in the mountain into which Bolverk slips in the form of a
serpent. Once inside the mountain, Odin resumes his normal form
and woos the maiden Gunnlod, the mead’s keeper, so that after three
days she allows him to drink from it. Once he has the mead in his
mouth, he escapes back to Asgard as an eagle, spitting the mead into

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 cree DEMONS HEAD

a vessel just in time before Suttung, in the form of a bird, is able to

catch him. Thus Odin won the mead of inspiration from the gods.*
The meaning of the cunning theft of the magical drink is not
really explained in the Norse sources, but in the light of other Euro-
pean myths the tale fits within a pattern that could be called ‘the
stealing of the magical drink’ in which a hero, usually aided by a
warrior god, steals the drink of immortality from the ‘demons’. There
are different versions of this myth, but the one that fits closest with
the Norse story of the truce of the Vanir and the creation of Kvasir is
found in the Hindu Indian Mahabaratha.
In this tale, the gods and demons are involved in a struggle, but the
struggle is depicted as a giant tug-of-war using a serpent as a rope and
a mountain as a pivot that turns in the ocean. As the ocean (described
as the ‘milky’ ocean) is churned, a magical butter called soma is pro-
duced that has the property of giving the gods immortality.” Rahu, a
demon, seizes it and drinks it, but Vishnu, king of the gods, decapi-
tates him with a discus, and takes the soma from the throat of the
severed head. Another god, Nara, fires his bow into the crowd of
demons and they flee into the underworld.
The Hindu myth contains many of the same images that are seen
in the Aesir-Vanir war: Odin flinging his spear into the Vanir host
mirrors the firing of Nara’s bow; the combined effort to make a drink
of immortality by the two warring families of gods, in one myth using
saliva, in the other through a tug-of-war; and perhaps it is possible
to add to these the drilling of a hole into the mountain, into which a
serpent is able to crawl in the myth of Suttung.

The Soma Theft

Other myths suggest that this idea of co-operation may be mere ‘spin’
by the ruling warrior class, for they portray the gaining of the magical
drink as out and out theft. Early Hindu tales depict the soma as a ‘well
of immortality in which dead warriors could be revived, like those
revived by Skuld on the field of battle, or those thrown into the caul-
dron of Bran, who emerge alive, though devoid of the power of speech.

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 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

In these myths, the gods send an envoy who, like Odin, woos the
demon king’s daughter, and she betrays the secret of immortality. In
one version, the king of the gods, Indra, sends a girl named Sarama to
obtain the soma (described as the milk of three magical cows) - she
steals it by swallowing it, and then, like Odin in his eagle form, vomits
it back up when she returns to the land of the gods.
In the Irish tale of the battle between the Tuatha De Danann and
an evil demonic race, the Fomhoire, the Tuatha possess a revivifying
well, but a Fomhoire named Ruadhan discovers and destroys it. In
another version, the Fomhoire are said to have owned the well; the
Dagda, disguised as Ruadh Rhoffessa, steals into the camp and is
forced by the Fomhoire to eat a vast amount of porridge from a hole
in the ground. He returns to his land and vomits it up. This tale of
over-indulgence makes no sense when viewed alone, but in light of
Sarama and Odin’s theft of the soma its meaning becomes apparent.
Interestingly, the same motif appears in the story of CGRoi Mac
Dairi’s death. When CiChulainn woos Blathnat and beheads CuRoi,
part of his quest is to obtain from CuRoj a magical cauldron and
three magical cows that produce vast quantities of milk. This makes
no sense on its own, but a reading of the tale of Sarama explains that
the three magical cows produce soma. It appears the theft of the mead
is tied in with the killing of the king.
But what exactly is soma? In Hindu myth, it is a kind of powerful
intoxicant, known as haoma in Iranian sources. A number of different
theories have been put forward as to its exact identity, indluding
amanita muscaria (fly agaric), Syrian rue, ephedra, cannabis, opium
and a simple fermented alcoholic drink. In the early Indian poem, the
Rig Veda, soma is confusingly described as both the juice of a leafy
plant and also as something resembling a kind of fungus or mush-
room; seemingly the term soma was applicable to a variety of different
species.’ Archaeological excavations in Turkmenistan, for instance,
have uncovered evidence for the ritual use of ephedra (an ampheta-
mine) mixed with cannabis in some areas and opium in others. In the
damper climes of Europe, ergot fungus was used, as it was at Eleusis,

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 TVE IE MOINS EVEAD

where those taking the hallucinogenic barley drink were granted a

sense of personal immortality through the visions it induced.
There is a strong link between such a ritual drink and the meads
of knowledge/immortality that throng Indo-European myth. The
revivifying cauldrons that populate these tales are likely to be ritual
vessels that offered immortality through religious experience. If this
is so, these vessels should be interpreted as offering the followers of a
vegetal cult a belief in immortality. Such an interpretation is sug-
gested in the tale of Bran, in which the Irish dead emerging from the
cauldron are unable to speak. When viewed in the light of the myster-
ies of Eleusis (see page 81), where the celebrants were not allowed to tell
any non-initiate of their experiences, this silence can be viewed as a
ritual stance. After all, the word ‘mysteries’ derives from the Greek
word muein, meaning to keep the mouth closed. It seems that rebirth
from the cauldron was a symbol of being initiated into the vegetal
mysteries, and it was this sacred drug and its accompanying experi-
ence that was ‘stolen’ by the warrior gods, so that it would become
their attribute alone. Hence, Freyja comes to Asgard and teaches her
regenerative knowledge to the wily Odin, giving him the power to
bring the dead to life, and fill his hall Valhalla with the souls of slain
heroes who will fight beside him at Ragnarok.
What the gods are stealing is not a potion per se but the vegetal
power ofregeneration, the power that enables Odin to die and be reborn
on the world tree Yggdrasil; the power of the Green Knight, the spirit
of fertility, to regenerate itself after death: the power possessed by the corn
and all green things.
This theft of the potion was adapted from existing motifs that
played a vital part in the old cyclical myth - the transferral of sover-
eignty from the old monarch to the new. This is demonstrated by the
role of the ‘demon’s daughter’, a role enacted by Blathnat, the wife of
CuRoi Mac Dairi, in Irish myth and Gunnlod, the daughter of the
giant Suttung, in Norse myth. These figures are enacting the ancient
role of the duplicitous goddess of sovereignty who passes her favours
on to her lover, the new king, and helps him defeat her old champion.

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 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

Talking Heads
There is an Indian myth that tells how the warrior god Indra won the
secret of soma. The secret was possessed by a sage named Dadhyanc,
but he refused to part with it so Indra cut off his head. The head fell
into a lake and then floated to the surface whereon it finally uttered
to Indra the secret.” In this tale, we learn that as with the decapitated
head of the demon Rahu, the soma is seen to reside in the head (or
throat) of the beheaded monster; in a similar way, in Norse myth,
Odin is shown obtaining knowledge from the pickled head of Mimir
in its well. Might the head of Grendel dragged from out of the waters
of the lake have been a similar object?
The Greek hero Orpheus provides us with one clue as to how a
severed head could give knowledge and its connection with the theft
of soma ~ his head is severed by the maenads and floats to the isle of
Lesbos, where it becomes an oracle."! For the Celts, the head was the seat
of the soul and the motif of a talking head frequently occurs in their
myths as demonstrated in the myths of Bran and Conaire (see pages 152
and 153). Certain druidic rites referred to in the myths suggest that
severed heads could be used for oracular purposes. The origins of this
concept are to be found, once again, in the imagery of the vegetal world.
The one constant recurring theme in the myths discussed here is
the passing on of fertility, the reproductive urge of nature, from one
season to the next. This ‘force’ is present in the new seed that is reaped
from the parent plant, hence the imagery of the seed in the winnow-
ing-basket as a symbol for the reborn god. But a parallel image to the
emasculization of the god is his decapitation, which the act of strik-
ing the ear of corn from the sheaf resembles; in this way, the new
growth will sprout from the head of the dead plant.
If soma is this essence, the ‘force’ that regenerates yearly in the
corn, then it is present in the harvested ear - the head. This head is
either ‘buried’ (sown) so that the next year’s crop can grow from it, or
the grain is ‘burned’ and ‘drowned’ (malted and soaked) to produce
an alcoholic drink. This is the imagery we see used in the folk song
John Barleycorn:

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 THE DEMONS AEA D

They filled up a darksome pit

With water to the brim,
They heaved in John Barleycorn,
There let him sink or swim.

They wasted, o’er a scorching flame,

The marrow of his bones;
But a Miller us’d him worst of all,
For he crush’d him between two stones.

If one brings to mind the kings placed in vats of mead, crushed by

falling pillars and burned in their halls, an image arises as to how
their deaths are linked to the vegetal cycle. When the body of the god
is crushed, burned and drowned, the ‘spirit’ then enters the drink
itself. In Indian myth, soma is personified as Agni, the sacrificial fire
which burns in the water. The modern term ‘fire-water’ for alcoholic
beverages demonstrates how ancient man may have interpreted the
‘kick’ of liquor as the vegetal spirit (a term we still use today) that
induces ecstasy. In this way, the spirit of the god can be passed on by
imbibing the ritual drink in which the head of the god is preserved.
And by this means it is possible to acquire the characteristics of the
deity, just as the eating of the flesh of the Yuletide troll gives Hyalti
strength, and the blood of the dragon supped by Sigurd in the Norse
myth gives him superhuman abilities. Again, as we hear in John
Barleycorn:

And they hae taen his very heart’s blood,

And drank it round and round;
And still the more and more they drank,
Their joy did more abound.

John Barleycorn was a hero bold,

Of noble enterprise,
For if you do but taste his blood,
‘Twill make your courage rise.

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 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

It is easy to see how the image of the fermented ‘head’ of corn can
become the image of a ‘talking’ head, passing on the occult knowl-
edge of soma and rebirth - the fertility ‘force’ flowing out of the god’s
severed head to the drinker. And it is on this image that the rites of
the transferral of kingship were based, as well as the taking of the
head of Grendel beneath the water.
The spirit resident in the ‘head’ or body of the dead king would be
transferred to the new king through ceremonial actions, hence the
importance of the preservation of the body of the dead king on which
the rites were to take place. The ‘spirit’ was still seen as residing in the
body of the dead god until it could be magically transferred. In Egypt,
this was done in an elaborate rite called the ‘opening of mouth’ cere-
mony; the new pharaoh, playing the role of Osiris’s son Horus, had to
open the mouth of the mummy of the deceased pharaoh, an act that
was seen both to transfer kingship magically to the successor and also
to bring back fertility of the land. The opening of the mouth trans-
ferred fertility into a new, more virile vessel and the land blossomed in
accord. What is of major importance is that to perform this rite the
Horus king had to present the mummy with his eye (albeit symboli-
cally). There can be little doubt that this ceremony was almost
identical to the image preserved in Norse myth in which Odin pres-
ents his eye to the preserved head of Mimir. In each case, this action
turns them into the one-eyed solar god who takes on the mantle of
fertility deity from the dead king. Thus Odin becomes known as
Baleygr (Furnace-eye) - he becomes the New Year sun." It is reasonable
to speculate that similar rites took place in ancient Germania on the
preserved bodies of the bog people. Indeed, maybe they were placed in
peat bogs because of their known preservative properties. Such an
occurrence would explain the honour shown to the bodies of the
deceased after death: the honour still paid to the corpse of Frothi as
he is paraded on his chariot; the respect shown to the dead Freyr in
his burial mound. Like the head of Mimir, the bog bodies had a part
to play in the kingship rites even after their deaths.
The theft of the ‘mead of inspiration’ or soma from the decapi-
tated demon was a reinterpretation of the transferral of kingship in

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 THE DEMON'S HEAD

the old farming cult. By utilizing this myth, it was possible to intro-
duce into the emerging cult the ritual drink of the farming gods.
Odin, therefore, became the ultimate incarnation of Ing - the one-
eyed god who kills off the old king - but with no intention of being
killed in turn the following year by another upstart.
The ‘war of the functions’ myth sought an end to the ritual cycle
itself by inordinately lengthening the reign of the god. The god would
be slain, the cosmos burned, but only at the end of time. For now, the
victory over the demons was complete. The warrior gods had the
upper hand - had acquired the power once ascribed to the Vanir and
their priestesses. Odin now has the power to reanimate the dead. The
giants and demons were slain. But even though the gods knew this
was not for good, the king reigning in the present could rest assured
there would be no challenge to his hereditary, not sacral, kingship.

Killing Grendel
It was not the winter alone that turned the hideous pair that threat-
ened Heorot from fertility gods to dark, negative creatures. The ruling
gods of the emerging military aristocracy had furthered the process -
demonizing the old gods until they were little more than monsters.
Grendel was just such a creation. He was a god turned monster. In
origin, he was the fertility spirit to be murdered, beheaded in the
water so that the new god could steal his soma, his revivifying draught
of vegetal immortality. But Grendel had become a nightmare, a bogey,
haunting Heorot until a man worthy of such a foe would face him.
In killing Grendel, Beowulf does not act out of turn; he beheads
the lake terror, as the kings of old had done to become king in their
turn, and he bears the severed head back to Heorot. But he also
commits an act hitherto unseen in Denmark. When the lake-witch
sits astride him, knife in hand, instead of yielding his life for the good
of the crops, he strikes her foul head from her shoulders. He kills the
mother-goddess of the ancient Ingaevones in her own sacred lake.
Unlike the preserved remains of the bog bodies of antiquity, this
one man was able to sink below the surface of Nerthus’s sacred lake

I81
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

and emerge unscathed. The slaying of Grendel’s mother is a northern

European equivalent of the Greek myth of the slaying of the hideous
gorgon Medusa by Perseus. The poet Robert Graves suggested that
the Perseus myth symbolized the violent ending of the older Earth-
goddess cult by incoming warrior tribes, and there is reason to
presume that something similar was happening here.
It is an act worthy of the Aesir god Odin, who casts his spear amid
the Vanir and overcomes them - a deed whose imagery was used in the
charm against a sudden pain, in which the victim casts a spear back at
the Vanir spirits who plague him (see page 107). It is the act of a god.
The stomach contents of Nerthus’s victims reveal that sacrificed
kings imbibed the sacred drink before their deaths in order to pass its
secret on to the new king in necromantic rites, just as the demon
Rahu swallowed the soma prior to his beheading by Indra. But when
the soma was passed on to the Aesir gods, to what use did they put it?
When Beowulf killed Grendel, what use did he make of the fertility
spirit? A clue is given in the myths of the revivifying cauldron that is
coveted by the warrior gods - it is a weapon of war. Indo-European
myth is quite open as to the use to which the Neolithic vegetal
sacrament was put in later times. And it is a use that finally unravels
one of the most intriguing questions posed to us by the Anglo-Saxon
Beowulf: the true meaning of his name.

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 *

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE BRIMWYLF

ROUND THE TIME of the Beowulf story, a great religious change

was taking place in Denmark which formed a background to the
dynastic feuds and struggles recorded in the sagas. It was as a result of
this conflict that the Scylding clan struck Sheaf from their ancestral
lineage to distance themselves from the sacrificial demands of the old
religion and instead placed the warrior god Odin at the head of their
family tree in his place (see page 73). That Sheaf appears in English lore
suggests this usurpation occurred after the English had left the con-
tinent (around AD 410-500), which places the deposition of ‘Sheaf?
and elevation of Odin around the late sth-early 6th centuries - again,
the date ascribed to the events in Beowulf.
It is evident that in many respects the tale of Beowulf depicts a
mythological event, and it is exactly the kind of myth we would expect
to have arisen in Denmark in this time of crisis. Had the Beowulf man-
uscript not survived, it still might have been possible to deduce that
the ending of the Nerthus religion and its replacement by the Odin
religion would have accrued the motifs of the Aesir-Vanir war: a
warrior who slays magical demons, defeats the monstrous fertility
deities, perhaps by beheading them, acquiring from them the secret
of immortality. All this seems to fit in with the version of events
described in Beowulf save the last point, for though he takes Grendel’s
head it is not expressly linked with the stealing of the barley-intoxi-
cant of the Vanir religion. At least not on the surface.

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Dutch Courage
In Indo-European myth, after the soma is stolen it becomes an intox-
icant used to give martial valour in battle. Indra drinks it before he
kills the serpent Vritra, the demonic god of the older worship. The Rig
Veda describes the feeling of imbibing it:

We have drunk the soma; we have become immortal; we have gone to

the light; we have found the gods. What can hatred and the malice of
a mortal do to us now, O immortal one? Inflame me like a fire kindled
by friction ... Weaknesses and diseases have gone; the forces of dark-
ness have fled in terror.!

It gave courage and strength, and a sense of immortality that enabled

one to be fierce in battle, unafraid of death. Again, this theme is
reflected in John Barleycorn.

John Barleycorn was a hero bold,

Of noble enterprise,
For if you do but taste his blood,
“Twill make your courage rise.

The folk song is referring to alcoholic drink and the majority of war-
riors would have had to rely on everyday ale to put fire in their blood.
Ancient peoples would have not joined in the horror of battle sober;
it was often the case that men became drunk before a conflict. In one
notable case, that of the battle of Catterick in North Yorkshire,
between a northern Celtic tribe, the Votadini, and the newly estab-
lished Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Deira and Bernicia, the Celts got so
drunk before the battle they were almost annihilated, as their poet
Aneurin, the only survivor, recounts bitterly:

Glasfedd a hancwyn, a gwenwyn fu

Pale mead was their drink, but it was poison.

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THE BRIMWYLF

But the warrior aristocracy seemed to have had more than ale in their
horns. There is convincing evidence for the use of ritual intoxicants not
only to induce a sense of invulnerability, but also a kind of martial fury
in battle, all related strangely to the imagery of the warriors becoming
wild animals - especially the boar, the bear and the wolf.

Bear Shirts and Wolf Heads

In Iranian lore, this ‘fury’ is called aéS’ma where it is associated with
the boar. The warrior is seen as ‘a wild, aggressive, male boar with
sharp fangs and sharp tusks, a boar that kills at one blow’, It is pos-
sible that Vanir warriors once went into battle in a similar fashion:
The boar was one of the cult animals of Freyr and Freyja, and Tacitus
mentions in the Germania that boars were sacred to the Baltic Aestii
tribe, who like the Anglii and their neighbours were worshippers of
the mother-goddess. The Aestii were reported as wearing the boar
symbol as a talisman against harm, possibly in the form of a mask.
This was a custom that was likely the origin of the many depictions of
this animal that appear on armour and weapons, especially helmets
such as the boar-crested helmet from Benty Grange, Derbyshire. ‘Boar
shapes’ are mentioned as appearing on the helmets of the Geats in
Beowulf, where they are said to protect the warriors.’

Boar shapes shone above the cheek-guards, adorned with gold, bright
and fire-hardened, kept guard over life

Boar-helmed
warrior from Viking
Torslunda helmet.

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Plutarch mentions masks of ‘hideous animal heads’ being worn by

the Cimbri and Teutones, though what animals he does not say. The
best known such magical transformation was that of the Norse
berserkr (bear shirts), warriors of Odin who transformed themselves
into bears in battle, an ability used by Bodvar Bjarki.* But it was the
wolf, above all other creatures, that typified this fury to the ancient
north-west Europeans. In Celtic tradition, the hero CuChulainn
undergoes a magical transformation in battle, where he becomes
physically distorted into a monstrous killing machine. This is known
as his ‘fury’ or fearg and is related to the Germanic vargr (wolf), a word
Tolkien used in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in its Anglicized
form warg to denote a huge wolf.5 Similarly, in Homeric tradition the
martial fury that possessed the warriors on the plains of Troy was
called lyssa (wolfish rage) derived from the Greek lycos.6 And in
Scythian tradition, haumavarga (haoma/soma wolves) were warriors
who took soma so that they would become wolves in battle. With
regard to Odin, Snorri begins the Heimskringla with a description of
this god:

It is said with truth that when Asa-Odin came to the northlands,

and the diar [gods] with him, they introduced and taught the skills
practised by men long afterwards ... He knew the arts by which he
could shift appearance of the body any way he wished ... Odin was
able to cause his enemies, ... swords to cut no better than wands. His
own men went to battle without coats of mail and acted like mad
dogs or wolves. They bit their shields and were as strong as bears or
bulls.

Odin’s special abilities - his imperviousness to blades, and his trans-

formations into carrion animals in battle - are clearly Vanir attributes
taught him by Freyja. But most importantly to our theme, as Snorri
states, Odin’s warriors could also appear in the shape of wolves. The
Norse word for these warriors was ulfhednar (wolf heads).
In Volsung’s Saga, two warriors, Sigmund and his son: Sinfjotli, are
depicted as becoming wolves by wearing wolf skins, much in the same

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way as berserkers became transformed by wearing their ‘bear shirts’.

Sigmund and his son enter a house where they see two men asleep
with wolf skins hung over them:

Sigmund and Sinfjotli put the skins on and could not get them off.
And the weird power was there as before: they howled like wolves,
both understanding the sounds.”

They go on a killing spree in the forest until such a time as the wolf
skins could be removed, whereon they burn them in the fire. And it is
possible to extend this ‘wolfish’ connection to the barley brew of the
Danish bog men, for the ergot fungus which was the active ingredient
of this ritual porridge was also known colloquially as the ‘wolf’s tooth’.

Wolf-warrior from
Vendel helmet.

Wolf motif from

Sutton Hoo
purse-clasp.

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 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

The Wolf's Tooth

There is a suggestion of wolf-ergot association in the Germanic folk-
lore figure of the roggenwolf (rye wolf), a lycanthropic spirit of the
cornfield that was said to inhabit the last sheaf of corn and strangle its
victims. This evil spirit seems to have been a personification of ergot,
which when consumed could cause convulsions and wryneck, in which
the neck would be violently twisted to one side, leading to the feeling
of being strangled. The reason for depicting the roggenwolf as a wolf is
suggested by other of the physical sensations experienced after taking
ergot - burning, thirst, massive appetite, delusions, itching and the
sense of becoming an animal - all suggestive of lycanthropy. If warriors
had once drunk ergotized beer before battle it explains why they may
have thought they were literally becoming wolves. This is made more
intriguing by the fact that the words vargr® and ‘ergot’ are thought to
be derived from the same Indo-European root word wergez meaning ‘to
strangle’. If the roggenwolf was ergot portrayed in the form of beast,
then its description as both a wolf and a strangler follows logically. In
17th-century England, ergot poisoning was known as the ‘strangula-
tion of the mother’, suggestive of the bog victims who had indeed been
strangled by the Earth-mother’s representative after eating the con-
taminated grains. In this way, the ergot fungus provides a direct link
between the strangled bog men and the wolfish warrior cults — the
‘wolf’s tooth’ was the ritual drink of both.
The use of the ‘wolf’s tooth’ in the ritual drink might help explain
the presence of the wolf on the Gundestrup cauldron shown as
accompanying the goddess plunging warriors into her vessel of
rebirth. Similarly, it is likely that the burning sensation the ergot
caused was associated with the initiatory fire of the mysteries in which
the child DemophoSn is placed by Demeter to give him immortality
(see page 81). Such an origin can also be postulated for the triple
burning of the Vanir witch Heid/Gullveig in Asgard. The burning
does not harm her but is demonstrative of her immortality and invin-
cibility. Perhaps ergot was seen as creating the same ‘inner fire’ that is
part of many shamanic experiences.

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No wonder ergot was so sacred. Its imbiber was ‘burned’ and

‘strangled’, was effectively reborn, just like the sacral king himself. In
taking ergot, an initiate of the Vanir vegetal cult would become one
with the deity and, undergoing a powerfully transformative experi-
ence of identity with the ‘lord’, would become ylfig, gidig (see page 108).
Interestingly, in the killing of the king rites the burning motif is
often connected to the symbolism of the wolf. Ragnarok was said to
begin with the unchaining of the giant wolf Fenris, whereon Surt the
fire-giant would burn the cosmos. The binding of Fenris in Hel must
be seen as part of the Aesir-Vanir war. It has a counterpart in Greek
myth, where the immortal Zeus overcomes the Titans by binding his
father Cronos in the underworld. Cronos, like Fenris, will be released
at the end of time whereon a Golden Age will ensue.
A sign that Fenris may represent the Vanir gods and their brew is
that when binding him, the god Tyr loses his hand, bitten off by the
teeth of the wolf. Taken in excess, ergot had a massively damaging effect
on the nerve endings, causing gangrene, loss of limbs and, in large
enough doses, death. The myth of Tyr might have been a cautionary
tale about the danger of the Vanir cult drink."
If the ritual drink of the Vanir had been ‘stolen’ and used by the
Aesir warrior bands, this would help explain the similarity between
the carrion-spirits of the Vanir, the Valkyries, and the animal trans-
formations the latter used in their states of martial fury. It may have
been that such warriors were seen as embodying the death-Keres of
the Vanir, bringing death to their opponents.
The ulfhednar of Odin, then, mimicked the wolfish carrion spirits
of the Vanir, though quite how much of these wolfish attributes were
derived from the ergot fungus and how much from the carrion
animal itself is impossible to determine. Whatever the ultimate origin
of the lupine imagery, the Beowulf poet shows Grendel and his mother
belonged to this same symbolism. Repeatedly, the poet describes
them in terms suggestive of lupine characteristics: brimwylf (water-
wolf), grundwyrgenne (ground-wolf) and heorowearh (sword-wolf).”
These words are commonly translated in a manner that loses the wolf
symbolism, but this is misleading because the poet was describing

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these monsters as what would now be known, for want of a better

term, as ‘werewolves’.

The Haelfhundingas
This is where the inclusion of the Beowulf poem within a ‘book of
monsters’ (see page 13) becomes important." Three of the four other
texts within Cotton Vitellius A.xv mention similar creatures: The
Letters ofAlexander to Aristotle and The Wonders of the East both mention
a strange breed of men known as the haelfhundingas (‘the half-hound
people’), described as being men with dog’s heads. And the Life of St
Christopher can be connected to these people, as in the Old English
tradition he is described thus:

He had the head of a hound, and his locks were extremely long, and
his eyes shone as bright as the morning star, and his teeth were as
sharp as a boar’s tusks.

His shining eyes link him with Grendel, as does his long hair, by which
the Beowulf-poet describes Grendel’s severed head being held. But why
is this saint depicted in such a fashion? One feasible answer is that
because St Christopher is usually seen as carrying the Christ Child
over a river, this Christian image somehow fused with a native Old
English tradition of a dog or wolf-headed psychopomp who carried
the dead over the ‘river of death’ into the underworld, a memory of
which is preserved in the lore of the shining-eyed coal-black phantom
hounds said to haunt pathways and graveyards in England (in East
Anglia going by the name of Black Shuck, derived from the Old English
scucca (demon), used in Beowulf to describe Grendel).
St Christopher seems to have picked up some of the symbolism
of the death-bringing wolfish spirits of paganism, becoming in the
process a wolf-Valkyrie such as Grendel and his mother. When Beowulf
was placed within a folio with three other texts containing lycan-
thropic imagery this was not a coincidence. Cotton Vitellius A.xv
is not just a book about monsters, but monsters of a specific type -
werewolves.

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 THE BRIMWYLF

The Gelding
If any doubt were remaining that Odin’s theft of the ‘mead of inspi-
tration’ was in reality his acquisition of the ceremonial ergot drink of
the Vanir, there remains one last piece of evidence - his practice of
seithr magic’ - that can be unmistakably linked to ergot.
When Freyja teaches Odin seithr magic, Snorri tells us it was
thought ‘shameful’ for a man to practice it, and he uses a specific term
for this practice: ‘erg’. This term can be translated as meaning the
passive partner in homosexual sex, but its use here probably had a
wider symbolic meaning." The practice of shamanism is often associ-
ated with cross-dressing or transexualism, and Odin, who bears many
shamanistic traits, is known as ‘the gelding’ in the Edda, linking him
to the castrated effeminate priests of Attis. In the Germania, Tacitus
mentions the Naharvali tribe, whose ancient grove was presided over
by a priest who dressed as a woman. This cross-dressing had the sym-
bolic value of representing either the shaman as ‘superhuman’ -
neither male nor female but both - or someone ‘different’ to whom
the normal laws of society did not apply. Such people were known in
Native American tradition as ‘contraries’; they rode their horses back-
wards, slept in the day and dressed as women, but they were powerful
medicine men. The unmanly ‘mimes’ at Uppsala, the effeminate
nature of Dionysos and the priests of Attis all seem to fit into this
symbolism.
As the term ergi was only applicable to the passive partner in homo-
sexuality it does not seem to refer to the sexuality of the person, but
their role. The passive man in homosexual sex is the equivalent of the
‘female’ in heterosexual sex, and therefore erg: suggests the passive
role played by the sacrificed king in his love-death: the king is
mounted by the woman, is subservient to her. As the term ergi, like
vargr, is derived from wergez we find ourselves in possession of another
clue that Odin had stolen the ergot-drink of the old religion, and by
doing so had acquired the shamanic secrets of its effeminate priests.
Odin was no mindless destroyer, he takes and adapts the old religion
to his own designs. In this respect, Caesar’s equating him with

I9I
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

Mercury (see page 49) becomes obvious, for Mercury was the god of
thieves and trickery. Odin steals every useable aspect of the older cult
(or rather, the priests of the Aesir retain everything useable from the
Vanir cult) while adapting the kingship rite towards a hereditary king-
ship rather than a sacrificial one. The old magical practices do not die
out; Odin becomes the divine magician par excellence. He hangs on the
world tree Yggdrasil for nine nights and days, a spear thrust in his
side, a regenerating self-sacrifice in the Vanir mould that allows him
to learn the magic of the runes. Odin, as warrior and shaman, bridges
the gap between the two cults.
Odin is a god of many names and disguises. He is Grimr (Hooded
one); Gelding; Long-beard; High One; Glad of War; Spear-Thruster;
Bolverk; Gondlir (Wand-bearer); Wanderer; Ygg (Terrible One).”
But this list is far from comprehensive. And another name can be
added to it.
In the East, where soma/haoma was the ritual drink of the warrior
cults, the wolf warriors went by the name of haumavarga, soma wolves.
The equivalent title in regions where the sacred ‘soma’ was the ergo-
tized barley drink would be an ergot wolf (warg) rye wolf (roggenwolf)
or barley wolf. And what is the Old English translation of ‘barley wolf’?
It is Beowulf:
In the very name Beowulf, we witness the theft of the magical
potion of the Vanir, a theft not explicit in the poem, though suggested
in the decapitation of the wolfish Grendel. In this Old English poem,
we see the tale of the ancient victory of an Aesir ‘barley wolf’ over
Vanir wolf-demons and the ending of an age-old practice. This ‘barley
wolf’ was Odin/Woden, who also bore among his many titles Geat,
meaning ‘the Goth’."* Beowulf the Geat was no man, he was the god
of the Aesir.
Does this mean that the tale was wholly legendary and ‘Beowulf’
was a kenning for Odin, suggestive of his victory over the demonic
forces of an old and abhorrent tradition? If so, he was later euphe-
mized into a warrior from Geatland by the Beowulf poet or his
immediate predecessors in much the same way as Snorri tried to make
Odin a mortal chieftain from Asia. But this is not the whole story.

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 THE BRIMWYLF
A

The Hooded Man

In England, the Angles of Northumbria were converted from pagan-
ism to Christianity in 627. This moment of conversion is described by
Bede, who relates the destruction of a heathen shrine at Goodman-
ham by Coifi, the pagan priest of Edwin of Northumbria:

So he formally renounced his pagan superstitions and asked the king

to give him arms and a stallion - for hitherto it had not been lawful
for the Chief Priest to carry arms or to ride anything but a mare - and,
thus equipped, he set out to destroy the idols. Girded with a sword
and with a spear in his hand, he mounted the king’s stallion and rode
up to the idols. When the crowd saw him, they thought he had gone
mad; but without hesitation, as soon as he reached the shrine, he cast
into it the spear he carried and thus profaned it. Then, full of joy at
his knowledge of the true God, he told his companions to set fire to
the shrine and its enclosures and destroy them.

Learning this from a good ‘historical’ source, this seems to be a

straightforward conversion. But Coifi means ‘hooded one’ - a
common epithet of Odin/Woden - and if this story had come down
to us in another form, it would probably have been believed that it was
a myth based on Odin/Woden’s war against the Vanir.
That Coifi was unable to bear weapons hints that he was a priest
of Freyr, who allowed no weapons in his temple. Nor was he allowed
to ride — again, because the stallion was sacred to Freyr. But when he
converts and is able to bear arms and ride a stallion, the image is
totally incongruous with that of a Christian priest, but not of a priest
of Odin. When Coifi profanes the Vanir shrine, he does so in a manner
suggestive of the victory of Odin: he throws his spear and burns the
temple. In reality, this event was either a conversion to Wodenism mis-
interpreted by Bede as a Christian conversion, or a strange Christian
rite employing the native symbolism of the Aesir-Vanir war to its own
ends - something not to be dismissed, given Pope Gregory’s advice to

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Mellitus to make the most of pagan shrines and festivals to get the
Christian message across (see page 46).!
The tale of Coifi shows that a deed that on the surface could be
interpreted as purely mythological may still have been acted out in
physical reality. In a similar fashion, were the deeds of Beowulf
entirely mythical or did priests or warriors from an Aesir-dominated
land (possibly Geatland in Sweden) come to Denmark at Hrothgar’s
request to help impose a new cult in place of the old one, acting out
in the historical plane an event from the timeless world of myth? If
Bede’s record of events in Northumbria is accurate, then it is proba-
ble that the same mechanism was at work in Denmark: warriors or
priests journeyed to the lake shrine of the strangling mother and
there ended her cult.
The war between the Aesir and Vanir cults may have continued for
a few generations until Odinism took hold, but when it was eventu-
ally complete, the old fertility god, the sheaf that was cut down at
winter, was removed from the Danish family tree for good, the old
family ‘head’ struck from the genealogy by the sword of Beowulf. In
place of the Sheaf came Skjold son of Odin, a shield-bearing warrior
who kills a bear as a child, in whose myth there is no mention of sea
journeys or vegetal symbolism. In time, it is said, Skjold becomes the
husband of Gefion (having been exorcised of her dark side), making a
dutiful wife of the goddess of sovereignty. In bedding her, he justifies
his taking of the land, as is always the way with such victors.
Whatever events did occur in Hrothgar’s Denmark can now only
be glimpsed through an old, misunderstood poem. But like the
Trojan War, the Minotaur in the labyrinth and the legends of Arthur,
the strange tale of the monster-slaying Beowulf was, at root, histori-
cal. Something happened in migration-age Denmark that inspired
generations of poets. And that something was a forceful ending toa
megalithic-aged fertility cult practised by the ancestors of the English
people.
Finally, the idea of a human hero need not be discarded either. If,
as at Goodmanham, the cult-war was physically enacted with the
destruction of the old Vanir temples or groves, then somewhere

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beneath the myth of Odin’s victory stands a historic man who may,
like Coifi, have played the role of this god in an act dictated by myth-
ology, but who nevertheless entered the lakeside shrine of Nerthus -
and profaned it, perhaps with bloodshed. The deeds of that man,
whatever his real name or status, was the germ-seed around which the
tale of Beowulf was to grow.

* * *

In trying to determine what the Beowulf poem is about, the majority

of scholars have worked backwards from the flowering glory of the
Beowulf poem itself, seeking roots in the dark soil of folktale and
romance. But this book has sought to work the other way, starting
with the ancient megalithic cult of the fertility god and the Earth-
goddess, through its continued practice in Iron Age Denmark, until
the final ending of this regicidal cult by Odin-worshippers during the
era in which Beowulf was set.
To argue that the deeds of Beowulf are just borrowings from
popular folk story (such as the ‘bear’s son’, see page 15) is to ignore
what we know actually occurred. The fact is the regicidal lake-mother
cult was superseded in Denmark during the age of migration. If we
had not already heard the tale of Beowulf, it would have been reason-
able to suppose such a ritual conflict could have generated a ‘legend’
concerning the victory over a lake-dwelling hag by a heroic warrior.
That such a motif forms the backbone to Beowulf confirms this
theory.
In time, however, some folkloric motives did become accrued to
the tale (see page 139) so that in Hrolf’s Saga the hero becomes the
‘bear’s son’: the berserker Bodvar Bjarki, son of Bjorn and Bera. But in
the earliest extant version - the Old English Beowulf - he remains the
barley wolf.

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 EPILOGUE
People of the Wolf

\ X J ILE THE wars of kingship and religion were raging in the old
country, the ‘new’ England was gradually being settled by the
descendants of the Ingaevones, who had not forgotten the divine Scef
nor his gifts to humankind. In the act of sailing to a new land by boat,
the English unconsciously imitated the epiphany of their god, for
they would have brought sheaves of corn with them across the ocean,
just as his myth had always portrayed. Accompanying the barley seed
were tales of Sheaf and Beow, and also a calendar rich in the cycles of
sun and moon, sowing and harvesting, that told of the Mothers’
night, of the ancient affiliation to the forces of nature. Some of the
warriors may have been followers of the new cult - although the
shrines to Woden in England may be late arrivals - but most would
have been Vanir worshippers, sons and daughters of the Earth-
mother, the people of Ing.
They were led, legend tells us, by Hengist and Horsa, Stallion and
Horse, thus claiming the new land in the name of the mare of sover-
eignty and the stallion of kingship. Such twin horsemen, gods of
the Vanir, appear in Norse tradition as the Haddingjar - meaning
‘long/womanly-hair’! and it may have been these who brought Ing
with them, as the old rune poem says:

Ing waes aerest mid Est-Denum

Gesewen secgum, oth he siddan est

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 EPILOGUE: PEOPLE OF THE WOLF

Ofer waeg gewat; waen aefter ran;

Thus heardingas thone haele nemdun’

Ing was first seen among men among the East Danes
till he later departed [east or back?]
over the sea the wagon ran after;
thus the heardingas/Haddingjar [?] named the hero.

To these people the old gods were not the vicious night-mares the
later religions conceived them to be: they accepted their dual nature
as one accepts that night follows day and winter follows summer, so
the gods of life also brought death, and through this death the
promise of rebirth. To them, the news of the death of the lake-mother
and her kin would have been an extreme shock, but how did news of
this event reach them?
Many suggestions have been aired over the date and location of
composition of Beowulf (see page 14). Some have suggested it was
written as an elegy to King Offa of Mercia in the roth century, others
that it was composed in Wessex under Alfred the Great in the 9th
century. However, the most likely is that it was written in East Anglia
in the 7th century. Firstly, the pro-Danish stance of the poem suggests
that it was either written at a date prior to the Viking raids on
England (from the 8th century onwards), or it was written in Danish-
occupied England (the Danelaw) after this date. As the forms of the
names used do not bear any traces of Viking influence, it must be
assumed that Beowulf was not a tale written by or for Vikings, and so
a date before the 8th century is indicated. Also, the names are Saxon
and the genealogies and family trees match those found in the early
poem Widsith and other dateable early sources. Secondly, the name of
Grendel begins to appear in English place names usually associated
with pits or bodies of water from the 700s onwards (for instance it is
recorded that in 739, one Aethelheard of the West Saxons granted land
to the Bishop of Sherbourne, ‘from Dodda’s ridge to Grendel’s pit’.)?
The appearance of this name means one of two things - that Grendel
was a well-known name for a water demon in Old English (a theory

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not borne out by linguistic evidence) or the story of Beowulf was

already known by then.
If the composition of Beowulf does date to the late 7th-early 8th
century, then, based on the literary sophistication needed to produce
the poem, there are two possibilities as to its source. The first is
Northumbria, a centre of great learning before the rise of Vikings, and
the second is East Anglia, a region once discounted until the discov-
ery of the ship burial at Sutton Hoo.

The Wuffingas
The modern story of Sutton Hoo begins in 1926, when Colonel
William Pretty bought land near Woodbridge, Suffolk, that included
several large burial mounds within its limits. After his death, his
widow turned to spiritualism, and after reportedly seeing the ghost of
a man on horseback and other strange figures amongst the mounds,
she asked local archaeologist Basil Brown to excavate them. His exca-
vations began in 1938 and a year later he had uncovered a ship burial
in ‘mound 1’. In fact, what Brown uncovered was not a ship as such
but a 9o-ft long ‘shadow’ in the sand, complete with rusty rivets,
where a ship had once lain before decomposing. In all, over 250 pre-
cious artefacts were found but not the body of the king: this, like his
vessel, had dissolved into the earth.
It is now thought that the Sutton Hoo ship burial was the grave of
King Raedwald* of East Anglia, who ascended the throne in 599 and
died some 25 years later, and whom Bede records as one of the early
Bretwaldas (‘wide rulers’) - what might now be termed an ‘over-king’ of
all the Anglian tribes in England south of the Humber. Raedwald
had a very colourful history: on a visit to the court of the Kentish
King Ethelbert (Hengist’s great-great-grandson), he was converted to
Christianity by St Augustine, but when he returned home he contin-
ued to honour both Christ and the pagan gods, side by side in his
temples. Although a pair of baptismal spoons were found in the ship
burial, the whole pagan burial site suggests that Raedwald was not
setting sail for a Christian heaven.

198

a
 EPILOGUE: PEOPLE OF THE WOLF

The contents found within the ship revealed that Raedwald’s

people were in trade contact with the peoples of the Continent.
Buried with him were a host of objects including a silver dish from
Byzantium (stamped with the mark of Anastasius I, who reigned from
491-518); three cauldrons, two drinking horns, a six-stringed harp;
nine spears, a wave-patterned sword worthy of a noble warrior, a large
shield decorated with a dragon and birds; an imposing helmet crested
with a serpent and with a face-guard formed from a stylized bird with
protective boar-heads at the tip of each wing (see plate 19); a whet-
stone sceptre with a stag mounting and eight ancestral faces staring
out from its sides, and an elaborately jewelled ‘purse’ containing 37
Merovingian coins and 3 blanks - money to pay the 40-strong spectral
crew who would have rowed Raedwald over the river of death to the
land where the sun sleeps at night.
Raedwald’s grave offers us a window into the world described in
Beowulf. Many of the objects described above match those described
in the poem, and as many seem to have been family heirlooms, they
may even have dated from Beowulf’s day. There were only a few gen-
erations separating Raedwald from the characters mentioned in
Beowulf. Before Raedwald had come Tyttla (d. 599), and before him
Wuffa (d. 577) - after whom the East Anglian dynasty were named the
Wuffingas - and then before him Wehha, who would have been king of
the East Angles when ‘Beowulf’ was supposedly king of the Geats.5 As
it is only in East Anglia that the rite of ship burial is found at this
time, this in itself suggests that the poet who originally composed
Beowulf — and included in it a ship burial for Scyld - had either known
of, or was in some way connected to, the East Anglian court and its
funerary tradition
The court of the Wuffingas, a people still entwined through trade
to the tribes of the Continent and practising the rite of ship burial,
might have offered a fertile source of inspiration for the Beowulf poet.
Further supporting this theory is that the grave goods at Sutton Hoo
suggest a strong connection between the East Anglian ruling house
and the land of Beowulf himself - Sweden.‘
When archaeologists uncovered the ship burial and its goods, they

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 SS eee. =

BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

were struck by the similarity to a number of finds associated with the

burial mounds of the Scylfing kings at Uppsala in Sweden. Not only
did these ancient mounds, thought to belong to the very kings that
appear in Beowulf and Hrolf’s Saga (Onela and Eadgils/Adils), contain
ship burials, but the armour contained within them, especially the
helmets, were almost identical, even down to the use of the same basic
‘fallen warrior’ and ‘dancing warrior with spears’ motifs found on
them. Originally, archaeologists believed the Sutton Hoo helmet was
from Sweden, but it is now seen as a native piece of craftsmanship,
based on Swedish models.” This shared burial rite and material tradi-
tion suggests there was a great affinity between these two peoples on
opposite shores of the North Sea at this time. Whether or not this
indicates a Swedish origin for the Wuffingas, or just a shared cultural
link, possibly through trade, it does provide a reasonable basis from
which to suggest an Anglian origin for Beowulf, concerned as it is with
Swedish dynasties and Scandinavian bloodlines.

Dynastic Connections

A number of attempts have been made to determine whether the

Wuffingas might have been related to any of the dynasties mentioned
in the poem.’ One of the first ideas put forward was that Wiglaf the
Waymunding, who defends Beowulf from the dragon, was related to the
Wuffingas through his father Weohstan - who some suggested lay
behind the ‘Wehha’ of the Wuffinga family tree. While this is not impos-
sible, it seems more likely that the Wuffinga family tree before Tyttla
was mostly mythical, like that of Wessex, and that Wuffa and Wehha
may be mythological entities rather than flesh and blood ancestors.
A further school of thought sought to identify the Wuffingas with
a tribe named the Wulfings, who are mentioned in Beowulf as neigh-
bours of the Geats in south-west Sweden. This is not a spurious
connection, for the name Wulfings (people of the wolf), is also the
meaning attributed to the Wuffingas - for the name Wuffa, probably
that of a mythical ancestor of the Anglian royal line, is a diminutive
of Wulf (wolf) and can be interpreted as meaning ‘little wolf’.

200
"Sagan aeasiatel ave ca ea ice
Fe

Er Or Wien wre Gre Ol aEbE WOLF

The Wulfings of Beowulf seem to be important, but are not really

mentioned in detail, as if it was assumed that the audience was
already acquainted with them. According to the poem Widsith, the
Wulfings were ruled by an ancestral figure called Helm, but little more
is said of them. It has been suggested that Beowulf’s father Egde-
theow may have fought the Wulfings as a young man, but that
Hrothgar had intervened and made peace between the neighbouring
tribes, in recompense for which Beowulf came to the aid of Hrothgar. ~
But it is also possible that the Wulfings were directly related to the
Danish Scyldings through marriage.
In the non-English versions, it is Hrolf who is the main protago-
nist of the Skjoldung saga, yet in Beowulf the action concentrates on
the earlier generation and has the monstrous incursion of Grendel
occurring under Hrothgar. Was this because the royal family for
whom Beowulf was arguably composed had a reason to celebrate a pos-
sible dynastic connection with Hrothgar but not Hrolf? A clue to this
possibility is to be found in the Wuffinga genealogy.
The name Hrothmund appears in the genealogy of the Wuffinga
King Aelfwald (713-49) three generations above Wehha. This name
only occurs once elsewhere in Germanic literature: in Beowulf. This
other Hrothmund is the son of Hrothgar who disappears when his
brother Hrethric is killed by Hrothulf/Hrolf Kraki (see page 146). If the
Wuffingas were the descendants of Hrothgar’s and Wealtheow’s son
Hrothmund, then there is good reason to see why Hrolf (Hrothulf)
should be seen as alluded to in Beowulf as a potential villain.’
This connection between the two Hrothmunds might be seen as
coincidental, were it not for a further connection between Hrothgar
and the Angles in Hrolf’s Saga, where he is called the king of North-
umbria. While such a title is clearly impossible, in some respects it
can be explained as a misunderstanding on behalf of the Icelandic
author (writing 500 years after the events he describes), if it was once
well known that Hrothgar’s son was related to the Anglian scions of
the Wulfings, the Wuffingas. The reason why he may have fled to
the Wuffingas, it seems, is because his mother, Wealtheow, was a
Wulfing, for in Beowulf she is called a Helming - an epithet that may

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 if

BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

be derived from Helm, the ancestor of the Wulfings according to

Widsith.
Wealhtheow’s name is interesting; it is formed from two words:
wealh (foreigner) means someone who speaks a non-Germanic lan-
guage, and theow (slave). Thus it could be that she was a foreigner
married to cement a dynastic alliance. Perhaps she was English but of
Wulfing/Wuffing descent, a queen from the new Anglia, one of the
early Anglian settlers who intermingled with the Celtic population. If
Wealhtheow was British/English and had married the king of the
Danes to cement the Wuffing/Scylding alliance, this could explain
why her son might flee to the royal house of the East Angles.
These genealogical conundrums suggest that there may once have
been a connection between the Wulfings and Wuffingas - even if that
connection was one of wishful thinking or poetic licence. For all we
know, Raedwald and his kin might have been the descendants of
simple pirates from Old Anglia who struck it lucky, warriors chiefs or
federates who struggled their way to power, but who allied themselves
through trade with Swedish tribes and invented a connection with
them to establish a sense of nobility and royalty. Or maybe the
Wuffingas were a Swedish royal house, kin to the Wulfings, who sailed
from Scandinavia to England and dominated the newly arrived
Anglian tribes. Whatever was the case, maybe the name ‘Wuffinga’
had nothing to do with a mortal ancestor named Wuffa but with
a mythical wolf god, perhaps even the ‘barley wolf himself, Odin/
Woden - the god who in heathen times headed the Wuffinga
family tree.
There are clues on the artefacts excavated at Sutton Hoo that the
wolf was more than a nickname for Raedwald’s supposed grandfa-
ther. On the sceptre found next to where the king’s body once lay
there was a gold-foil wolf halfway up the shaft, and on the lid of the
purse containing the payment for the ghostly oarsmen appears a fan-
tastical image of a man standing between two wolves. The presence of
these wolfish symbols on the regalia of people who called themselves
the ‘people of the wolf? suggests that Beowulf was a ‘family myth’ of
the Woden-descended Wuffingas and that it is in their royal court at

202
 EPILOGUE: PEOPLE OF THE WOLF

Rendlesham that the tale of the barley wolf’s victory over the wolf
demons of the old religion was first recorded.

A Dark Age Parable

But why was Beowulf written? Although it may have been a simple tale
to while away the long, dark winter evenings, the very nature of the
poem suggests a hidden agenda. It is clear that the Vanir cult existed
in England, but if the tale of Beowulf was that of a Woden cult, and
perhaps the cult myth of the Wuffingas, then presumably at some
point the Wuffingas in East Anglia were faced with a similar position
to the one that Hrothgar faced in Denmark. They were a warrior aris-
tocracy ruling over a people who still worshipped the old religion. In
such a case, it is possible that Beowulf was propaganda for this new
regime. The tale could have been seen to legitimize the overthrowing
of the old paganism and the installation of the new cult of
Odin/Woden - a poetical allegory to legitimize this Swedish royal
house and justify its eradication of the older native faith.
Before long an even newer cult, Christianity, arrived, but as it was
essentially a tale of religious conversion the sentiment behind Beowulf
remained potent. On this evidence, it is possible that the poem as we
know it - Christianized and effectively purged of anything overtly
pagan - was composed shortly after the demise of (the, albeit nomi-
nally, converted) King Raedwald from a lost pagan original or
originals. In many ways, Raedwald offered a parallel to the mythical
hero. Like Beowulf he was essentially a non-native, a Swede who had
ended the pagan cults of the local Angli. Both men were buried in a
mound stacked high with the heirlooms of the old religion.

The Last of the Wuffingas

It is more than likely that Raedwald knew the tale of the god-man
Beowulf, his wolfish ancestor, who overcame the dark wargs of the
ancient religion- the dread mother of the lake and her dark winter
son - with their too heavy demands on the person of the king.

203
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

Perhaps he also knew that when he died, the old faith of the barley
wolf would die with him, its pagan treasures vanishing from the world
of men to accompany him to the great deep.
But the wolf god continued to protect its own, even when his own
religion had changed and been taken over. According to the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle, the last of the line of the Wuffingas, King Edmund,
died by Viking hands in the year 869:

In this year the [Danish] host rode across Mercia into East Anglia and
took winter quarters in Thetford and the same year King Edmund
fought against them and the Danes had the victory, and they slew the
king and overran the entire kingdom.

The king was buried in the town that still bears his name - Bury St
Edmunds. Although he is a celebrated Christian martyr, there is some-
thing about his death that recalls the ancient cult-war and the heroic
deeds of Edmund’s ancestors, and the ultimate ancestor, the wolf-god
Beowulf. When he was killed by Vikings (he was tied to a tree and shot
full of arrows, reminiscent of Balder), his head was struck from his
shoulders and hidden in a wood.

There was eke a great wonder, that a wolf was sent,

by God’s direction, to guard the head
against the other animals by day and night.
They went on seeking and always crying out,
as is often the wont of those who go through woods;
‘Where art thou now, comrade?’ And the head answered them,
‘Here, here, here.’ And so it cried out continually,
answering them all, as oft as any of them cried,
until they all came to it by means of those cries.
There lay the grey wolf who guarded the head,
and with his two feet had embraced the head,
Greedy and hungry, and for God’s care durst not
taste the head, but kept it guarded against [other] animals.
Then they were astonished at the wolf’s guardianship,

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EPILOGUE: PEOPLE OF THE WOLF

and carried the holy head home with them,

thanking the Almighty for all His wonders;
but the wolf followed forth with the head
until they came to the town, as if he were tame,
and then turned back again unto the wood.”

These motifs of the killing of the king, the severing of his head, its
ability to speak although severed and the connection with the wolf do
not arise in this legend by sheer chance. In addition, when the head is
reunited with the body it miraculously joins back onto it, like that of
the Green Knight, leaving just a small scar. We know this as in Abbo
of Fleury’s The Life ofSt Edmund, written in 985, it is related how he saw
the body, and that it was supple as if embalmed and bore no trace of
wounds save for a scarlet ‘thread’ about the neck. It has been sug-
gested that the body of St Edmund discovered in the fens was in fact
a prehistoric bog body, and that in trying to find their murdered king,
his people had uncovered the remains of a sacred king of the old reli-
gion still bearing the marks of his ritual strangulation."
Like a king of the old religion the preserved body of the saint, like
that of King Frothi (see page 124) was deemed holy, and offered mira-
cles of healing to his worshippers. And so by some strange irony, the
last of the Wuffingas, the People of the Wolf, was given the kind of
honour formerly only known by the god-kings of old, all the while in
place of the martyr’s body lay an interloper, a husband of the lake-
mother, an ancient king freed from the mother’s embrace after a
thousand years.
St Edmund was remembered and revered long after the tale of
Beowulf’s victory over the dreaded lake-goddess and her kin, once
sung loudly in mead-halls, was utterly forgotten by the English
people. When at last it did emerge again into the light of day, like the
bog body of ‘Edmund’, after nearly 1,000 years, the rites and religion
that informed it had been forgotten. Just as the bog body had been
taken for a Christian king, so the tale of Beowulf - a visitor from a lost
age - was taken as a fiction, an amusing tale, but it bore the traces of
an ancient ritual event.

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 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

Survivals

Whether or not the wolf and head motifs in the St Edmund story are
coincidental, the tale of Edmund, last of the Wuffingas, shows that
elements of the old cults may have survived the conversion. The per-
sistence of rites such as the Aecerbot (field remedy), which calls on the
Earth-mother and is full of pagan sexual imagery concerning the fer-
tilizing seed and plough of the god impregnating the earth, bring to
mind the old cults. This is not to say that pockets of pure paganism
survived, more that ancient images, superstition and magic were
retained and incorporated into the new faith. Harvest queens on
wagons, and crying the neck, are the survival of magic and supersti-
tion within the framework of a new religion. For the conversion to
Christianity warranted no giant conceptual leap. In essence, the myth
of Christ was not much different from the Vanir religion of the earlier
tradition. Christ the ‘Son of Man’ was surely the same spirit as ‘Ing
(Son) son of Mannus’ he was the dying and rising god under a new
name, whose sacred symbol was still the ‘bread of life’. Born on the
Night of Mothers, he entered the tomb, like Freyr, until the stone was
rolled away and he emerged alive, reborn.”
Christianity, however, brought the ‘good news’ that all men, not
just initiates or warriors, could now feast in the hall of the gods. And
kings no longer needed to die at the end of the year for their people,
as Christ had died for all mankind. Indeed, the conversion from the
Vanir cult to Christianity was probably no more traumatic than had
been the change from the fertility cults to the militaristic cults of the
Aesir. At root, they were both re-imaginings of the same basic myth.
Thus, the people of a rural English parish, in celebrating the harvest
festivals and the Nativity, observing the farming year, appointing a
‘harvest queen’, and believing in fairies and other spirits, were not
leading radically different lives from those of their Continental ances-
tors at the time of the Egtved girl (see page 34).
The real severance from our ancestral heritage is something that
has occurred only in recent times. Sheaf and his elf-gods may have
survived the pogroms of Dark Age Denmark, the sword of Beowulf,

206
 EPILOGUE: PEOPLE OF THE WOLF

and the coming of the Christ, only to fall to the ungodly powers of
industrialization and urbanization.
Part folktale, part myth, part history, Beowulf offers us some con-
solation for the loss of much of our heritage. The horse and the rider
have long vanished from our land; only the deeds of the barley wolf
remain with us, a splinter of a lost mythology, a fragment of Dark Age
epic from a more heroic age, first heard by kings long ago but mirac-
ulously surviving invasion, dissolution and fire to thrill, entertain and
educate today. |

207
 NOTES

Prologue: Where Now the Horse and Rider?

Es For the ending of native Saxon culture by the Norman conquest but also of possi-
ble survivals see Shippey, T, (1992), pp. 35-8.
For JRR Tolkien’s attempt to create a replacement ‘mythology for England’ as well
as Tolkien’s debt to Anglo-Saxon lore in general see Shippey, T, (1992), especially
p- 268.
On the history of the Beowulf manuscript, see Chambers, RW, and Wyatt, AJ, (1943),
Pp. 1xX-xix.
For the figure of Arthur as propaganda for the Norman Kings of England, see Fife,
G, (1990), pp. 37-9.
For information on the Waldhere fragments discovered in Copenhagen, see
Branston, B, (1993), p. 6, and Herbert, K, (2000), pp. 261-71.
. Translations of the Old English poems ‘Deor and ‘Widsith’ can be found in Bradley,
S (ed.), (1995).
Tolkien’s poem ‘Where now the horse and the rider?’ occurs in chapter 6 of
Tolkien, JRR, (2002).
His essay ‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics’, is printed in Tolkien, JRR,
(1997), along with his essays on translating Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight. The Anglo-Saxon poem from which it is derived - The Wanderer - is trans-
lated in Bradley, S (ed.), (1995).
For the archaeological discovery of the Sutton Hoo ship burial, see Carver, M,
(1998) pp. 2-24.
IO. For the effect of the Sutton Hoo find on Beowulf criticism, see Chambers, RW,
(1963), pp. 507-23.

Introduction: The Keenest for Fame

if Numerous editions of the Beowulf poem are available, both in Old English and in
translation. For ease of reading and understanding, Seamus Heaney’s award-
winning prose translation (2002) is perhaps the most accessible, while the
translation by Michael Alexander (1986) (used in the quotes found in this book)
occupies the middle-ground between a literal translation and one that makes
sense to the average reader. Nothing, however, can better the Old English poem
itself, and for this the ideal starter is Porter, J(trans.), (2003), which gives the literal
translation on the page opposite the vernacular text.

208

*—
 NOTES
¥

On the use of language, dialect and origins of the poem, good introductions are
found in Chambers, RW, (1963), and Newton, S, (1999), although the bibliogra-
phies found in the former and in Orchard, A, (2003), suggest many further
avenues.
We know this because when Beowulf recounts his tale to Hygelac on his return to
the land of the Geats, it differs in some minor respects to what we have been told
earlier in the poem. See Alexander, M, (1986), pp. 39-40.
For Hygelac as the ‘Chochilaicus’ mentioned in the chronicles of Gregory of Tours,
see Chambers, RW, (1963), pp. 2-5, and for the historicity of the Swedish king
Eadgils/Adils pp. 6-10.
On the early theory that Beowulf was an echo of an earlier pagan sun god, see
Chambers, RW, (1963), pp. 41-8. Much of this original mythological work was done
in early 20th-century Germany and is hard to come by.
For a discussion of the ‘bear’s son’ or ‘the three princesses’, the original appears in
Grimm, J and W, (1993), but the main source of debate is Panzer, F, (1910), sum-
marized in Chambers, RW, (1963), pp. 368-70. It was Grimm who suggested that
Beowulf originally meant ‘bee’ in Grimm, W, (1854), p. 342.

Chapter 1: Clans of the Sea Coasts

1. On the silting-up of the Wantsum Channel, see Harris, S, (2001), pp. 4-5.
For details of the wanderings of the Cimbri and Teutones, see Cunliffe, B, (2001),
p. 368.
The history of Roman attempts to annex Germania, especially the horror that
faced Varus, are evocatively retold in Schama, S, (1996), pp. 88-9. Varus’s defeat,
told by Vellius Paterculus, is translated in Jackson, JS (ed. and trans.), (1889), p. 536.
A very readable translation of the Germania is Tacitus (trans. Mattingly, H and
Handford, S), (1986) - it is from this version that I quote. It is possible that
Tacitus’s source for the Germania was King Masyos of the Semnones tribe, who
‘visited Rome in AD 92 when Tacitus held the office of Praetor, and so his infor-
mation is to be respected, see North, R, (1997), pp. 141, 210.
An overview of Iron Age German archaeology can be found in Cunliffe, B (ed.),
(1994), chs Io, 12.
Although by Tacitus’s time there is evidence that land was beginning to be
awarded to status individuals, this was possibly through Roman influence.
On the term ‘German’ as a linguistic tag rather than an ethnic one, see Mallory, JP,
(1994), pp. 84-7; Hutton, R, (1997), p. 269 mentions the similarities and differences
between the Germanic and Celtic cultures and languages.
On ‘wer-gild (man-price), see Chambers, RW, (1963), p. 77 and Stenton, F, (1986), pp.
261, 303-4.
The Battle ofMaldon is perhaps the second best-known of all Old English poems, see
Gordon, E (trans.), (1949).
10, On the Langobardi who would in time settle in Italy, giving their name to the
region of Lombardy, see Collins, R, (1999), pp. 132-3, 196-217.
II. For the Saxons and the Chauci, see Myres, J, (1987), pp. 48-54 and pp. 50-5 respec-
tively. While Myres remains a good source for overview of the invasions, a more
modern and archaeologically more up-to-date academic view is that found in
Dark, K, (2000). Rudgley, R, (2002), provides a simple and entertaining account
that does not get bogged down in argument and counter-argument.

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 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

Chapter 2: Former Days

as The Gothic historian Jordanes in his Getica (a history of the Gothic peoples written
in AD 550) referred to Scandza as ‘vagina nationum’ (the womb of nations), see
Rudgley, R, (2002), ch 4.
The prehistory of Denmark is covered well in Glob, PV, (1971), as well as in its
European context in Cunliffe, B (ed.), (1994), over many chapters.
On ancient Danish megaliths, see Glob, PV, (1971), pp. 53-100. This is not only a
good introduction to a rarely covered subject, but is written with the traveller in
mind.
The link between the ‘Great Goddess’ and the tombs of the Neolithic is mentioned
in Glob, PV, (1971), p. 100, but is questioned in Hutton, R, (1997), pp. 39-44
For the use of Neolithic hallucinogens, see Sherratt, A, (1996), and Rudgley, R,
(1993), Pp- 19-33.
Details of the Tustrup ritual site can be found in Piggot, S, (1980), p. 116 and Glob,
PV, (1971), Pp. 95-6.
For details of the tomb at @m - the best book is in Danish - see Johansen, BJ,
(2003). The site is in excellent condition and is about 40 minutes east of Lejre on
foot on the road to @m.
For solsticial fire lighting in Europe, see Hutton, R, (1996), pp. 311-21, 366-9.
For the introduction and use of corded ware and beaker pottery, see Cunliffe, B,
(2001), pp. 160-1, 215-19 and 217-21.
Io. Glob, PV, (1983), provides a very readable and evocative introduction into the
‘golden age’ of Danish prehistory, and includes many photographs of the excava-
tions and artefacts. See pp. 110, 112 for Glob’s interpretation of the Kivik grave
carvings.
II. For a good introduction to the age of migration, see Cunliffe, B (ed.), (1994), ch 13
and Collins, R, (1999) pp. 47-54.
12. Rudgley, R., (2002) pp. 111-18.
13. My source for the quote from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (compiled in the 9th
century) is Savage, A (trans.), (1986).
14. For the ending of Roman Britain, see Dark, K, (2000), which explores this difficult
subject and offers an alternative to the long-held idea that the Anglo-Saxon
‘invasion’ was short, violent and all-encompassing. He is also a good source for
early Germanic burials in England, but more detailed evidence is found in Lucy,
S, (2000).

Chapter 3: At the Altars of Their Idols

Te Three works provide a good overview of Anglo-Saxon heathenism: Bates, B, (2002),
Branston, B, (1993) and Herbert, K, (1994).
For the Runic alphabet, see Pollington, S, (2002).
3. Pollington, S, (2003), provides translations of the magico-religious manuscripts
mentioned here and elsewhere in this book.
Bede’s calendar is discussed in Herbert, K, (1994), pp. 19-22, while a less forgiving
approach appears in Hutton, R, (1997), pp. 271-2.
For the Coligny Calendar, see Hutton, R, (1997), PP- 143, 178, and Cunliffe, B, (1999),
pp. 188-9. i
For the days of the week, see Hutton, R, (1997), pp. 265-7.

210
 NOTES
¥

of For place-name evidence, see Stenton, F, (1986), pp. 99-100, who also discusses the
various types of shrine on pp. 100-2. Although it is possible to find the four gods
of the weekdays, it is not known if others existed alongside, since they are not
presently recognized as divine. In many books, Watling Street, the Roman road
from Richborough to Chester, is recorded as ‘the street of the people [inga] of a
Saxon named Watta or Watla’. But Tolkien postulated that it was named after the
mythological Wada, father of the giant Weland, and that ‘Watling Street’ (‘the
street of the children of Wade’) was originally the name of the Milky Way in Ger-
manic paganism. When the Germanic tribes reached Britain, the name of this road
across the heavens was applied to the road across England, the like of which they
had not seen before. Perhaps many other gods lie buried in this way. For instance,
was Reading really named after the descendants of a man named ‘Redda’ and not
the goddess Rheda mentioned by Bede?
For details on Yeavering, see Hope-Taylor, B, (1979).
Details of the shrines used by later Vikings as a clue to the nature of Anglo-Saxon
places of worship, see Ellis Davidson, HR, (1988), pp. 31-s.
Io. For good introductions to the Norse gods, see Ellis Davidson, HR, (1990), though
the most entertaining introduction is Crossley-Holland, K, (1980).
A. For background on Snorri Sturluson and his works see the very good introduction
to Snorri (trans. Hollander, L), (2002), pp. ix-xv.
72. For the range and development of the Celtic gods, see Green, M, (1986) and
(1989), p. I.
13. For Odin’s possible origin as a Gallic Mercury, see Helm, K, (1946), pp. 60-71, dis-
cussed in North, R, (1997), p. 305.
14. The Vanir gods and goddesses are discussed in best detail by Ellis Davidson, HR,
(1990).
15. The Matronae are best illustrated in Green, M, (1986), pp. 72-102

Chapter 4: In Dread Waters

I. For the best introduction to human sacrifice in Pagan Europe, including a possi-
ble proof for the famous Celtic ‘wicker man’, see Green, M, (2001), pp. 68-9.
The reports of Adam of Bremen and Thietmar of Merseburg are to be found in
Ellis Davidson, HR, (1988), pp. 24 and 58-9 respectively.
For the Danish bog sacrifices, nothing can beat Glob, PV, (1988). This book is well
written and well illustrated - and, above all, haunting.
For Iron John, see Grimm,J and W, (1993), pp. 612-19, and Grigsby, J, (2002).
For Lindow Man, see Stead, I, Bourke, J, and Brothwell, D, (1986), and Turner, RC
and Scaife, RG (eds.), (1995).
For the stomach contents of the bog men, see Stead, I, Bourke, Jand Brothwell, D,
(1986), pp. 99-135, and Turner, RC and Scaife, RG (eds.), (1995). pp. 59-61. For the
presence of ergot in the stomachs of the Danish bog men, see Green, M, (2001), pp.
84, 194.
For effects of eating ergot and its outbreaks, see Rudgley, R, (1999), pp. 95-6 and
McKenna, T, (1992), pp. 134-6.
For the discovery of ritual wagons in Danish bogs, see Glob, PV, (1988), pp. 166-71,
and discussed in Ellis Davidson, HR, (1990), pp. 93-6, 103, 135.
See Ellis Davidson, HR, (1990), p. 113.

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 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

Io. The link between Gefion/Geofon and water is discussed at length in North, R,
(1997), Pp. 221-6.

Chapter 5: Scyld Scefing

& The link between Scef and Tennyson’s The Idylls of the King was suggested in
Herbert, K, (1994), p. 16.
See Herbert, K, (1994), p. 15.
The appearance of Scef in Aethelweard’s genealogy can be found in Campbell, A
(ed.), (1962), p. 33. William of Malmesbury’s mention of Sheaf appears in his Gesta
Regum Anglorum (1989).
‘Ing as the patrynomic is in Herbert, K, (1994), p. 16.
On Widsith — the best introduction to the poem and all the characters mentioned
is Chambers, RW (ed.), (1912).
For details of Skjold, see Chambers, RW, (1963), p. 77. Skjold’s history is told in
Saxo Grammaticus (trans. Fisher, P; ed. Davidson, HE), (2002).
For harvest customs, see Chambers, RW, (1963), pp. 81-3, while the Byggvir and
Pekko analogies appear on pp. 297-301.
Chambers, RW, (1963), pp. 83-4.
9. The moon god Sin’s ‘Quffah’ boat appears in Hooke, SH, (1963), p. 25.
10. The solar boat of Egypt, so like that of ancient Scandinavia, appears in Rundle-
Clark, RT, (1978), pp. 118-9, 235-6.
pa The Spoils of the Abyss by ‘Taliesin’ is translated well in Matthews, C, (1987),
pp. 107-8. This is further discussed, along with other mythological poems by
‘Taliesin’, in Matthews, J, (1991). For the historical poems by the real Taliesin, the
historical poet of the north after whose pseudonym the other, later, poet wrote, see
Williams, I, (1987).
72. For Tolkien’s thoughts on, and use of, the figure of Sheaf, see Tolkien, JRR (ed.
Tolkien, C), (2002), pp. 85-97.

Chapter 6: The Barley God

1. Tammuz’s story appears in Hooke, SH, (1963), pp. 20-3.
Re Adonis is discussed in Graves, R, (1960), (vol. 1), pp. 69-73, and Frazer, JG, (2004),
PP. 237-52.
See Frazer, JG, (2004), pp. 252-7.
Osiris’s myth is summarized in Rundle-Clark, RT, (1978), PP. 97-180.
See Rundle-Clark, RT, (1978), pp. 235-6.
For Dionysos, see Kerenyi, C, (1976), and Harrison, J, (1991).
Harrison, J, (1991), pp. 413-25.
ao
eat
BOSSKerenyi, C, (1962) offers the best overall discussion of the rites and mysteries prac-
tised there.
ne For details of the Eleusinian cult drink, the kykeon, and its identification as ergot,
see Wasson, SK, Hoffman, A, and Ruck, C, (1978); and Wasson, SK, Ott, J, Ruck, C
and Doniger O'Flaherty, W, (1986). This theory is further examined in Rudgley, R,
(1999), p. 96 and McKenna, T, (1992), pp. 130-37.
Io. For the drowning of the fertility god, see Rundle-Clark, RT, (1978) p. 104.

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 NOTES

Chapter 7: Freyr
x The ‘sex-change’ theory of Nerthus/Njorthr is discussed and dismissed in North,
R, (1997), pp. 20-2.
The similarity of Germanic god and goddess names is argued in Ellis Davidson,
HR, (1990), p. 106.
The source for Tacitus’s role as a head priest of Cybele’s cult is North, R,
(1997), p- 45-
The most comprehensive and concise discussion of Freyr and his attributes is
found in Ellis Davidson, HR, (1990), pp. 92-103.
For the sacred boar, see Ellis Davidson, HR, (1990), p. 98 and (1988), PP. 50, 141, 202.
Aldhelm of Sherbourne’s letters concerning the ‘foul pillar’ can be found in
North, R, (1997), pp. 51-2.
For “Prija’ as ‘beloved’, and the use and misuse of the term ‘prick’, see Herbert, K,
(1994), p. 24.
On the origins of the Gundestrup cauldron, see Cunliffe, B (ed.), (1994), pp. 401-3,
and Devereux, P, (2003), pp. 51-2, who offers an exciting explanation of its varied
symbolism.
For a contemporary description of the effeminate priests of Attis, see Apuleius
(trans. Graves, R), (1985), ch. 12.
Io. For Freyja and her ability to transform into a falcon, see Davidson, HR, (1990),
PP- 39, 42, 44.
Il. A translation of Skirnismdl is found in Titchenell, E-B, (1998), pp. 248-54

Chapter 8: The Wagon Ran After

ae The saga of Olaf Tryggvason appears in Snorri Sturluson (trans. Hollander, L),
(2002), pp. 144-244.
The source for Gunnar’s tale is Flateyarbok in the Elder Edda, written around 1400,
see Larrington, C, (1999).
The reference to Lytir is from Flateyarbok, 1, 467 and the ‘wooden men’ - the
wooden idols of Freyr, mentioned in the Elder Edda - are discussed in North, R,
(1997), PP. 94-5.
The field remedy charm, the Aecerbot, is quoted with a good commentary in
Pollington, S, (2003), pp. 477-8, and Griffiths, B, (2003), pp. 185-90.
Ing as an aspect of Freyr is discussed in depth throughout North, R, (1997), and
Ellis Davidson, HR, (1990), p. 104.
Yngvi-Freyr is mentioned in Snorri Sturluson (trans. Hollander, L), (2002), p. 14.
For the word ‘rune’ meaning ‘magic’ as a whole, not just letters, see Pollington, S,
(2002), p. 10, in which the Old English Rune Poem is also translated.
On the appearance of Ingui in Bernicia, see North, R, (1997), pp. 42-3

Chapter 9: The Elves

18 The Norse creation myth appears in Voluspa in the Elder Edda, translated in Titch-
enell, E-B, (1998), pp. 91-100, and in Snorri Sturluson (trans. Faulkes, A), (1995),
pp. 10-12.
For the connection between the elves and Freyr, see Ellis Davidson, HR, (1990), pp.

213
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

105, 156. General British fairy lore is to be found in Briggs, K, (1977), and in Spence,
L, (1948).
For the fairy aversion to iron, see Spence, L, (1948), pp. 181-2, 257.
4. For the genii cucullati as elf-like hooded spirits, see Davidson, HE, (1988), pp. 108-9.
5. The best summaries of Anglo-Saxon beliefs concerning the elves are Pollington, S,
(2003), pp. 456-61, and Griffiths, B, (2003), pp. 47-54. These books also deal with
the disease-bringing aspects of the elves and the numerous charms used to protect
one from them.
6. The Icelandic land-spirits (as non-human nature spirits) are found in Davidson,
HE, (1988), pp. 102-8, while she discusses the derivation of the elves from ancestral
spirits on pp. 115 and 122.
7. For the Elf of Geirstadt and St Olaf, see Davidson, HE, (1988), p. 122.
8. The tradition of leaving food for the fairies is mentioned in Spence, L, (1948), p. 188
and throughout Evans-Wentz, WY, (1988). If any reader knows of the continuation
of any such custom or fairy-belief today, the author would very much like to hear
about it, via the publisher.
9. Alfablot appears in Cormac’s Saga (written in Icelandic between AD 1250-1300, and
based on a lost 12th-century saga); see Collingwood, WG, and StefanssonJ, (trans.),
(1991), ch. 22.
10. The terms ylfig and aelfsiden are discussed in Pollington, S, (2003), pp. 460-1
11. Aelfsiden is discussed in North, R, (1997), pp. 55, 85, 105, 317-8. It may be that the
Old English term ‘wanseoc found in these medical manuscripts may mean ‘Vanir-
sick’: that is, an illness caused by the Vanir (the phrase itself is of major importance
as it shows that the Vanir were known in Old England).
12. Tacitus comments on how the Germans valued women as being ‘holy’ and having
prophetic abilities, mentioning Veleda of the Bructeri tribe, who was honoured as
a goddess. Her name means simply ‘seer’ and was probably a title related to the
Brythonic Celtic word ‘gweled’ (to see) and the Irish druidic title of ‘filidh’ (poet),
also derived from the verb ‘to see’. In the Greenland saga of Erik, there is a descrip-
tion of one who practised her craft around the same time as Olaf Trygvasson was
ending the rites of Freyr in Norway. Her name was Thorbiorg - one of an original
group of nine, she was summoned to a village to see when a famine would end. Her
description is colourfully given in full, even down to her cat-skin gloves and a hood
lined with cat skin. She is described as wearing a blue dress with a pouch at the
belt containing her magical equipment ~ stones, feathers, etc — and having a staff
mounted with magical stones, with brass ornaments up it. She sits on a specially
constructed high-seat (perhaps so she could see). Her ‘sitting’ follows a meal con-
sisting of animal hearts and goat’s milk. A Christian girl named Gudrid sings a
special chant, albeit reluctantly, having been taught it as a child, and the seer fore-
casts an end to the crisis. See Bates, B, (2002), ch. 16.

Chapter 10: Choosers of the Slain

1. For the Greek Keres, see Harrison, J, (1991), pp. 41-3, 165-217.
2. For the war of Zeus and the Titans and its derivation from Indo-European myth,
see Lincoln, B, (1991), pp. 10-12, 39 and Campbell, J, (1964), p. 80.
3. For the many varied names of Valkyries, see Davidson, HE, (1988), p. 96 and
Crossley-Holland, K, (1980), pp. 156-7

214
 NOTES
td

For the episode in the Vita St Gregory concerning the ‘prophetic’ crow, see North, R,
(1997), p. 177.
For the Irish Morrighan as a battle-crow/raven, see Green, M, (1986), Pp. IOI, 120.
The nature of the Norns are discussed in Crossley-Holland, K, (1980), pp.
xxvili-xxiv and Davidson, HE, (1988), pp. 96, 164.
For phantom black dogs, see the thought-provoking articles by Trubshaw, B,
(1994).
Details of the hags of folklore and legend appear in Briggs, K, (1977), pp. 57-60
(Cailleach), 206 (Grindelow), 242 (Jenny Greenteeth). It has long been accepted
that behind Black Annis and the other hags that bear the name ‘Annis’or ‘Annie’
lies Danu, mother of the Tuatha De Danann.
For Demeter Erinyes, see Kerenyi, C, (1962), pp. 31-2. The imagery behind the rape
is deciphered as follows: The goddess is the cold winter earth that swallows the
grain in the winter so it may emerge reborn in the spring. To do this, the earth
must be cut open and the seed inserted, and thus in some myths we have the
imagery of the goddess being ‘raped’.
Io. The sources for the tale of Skathi are Snorri Sturluson (trans. Hollander, L),
(2002), p. 12 and Snorri Sturluson (trans. Faulkes, A), (1995), pp. 23-4.
Il. The cannibal-mother-mare Leucippe is mentioned by Graves, R, (1960), (vol. 1), pp.
106, IIo.
12. Hag-riding is mentioned in Briggs, K, (1977), p. 216 and Simpson,J and Roud, S
(eds.), (2003).
13. Robert Kirk’s ‘Secret Commenwealth of Elves, Fauns and Faires’ is available online
at http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/sce/.

Chapter 11: Royal Obligations

is The main views on regicide and sacral kingship in ancient Scandinavia are
McTurk, R, (1974-7) and (1994), who argues against the position and North, R,
(1997) who argues in favour pp. 260-66.
. North, R, (1997), p. 47.
. Frothi appears in Saxo Grammaticus (trans. Fisher, P; ed. Davisdon, HE,) (2002).
See Shippey, T, (1992), pp. 185-8.
Nvw
For Hakon’s droit du seigneur (the right of the feudal lord to sleep the first wedded
night with the bride of any of his vassals), see North, R, (1997) pp. 262-4.
com For details on the horse rituals of the Indo-European peoples (including
Asva Medha), see Mallory, JP, (1994), pp. 135-7.
The dating of the Uffington White Horse to the late Bronze Age is found in
Castleden, R, (2000), p. 48.
The bizarre rite recorded in 12th-century Donegal by Gerald of Wales can be found
in Giraldus Cambrensis (trans. O’Meara), (1951), p. 93-
The tale of the wounded King Nuada is in Rolleston, TW, (1987), pp. 107-8.
Io. The more unfortunate kings, Domaldi and Agni, appear in Snorri Sturluson
(trans. Hollander, L), (2002), pp. 17-19 and 22-38 respectively.
TT. The range of dates for the practice of bog sacrifice in Denmark appears in Turner,
RC, and Scaife, RG (eds.), (1995), p- 147.
12: Olaf then beheaded the duplicitous slave.
13. As to their strangulation, Glob mentions the symbolism of the neck-ring in (1988),
Pp. 163-7.

215
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

14. Interestingly, the original name of this goddess has been reconstructed by
linguists as Kolyo (the coverer), who is seen to drag men to her domain, the under-
world, by fetters or bonds. For the connections of this goddess to Seithr, see
Lincoln, B, (1991), p. 108.
15. Gefion riding her lover is mentioned in the Lokasenna poem of the Elder Edda,
quoted in North, R, (1997), p. 225.
16. North, R, (1997), pp- 140-9.
17. North, R, (1997), pp. 254-5. The ultimate mythic origin of these motifs is found in
the characters ‘Twin’ and ‘Man’ of Indo-European myth. For details of these
beings and their fate, see Lincoln, B, (1991), p. 12. These creation mythologies are
also discussed in Stone, A, (1997), pp. 113-16.
18. Saxo’s ‘Balderus’ is discussed in North, R, (1997), p. 128.
19. JG Frazer’s much-used quote is found in Frazer, JG, (2004), pp. 2-3. Frazer has been
much maligned, but for an overview of the pro- and contra-Frazer stance of schol-
ars since the publication of The Golden Bough, see Hutton, R, (1997), pp. 325-8.

Chapter 12: The Hall Turned to Ashes

i For Hrolf Kraki one can do no better than to read the translation by Jesse Byock,
(1998). Byock offers great introductory notes that include detailed comparisons
with the plot and characters of Beowulf.
These parallels are also discussed (in more depth) in Chambers, RW, (1963),
Pp. 15-31.
Chambers, RW, (1963), pp. 15-20, 426-9 offer an overview of the character of Hjor-
vard and pp. 20-5 give a summary of the character of Ingeld.
Ingeld is also discussed in Shippey, T, (1992), pp. 186-8.

Chapter 13: The Wandering Inguz

iE From the Book ofthe Dun Cow, a 12th-century manuscript but which may originally
date from the first part of the 8th century, the tale of Da Derga can be found in
Gantz (trans.), (1986), pp. 60-106. Gantz’s translation is prefaced with an excellent
introduction that discusses its probable ritual content.
The hideous Fer Caille is linked to the Wild Herdsman of Welsh myth in Grigsby,
J, (2002), pp. 42-5.
. Bran’s story appears in Gantz,J (trans.), (1985), ch. 2.
Qe

. The link between the red hair of the bog men and the melyngoch hair of the
cauldron-folk in Bran’s tale is suggested in Stead, I, Bourke, Jand Brothwell, D,
(1986), p. 173.
. For the Celtic feast of Samhain as the ‘hinge in the year’ when odd happenings
occurred, see Rees, A and B, (1990), p. 89.
. Macc Oc’s tale is found in Gantz, J, (trans.), (1986), pp. 37-42.
7. The tragic tale of Diarmuid and Grainne is prefaced in Rolleston, TW, (1987), pp.
297-304.
. The tale of Caer Imbormeith, so like that of Gerthr, appears in Gantz, J, (trans.),
(1986), pp. 107-12.
The midwinter alignment of the Newgrange monument is discussed in depth in
O’Kelly, M, (1994), pp. 123-5.

216
 NOTES
i

Io. For the ‘feasting halls’ of ancient myth as dim memories of ritual sites, see Harbi-
son, P, (1988), pp. 156-8.
ie Details of the Woodhenge child sacrifice are to be found in North, J, (1996),
PP. 347-58.
12: The source of the tale of Banban the Hospitaller is Rees, A and B, (1990), pp. 333-5.
13. Fyolnir’s drowning appears in Snorri’s Ynglingatal (trans. Hollander, L), (2002), pp.
14-15.
14. For the Viking halls at Lejre, see Byock, J, (1998), pp. xviii-xxiii, which includes a
plan of the halls. One can visit the site of these halls, arguably the site of Heorot,
today. They lie at the tiny hamlet of Gammel Lejre, a half hour’s walk north of
Leijre train station. The hamlet is surrounded by a massive ritual landscape of
barrows and standing stones.
15. Strabo’s mention of the destruction aadsacrifice of the island priestesses’ temple
is from Geographia, iv, 4, 6 quoted in Green, M, (2001), p. 194.
16. A good summary of all Norse sources of the Ragnarok myth is in Crossley-
Holland, K, (1980), pp. 173-6.

Chapter 14: A Midwinter Game

16 Easily available translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are Tolkien, JRR,
(1979) and Stone, B (trans.), (1986).
Tolkien mentions the pagan origins of the tale in Tolkien, JRR, (1997), pp. 72-3.
The Irish story of Bricriu’s Feast that forms the main backbone of the Middle
English poem can be found in Gantz (trans.), (1986), pp. 219-55.
A suggested link between the tales of Sir Gawain and Beowulf to bog ritual is found
in Stead, I, Bourke, J, and Brothwell, D, (1986), pp. 172-3.

Chapter 15: The Demon’s Head

i The nature of Odin is discussed by Snorri Sturluson (trans. Hollander, L), (2002),
pp. 10-13.
. Snorri Sturluson (trans. Hollander, L), (2002), pp. 7-8.
The appearance of Heid/Gullveig that precipitates the conflict is mentioned in
Crossley-Holland, K, (1980), pp. 7, 184.
For the theory that the Indo-European languages arrived with farming, see
Renfrew, C, (1998), followed up by Renfrew, C, and Bellwood, P (eds.), (2002), and
linked with genetic models of dispersal in Forster, P, and Toth, A, (2003), and Gray,
RD, and Atkinson, QD, (2003).
For the ‘War of the Functions’, see Mallory, JP, (1994), p. 139.
Kvasir’s myth is found in Snorri Sturluson, (2002), pp. 10-13 and his Edda (trans.
Faulkes, A,), (1995), pp. 61-4.
For the Hindu myth of the Churning of the Milky Ocean, see Doniger O’Flaherty,
W (trans.), (1975), pp. 274-80.
The link between sarama and the Dagda’s porridge is made in Grigsby, J, (2002),
pp. 127-8.
For the original identity of soma (as ephedra and other stimulants), see Rudgley, R,
(1993), pp. 43-55; (1999), pp. 226-9, and McKenna, T, (1992), p. Ior.
Io. For the myth of the decapitation of Dadhyanc, see Doniger O’Flaherty, W (trans.),
(1975), PP- 56-9.

217
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

11. For the myth of Orpheus, see Harrison, J, (1991), pp. 455-77.
12. For the Opening of the Mouth Ceremony, see Rundle-Clark, RT, (1978), p. 122.
13. For the name ‘Baleygr’ as an epithet of Odin, see North, R, (1997), pp. 263, 328.

Chapter 16: The Brimwylf

1. There are many Hindu poems that deal with the taking of soma - see Doniger
O'Flaherty, W (trans.), (1981), p. 135.
2. The magical-martial tradition of Aesma appears in Lincoln, B, (1991), p 133,
3. For the magical properties of boar helms, see Ellis Davidson, HR, (1988), pp. 49-50.
4. Information on the berserkers is found in many sources, especially Eliade, M,
(1995), pp. 81-4; Byock, J, (1998), p. xxiv; and Bates, B, (2002), pp. 157-9.
For the connections between vargr, warg and ergot, see the excellent essay by Stone,
A, (1994), the source of much of this chapter’s information on ergot and lupine
folklore.
. For the next best source, especially on ‘wolfish rage’ as part of an Indo-European
martial cult, see Lincoln, B, (1991), ch. 10 (haomawergez and ulfhednar are mentioned
on p. 134).
. The Volsung Saga fragment that deals with transformation into a wolf appears in
Byock, J, (1999), pp. 44-7.
8. The folklore surrounding the roggenwolfis found in Frazer, JG, (2004), pp. 352-6.
9. In time, the term vargr (and its English variants wearg/wearh) came to mean
‘outlaw’ - someone who could be hunted down and killed like a wolf, for which the
killer would incur no penalty. As the usual method of killing an outlaw was by
hanging or strangulation, this suggests that vargr had little to do with the crimes
committed by later outlaws (which were varied), but rather with the method of
execution. This seems to suggest that in later Christian times, taking ergot for mil-
itary or ritual purposes was seen as a heinous crime and that its practitioners were
outlawed; in time vargr and its association with strangulation became synony-
mous with outlawry.
Io. The link between ergot and strangulation are made clear in Stone, A, (1994).
PT, The burning magical heat of the berserkers is discussed in Eliade, M, (1995),
pp. 81-4.
12. Stone, A, (1994).
3. For the idea that the Cotton Vitellius manuscript was meant to be a ‘Book of Mon-
sters’ based on the inclusion of tales describing ‘Haelfhundingas’, see Orchard, A,
(2003), pp. 24-5. :
14. The scucca (demon) is mentioned in Griffiths, B, (2003), Pp. 55-7 while Newton, S,
(1999), pp. 143-4 links this creature with Grendel and the Black Shuck of East
Anglian folklore.
1S. For Odin’s adoption of seithr, see Snorri Sturluson, (2002), por.
16. His use of ‘erg?’ is found in Stone, A, (1994), and North, R, (1997), p. 85.
1G The various names of Odin quoted here.are found in Crossley-Holland, K, (1980),
pp. 64, 248.
18. For a discussion of the term ‘Geat’ as a mythological name rather than a tribal
appellation, including the adoption of the term by Odin, see North, R, (1997),
p. 138.
19. For a discussion of the Northumbrian priest Coifi’s relation to the figure of Odin,
see North, R, (1997), pp. 332-4.

218
 NOTES
i

Epilogue: People of the Wolf

I. For the long-haired twin gods, the Haddingjar, that possibly stand behind Hengist
and Horsa, see Ellis Davidson, HR, (1990), p. 170.
For the occurrence of Grendel place names in Anglo-Saxon England, see Bates, B,
(2002), p. 81, and Chambers, RW, (1963), pp. 304-8.
For an overview of the discovery and finds at Sutton Hoo, see Carver, M, (1998).
For Raedwald, see Carver, M, (1998), pp. 22-3, 34; Rudgley, R, (2002), pp. 168-72 and
for a discussion of his pedigree, see Orchard, A, (2003), p. 78.
The Wuffinga family tree appears in the thought-provoking Newton, S, (1999).
Their connection with Sweden is mentioned in Wood, M, (1987), pp. 74-5.
The parallels between the goods buried at Sutton Hoo and those found at Uppsala
are discussed in Newton, S, (1999), p. III.
The links between the Wuffingas and the various tribes mentioned in Beowulf are
discussed in Newton, S, (1999), pp. 106-7, 125-31.
The figure of Hrothmund and the Wuffinga genealogy are discussed in Newton, S,
(1999), ch. 4.
EO: Abbo of Fleury’s quote concerning King Edmund’s martyrdom can be found online
at www.wmich.edu/medieval/research/rawl/edmund/index.html along with other
vernacular texts describing these events - in translation.
Bi For more on the suggestion that Edmund’s miraculously preserved body was that
of a prehistoric sacrifice, see Stead, I, Bourke, J, and Brothwell, D, (1986), p. 175.
72. Survivals of Anglo-Saxon paganism after the conversion are mentioned by
Herbert, K, (1994), pp. 18-19 and Branston, B, (1993), p. 183.

219
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alexander, M, (trans.), Beowulf, Penguin, 1986

Apuleius, (trans. Graves, R) The Golden Ass, Penguin, 1985
Bates, B, The Real Middle Earth, Pan MacMillan, 2002
— The Way of Wyrd, Arrow, 1996
Bede, (trans. Sherley-Price, L), Ecclesiastical History of the English People,
Penguin, 1990
Blair, J, The Anglo-Saxon Age, Oxford, 2000
Bradley, S, (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Poetry, Everyman, 1995
Branston, B, The Lost Gods ofEngland, Constable, 1993
Briggs, K, A Dictionary ofFairies, Penguin, 1977
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Harrison, J, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, Princeton, 1991
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225
 APPENDICES

Timeline: 8000 BC-AD 1939

c. 8000 BC Mesolithic (Middle Stone) Age in northern Europe.
Hunter-gatherer groups in river valleys of
Scandinavia. First evidence of organized cemeteries at
Vedbaek (Zealand) and Skateholm (Sweden).
c. 6000 Arrival of farming and Indo-European languages in
south-east Europe from Anatolia.
c. 4200 Neolithic (New Stone) Age begins in northern Europe
with the arrival of farming and Indo-European
languages. First megaliths built in Scandinavia.
c. 4000 Possible split of Indo-European languages into
‘Germanic and ‘Celtic’ groups.
C. 3500-3000 Massive building of megalithic monuments
throughout Atlantic coastal regions of north-west
Europe.
C. 3300-3200 Building of the passage graves at Newgrange, Ireland
and @m, Denmark.
C. 3200 Building of the Tustrup ‘necropolis’ in Jutland.
C. 3000-2500 Use of ‘Corded Ware’ pottery and rise of individual
burial tradition in Scandinavia.
Cc. 2500-2000 ‘Beaker’ period in western Europe. Rise of
metalworking, but Stone Age continues in
Scandinavia.

226
 TIMELINE: 8000 BC-AD 1939
A

Cc. 2000 Start of characteristic ‘spiral’ style of Scandinavian

metalwork.
c. I500 ‘Golden age’ of Bronze Age Denmark. Tree-trunk
burial under round mounds. Era of the cord-skirted
Egtved girl.
c. 1300 Trundholm ‘sun chariot’ constructed.
c. 1200 Bronze Age ‘systems collapse’.
c. 90O First evidence of ritual deposition in bogs.
Cc. 750 Beginning of Celtic ‘Iron Age’.
c. 730-540 Rise in warrior elites in Western Europe.

41S Alcibiades steals the cult drink of Eleusis.

c. 291 Sacrificial death of Grauballe man.
c. 200 Death of Tollund Man.
c. 250-100 Building and ritual destruction by fire of massive
wooden circular enclosures in Ireland.
I20 Cimbri and Teutones begin their migrations south
from Denmark.
113 Cimbri and Teutones invade North Italy.
105 - Cimbri and Teutones defeated by Roman general
Caius Marius.
55 BC Julius Caesar crosses the Rhine.

AD9 Defeat of Roman commander Publius Quintilius

Varus in the Teutoburg forest.
16 Romans withdraw behind the Rhine.

92 King Maysos of the Semnones tribe visits Rome,

perhaps providing Tacitus with information to write
his Germania.
98 Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus writes Germania
(‘On the History and Geography of Germany’).
168-180 Rome attacks the Germans following five years of
barbarian incursions.

227
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

c. 200 Ritual deposit of wagons at Dejbjerg, Jutland.

C. 250 Appearance of runic script on items from Jutland.
280 ‘Saxon Shore’ forts built on east coast of Britain to
defend land from Saxon pirates.
Cc. 300 Possible emergence of the Danes. Ending of practice
of human sacrificial bog offerings.
367 Britannia raided by Picts, Scots and Saxons.
370 Arrival of Huns around the Black Sea. Germanic
tribes begin to push west en masse.
396 Alaric the Goth destroys Eleusis, ending 2,000 years
of its Mystery cult.
406 Vandals, Alans and Sueves (Suebi) cross the Rhine.
407 Last Roman troops leave Britain with Constantine III.
410 Alaric the Goth sacks Rome.
c. 410-49 Possible Germanic settlement in Britain.
C. 425-59 Reign of Vortigern.

449 Traditional date of arrival of Hengist and Horsa at

Ebbsfleet, Kent.
c. 450 Abandonment of Saxon settlement at Feddersen
Wierde.

c. 490-500 Battle of Mons Badonicus: English defeated by

Britons, possibly under Ambrosius Aurelianus.
C. 500-515 Possible timeframe for Danish events that occur in
Beowulf.
C. SIS—75 Possible timeframe for Swedish events that occur in
Beowulf.
C. §20-21 Death of Chochilaicus (King Hygelac in Beowulf) in
territory of the Hetware tribe.
C. §25 Death of King Ohthere of Sweden.
C. 535 Death of King Onela of Sweden.
C. 35-75 Reign of King Eadgils of Sweden.

228
 TIMELINE: 8000 BC-AD 1939
A

540 Gregory of Tours writes his Frankish Chronicle and

Gildas writes his De Excidio.
$50 Gothic historian Jordanes writes Getica (‘A History of
the Gothic Peoples’).
555-616 Reign of King Aethelbert of Kent.
C. $77 Proposed death of Wuffa of East Anglia; succeeded by
Tyttla.
597 St Augustine arrives in Kent and converts Aethelbert.
598 Battle of Catreath (Catterick), North Yorkshire: Celts
of the Gododdin tribe defeated by a joint army of
Angles from Deira and Bernicia.
599 Death of Tyttla of East Anglia; succeeded by
Raedwald who becomes Bretwalda: ruler of all Anglian
kingdoms south of the Humber
c. 7th century Composition of poem Widsith.
601 St Gregory’s letter to Mellitus concerning the
conversion of pagan shrines into churches.
604 Death of St Augustine.
613 Edwin of Northumbria flees to court of Raedwald at
Rendlesham.

617-33 Reign of King Edwin of Northumbria.

624 Death of Raedwald - possible burial in ship within
mound 1 at Sutton Hoo.
627 Conversion of Northumbria. Destruction of
Goodmanham shrine by Coifi.
c. 650-700 Composition of Beowulf
664 Synod of Whitby.

673 Birth of Venerable Bede.

681-735 Bede at Jarrow.

713-49 Reign of King Aelfwald of East Anglia

725 Bede records Anglo-Saxon calendar in his De
Temporum Ratione.

229
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

731/2 Bede finishes his Ecclesiastical History.

739 Aethelheard of the West Saxons grants lands to the
Bishop of Sherbourne ‘from Dodda’s ridge to
Grendel’s pit’.
743-SI Reign of Frankish king Childeric III, last of the
Merovingians.

793 First Viking raid on Lindisfarne.

869 Martyrdom of St Edmund, last of the Wuffinga kings
of East Anglia.
871-99 Reign of Alfred the Great of Wessex: Scef, Scyld and
Beow are placed in the Wessex genealogical list.
c. 900 Date of the R4llinge Freyr.
941-6 Reign of Edmund I. During his reign, the monks of
Abingdon Abbey perform the strange land-claiming
ceremony involving the sheaf and shield.
978-1016 Reign of Aethelred the Unready.
985 Abbo sees the preserved body of ‘St Edmund’.
950-1050 Composition of Anglo-Saxon magico-religious
manuscripts such as the Lacnunga.
991 Battle of Maldon, Essex.

994 Olaf Trygvasson baptized in England. 40,000 people

killed by ergot poisoning in Aquitaine.
995 Death of Earl Hakon. Olaf Trygvasson takes throne of
Norway.
Cc. 995-1000 Gunnar Helming imitates the god Freyr in a ritual
procession in Sweden.
1000 Death of Olaf Trygvasson at the sea-battle of Swold.
c. 1000 Penning of Beowulf manuscript.
IOI5-30 Reign of St Olaf Haraldson.
1066 Battle of Hastings.
II40 William of Malmesbury writes about ‘Sheaf’.

230
 TIMELINE: 8000 BC-AD 1939

1220 Snorri Sturluson composes his Edda.

1536-40 Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII.
1571-1631 Life of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton who received the
Beowulf manuscript from Laurence Nowell, dean of —
Lichfield.

1731 Fire at Ashburnham House in which Beowulf

manuscript is nearly destroyed.
1936 Tolkien’s lecture on Beowulf, ‘The Monsters and the
Critics’.
1938 Basil Brown begins excavations at Sutton Hoo.
1939 Brown discovers the ship burial of Raedwald (?) in
mound 1 at Sutton Hoo.

231
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

THE WUFFINGAS
Woden - Caser - Tyttman - Trygil - Hrothmund - Hryp - Wilhelm

Wehha

Eni
i
Raedwald m1 e
(died c. 625) : r
a
a
: a
A
Raegenhere Eorpwald Sigeberht ie
(killed c.617) (killed c. 628) (killed c. 635) &
Edmund
(killed 869)

THE GEATS
Hrethel Waegmund

Herebeald Haethcyn Hygelac m.Hygd a daughter m. Edgetheow Weohstan

a daughter Heardred Beowulf | Wiglaf

m. Eofor

232
Sere eo Phroe e, Pee

APPENDICES
¢

THE SWEDES (SCYLFINGS)

Ongentheow

Onela (Ali: not recognized as a Scylfing) Ohthere (Ottar)

m. Healfdene's daughter r

Eanmund Eadgils (Adils)

THE DANES (SCYLDINGS)

Scyld Scefing (Skjold)

Beow(wulf) the Dane

Healfdene (Halfdan)

Heoroga r Hroth gar (Hroar) Halga (Helgi) a daughter (Signy)

: m. Wealtheow a m. Onela

Hrethric Hrothmund Freawaru Hrothulf (Hrolf Kraki)

(Roricus: not m. Ingeld
recognized as son of Froda
Hroar's son)
Heoroweard (Hjorvard:
not recognized as part
of the Scylding famil
iy ey [Note: The names in roman type are as they
appear in Beowulf, those in italics are the
corresponding characters as they appear in
Scandinavian legend.]

233
 KEY
| ANGLII CIMBRI Tribal areas
e Archaeological sites

234
 Soaps jedIBoOjoaeyriye
| sdnou8 jequy/sajdoad < pao :
woe
su
FrmusansGsalar
“oe
sNoxws
swe Zam,
APPENDICES

235
éSONIFIAM
009-00r av 9
SNOILVUDIW
See 40. 9DV FHL.
ee)
Pa ee
KEY
MERCIA Anglo-Saxon
ESSEX Kingdoms
Gwynedd Celtic Kingdoms
e Place names mentioned
in the text

236
eee eee a eT

INDEX

Abbo of Fleury, 205, 219, 230 182, 204, 208, 210, 219, 229
Abingdon, 70, 230 Anglo-Saxons, 1, 4, 14, 37, 38, 40, 41, 43,
Adam of Bremen, 54, 90, 211 44, 51, 101
Adils, 141, 144, 161 Angus, 156 see also Macc Oc
See also Athils, Eadgils Anubis, 114
Adonis, 76, 77, 84, 88, 91, 212 Apollo, 49
Aecerbot (‘field remedy’), 43, 96, 206, 213 Arthur, King, 1, 2, 72
Aelfsiden, 109, 214 Asgard, 47, 50, 172, 174, 177, 188
Aesir, 47, 48, 50, 51, 91, 92, 103, 109, 161, Ashere, 10
167, 1682172, 1735 175, 1825,1833 189; Asva Medha, 126, 127, 215
192, 193, 194, 206 Athils, 14, 209 see also Adils, Eadgils
A_ma, 185 Attis, 76, 77, 83, 84, 86, 87, 90, 100, 118,
Aethelweard, 64, 212 124, 133, 191, 213
Agamemnon, 134 Augustus, 21
Agni, 129, 179, 215 Aviones, 24
Alaric, 21, 81, 228
Alcibiades, 82, 227 Bachlach, 165, 166
Alcock, Leslie, 1 Badb, 152
Alcohol, 32, 176, 178, 179, 184 Balan, 134
Aldhelm of Sherbourne, 90, 213 Balder, 47, 75, 133, 134, 135, 157, 161, 204
Alfablot, 106, 214 Balderus, 135, 216 see also Balder
Alfheim, 50, 103 Balin, 134
Ambrosius Aurelianus, 38, 228 Barley, 22, 30, 56, 64, 66, 69, 75, 79, 80,
Ancestral cults, 5, 9, 28, 29, 30, 47, 50, 91, 82, 84, 85, 88, 92, 97, 111, 116, 117, 125,
100, 105, 111, 183, 199, 201, 206, 214 169, 173, 177, 183, 187, 192, 195, 196,
and Elves, 104 202, 203, 204, 207, 212
Aneurin, 184 Barley wolf, 192, 195, 202, 207
Angelcyn, 38 Barleycorn, John (ballad), 66, 67, 68, 75,
Angeln, 24, 37 76, 77, 178, 179, 184
Angles, 24, 35, 36, 37, 193, 199, 201, 202 Battle Axe culture, 32
Anglii, 24, 25, 34, 38, 53, 56, 65, 185, 203 Battle of Maldon, 23, 93, 209, 230
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 24, 37, 41, 93, 204, 210 Beaker culture, 32, 226
Anglo-Saxon language and literature, 2, 3, “Bear’s son” folktale, 15, 195
12, 23, 24, 32, 35, 37, 38, 43, 50, 51, 64, Bede, The Venerable, 38, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46,
69, 85, 93, 101, 103, 106, 110, 111, 124, 50, 51, 193, 194, 198, 210, 211, 229, 230

237
 —

BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

Bedivere, Sir, 63 Boar symbolism, 8, 10, 50, 76, 77, 88, 89,
Beli, 89, 134, 157 129, 141, 143, 151, 156, 164, 185, 190,
Bendith y Mamau, 103 199; 213; 218
Benty Grange boar-helmet, 185 see also Boar’s Head Feast, 89
Boar symbolism Bodvar Bjarki, 140, 142, 186, 195, 139
Beow, 7, 64, 66, 69, 72, 116, 124, 196, 230 Bogs, as ritual sites, 54, 55
Beowulf (the poem), 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 12, 13, 15, Bolverk (Odin), 174, 192
19, 20, 23, 24, 27, 36, 39, 51, 52, 54, 58, Borremose man, 55
59, 60, 63, 64, 65, 69, 74, 100, 112, 116, Borum Eshgj, 33
117, 131, 137, 138, 144, 145, 146, 147, Bous, 135
148, 159, 164, 167, 183, 185, 190, 192, Bran the Blessed, 134, 153, 156, 157, 158,
201, 203, 207, 229, 230 159, 175, 177, 178, 216
‘bear’s son’ folktale and, 15 Bricriu’s Feast, 164, 165, 217
as Christianized interpretation of Brimwylf, 10, 183, 189, 218
pagan cosmology, 101, 102, 110 Brisingamen necklace, 10, 50, 132
combining of English and Danish Broddenbjerg idol, 45, 95
traditions in, 73 Bromios, 80 see also Dionysos
as ‘family myth’ of the Wuffingas, 202 Bronze Age, 26, 31, 33, 34, 35, 51, 125,
manuscript of, 3, 13, 183, 190, 218, 231 £29, 173: 215,097
parallels with Hrolf’s Saga, 143 Brother symbolism, 19, 37, 47, 52, 76, 77,
poet of, 14, 40, 59, 65, 85, 100, 102, 84, 91, 95, 102, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137,
120, 190 140, 142, 143, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149,
quoted, 12, 19, 26, 36, 40, 52, 69, 101, 152, 153, 156, 174, 201
119, 132, 136, 138, 145, 148, 171, Brown, Basil, 4, 198, 231
185 Brugh na Boinne, 104, 154, 155 see also
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and, Newgrange
163, 166 Burial mounds, 11, 12, 14, 27, 29, 30, 31,
translation of, 2 34, 44, 95, 104, 105, 111, 112, 163, 198 d
use of term Ingwine in, 98 199, 210
vegetal symbolism in, 69, 72, 74, 79 Burning, 4, 56, 116, 148, 149, 158, 160,
Beowulf (the hero), 2, 14, 52, 59, 119, 132, 188, 189, 218
136, 145, 146, 161, 166, 168, 171, 181, Byblos, 77
182, 194, 206 passim, 7-12 Bygevir, 69, 212
as ‘Barley-wolf’, 192 Byrhtnoth, 23, 93
as historical figure, 5, 14, 194, 195
as Odin, 192 Cadbury, 1
as sun god, 14 Caesar, Caius Julius, 21, 22, 49, 50, 191,
Bera, 139, 140, 195 D2.
Bernicia, 99, 184, 213, 229 see also Angles; Cailleach, 115, 117, 215
Deira; Northumbria Cain, 7, 10, 52, 101, 102, 109, 110, 136
Berserkers, 186, 218 Calendar, 41, 42, 43, 50, 59, 69, 196, 210,
Bertilak, 162, 163, 165 2S)
Bjorn, 139, 140, 195 Camelot, 1, 162, 163, 165
Black Annis, 114, 215 Carrion symbolism, 112, 114, 115, 117,
Black Dogs, 114, 215 118, 119, 129, 136, 144, 147, 186, 189
Black Shuck, 114, 190, 218 see also Black Celts, 1, 2, 20, 22, 23, 32, 38, 40, 42, 44,
Dogs; Scucca, 48, 49, 51, 53, 65, 90, 103, 104, 132,
Blathnat, 158, 165, 176, 177 134, 149, 150, 151, 153, 154, 156, 157,
Blodeuwedd, 134 158, 159, 178, 184, 186, 202, 209, 211,
Boand, 154 214, 216, 226, 227, 229

238
 INDEX

Ceres, 128 Demophoén, 81, 188

Ceridwen, 116, 117 Denmark,
Cernunnos, 90, 104 cult of Freyr in, 97, 99, 110, 124, 125
Charm ‘against a sudden pain’, 107, 112, Dark Age religious conflict in, 128,
182 144, 145, 166, 168, 181, 183194, 195,
Chauci, 24, 25, 209 203, 206
Childeric III, 123, 125, 230 as original homeland of the English, 2,
Chochilaicus, 14, 209, 228 20, 26
Christianity, 26, 32, 38, 40, 41, 43, 48, 76, pagan sacrifice in, 54, 55, 82, 84, 120,
94, 96, 97, 99, 101, 102, 105, 108, 109, 135; 136,205
111, 113, 120, 124, 125, 157, 165, 166, in prehistory, 21, 24, 29, 31, 33, 35,
171, 190, 193, 198, 203, 204, 205, 206, 226, 227
207, 214, 218 prehistoric religion of, 45, 50, 51, 56, 57,
Christmas, 106, 154, 162, 165 58, 59, 60, 74, 79, 83, 129, 173, 210
Cichuil, 151, 152 in the sagas, 7, 12, 52, 141, 152, 157
Cimbri, 20, 35, 186, 209, 227 in Viking age, 93
Cimbric Peninsula, 25, 26, 34, 50 Deor, 3, 208
Coifi, 45, 113, 193, 194, 195, 218, 229 Diana, 133, 135
as Odin, 193 Diarmuid, 156, 159, 216
Coligny calendar, 42, 210 Dionysos, 79, 80, 81, 83, $4, 86, 88, 89, 90,
Conaire Mor, 150, 151, 152, 153, 156, 157, 118, 120, 160, 173, 191, 212
158, 161, 178 Djed column, 78, 83 see also Osiris
Constantine III, 37, 228 Domaldi, 127, 128, 150, 215
Copenhagen, 3, 27, 55, 58, 208 Donegal kingship rite, 126, 215
Corded Ware culture, 226 Dragons, 2, 11, 12, 14, 19, 23, 140, 179,
Cotton, Sir Robert Bruce, 13, 231 199, 200
Crete, 1, 26, 35, 80 Drowning, ritual, 5, 23, 53, 56, 60, 84, 87,
Cronos, 189 115, 133, 135, 159, 178, 179
CuChulainn, 132, 158, 165, 186 Dun Ailinne, 158
CuRof Mac Dairi, 132, 158, 165, 176, 177
Cybele, 76, 84, 86, 87, 100, 118, 133, 213 Eadgils, 11, 14, 200, 209, 228 see also Adils;
Athils
Da Derga, 150, 151, 152, 156, 157, 216 Ealh, 44, 45
Dadhyanc, 178, 217 Eanmund, 11
Dagda, 104, 112, 151, 153, 154, 155, 176, East Anglia, 14, 190, 197, 198, 199, 203,
PAG 204, 218, 229, 230
Danes, 8, 9, 10, 25, 32, 35, 36, 40, 63, 66, Easter, 42, 43, 76
73, 74, 98, 99, 114, 136, 137, 139, 141, Ebbsfleet, 19, 37
143, 148, 166, 167, 197, 202, 204, 228 Edgtheow, 8
see also Denmark Edmund, king of East Anglia see St
Deira, 184, 229 see also Angles; Bernicia, Edmund
Northumbria Edmund I, king of England, 70, 230
Dejbjerg, 57, 114, 228 see also Wagons, Edwin, king of Northumbria, 113, 193,
ritual use of, 229
Demeter, 75, 79, 80, 81, 117, 118, 119, 133, Efnissien, 153
173, 188, 215 Egtved Girl, 34, 79, 206, 227
Black Demeter of the Phigalian cave, Elbe river, 24, 25
fA, Elcmar, 154, 155, 157
as Erinys, 117, 215 Eleusis, 81, 82, 85, 173, 176, 177, 227, 228
see also Eleusis see also Demeter

239
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

Elfshot, 106 123, 131, 148, 151, 164

Elk-Frodi, 140 and Gerthr, 92, 125, 129, 134
Elves, 7, 50, 101, 102, 103, 105, 106, 107, and Ing, 97, 99, 128
108, 109, 110, 111, 115, 142, 147, 151, name related to Freyja, 87
213, 214, 215 ‘peace’ of, 124, 155
offerings to, 31 and sacrifice, 130, 132
Emhain Macha, 158 same god as Njorthr, 88
Eostre, 42, 43 as Vanir god, 50, 58, 69, 85, 172
Ergi, 191, 218 ‘wagon-tour’ of, 93, 94, 95, 166
Ergot, 56, 57, 82, 136, 188, 192 Fricco, 90 see also Freyr
Etain, The Wooing of, 154 Frig, 44, 47, 49
Ethelbert, King, 19, 198 Frisians, 11, 24, 38
Ethelred II, King 93 Froda, 148
Eudoses, 24 Frodo, 124
Evans, Sir Arthur, 1, 5 Frothi, 124, 125, 148, 156, 180, 215
Eye, Danish king, 124, 159
burning, 9, 114, 180 Frétha-frith, 124
loss of, 155, 156, 180 Funnel-necked beakers, 30
one-eyed figures, 49, 151, 152, 156, 159, Fyolnir, 159, 217
161
symbolism, 68, 156, 190 Gabiae, 51 see Mothers, The; Gefion
Farming, 22, 28, 30, 33, 35, 43, 59, 66, 70, Gaul, 21
74, 76, 77, 79, 82, 84, 86, 91, 92, 100, Gawain, Sir, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 171,
105, 111, 173, 174, 181, 206, 217, 226 208, 217
Feddersen Wierde, 36, 228 Geat, 171, 192, 218
Feis, 126 the lost tale of Maethild and, 3
Fenrir, 47, 161 Geats, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 27, 59, 140,
Fer Caille, 151, 152, 153, 161, 166, 216 142, 143, 167, 168, 171, 185, 199, 200,
Fergus Mac Roich, 133, 134, 157, 159 209
Fersley, 31, 157, 158 Gefion, 51, 58, 59, 60, 88, 99, 100, 132,
Foederati, 38 139, 194, 212, 216
Franks, 11, 14, 24, 38, 123, 124, 229, 230 as Geofon, 58
Frau Holda, 114 see also Freyja
Frau Perchta, 114 Gefn (Freyja), 51
Frazer, Sir JG, 135, 136, 166, 212, 216, 218 Genii Cucullati, 103
The Golden Bough, 135, 216 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 2
Freawaru, 148, 149 Gerald of Wales, 126, 215
Freyja, 50, 51, 58, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 91, Germania, 16, 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 37, 39, 48
109, 112, 115, 116, 118, 129, 132, 134,
B}

52, 53, 60, 91, 117, 125, 147, 155, 180,

148, 149, 151, 172, 177, 185, 186, 191, 191, 209 see also Germans
213 Germania (Tacitus), 21, 24, 26, 85, 125,
Freyr, 155, 185, 191, 209, 227
and Angus, 156 Germans, 3, 5, 14, 15, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24,
and Beli, 89, 157 26, 32, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 44, 48, 49, 51,
cult-animals of, 88, 89, 185, 193 53, 59, 65, 87, 89, 98, 102, 114, 126,
death of, 91, 161, 180, 157, 188, 201, 202, 209, 210, 211, 214,
and elves, 103, 104 227, 228
as embodied in the person of the king, Gerthr, 91, 92, 104, 125, 129, 134, 156
124, 125, 127, 136, 159, Getica, 26, 210, 229
as fertility god, 84, 89, 90, 91, 120, 206 Gidig, 108, 120, 189

240
 INDEX

Gildas, 37, 229 Gudrun lundasol, 125, 129

Glob, Peter Vilhelm, 30, 33, 55, 57, 129, Gullinbursti, 88 see also Boar symbolism
210, 211, 215 Gullveig, 172, 188, 217
The Bog People, 55 Gundestrup cauldron, 90, 104, 131, 151,
Goddess, 42, 50, 57, 103, 112, 113, 115, 159, 188, 213
118, 129, 172, 210, 211 see also individual Gunnar Helming, 94, 95, 166, 213, 230
names Gunnlod, 174, 177
Gododdin, 229 Gweir, 130
Goodmanham, 45, 193, 194, 229 Gwion Bach, 116 see also Taliesin
Gé6tar, 14 see also Geats Gylfi, 58
G6tland, 27
Grauballe Man, 55, 56, 120, 227 Haddingjar, 196, 197, 219
Graves, Robert, 182 Hades, 81, 112, 114
Green Knight, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, Hag-riding, 118, 119, 215 see also Hags;
177, 205, 208, 217 Nightmare
Gregory of Tours, 14, 44, 46, 113, 193, Hags, 107, 114, 115, 118, 120, 127, 132,
209, 215, 229 162, 163, 164, 195, 215
Grendel, Hakon, 93, 94, 125, 129, 215, 230
and ‘brother-killing’ motif, 101, 136, Halga, 7, 145, 147, 148
as ‘dark’ side of Vanir gods, 102, 110, Halls, 106, 112, 138, 150, 157, 216
116, 120, 181, 183 Hallucinogens, 30, 57, 82
as fertility god, 181 Haumavarga, 186, 192
and the Green Knight, 163, 164 Head, the severed, 10, 12, 33, 47, 56, 58, 64,
and Irish myth, 151, 152, 153 66, 67, 69, 79, 113, 117, 129, 140, 152,
and midwinter death of the king, 161, 153, 156, 158, 159, 162, 163, 164, 165,
163, 166 171, 172, 175, 178, 179, 180, 181, 183,
passim, 2, 5, 7, 13, 14, 15, 40, 123, 201 185, 186, 190, 199, 204, 205, 206, 213
place names mentioning, 197 Healfdane, 7
severed head of, 178, 180, 181, 182, 183 Heardred, 11
watery abode linked to sacred lake of Heid, 172, 188, 217 see also Gullveig
Nerthus, 59, 60, 85 Hel, 47, 76, 161, 189
and dog/wolf symbolism, 189, 190, Helgi, 141, 147, 148 see also Halga
192 Henbane, 30
and ‘Yuletide’ troll, 142, 143, 144, 147 Hengist, 10, 19, 20, 38, 126, 196, 198, 219,
Grendel’s mother, 228 see also Horsa
and ‘brother-killing’ motif, 136, Heorogar, 7, 146
as ‘dark’ side of Vanir gods, 109, 110, Heorot, 7, 8, 9, 54, 123, 136, 137, 138, 139,
182 144, 145, 148, 149, 153, 159, 161, 166,
and dog/wolf symbolism, 189, 190 171, 181, 217
as a fertility goddess, 79, 102, 116, 120 Heoroweard see Hjorvard
and Irish myth, 153 Herakles, 111
passim 2, 5, 10, 14, 166, 171, 195, 203 Hereward the Wake, 1
and ritual regicide, 144, 147, 151, 161, Herminones, 23
164 Hjorvard (Heoroweard), 141, 146, 147, 148,
and ‘straddling’ motif, 119, 131, 132, 149, 152, 153
136 Hlafdige, hlaford (lady, lord), 33
watery abode linked to sacred lake of Hleidargard, 139, 140, 142 see also Lejre
Nerthus, 52, 59, 60, 85, 100 Hodr, 47, 76, 133, 134, 157
Grindylow, 115, 120 Horsa, 19, 20, 37, 38, 126, 196, 219, 228 see
Gronw Pebr, 134 also Hengist
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

Horse, 34, 45, 88, 92, 117, 126, 127, 193, Isis, 75, 77, 81, 83, 84, 86, 91, 132, 134
196, 208, 215 Istaevones, 23
Horus, 77, 132, 180
Hotherus, 135 see also Hodr Jaettestuer (giant’s graves), 29
Hott (Hjalti), 140, 141, 142 Jordanes, 26, 210, 229
Hrethel, 8 Judith, 13
Hrethric, 145, 146, 201 Jutes, 24, 35, 36, 37, 38, 126, 128
Hroar, 138, 144, 148 see also Hrothgar Jutland, 24, 27, 28, 30, 33, 37, 54, 57, 90,
Hrolf Kraki, 138 passim, 139, 140, 141, 142, 98, 226, 228
143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 149, 153, 157,
161, 163, 167, 195, 200, 201, 216 Kalevala, 69, 70
Hrothgar, 7 passim, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 35, 36, Kent, 14, 19, 37, 38, 44, 45, 54, 126, 228,
63, 120, 123, 136, 138, 139, 144, 145, 229 see also Jutes
146, 148, 161, 164, 167, 194, 201, 203 Keres, 110, 111, 112, 114, 115, 118, 127,
see also Hroar 143, 189, 214
Hrothmund, 145, 146, 201, 219 King of the Wood
Hrothulf see Hrolf Kraki The Golden Bough, 135, 136, 137, 161, 166
Hrunting, 10, 11 see also Frazer, Sir JG
Hugin, 19, 47 Kirk, Robert, 119, 131, 215
Hungary, 20 Knossos, 5
Huns, 36, 228 Kvasir, 172, 174, 175, 217
Hvit, Queen, 139, 140 Kykeon, 82
Hygd, 11
Hygelac, 8, 10, 11 passim, 14, 20, 132, 140, Lacnunga manuscript, 107, 230
144, 148, 209, 228 Ladon river, 117, 118, 133
Lady Bertilak, 162, 163, 164
Idols, 40, 210 Landvaettir, 103
Idunn, 134 Langobards, 24, 27, 65, 209
Iliad, The 5 Lejre, 54, 58, 139, 143, 157, 159, 160, 210,
Inanna, 75 217 see also Heorot
Indo-European languages, 86, 102, 126, Letters ofAlexander to Aristotle, 13, 190, 208,
130, 156, 171, 173, 182, 184, 188, 214, 209
215, 216, 217, 218, 226 Leucippe, 118, 215
Ing, 36, 65, 97, 98, 99, 120, 124, 128, 132, Lif and Lifthrasir, 161
148, 149, 150, 154, 156, 166, 181, 196, Liknites, 82 see also Winnowing fan, ritual
197, 206, 212, 213, 216 see also Ingui use of
Ingaevones, 23, 24, 26, 36, 40, 53, 59, 79, Lindow Man, 55, 211
80, 83, 97, 98, 100, 124, 128, 148, 149, Litha, 42, 69
167, 181, 196 Lleu, 134, 157
Ingcel, 152, 156, 157 Loki, 47, 69, 76, 133
Ingeld, 145, 148, 149, 152, 153, 157, 216 ESDys7
Ingui, 99, 213 see also Ing Lucan, 49
Ingvaeones, 98 see also Ingaevones Lug, 49, 51
Ingwine, 36, 52, 98 see also Ingaevones Lugaid, 133, 134, 157
Ireland, 93, 103, 104, 106, 113, 115, 126, Lyssa, 186
1$2; 155,157, 226,227 Lytir, 96, 213
Iron Age, 21, 22, 35, 54, 55, 79, 86, 104,
147, 167, 195, 209, 227 Mac Cecht, 152 ;
Iron John, 55, 211 Macc Oc, 154, 155, 156, 157, 216 see also
Ishtar, 75 Angus

242
 INDEX

Maethhild and Geat, 3 as a form of Gefion, 58

Mannus, 23, 206 as a male divinity, 86, 87
Marius, Caius, 21, 227 related to Njorthr, 58, 86
Mars, 43, 49 Newgrange, 104, 154, 155, 156, 158, 216,
Matholwch, 153 226
Mead of inspiration, 159, 174, 176, 179, Niflheim, 47
180, 184, 191, 205 Nightmare, 119, 120, 131, 181
Medb of Connacht, 133 Nile river, 77, 84, 132
Medusa, 182 Njal’s Saga, 113
Megalithic age, 5, 28, 31, 32, 39, 54, 80, 91, Njorthr, 50, 58, 85, 86, 87, 88, 91, 118,
105, 106, 154, 157, 194, 195, 226 120, 129, 213 see also Nerthus
Mellitus, Abbot, 46, 194, 229 ’ Noatun, 86
Mercia, 14, 197, 204 Norman Conquest, 2
Mercury, 43, 49, 192, 211 Norns, 113, 142, 144, 215
Merovingians, 123, 199 Northumbria, 14, 41, 45, 113, 193, 194,
Mesolithic age, 27, 28, 114, 226 198, 201, 218, 229 see also Angles;
Middle Earth, 9, 47, 101 Bernicia; Deira
Middle (Near) East, 28, 76, 79, 80, 83, 84, Nowell, Laurence, 13, 231
85, 86, 88, 91 Nuada, 127, 166, 215
Midir, 154, 155 Nuitones, 24
Midsummer, 31, 106
Midwinter, 31, 42, 56, 60, 89, 104, 129, Oder river, 33
135, 136, 137, 143, 147, 150, 154, 156, Odin,
157, 158, 160, 161, 162, 163, 165, 166, attributes of, 19, 46, 47, 48, 112, 186,
216,217 189
Mimir, 156, 172, 178, 180 as ‘Beowulf’/Barley-wolf, 194, 202
Minerva, 49 as a Celtic god in origin, 49
Minotaur, 1,5 as ‘Coif’, 193
Modranicht, 42, 43, 51, 59, 206 death of, 117, 161, 181
Moon, 42, 49, 77 establishment of cult, 166, 195, 203
Morgan le Fay, 112, 163, 164, 166, 171 and ‘ergi’, 191
Mérrighan, 104, 112, 113, 118, 151, 152, as father of Balder, 75
161, 163 as father of Skjold, 58, 66, 73, 183, 194
Mothers, the (Matronae), 42, 43, 50, 58, and Mimir’s head, 156, 178, 180, as
59, 103, 206 one-eyed, 49, 180, 218
Mound People, 33, 34, 36, 55, 79 and the theft of the ‘mead of
Muein, 177 inspiration’, 174, 175, 176,177, 191,
Munin, 47 192
Mycenae, 26, 35 and the war with the Vanir, 172, 182
Mysteries, 53, 81, 133 see also Eleusis Odysseus, 112
Offa, king of Mercia, 197
Nanna, 75, 135 Olaf Haraldson (St Olaf), 105
Near East see Middle (Near) East Olaf Tryggvason, 93, 94, 95, 125, 129, 213,
Neolithic age, 5, 28, 30, 31, 51, 70, 74, 79, 214, 215, 230
80, 91, 103, 104, 105, 128, 154, 157, Olaf, Elf of Geirstad, 105
158, 182, 210, 226 Old English (people) , 2, 6, 19, 41, 42, 43,
Nerthus, 53, 54, 57, 58, 59, 74, 79, 80, 82, 50, 102, 103, 148 see also Angles; Anglii;
83, 84, 85, 86, 95, 97, 99, 103, 104, 114, Anglo-Saxons
AVS, AA7 A913, 1395155,159) 160; Old English (language) see Anglo-Saxon
181, 182, 183, 195, 213 language and literature

243
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

Old English Rune Poem, 98, 213 53, 87, 98, 100, 209, 210, 211, 227, 228
Olympians, 80, 91, 111, 173 Rome, 20, 22, 26, 35, 48, 76, 83, 84, 85,
Om passage grave, 31, 104, 157, 210, 226 106, 209, 227, 228
Onela, 11, 144, 200, 228 Runes, 98, 228
Oral tradition, 2, 13, 65, 160
Orkney, 30 Sabazios, 80 see also Dionysos
Orpheus, 178, 218 Samhain, 150, 152, 155, 157, 216
Oseberg ship burial, 58 Sampsd Pellervoinen, 69
Osiris, 75, 77, 79, 81, 83, 84, 86, 88, 89, 91, Sarama, 176
132, 134, 180, 212 Saxo Grammaticus, 90, 135, 148, 149, 153,
157, 212, 215, 216
Passage graves, 30, 104 see also @m Saxons, 24, 25, 35, 36, 38, 51, 83, 101, 197,
passage grave 209, 228, 229, 230
Passion of St Christopher, 13, 190 Scandinavia, 26, 65, 70, 72, 74, 79, 84, 106,
Paulinus, Bishop, 113 125, 129, 139, 202, 212, 215, 226
Peg O’Nell, 115 Scandza, 24, 26, 28, 32, 34, 65, 84, 91, 99,
Peg Powler, 115 210
Pekko, 69, 212 Scef, 64, 65, 66, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 85, 196,
Perseus, 182 212, 230
Pietroasa neck-ring, 132 Schleswig-Holstein, 24, 26
Poland, 20, 27 Schliemann, Heinrich, 1
Porridge (ritual meal), 30, 31, 56, 96, 104, Scucca, 190, 218
106, 111, 136, 176, 187, 217 Scyld Scefing, 7 passim, 16, 19, 36, 58, 60,
Poseidon, 117, 118, 133 63, 64, 65, 69, 70, 72, 73, 79, 199, 212,
Pryderi, 118, 130 230
Prydwen, 72 Scyldings, 7, 8, 13, 15, 20, 54, 63, 64, 73,
Ptolemy of Alexandria, 25 128, 137, 143, 144, 146, 148, 149, 152,
167, 183, 201, 202
Quffah, 72, 212 Scylfings, 14, 200
Seithr, 109, 118, 130, 144, 153, 191, 218
Raedwald, 198, 199, 202, 203, 219, 229, Semnones, 45, 108, 209, 227
231 see also Sutton Hoo Seth, 77, 84, 134
Ragnarok, 47, 89, 117, 157, 160, 177, 189, Sheaf, 64, 65, 69, 70, 73, 74, 75, 77, 79, 82,
217 83, 86, 89, 99, 116, 120, 128, 166, 183,
Rahu, 175, 178, 182 194, 196, 206, 212, 230 see also Scef
Rallinge, image of Freyr from, 90, 104, Shield symbolism, 70, 72, 82, 116, 194,
131, 230 199, 230
Rappendam, 58 Sidhe, 111 see also Tuatha De Danaan
Ravens, 19, 47, 49, 112, 114 Sigurd, 95, 179, 186
Reudigni, 24 Sin (moon god), 72, 212
Rex Nemorensis, 135, 166 Sinfjotli, 186, 187
Rheda, 43, 211 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 164, 208, 217
Rhiannon, 118, 130 Skara Brae, 30, 80
Rhine river, 20, 21, 24, 33, 51, 227, 228 Skateholm, 27, 114, 226
Rhineland, 49 Skathi, 118, 129, 215
Riding symbolism, 10, 119, 131, 132 Skirnir, 92, 125, 134
Ritual deposition, 35, 227 Skjold, 58, 65, 73, 99, 124, 194, 212 see also
Robin Hood, 1 Scyld
Roggenwolf, 188, 192, 218 Skjoldungs, 58, 137, 146, 201 see also
Romans, 20, 21, 22, 36, 37, 38, 43, 48, 49, 51, Scyldings

244
 INDEX

Skuld, 113, 141, 142, 144, 146, 147, 148, Tacitus, Cornelius (cont.)
149, 151, 152, 153, 157, 161, 163, 167, Germania, 21, 24, 26, 85, 125, 155, 185,
175 191, 209, 227
Sleipnir, 47 Taliesin, 72, 116, 117, 212
Snorri Sturluson, 42, 48, 51, 58, 72, 85, 86, Spoils of the Abyss, 72, 130, 212
88, 89, 91, 92, 124, 127, 158, 172, 186, Tammuz, 75, 91, 212
PSII OD 21 21392159179 j80231 Taranis, 49 see Sucellos; Thunor
Heimskringla, 94 Tegid Voel, 116
Prose Edda, 48, 58, 72, 88, 91, 92, 103, Tennyson, Alfred, 63, 212
191, 213, 216, 217, 231 Teutoburg forest massacre, 21
Skdldskaparmadl, 85 Teutones, 20, 35, 186, 209, 227
Ynglingatal, 95, 127, 129, 158, 159, 172, ' Thietmar of Merseburg, 54, 58, 139, 211
2A Thokk, 47
Soma, 175, 176, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, Thor, 47, 48, 60, 87, 161
184, 186, 192, 217, 218 Thorir Hound’s Foot, 140
Sovereignty, 117, 126, 127, 134, 147, 148, Thunor, 43, 44, 47, 49
161, 166, 167, 177, 196 Titans, 79, 111, 189, 214
St Augustine, 19, 41, 46, 198, 229 Tiw, 43, 44, 47, 49
St Christopher, 190 Tolkien, JRR., 2, 4, 73, 101, 120, 124, 147,
Passion of St Christopher, 13, 190 186, 208, 211, 212, 217, 231
St Edmund, 204, 205, 206, 219, 230 ‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics’, 4
St Gregory, 14, 44, 46, 113, 193, 209, 215, The Hobbit, 2
IDS, The Lord of the Rings, 2, 4
St Olaf (Olaf Haraldson), 105, 214 Tollund Man, 54, 55, 56, 90, 120, 227
Stonehenge, 30, 158 Tragedy, origins of, 80, 90
Strabo, 160, 217 Trance states, 30, 45, 108, 109, 142
Strangulation, 54, 55, 127, 130, 131, 133, Trolls, 2
136, 188, 189 see also Neck-ring ‘Yuletide troll’, 142
Suarines, 24 Troy, 1
Sucellos, 49 Trundholm sun chariot, 34, 35, 227
Suebi, 24, 56, 83, 228 Tuatha De Danaan, 103, 104, 127, 155,
Sun, 14, 30, 34, 35, 42, 43, 50, 71, 77, 88, 176, 215
96, 99, 104, 117, 125, 154, 156, 157, Tuisto, 23
158, 161, 166, 196, 199, 209, 227 Tungri, 21
Surt, 157, 161, 189 Tustrup, 30, 106, 210, 226
Sutton Hoo, 4, 117, 198, 199, 200, 202, Tyr, 47, 189
208, 219, 229, 231 see also Raedwald Tyttla, 199, 200, 229
Suttung, 174, 175, 177
Svein Forkbeard, 93 Uffington White Horse, 126, 215
Sweden, 14, 20, 24, 26, 27, 34, 36, 54, 58, Ulfhednar, 186, 189, 218
90, 94, 95, 97, 114, 141, 144, 167, 194, UIl, 72
199, 200, 219, 226, 228, 230 Uppsala, 14, 54, 90, 159, 191, 200
Swedes, 11, 14, 58, 94, 95, 97, 119, 127, Ursula, 7
128, 129, 142, 144, 200, 202, 203, 209, Valhalla, 112, 161, 177
228 Valkyrie, 112, 113, 116, 118, 146, 161, 189,
Syr (Freyja), 116, 129 190, 214
Tacitus, Cornelius, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, Vanir, 50, 51, 53, 58, 59, 60, 69, 79, 84, 85,
27, 35, 40, 44, 45, 48, 49, 51, 53, 54, 56, 57, 91, 100, 102, 103, 151, 152, 160, 163,
59, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 118, 128, 133, 167, 167, 168, 185, 186, 188, 189, 191, 192,
185, 191, 209, 213, 214, 227 193, 194, 196, 203, 206, 211, 214

245
 BEOWULF AND GRENDEL

Vanir (cont.) Wiglaf, 11, 12, 23, 200

as Elves, 102, 103,105, 106, 107, 108, William of Malmesbury, 64, 212, 230
109 Windeby Girl, 56
negative side of, 110, 112, 115, 118, Winnowing fan, ritual use of, 81, 82, 178
119, 120, 136, 144, Woden, 32, 43, 44, 46, 49, 51, 64, 192, 193,
war with the Aesir, 172, 173, 175, 181, 196, 202, 203 see also Odin
182, 183, Woexstan, 11
Vargr, 186, 191, 218 Wolves, 5, 10, 47, 66, 112, 114, 117, 143,
Varini, 24 152, 159, 161, 169, 185, 186, 187, 188,
Varus, Publius Quintilius, 21, 209, 227 189, 190, 192, 195, 196, 200, 202, 204,
Vedbaek, 27, 226 205, 206, 207, 218, 219
Vegetal symbolism, 43, 69, 75, 88, 91 Wonders of the East, 13, 190
Vikings, 5, 14, 23, 54, 59, 84, 86, 92, 93, Woodhenge, 158, 217
139, 145, 159, 197, 198, 204, 211, 217, Wuffa, 199, 200, 202, 229
230 Wuffingas, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203,
Volva, 109, 118, 124, 127, 130, 160 204, 205, 206, 219, 230 see also
Vortigern, 37, 38, 228 Raedwald
Votadini, 184 see also Gododdin Wulfings, 200, 201, 202
Wyrd, 113
Wagons, ritual use of, 53, 57, 83, 87, 88,
124, 213 Yeats, W B, 156
Waldhere, 3, 208 Yeavering, 45, 46, 211
Wanderer, 3 Ygedrasil, 47, 161, 177, 192
Wantsum Channel, 19, 209 Yifig, 108, 120, 189
Wealtheow, 8 passim, 132, 145, 201 Ynglings, 97, 119, 127, 128, 129, 167
Wehha, 199, 200, 201 Yrsa, Queen, 141, 142
Weland, 10, 211 Yule, 42, 89, 140, 142, 143, 146, 161, 163,
Wergild, 23 166, 179
Weser, 25, 36
Weser river, 25, 36 Zagreus, 80 see also Dionysos
Wessex, 13, 14, 37, 64, 65, 73, 90, 197, 200, Zealand, 27, 34, 54, 58, 104, 139, 226
230 see also Saxons ° Zeus, 79, 80, 111, 189, 214
Widsith, 3, 65, 145, 148, 197, 201, 202, 208,
212, 229

246
 UK £12.99
US $17.95 (Can. $19.95)

compelling evidence that the legend of Beowulf and

be dismissed asa ae anaka is based on historical

h peoplethatinvelved the ritual taking of a sacred

withhuman sacrifice ..

an MAiin Coltic studies. He confibuted idare Uaod Draco”

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: andaut or oFWemona theWasteland: A Quest anthe LYfaiilarel| ites

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Cover design: 3+Co. (www.threeandco.com)

Sf ISBN 13: 978-1-84293-153-0
ISBN-10: 1-84293-153-9
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