Post by Andorinha on Jan 15, 2009 20:37:54 GMT -6
Beowulf ARCHIVE: Fact or Fiction?
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Message 1 of 16 in Discussion
From: Storrmrider
Sent: 10/31/2002 11:39 AM
I am assuming that this poem is a historical fiction.
Were Scyld Shefing, Beow, and Hrothgar and their descendents real people in the history of the Danes?
What about the Geats? What modern day country is descended from them?
What actual historical events took place during the time that this poem takes place?
What years in history does this take place?
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Message 2 of 16 in Discussion
From: Zauber
Sent: 10/31/2002 12:45 PM
Hygelac was an historical figure, appearing in other documents as well as 'Beowulf'. But I don't think any of the other people have been identified as historical. Since the events in the story took place around or before 500 A.D., it's not surprising that we don't have better records from these times. Also, Beowulf was originally oral, and so I am sure it accumulated more and more information and embellishment as time passed. It probably could be terms "historical fiction".
The Geats were Swedes. Check out www.angelcynn.org.uk/ and www.jagular.com/beowulf/chronology.shtml for more historical perspective. A few events and their dates are:
400, Germanic people begin to settle in Britain
590, St Augustine starts to convert the English
625, the ship's burial at Sutton Hoo
700, Charlemagne
1066, Battle of Hastings
I'm sure others can add to this!
Zaube
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Message 3 of 16 in Discussion
From: Slade
Sent: 10/31/2002 10:35 PM
Zauber's reply I think is a good summary of the situation. Beowulf is essentially historical fiction, probably 'set' in the 5th or 6th century. Hygelac is essentially the only documented 'historical' characters, though other characters like Hrothgar show up in Danish stories too, so seem to be loosed based on real people, though probably actually people who were Huns or maybe Goths. Beowulf himself isn't really attested anywhere else, though 'Beowulf' could be the nickname of some historical or semi-historical person - but this is not known.
The Geats may have been Swedes, or may have been Jutlanders ('Jutes'), or possibly residents of the Baltic islands of Oeland or Goetland. Or they may have been fictional - see my n. to l. 195 in the translation edition.
--B.
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Message 4 of 16 in Discussion
From: Zauber
Sent: 11/1/2002 6:36 AM
Thanks for the additional information, Slade. I hadn't read that Hrothgar was also an historical figure.
Have you come across any conjecture or ideas as to what/who Grendel might have been, or is he purely fictional? He seems more complex than a 'standard' monster such as the dragons, with the references to him being a descendant of Cain.
Zauber
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Message 5 of 16 in Discussion
From: Storrmrider
Sent: 11/1/2002 1:17 PM
Perhaps during the time that Beowulf takes place, Grendel was something like Attila the Hun, Hitler, or Sadam Hussein was to their ages. What other dominating destructive rulers, dictators, or warrior types can you think of whose actions can be attributed to the way Grendel is described in Beowulf?
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Message 6 of 16 in Discussion
From: Slade
Sent: 11/1/2002 2:06 PM
Well, Hrothgar isn't historical in the same way as Hygelac (appears) to be. It's more like if 200 years from now one of us wrote a story with the name 'Winston Churchill' in it as a 'heroic' leader, but without using England or WWII or any of Churchill's actually biography in the story. It's essentially just Hrothgar's name which is (semi-)historical. Halfdane, Helga, Hrethric and Hrothulf are 'historical' in the same way actually.
Here's a chart excerpt from Lars Hemmingsen's dissertation (ref. in biblio. at heorot.dk):
So one can see that 'Hrothgar' = 'Roar' (Norse) = the migration-period Hun leader 'Roas', the father of the famous 'Attila', who has become the 'Adils' of Beowulf. Likewise the Hun 'Octar' is the Scylfing leader in Beowulf named 'Ohthere'. 'Hrothulf', who corresponds to the 'historical' 'Rodulf' (who I believe is a Goth or a Herul, not a Hun) is also the hero of the Norse saga 'Rolf saga kraka', though he is a villian in 'Beowulf'.
I doubt Grendel was modelled on any of the migration-period rulers, like Attila. Attila appears in sagas and stories, but always as a great king - he even features in the Icelandic Elder Edda. So, Attila is remembered as a heroic king, if rather warlike.
If Grendel has a model in 'fact', it may be from a 'local' (wherever 'local' is for Beowulf, since we are not certain exactly where (or when!) it was composed) bandit (or dacoit, if you will
). But, more likely, Grendel derives simply from a folktale of some sort, of evil creatures living in the fens. The nastiness of fens and their eerie feel requires no real-life model for people to come up with creatures like Grendel!
A lot of 19th-c. Beowulf-criticism saw Grendel and the dragon as allegories for abstract 'evils'. So some said that Grendel was some sort of personification of a plague, or spring flooding, or storms or whatever, and similarly for the dragon. This isn't a popular view anymore, and I myself doubt that it is very relevant.
hope this helps
cheers,
B.
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Message 7 of 16 in Discussion
Sent: 11/1/2002 2:09 PM
This message has been deleted by the author.
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Message 8 of 16 in Discussion
From: Slade
Sent: 11/1/2002 2:23 PM
chart didn't display very well (microsoft again!) so here's another try:
__________________________________________
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Message 9 of 16 in Discussion
From: Zauber
Sent: 11/4/2002 1:23 PM
Thanks for the cleaned up chart. I will peruse it this evening.
Zauber
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Message 10 of 16 in Discussion
From: sparrow
Sent: 11/21/2002 11:06 AM
Hello. I am late in joining this study, and I am a little confused about Slade's chart. Is it in the nature of a family tree or does it deal more with linguistics?
Thank you.
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Message 11 of 16 in Discussion
From: Slade
Sent: 11/21/2002 11:59 AM
Vertically the chart is genealogical (father-son), horizontally it is philological. E.g. Healfdene of _Beowulf_ is the 'same person' as the Norse Haldan (and Norse Halfdan), and the historical 'real' person Huldin; Healfdene is the father of Hrothgar & Halga, just as Haldan (in the Norse) is the father of Roar and Helgi. Does that help?
Notice that the 'real-life' Huns have been split/doubled into the Scyldings and the Scylfings - i.e. the Hun Huldin has become both the Norse Haldan and the Norse Halfdan, the Hun Roas is Roar, the son of Haldan, but the brother of the Hun Octar becomes the son of Halfdan, &c.
The Migration-Age rulers (Huns mainly) of the Continent were carried in Germanic memory/legend to Scandinavia and England, though the actual figures were 'naturalised' and confused, &c. It's interesting to see the 'folk-etymology' of the names - i.e. the name of the 'historical' Huldin doesn't mean anything in Norse or Old English, so we see it is 'changed' to Healf-dene, Half-dan (both meaning 'Half Dane').
---B.
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Message 12 of 16 in Discussion
From: sparrow
Sent: 12/29/2002 7:44 PM
Boy, has my attention been diverted! A prompt reply deserves equally prompt appreciation.
Thank you Slade, your explanation does clear things up considerably. One remaining cloud: To whom does Ohthere correspond?
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Message 13 of 16 in Discussion
From: Zauber
Sent: 12/30/2002 9:18 AM
Of course I defer to Slade's knowledge on this, but I read it as the two sons in question being Hrothgar, Roar, Roe,Ottar, Ohthere, or Roas; and Halga, Helgi, Helge, or Octar.
I based this not on how their names began, which I first thought was the clue, but by THEIR sons: Hrethric, Hrokr, Adils, Eadgils, Attila.
Hoping that is correct, I remain you servant, Zauber!
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Message 14 of 16 in Discussion
From: Slade
Sent: 1/1/2003 9:13 PM
Sparrow - Ohthere corresponds to the 'Norse' Ottar and the 'real-life' Hun Octar (son of Huldin and uncle of Attila). And thus Beowulf's Hrothgar corresponds to the 'Norse' Roar, Saxo's Roe and the 'real-life' Hun Roas. Halga/Helgi/Helge appears to be an addition common to both Norse & Anglo-Saxon, but has no counterpart in 'the Huns'. Huldin's family is 'split' in Beowulf and the Norse legends into two separate families, the Scyldings & Scylfings. Roas's descendants are attributed to Ohthere/Ottar instead. And Hrothulf appear to be 'grafted on' from the 'original person' of Rodulf, who was a Herul.
B.
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Message 15 of 16 in Discussion
From: sparrow
Sent: 1/2/2003 9:03 AM
Thank you both! I think I am starting to get it.
____________________________________
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Message 16 of 16 in Discussion
From: BelfalasBoy
Sent: 5/14/2003 6:43 AM
I have just been reading your posts and find the question an interesting one of what historical persons or actual peoples can be ascribed from Beowulf.
It is true to say that it is as an historical document that it has been mainly examined and dissected. In 1925 Prof. Archibald Strong translated Beowulf into verse, but in 1921 he had declared; "Beowulf is the picture of a whole civilization, of the Germania which Tacticus describes. The main interest which the poem has for us is thus not a purely literary interest. Beowulf is an important historical document". Of course, Tolkien the Philologist strongly reputed this narrow attitude to the work as a pure piece of research material, as clearly stated in his famous critical lecture, "The monsters and the critics". He goes on the state that "The illusion of historical truth and perspective, that has made Beowulf seem such an attractive quarry, is largely a product of art". One cannot argue either with the earlier post thats emphasises the valuable knowledge gleaned from Beowulf - that the poem has yielded essential information, such as the date and identity of Hygelac.
Tolkien, when discussing the critics who dismiss it as a "wild-folk tale of the North, and when grappling with the effects of have a christian scholar messing together a hotch-potch of unrelated historical event for a pagan culture he was aware of but ultimately viewed with a later crgitian attitude, in fact Cain is mentioned as the ancestor of Grendel and giants in general.
Later on in the essay, Tolkien state that: "Beowulf is not an actual historical picture of historic Denmark or Geatland or Sweden about A.D 500. But it is (if with certain minor defects) on a general view a self-consistent picture, a construction bearing clearly the marks of design and thought. The whole must have succeeded admirably in creating in the minds of the poets contemporaries the illusion of surveying a past, pagan but noble and fraught with deep significance - a past that itself had depth and reached backward into a dark antiqity of sorrow. This impression of depth is an effect and justification of the use of episodes and allusions to mold tales, mostly darker, more pagan, and desperate than the foreground. I many ways its clear that the unknown beowulf poet is regurgitating extracts from a number of legends all rlting to the main historical facts in Beowulf, and the fact that all these other "legends" have disappeared and thus leaving Beowluf as the only source, it still means that the complexity and degree of influence these stories are show to have had means that is is almost certainly historical fact that there would have existed straight forward verse and a natural sequence with Beowulf deeds, or with the fall of Hygelac; or again with the fluctuations of the feud between the houses of Hrethel the Great and Ongentheow the Swede; or with the tragedy of the Heathobards, and the treason that destroyed the Scylding dynasty. Tolkien himself comments: "Indeed, this must be admitted to be practically certain: it was the existence of such connected legends, connected in the mind, if not necessarily dealt with in chronicle fashion or in long semi-historical poems - that permitted the peculiar use of them in Beowulf". The poet assumes we are aware of these, and so any modern critisism in this area of it being long on details yet with the core of the story or plot appearing weak and thin, is a product of this fact and the unique place of the poem in Anglo-Saxon literary study.
Belf.
_________________________________________
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Message 1 of 16 in Discussion
From: Storrmrider
Sent: 10/31/2002 11:39 AM
I am assuming that this poem is a historical fiction.
Were Scyld Shefing, Beow, and Hrothgar and their descendents real people in the history of the Danes?
What about the Geats? What modern day country is descended from them?
What actual historical events took place during the time that this poem takes place?
What years in history does this take place?
________________________________________
Reply
Message 2 of 16 in Discussion
From: Zauber
Sent: 10/31/2002 12:45 PM
Hygelac was an historical figure, appearing in other documents as well as 'Beowulf'. But I don't think any of the other people have been identified as historical. Since the events in the story took place around or before 500 A.D., it's not surprising that we don't have better records from these times. Also, Beowulf was originally oral, and so I am sure it accumulated more and more information and embellishment as time passed. It probably could be terms "historical fiction".
The Geats were Swedes. Check out www.angelcynn.org.uk/ and www.jagular.com/beowulf/chronology.shtml for more historical perspective. A few events and their dates are:
400, Germanic people begin to settle in Britain
590, St Augustine starts to convert the English
625, the ship's burial at Sutton Hoo
700, Charlemagne
1066, Battle of Hastings
I'm sure others can add to this!
Zaube
_____________________________________
Reply
Message 3 of 16 in Discussion
From: Slade
Sent: 10/31/2002 10:35 PM
Zauber's reply I think is a good summary of the situation. Beowulf is essentially historical fiction, probably 'set' in the 5th or 6th century. Hygelac is essentially the only documented 'historical' characters, though other characters like Hrothgar show up in Danish stories too, so seem to be loosed based on real people, though probably actually people who were Huns or maybe Goths. Beowulf himself isn't really attested anywhere else, though 'Beowulf' could be the nickname of some historical or semi-historical person - but this is not known.
The Geats may have been Swedes, or may have been Jutlanders ('Jutes'), or possibly residents of the Baltic islands of Oeland or Goetland. Or they may have been fictional - see my n. to l. 195 in the translation edition.
--B.
________________________________________
Reply
Message 4 of 16 in Discussion
From: Zauber
Sent: 11/1/2002 6:36 AM
Thanks for the additional information, Slade. I hadn't read that Hrothgar was also an historical figure.
Have you come across any conjecture or ideas as to what/who Grendel might have been, or is he purely fictional? He seems more complex than a 'standard' monster such as the dragons, with the references to him being a descendant of Cain.
Zauber
__________________________________________
Reply
Message 5 of 16 in Discussion
From: Storrmrider
Sent: 11/1/2002 1:17 PM
Perhaps during the time that Beowulf takes place, Grendel was something like Attila the Hun, Hitler, or Sadam Hussein was to their ages. What other dominating destructive rulers, dictators, or warrior types can you think of whose actions can be attributed to the way Grendel is described in Beowulf?
__________________________________________
Reply
Message 6 of 16 in Discussion
From: Slade
Sent: 11/1/2002 2:06 PM
Well, Hrothgar isn't historical in the same way as Hygelac (appears) to be. It's more like if 200 years from now one of us wrote a story with the name 'Winston Churchill' in it as a 'heroic' leader, but without using England or WWII or any of Churchill's actually biography in the story. It's essentially just Hrothgar's name which is (semi-)historical. Halfdane, Helga, Hrethric and Hrothulf are 'historical' in the same way actually.
Here's a chart excerpt from Lars Hemmingsen's dissertation (ref. in biblio. at heorot.dk):
So one can see that 'Hrothgar' = 'Roar' (Norse) = the migration-period Hun leader 'Roas', the father of the famous 'Attila', who has become the 'Adils' of Beowulf. Likewise the Hun 'Octar' is the Scylfing leader in Beowulf named 'Ohthere'. 'Hrothulf', who corresponds to the 'historical' 'Rodulf' (who I believe is a Goth or a Herul, not a Hun) is also the hero of the Norse saga 'Rolf saga kraka', though he is a villian in 'Beowulf'.
I doubt Grendel was modelled on any of the migration-period rulers, like Attila. Attila appears in sagas and stories, but always as a great king - he even features in the Icelandic Elder Edda. So, Attila is remembered as a heroic king, if rather warlike.
If Grendel has a model in 'fact', it may be from a 'local' (wherever 'local' is for Beowulf, since we are not certain exactly where (or when!) it was composed) bandit (or dacoit, if you will
). But, more likely, Grendel derives simply from a folktale of some sort, of evil creatures living in the fens. The nastiness of fens and their eerie feel requires no real-life model for people to come up with creatures like Grendel!A lot of 19th-c. Beowulf-criticism saw Grendel and the dragon as allegories for abstract 'evils'. So some said that Grendel was some sort of personification of a plague, or spring flooding, or storms or whatever, and similarly for the dragon. This isn't a popular view anymore, and I myself doubt that it is very relevant.
hope this helps
cheers,
B.
________________________________________
Reply
Message 7 of 16 in Discussion
Sent: 11/1/2002 2:09 PM
This message has been deleted by the author.
__________________________________________
Reply
Message 8 of 16 in Discussion
From: Slade
Sent: 11/1/2002 2:23 PM
chart didn't display very well (microsoft again!) so here's another try:
__________________________________________
Reply
Message 9 of 16 in Discussion
From: Zauber
Sent: 11/4/2002 1:23 PM
Thanks for the cleaned up chart. I will peruse it this evening.
Zauber
_________________________________________
Reply
Message 10 of 16 in Discussion
From: sparrow
Sent: 11/21/2002 11:06 AM
Hello. I am late in joining this study, and I am a little confused about Slade's chart. Is it in the nature of a family tree or does it deal more with linguistics?
Thank you.
________________________________________
Reply
Message 11 of 16 in Discussion
From: Slade
Sent: 11/21/2002 11:59 AM
Vertically the chart is genealogical (father-son), horizontally it is philological. E.g. Healfdene of _Beowulf_ is the 'same person' as the Norse Haldan (and Norse Halfdan), and the historical 'real' person Huldin; Healfdene is the father of Hrothgar & Halga, just as Haldan (in the Norse) is the father of Roar and Helgi. Does that help?
Notice that the 'real-life' Huns have been split/doubled into the Scyldings and the Scylfings - i.e. the Hun Huldin has become both the Norse Haldan and the Norse Halfdan, the Hun Roas is Roar, the son of Haldan, but the brother of the Hun Octar becomes the son of Halfdan, &c.
The Migration-Age rulers (Huns mainly) of the Continent were carried in Germanic memory/legend to Scandinavia and England, though the actual figures were 'naturalised' and confused, &c. It's interesting to see the 'folk-etymology' of the names - i.e. the name of the 'historical' Huldin doesn't mean anything in Norse or Old English, so we see it is 'changed' to Healf-dene, Half-dan (both meaning 'Half Dane').
---B.
______________________________________________
Reply
Message 12 of 16 in Discussion
From: sparrow
Sent: 12/29/2002 7:44 PM
Boy, has my attention been diverted! A prompt reply deserves equally prompt appreciation.
Thank you Slade, your explanation does clear things up considerably. One remaining cloud: To whom does Ohthere correspond?
__________________________________________
Reply
Message 13 of 16 in Discussion
From: Zauber
Sent: 12/30/2002 9:18 AM
Of course I defer to Slade's knowledge on this, but I read it as the two sons in question being Hrothgar, Roar, Roe,Ottar, Ohthere, or Roas; and Halga, Helgi, Helge, or Octar.
I based this not on how their names began, which I first thought was the clue, but by THEIR sons: Hrethric, Hrokr, Adils, Eadgils, Attila.
Hoping that is correct, I remain you servant, Zauber!
_____________________________________________
Reply
Message 14 of 16 in Discussion
From: Slade
Sent: 1/1/2003 9:13 PM
Sparrow - Ohthere corresponds to the 'Norse' Ottar and the 'real-life' Hun Octar (son of Huldin and uncle of Attila). And thus Beowulf's Hrothgar corresponds to the 'Norse' Roar, Saxo's Roe and the 'real-life' Hun Roas. Halga/Helgi/Helge appears to be an addition common to both Norse & Anglo-Saxon, but has no counterpart in 'the Huns'. Huldin's family is 'split' in Beowulf and the Norse legends into two separate families, the Scyldings & Scylfings. Roas's descendants are attributed to Ohthere/Ottar instead. And Hrothulf appear to be 'grafted on' from the 'original person' of Rodulf, who was a Herul.
B.
__________________________________________
Reply
Message 15 of 16 in Discussion
From: sparrow
Sent: 1/2/2003 9:03 AM
Thank you both! I think I am starting to get it.
____________________________________
Reply
Message 16 of 16 in Discussion
From: BelfalasBoy
Sent: 5/14/2003 6:43 AM
I have just been reading your posts and find the question an interesting one of what historical persons or actual peoples can be ascribed from Beowulf.
It is true to say that it is as an historical document that it has been mainly examined and dissected. In 1925 Prof. Archibald Strong translated Beowulf into verse, but in 1921 he had declared; "Beowulf is the picture of a whole civilization, of the Germania which Tacticus describes. The main interest which the poem has for us is thus not a purely literary interest. Beowulf is an important historical document". Of course, Tolkien the Philologist strongly reputed this narrow attitude to the work as a pure piece of research material, as clearly stated in his famous critical lecture, "The monsters and the critics". He goes on the state that "The illusion of historical truth and perspective, that has made Beowulf seem such an attractive quarry, is largely a product of art". One cannot argue either with the earlier post thats emphasises the valuable knowledge gleaned from Beowulf - that the poem has yielded essential information, such as the date and identity of Hygelac.
Tolkien, when discussing the critics who dismiss it as a "wild-folk tale of the North, and when grappling with the effects of have a christian scholar messing together a hotch-potch of unrelated historical event for a pagan culture he was aware of but ultimately viewed with a later crgitian attitude, in fact Cain is mentioned as the ancestor of Grendel and giants in general.
Later on in the essay, Tolkien state that: "Beowulf is not an actual historical picture of historic Denmark or Geatland or Sweden about A.D 500. But it is (if with certain minor defects) on a general view a self-consistent picture, a construction bearing clearly the marks of design and thought. The whole must have succeeded admirably in creating in the minds of the poets contemporaries the illusion of surveying a past, pagan but noble and fraught with deep significance - a past that itself had depth and reached backward into a dark antiqity of sorrow. This impression of depth is an effect and justification of the use of episodes and allusions to mold tales, mostly darker, more pagan, and desperate than the foreground. I many ways its clear that the unknown beowulf poet is regurgitating extracts from a number of legends all rlting to the main historical facts in Beowulf, and the fact that all these other "legends" have disappeared and thus leaving Beowluf as the only source, it still means that the complexity and degree of influence these stories are show to have had means that is is almost certainly historical fact that there would have existed straight forward verse and a natural sequence with Beowulf deeds, or with the fall of Hygelac; or again with the fluctuations of the feud between the houses of Hrethel the Great and Ongentheow the Swede; or with the tragedy of the Heathobards, and the treason that destroyed the Scylding dynasty. Tolkien himself comments: "Indeed, this must be admitted to be practically certain: it was the existence of such connected legends, connected in the mind, if not necessarily dealt with in chronicle fashion or in long semi-historical poems - that permitted the peculiar use of them in Beowulf". The poet assumes we are aware of these, and so any modern critisism in this area of it being long on details yet with the core of the story or plot appearing weak and thin, is a product of this fact and the unique place of the poem in Anglo-Saxon literary study.
Belf.
