Chapter XVIII: Section I: Is "beowulf" Translated From a Scandinavian Original?

Our poem, the first original poem of any length in the English tongue, ignores England. In one remarkable passage (ll. 1931-62) it mentions with praise Offa I, the great king who ruled the Angles whilst they were still upon the Continent. But, except for this, it deals mainly with heroes who, so far as we can identify them with historic figures, are Scandinavian.

Hence, not unnaturally, the first editor boldly declared _Beowulf_ to be an Anglo-Saxon version of a Danish poem; and this view has had many supporters. The poem _must_ be Scandinavian, said one of its earliest translators, because it deals mainly with Scandinavian heroes and "everyone knows that in ancient times each nation celebrated in song its own heroes alone[227]." And this idea, though not so crudely expressed, seems really to underlie the belief which has been held by numerous scholars, that the poem is nothing more than a translation of a poem in which some Scandinavian minstrel had glorified the heroes of his own nation.

But what do we mean by "nation"? Doubtless, from the point of view of politics and war, each Germanic tribe, or offshoot of a tribe, formed an independent nation: the Longobardi had no hesitation in helping the "Romans" to cut the throats of their Gothic kinsmen: Penda the Mercian was willing to ally with the Welshmen in order to overthrow his {99} fellow Angles of Northumbria. But all this, as the history of the ancient Greeks or of the ancient Hebrews might show us, is quite compatible with a consciousness of racial unity among the warring states, with a common poetic tradition and a common literature. For purposes of poetry there was only one nation--the Germanic--split into many dialects and groups, but possessed of a common metre, a common style, a common standard of heroic feeling: and any deed of valour performed by any Germanic chief might become a fit subject for the poetry of any Germanic tribe of the heroic age.

So, if by "nation" we mean the whole Germanic race, then Germanic poetry is essentially "national." The Huns were the only non-Germanic tribe who were received (for poetical purposes) into Germania. Hunnish chiefs seem to have adopted Gothic manners, and after the Huns had disappeared it often came to be forgotten that they were not Germans. But with this exception the tribes and heroes of Germanic heroic poetry are Germanic.

If, however, by "nation" we understand the different warring units into which the Germanic race was, politically speaking, divided, then Germanic poetry is essentially "international."

This is no theory, but a fact capable of conclusive proof. The chief actors in the old Norse Volsung lays are not Norsemen, but Sigurd the Frank, Gunnar the Burgundian, Atli the Hun. In Continental Germany, the ideal knight of the Saxons in the North and the Bavarians in the South was no native hero, but Theodoric the Ostrogoth. So too in England, whilst _Beowulf_ deals chiefly with Scandinavian heroes, the _Finnsburg_ fragment deals with the Frisian tribes of the North Sea coast: _Waldere_ with the adventures of Germanic chiefs settled in Gaul, _Deor_ with stories of the Goths and of the Baltic tribes, whilst _Widsith_, which gives us a catalogue of the old heroic tales, shows that amongst the heroes whose names were current in England were men of Gothic, Burgundian, Frankish, Lombard, Frisian, Danish and Swedish race. There is nothing peculiar, then, in the fact that _Beowulf_ celebrates heroes who were not of Anglian birth. {100}

In their old home in Schleswig the Angles had been in the exact centre of Germania: with an outlook upon both the North Sea and the Baltic, and in touch with Scandinavian tribes on the North and Low German peoples on the South. That the Angles were interested in the stories of all the nations which surrounded them, and that they brought these stories with them to England, is certain. It is a mere accident that the one heroic poem which happens to have been preserved at length is almost exclusively concerned with Scandinavian doings. It could easily have happened that the history of the _Beowulf_ MS and the _Waldere_ MS might have been reversed: that the _Beowulf_ might have been cut up to bind other books, and the _Waldere_ preserved intact: in that case our one long poem would have been localized in ancient Burgundia, and would have dealt chiefly with the doings of Burgundian champions. But we should have had no more reason, without further evidence, to suppose the _Waldere_ a translation from the Burgundian than we have, without further evidence, to suppose _Beowulf_ a translation from the Scandinavian.

To deny that _Beowulf_, as we have it, is a translation from the Scandinavian does not, of course, involve any denial of the Scandinavian origin of the _story_ of Beowulf's deeds. The fact that his achievements are framed in a Scandinavian setting, and that the closest parallels to them have to be sought in Scandinavian lands, makes it probable on _a priori_ grounds that the story had its origin there. On the face of it, Muellenhoff's belief that the story was indigenous among the Angles is quite unlikely. It would seem rather to have originated in the Geatic country. But stories, whether in prose or verse, would spread quickly from the Geatas to the Danes and from the Danes to the Angles.

After the Angles had crossed the North Sea, however, this close intimacy ceased, till the Viking raids again reminded Englishmen, in a very unpleasant way, of their kinsmen across the sea. Now linguistic evidence tends to show that _Beowulf_ belongs to a time prior to the Viking settlement in England, and it is unlikely that the Scandinavian traditions embodied in _Beowulf_ found their way to England just at the time when {101} communication with Scandinavian lands seems to have been suspended. We must conclude then that all this Scandinavian tradition probably spread to the Angles whilst they were still in their old continental home, was brought across to England by the settlers in the sixth century, was handed on by English bards from generation to generation, till some Englishmen formed the poem of _Beowulf_ as we know it.

Of course, if evidence can be produced that _Beowulf_ is translated from some Scandinavian original, which was brought over in the seventh century or later, that is another matter. But the evidence produced so far is not merely inconclusive, but ludicrously inadequate.

It has been urged[228] by Sarrazin, the chief advocate of the translation theory, that the description of the country round Heorot, and especially of the journey to the Grendel-lake, shows such local knowledge as to point to its having been composed by some Scandinavian poet familiar with the locality. Heorot can probably, as we have seen, be identified with Leire: and the Grendel-lake Sarrazin identifies with the neighbouring Roskilde fjord. But it is hardly possible to conceive a greater contrast than that between the Roskilde fjord and the scenery depicted in ll. 1357 _etc._, 1408 _etc._ Seen, as Sarrazin saw it, on a May morning, in alternate sun and shadow, the Roskilde fjord presents a view of tame and peaceful beauty. In the days of Hrothgar, when there were perhaps fewer cultivated fields and more beech forests, the scenery may have been less tame, but can hardly have been less peaceful. The only trace of accurate geography is that Heorot is represented as not on the shore, and yet not far remote from it (ll. 307 _etc._). But, as has been pointed out above, we know that traditions of the attack by the Heathobeardan upon Heorot were current in England: and these would be quite sufficient to keep alive, even among English bards, some remembrance of the strategic situation of Heorot with regard to the sea. A man need not have been near Troy, to realize that the town was no seaport and yet near the sea.

{102}

Again, it has been claimed by Sarrazin that the language of _Beowulf_ shows traces of the Scandinavian origin of the poem. Sarrazin's arguments on this head have been contested energetically by Sievers[229]. After some heated controversy Sarrazin made a final and (presumably) carefully-weighed statement of his case. In this he gave a list of twenty-nine words upon which he based his belief[230]. Yet of these twenty-nine, twenty-one occur in other O.E. writings, where there can be no possible question of translation from the Scandinavian: some of these words, in fact, are amongst the commonest of O.E. poetical expressions. There remain eight which do not happen to be found elsewhere in the extant remains of O.E. poetry. But these are mostly compounds like _headho-l[=a]c_, _feorh-s[=e]oc_: and though the actual compound is not elsewhere extant in English, the component elements are thoroughly English. There is no reason whatever to think that these eight rare words are taken from Old Norse. Indeed, three of them do not occur in Old Norse at all.

Evidence to prove _Beowulf_ a translation from a Scandinavian original is, then, wanting. On the other hand, over and above the difficulty that the _Beowulf_ belongs just to the period when intimate communication between the Angles and Scandinavians was suspended, there is much evidence against the translation theory. The earliest Scandinavian poetry we possess, or of which we can get information, differs absolutely from _Beowulf_ in style, metre and sentiment: the manners of _Beowulf_ are incompatible with all we know of the wild heathendom of Scandinavia in the seventh or eighth century[231]. _Beowulf_, as we now have it, with its Christian references and its Latin loan-words, _could_ not be a translation from the Scandinavian. And the proper names in _Beowulf_ which Sarrazin claimed were Old Norse, not Old English, and had been taken {103} over from the Old Norse original, are in all cases so correctly transliterated as to necessitate the assumption that they were brought across early, at the time of the settlement of Britain or very shortly after, and underwent phonetic development side by side with the other words in the English language. Had they been brought across from Scandinavia at a later date, much confusion must have ensued in the forms.

Somewhat less improbable is the suggestion "that the poet had travelled on the continent and become familiar with the legends of the Danes and Geats, or else had heard them from a Scandinavian resident in England[232]." But it is clear from the allusive manner in which the Scandinavian tales are told, that they must have been familiar to the poet's audience. If, then, the English audience knew them, why must the poet himself have travelled on the continent in order to know them? There is, therefore, no need for this theory, and it is open to many of the objections of the translation theory: for example it fails, equally with that theory, to account for the uniformly correct development of the proper names.

The obvious conclusion is that these Scandinavian traditions were brought over by the English settlers in the sixth century. Against this only one cavil can be raised, and that will not bear examination. It has been objected that, since Hygelac's raid took place about 516, since Beowulf's accession was some years subsequent, and since he then reigned fifty years, his death cannot be put much earlier than 575, and that this brings us to a date when the migration of the Angles and Saxons had been completed[233]. But it is forgotten that all the historical events mentioned in the poem, which we can date, occur before, or not very long after, the raid of Hygelac, c. 516. The poem asserts that fifty years after these events Beowulf slew a dragon and was slain by it. But this does not make the dragon historic, nor does it make the year 575 the historic date of the death of Beowulf. We cannot be sure that there _was_ any actual king of the Geatas named Beowulf; and if there was, the last known historic act with which that king is associated is the raising of Eadgils to the Swedish throne, {104} c. 525: the rest of Beowulf's long reign, since it contains no event save the slaying of a dragon, has no historic validity.

It is noteworthy that, whereas there is full knowledge shown in our poem of those events which took place in Scandinavian lands during the whole period from about 450 to 530--the period during which hordes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes were landing in Britain--there is no reference, not even by way of casual allusion, to any continental events which we can date with certainty as subsequent to the arrival of the latest settlers from the continent. Surely this is strong evidence that these tales were brought over by some of the last of the invaders, not carried to England by some casual traveller a century or two later.

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