Beowulf

The mead-hall went quiet the way a held breath goes quiet. Heorot, the gold-trimmed pride of the Danes, had stood abandoned after dark for twelve winters, its benches splintered where a thing from the moors came each night to carry sleeping men off in its arms. On the night a stranger from across the sea lay waiting among the warriors, the door gave its iron groan and Grendel stepped into the smell of old smoke and banked embers, reaching for another easy meal. What closed around its arm instead was a grip harder than anything it had met in the world of men, and for the first time the creature wanted only to run.

The man holding it was Beowulf, a Geat from the south of what is now Sweden, son of Ecgtheow and nephew to Hygelac, king of his people. He had heard, across the water, that Hrothgar’s great hall was haunted, and he had come with fourteen chosen men and an old debt of friendship to repay. He was young, untested by anything that would outlast a song, and enormous. The poem that carries his name is careful about his strength and almost silent about his face. It tells us the grip of his one hand held the force of thirty men, and leaves the rest, his features, his height, the colour of him, to guesswork. Whether such a man ever lived is beyond recovering. Hygelac’s fatal raid on the Frisians is the one corner of the story that brushes recorded history, somewhere in the early sixth century, and the hero who supposedly survived it swims up out of legend rather than chronicle.

He had been like this since boyhood. When a Danish thane named Unferth sneered that Beowulf had once lost a reckless swimming match against a companion called Breca, Beowulf answered with the truth of it. They had swum the winter sea for days with swords drawn against the deep, a storm had torn them apart, and something had dragged him down toward the sea floor. He killed nine sea-monsters in the black water before the tide carried him, spent and frozen, to shore. The cold of that swim, the salt, the weight of the drowning dark, were the kind of thing he survived for sport. This was a man who went looking for the edges of the world so he could test himself against them.

So when Grendel came, he met it the hard way, on purpose. He had sworn to use no sword, since the monster carried none, and he kept the oath. The two of them wrecked the inside of Heorot, benches torn from their fastenings, the whole building groaning on its frame, the Danes outside listening to a noise no one wanted to name. The hero would not let go. The creature’s arm tore from its shoulder, and Grendel fled across the moor to bleed to death in its den while Beowulf hung the ripped limb beneath the rafters like a banner.

The relief lasted one night. Grendel’s mother came for her son’s killer and for the arm, and the grief of a monster is still grief. Beowulf followed her down into a haunted mere, a black tarn where the water seemed to burn and a hunted deer would rather die on the bank than wade in. He sank for most of a day to reach the bottom. There the famous sword Hrunting, lent to him by the same Unferth who had mocked him, failed against her hide and would not bite. He fought her with his hands and nearly lost, until he caught sight of an enormous blade forged by giants, too heavy for an ordinary man, and swung it. That sword killed her. Its blade melted afterward in her hot blood, leaving him only the hilt to carry back up into the light.

He went home rich and honoured, and the poem lets fifty years pass in a few lines. Hygelac fell in battle, the throne came to Beowulf, and he ruled the Geats well and long. Then a slave, fleeing punishment, stumbled into a barrow where a dragon had slept three hundred years on a hoard of old gold, and stole a single cup. The dragon woke, counted its treasure, found the theft, and burned the countryside through the night, Beowulf’s own hall among the ashes.

He was an old man by then. He went to the barrow anyway, with an iron shield made against the fire and a company that lost its nerve and ran, all but one. A young kinsman named Wiglaf stayed. Between them they killed the dragon, but it sank its fangs into Beowulf’s neck, and the venom was already working as the beast died. He asked to see the treasure he had bought with his life, and Wiglaf brought it out of the barrow and laid it before him. Then the man who held the strength of thirty hands in one of them died of a bite, the way ordinary men die.

His gifts were never magic in the way a god’s are. He was simply stronger than anything reasonable, able to crush mail and bone in his fingers, to hold his breath through a day’s descent, to keep coming when fear told him to stop. What undid him was the other face of that same nature. He fought alone because glory is taken alone, and the older he grew the more the stories he had already made demanded a bigger ending. Against a poison that did not care how many men his hand was worth, courage was not enough, and there was no one left to lend him a strength like his own. His people burned him on a headland above the sea and raised a barrow over his ashes so that sailors would see it from far out on the water. The last word the poem gives him is lofgeornost: of all kings the gentlest to his men, the kindest to his people, and the most eager for fame.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Beowulf?

Beowulf is the warrior-hero of the Old English epic poem of the same name, a prince of the Geats (a people of what is now southern Sweden) who later becomes their king. He is best known for killing the monster Grendel, defeating Grendel’s mother, and dying in battle against a dragon.

What monsters does Beowulf fight?

Beowulf fights three monsters across the poem. As a young man he kills Grendel, who has been raiding the Danish hall Heorot, then descends into a haunted lake to slay Grendel’s avenging mother; decades later, as an aged king, he battles a treasure-hoarding dragon that has ravaged his kingdom.

How does Beowulf die?

Beowulf dies from a dragon’s bite. In his final battle he and his young kinsman Wiglaf manage to kill the dragon, but its venomous fangs pierce Beowulf’s neck during the fight, and the poison kills him moments after the beast falls.

How strong is Beowulf?

Beowulf is described as having the strength of thirty men in the grip of a single hand. That superhuman strength lets him tear the arm from Grendel’s body with his bare hands and wield a giant-forged sword far too heavy for an ordinary warrior.

Is Beowulf based on a true story?

Beowulf is a legendary figure rather than a documented historical person. The poem does touch real history through King Hygelac, whose fatal raid on the Frisians is recorded in the early sixth century, but Beowulf’s monster-slaying deeds belong to heroic legend rather than chronicle.

Related Entries

Grendel, Grendel’s mother, Wyrm, Firedrake, Aglaeca, Ettin, Cofgod, Sigurd, Fafnir, Draugr, Jötunn, Troll, Dragon, Arthur