Grendel’s mother

The water never settles. By day the lake lies black beneath leaning trees whose roots grip the bank like fingers, and at night a dull fire moves across its surface though nothing there is burning. A stag run to the edge by hounds will turn and stand to be torn apart rather than set one hoof in it. The bottom has never been measured. Somewhere below it, deeper than any rope has reached, a hall stands dry inside the flood, and for a long time the men of Heorot did not know that anyone lived there at all.

They learned it the hard way, and they learned it the night they were sure they were safe. Grendel was dead. Beowulf had torn the monster’s arm from its socket and nailed it claw and all beneath the gilded roof, and Grendel had crawled home across the moor to bleed out in the mere. So the Danes slept in their own hall again, the first untroubled sleep in twelve winters, the benches full and the fire low. They did not think to count their enemies. They thought there had only ever been one.

She came up out of the lake while they slept. The grief that drove her was as old as any human grief, and so was the law she obeyed: a son had been killed, and someone would pay. She crossed the dark ground to Heorot, and the warriors who woke to her were less ready than they had been for Grendel, because no one expected a second monster. She did not stay to feast. She seized Æschere, the man Hrothgar loved best of all his counsellors, and she tore down her son’s arm from the wall to carry home, and she was gone back into the fen before the hall could arm itself. The reckoning had lasted a few moments. In the morning Hrothgar wept for the wisest friend he had, and the joy of the rescued hall curdled overnight into a new fear.

What she was, the poem will not quite say, and the old words it uses pull in different directions. She is a merewif, a woman of the mere; a brimwylf, a sea-wolf; an aglæcwif, which can mean a fearsome woman or a female warrior, the same dangerous word the poem spends elsewhere on heroes. She belonged to the brood of Cain, the line of exiles and monsters that sprang from the first murderer when God drove him out, the same cursed kindred that produced her son. She has no name. Across the whole length of the poem she is only ever someone’s mother, which is both all the poem will grant her and the single thing that makes her move.

Her shape stays half in shadow on purpose, as her son’s did. She is larger and stronger than a man, her hands end in claws, and her grip can hold a warrior in armour fast against the floor. Beyond that the lines stay vague, and the vagueness does its work. The mere itself is described far more fully than she is: the blood that fouls the water when her son dies in it, the sea-beasts and nicors that bask on the rocks at dawn, the cold weight of a lake whose floor no man has touched.

Hrothgar told Beowulf where she lived, and pointed to Æschere’s head left on the cliff above the water. Beowulf put on his mail and his helm, took the loaned sword Hrunting from Unferth, and dived. The descent took most of a day. She felt the water move and reached up and dragged him down into the dry hall where the flood could not follow, and there the fight began in earnest. Hrunting, a famous blade that had never failed a man before, would not bite her at all. He threw it down. They wrestled, and she got him under her and drew a broad knife to finish him, and only the rings of his mail-shirt turned the blade. Then he saw it on the wall: an ancient sword forged by giants, too heavy for any ordinary man to lift. He took it in both hands and swung, and it went through her neck and broke her spine, and she dropped.

A light came up in the hall after she fell, clear as a candle from heaven. By it Beowulf found Grendel’s corpse lying nearby and struck off its head to carry back as proof. The giant blade could not survive what it had cut. Grendel’s blood was so hot and so poisonous that the iron melted in Beowulf’s hands like ice in a thaw, until only the gold hilt was left. He swam back up carrying that hilt and the head, and the men still waiting at the edge had given him up for dead.

Her strength was real and her water was deadlier than she was. Inside the mere she was almost untouchable: the best sword in the hall turned aside from her, the depth and the cold and the monsters in the flood were all on her side, and she fought a man who could not breathe where she lived. But her power had edges. It was bound to that one lake, and away from it she did no harm; she struck Heorot once and ran straight home. The vengeance that made her dangerous also drew her killer to her door, since a feud cuts both ways and the man who owed her son a death now owed her one too. And the weapon that finally answered her was not a man’s sword at all but a blade out of her own monstrous kindred’s forging, the work of the giants, hanging on her own wall.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Grendel’s mother in Beowulf?

Grendel’s mother is the second of the three monsters the hero Beowulf fights in the Old English epic. She is an unnamed water-dwelling creature descended from the biblical Cain who attacks King Hrothgar’s hall, Heorot, to avenge the death of her son Grendel, and who is later hunted down and killed by Beowulf in her lair beneath a haunted lake.

Why does Grendel’s mother attack Heorot?

Grendel’s mother attacks Heorot for revenge after Beowulf kills her son Grendel. The night after Grendel dies, she comes up from her mere, kills Hrothgar’s most trusted counsellor Æschere, and takes back her son’s torn-off arm, which had been hung in the hall as a trophy. Her motive is the human logic of a blood-feud: a death must be paid for with a death.

How is Grendel’s mother defeated?

Beowulf tracks her to her underwater hall and fights her there. The sword Hrunting, lent to him by Unferth, fails to harm her, and she nearly kills him with a knife before his armour saves him. He finally kills her by seizing an ancient giant-forged sword from the wall of her lair and striking through her neck, breaking her spine.

What does Grendel’s mother look like?

The poem deliberately keeps her appearance vague, much as it does her son’s. She is described as a powerful, humanlike female monster, larger and stronger than a man, with clawed hands and a grip strong enough to pin an armoured warrior. She is called a “mere-woman,” a “sea-wolf,” and a “fearsome woman,” but no detailed physical portrait is given.

What happens to the sword Beowulf uses to kill Grendel’s mother?

After killing Grendel’s mother, Beowulf uses the giant sword to behead the nearby corpse of Grendel as a trophy. Grendel’s blood is so hot and poisonous that it melts the iron blade away entirely, leaving only the golden hilt, which Beowulf carries back to the surface along with Grendel’s head.

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