“O flower of warriors, beware of that trap. Choose, dear Beowulf,
the better part, eternal rewards. Do not give way to pride. For a brief while
your strength is in bloom but it fades quickly; and soon there will follow illness
or the sword to lay you low, or a sudden fire or surge of water or jabbing
blade or javelin from the air or repellent age. Your piercing eye will dim and
darken; and death will arrive, dear warrior, to sweep you away.” Beowulf
The myth of Beowulf fascinates me more than
any other. Here is a man who defeated, and when I say defeated I mean killed, a
leviathan, a troll, a witch-snake and a dragon! No other hero I can think off
has as many skins on the wall as the great Geat. And he wasn’t even a demigod,
like say, Hercules!
The story begins with Beowulf sailing away
from his homeland, Geatland, to travel to the land of the Danes, to help a
friendly neighboring peoples, and to make a name for himself. The King of the
Danes, Hroogar, has developed a small problem. To celebrate his countries
prowess against its enemies, the king built a great hall for his warriors to
drink mead, tell tall tales, sing songs, ravage beautiful dames and all the
other things victorious drunken warriors tend to do. The one mistake he made,
however, was building his party hall within earshot of a terrible troll named
Grendle, who was born deformed: his eardrum grew outside of his ear, not
inside. Grendle couldn’t tolerate noise!
So, every time the Danes had a celebration,
Grendle would come and play the role of party pooper, by destroying everything
in his path, killing a warrior or two and taking their corpses back to his cave
to dine on. A terrible pall fell across the land and no one dared stand up to
the terrible Grendle. Then Beowulf showed up, full of confidence after slaying
a leviathan along the way, bragging to be the greatest warrior in the world and
vowing to rid the Danish lands of the cursed troll. To get matters started, Beowulf
insisted on throwing a great celebration at the king’s hall, and when Grendle
showed up, Beowulf battled him, ripped his arm off at the shoulder, causing the
troll to flee back to his cave, fatally wounded.
When the troll dies, its angry mother, an evil
witch who can shape shift into a snake, came calling for Beowulf. When she
encounters the Geatmen, she attack and kills Beowulf’s best warrior before
slinking back home. Outraged, Beowulf follows her to her lair and confronts
her. Unable to hurt the sorceress with his weapons, Beowulf grabs an ancient magickal
sword forged by a giant, lying amongst her horde and slays her with it. He then
decapitates Grendle, gives the head to the king, is handsomely rewarded and
then returns home to Geatland, where his new found reputation eventually makes
him a great king of his own people.
Fifty years later, a young man in Beowulf’s
kingdom comes upon a cave filled with treasure. He takes a golden cup with him
for proof, and in the process, wakes a sleeping dragon. The dragon is furious
to find one piece of its horde missing and flies from its lair, burning
everything in its sight. With his kingdom under threat, old Beowulf summons his
youthful courage and gathers his warriors to confront the dragon.
Sensing his own inevitable demise, Beowulf
bravely orders his men to stand down and attacks the dragon alone. A great
battle ensues and Beowulf finally slays the airborne beast by ripping its heart
out with his bare hands. Unfortunately, Beowulf is mortally wounded by the
dragon and dies soon after, surrounded by his closest friends and warriors. His
people build a massive funeral pyre for their fallen hero and then bury his
ashes and the dragon’s great lair together in a huge burial mound.
Two burial mounds that might fit the
description have been found in Geatland, in what we today call Scandinavia. One
was excavated in the late 19th century and grand burial setting fit
for a great king was found. It is debatable whether or not it was Beowulf. The
other one has not been excavated.
I highly recommend reading a translated
version of the epic poem Beowulf. There are a couple of really good movies made
in the 2000’s that do a great job of telling this great myth as well. Of the
two, I prefer the animated version. Odin and Thor would be proud.
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