24 February 2009
This is a transitional and short fit and not much happens in terms of plot. Hrothgar and his men depart the hall and Beowulf and his men settle down to sleep. But before he lays down, Beowulf announces that he will forgo the use of weapons in the upcoming fight; he will battle with his bare hands, just like Grendel. Finally, we see Grendel creeping up to the hall and all the warriors asleep—save one, presumably our hero.
There are two items of note in this fit. The first is Hrothgar’s departure, in which we are told, in lines 664-665b, “wolde wīġfruma Wealhþēo sēċan, cwēn to ġebeddan” (the war-chief would seek out Wealhtheow, his queen as bedfellow.) Is this a protective move, or is he hiding in the queen’s bedchamber? The poem is somewhat ambivalent in its treatment of Hrothgar. He is continually described as a brave and good king, yet there are incidents, like this one, where he is cast in a somewhat less than honorable light. He has just turned over guardianship of Heorot to another for the first time in his reign and he departs to the women’s sleeping quarters. Charitably, we can say that he is a once-good king who is now old and no longer up to the task.
(Occasionally one runs across Old English words that are simply humorous when read by a modern speaker. We have one such in the line quoted above, wīġ, meaning war. Another is hēap, which is the root of our modern word for a pile of things, but in the context of the poem means a company or host of warriors. In one place (line 477), we get the wonderful wighēap, meaning a war band, but which I can’t help but picture as a large mass of hair.)
The second item is the description of Grendel’s approach, lines 702b-703a: “Cōm on wanre niht scrīðan sceadugenġa.” (In the dark night came gliding the walker in the shadows.) Scrīðan sceadugenġa is just a wonderfully alliterative phrase.
