14 May 2009
A herald announces the death of Beowulf to the other warriors and predicts hard times for the Geats. They will be beset by the Franks, who fought a war with them when Hygelac was king, and by the Swedes, who are still angry over that war. The herald goes into some detail about the Swedish war and how Ongentheow, the Swedish king, was particularly ruthless in battle with the Geats. Ongentheow killed Hæthcyn, the king of the Geats, and had beseiged the survivors of the battle when Hygelac, Hæthcyn’s brother, came to their aid.
This fit is short, but it is challenging to read. It jumps around in time, with events in three different periods and it assumes the reader is familiar with the wars in question, with references that are obscure to the modern reader. The language is fairly straightforward, with no long passages of elevated prose or, by this point, new words.
But there are some neat turns of phrase. One is in line 2904 when Beowulf is described as sexbennum sēoc, or sick with dagger wounds. The sex- is the same word as seax, the short stabbing sword.
The survivors of battle are called sweorda lāfe, or the leavings of swords in line 2936. And in lines 2939–41, Ongentheow threatens the sweorda lāfe:
Cwæð, hē on merġenne mēċes ecgum
ġētan wolde, sum’ on galgtrēowu[m]
[fuglum] tō gamene.(He said that in the morning with the edges of swords
[he] would gut [them], [and hang] some on the gallows-tree
for the amusement of birds.)
A lovely image, that.
