19 March 2009
Beowulf begins the fit by asking Hrothgar to look after his men, willing his possessions to Hygelac, the king of the Geats, and saying the sword Hrunting should be returned to Unferth should he die. Then Beowulf dives into the mere. He is immediately attacked by Grendel’s mother and by various other sea creatures, but is protected by his armor—reminiscent of the earlier story of the swimming contest. He reaches the bottom of the mere, where he finds himself in some sort of hall, glowing with fire-light. Beowulf strikes at Grendel’s mother with Hrunting, but the blade has no effect. He tosses away the sword, intending to wrestle—much as he did with Grendel. He throws her to the ground, but she grasps him and he falls. She then leaps on top of him and draws a long knife, but again his armor protects him. Beowulf manages to throw her off him and stand up. What will happen to our hero? Tune in next time. Same Beo-time; same Beo-channel.
We see that despite the earlier claim that she is less of a warrior because she is female, Grendel’s mother poses a bigger problem for Beowulf than her son did. Beowulf had the upper hand on Grendel (heh! heh!) from the beginning of that fight, but Grendel’s mother proves to be a more formidable opponent.
We again get the pattern of Beowulf saying words, how he will prevail in battle, before going into the fight. He did it the evening before the fight with Grendel, and the poem makes the point that he in the midst of the fight he recalled those words. A hero is one whose deeds match his words. Here Beowulf says, “iċ mē mid Hruntinge dōm ġewyrċe, oþðe meċ dēað nimeð” (“I will work glory for myself with Hrunting, or death will take me”).
Note that Old English doesn’t have a future tense, nor does it use auxiliary verbs like will or shall to express futurity. The present tense doubles to express futurity, with context largely providing the indication of what is meant. Literally, this sentence reads, “I work glory for myself with Hrunting, or death takes me.” Technically, Modern English doesn’t have a proper future tense either; we use auxiliary verbs to mark the future—which we often call, somewhat inaccurately, the future tense. Old English doesn’t use auxiliary verbs in this fashion. The verb sculan, the root of our modern shall, denotes obligation more than simple futurity, and willan denotes desire for. Both auxiliary verbs were commonly used in future contexts, but denoting the future was not their primary purpose and the future could be implied without them. The obligation/desire distinction still exists in our Modern English shall and will, but the two words are becoming conflated and their primary purpose is to express futurity.
Also in Old English, the verb beon, to be, carried a sense of present action continuing into the future, as opposed to wesan, which denoted a simple present. In Modern English, these two forms have melded into our verb to be. See the Big List entry for more details.
Other things going on this fit:
Line 1495 says that Beowulf swam through the water for hwil dæġes before coming to the bottom of the mere. Literally, this means a while of the day. No one really knows how long the poet intended this to be. It is a period of time that, today, is indeterminate, although it could have had specific meaning a thousand years ago.
Grendel’s mother is referred to as a brimwylf in line 1506. This translates as she-wolf of the sea. Also, in 1511 the other sea-monsters are said to be hildetūxum, or with battle-tusks.
In line 1523, the sword Hrunting is called a beadolēoma, or battle-light, a neat kenning that appears several times in the poem.
Unlike her son, Grendel’s mother uses weapons. This makes her somewhat closer to human. In particular, the weapon she uses is called, in line 1545, a seax, a short sword (or long knife) that is the root of the ethnic name Saxon. The Saxons were literally people who used a seax in battle. The poet almost certainly did not intend to imply that Grendel’s mother was a Saxon; she simply used a knife. The specific choice of seax in this line is for alliteration.
Also in that same line, it says that Grendel’s mother ofsæt þā þone seleġyst (she ofsæt the hall-guest); she had just thrown Beowulf to the ground and has turned and attacked him. Exactly what ofsæt means is uncertain. It most likely means to beset or to set upon, but some have taken it to mean to sit upon, with the attendant sexual implications. While this may make sense with Angelina Jolie playing the role, any reading of sexual implication in the original poem is pretty far-fetched. There is almost no sexuality in Beowulf (lots about gender roles, but little or nothing about sexual acts or desires). It may mean that she leaped on top of him, but it’s a simple attack, not a rape.
While I implied in my summary above that there is a cliff-hanger ending to this fit, it’s not really the case in the poem, which tells us explicitly that Beowulf is going to win. Lines 1554-1556 read:
Ġewēold wīġsigor wītiġ drihten;
rodera rædend hit on ryht gescēd
yðelīċe, syþðan hē eft āstōd.(Brought about war-victory the wise Lord;
the ruler of the heavens decided it for the right one
easily, once he stood up again.)
This is another example of the strange interplay between agency and fate that is going on in the poem. God is deciding who will win, but he only decides once Beowulf shakes off the attack of Grendel’s mother and gets back onto his feet.
Coming up next: Beowulf defeats Grendel’s mother with a bit of deus ex machina, he mutilates Grendel’s corpse, and returns to Heorot in victory.
