Analysis

Analysis of the Poem

All line references not otherwise attributed are to Beowulf, trans. Seamus Heaney. 2000.

When presented with a new stone a diamond cutter studies its nature, where the structural cleavage is, and just how much force, and in what direction, must be applied to reveal the natural beauty of both pieces. If he splits the diamond incorrectly he is left with a mess, worthless fragments, chaos. If the division is done correctly he is able to reveal the beauty of both pieces more clearly than when they were joined. A difference between diamonds and literature is that we may rejoin anything we split with no lasting damage to either piece.

The greatest authority on the poem Beowulf is the poet himself. We take a page from Tolkien’s essay, “The Monster and the Critics,” and say the poem is not quite a conglomeration of unrelated short poems under a canopy labeled Beowulf; nor is it a homily, a sermon preached to the faithful; it is as the poet says, a story about Beowulf the warrior.

Using Occam’s razor, and under the criterion to retain only the material about Beowulf, we remove, and only temporarily, that material whose subject is someone else, some other king or kingdom, some other war, or statements that contradict material in the Beowulf section. Tolkien did say the poem was a unity, but scholars have been taking apart poetry since we decided to teach the work. We have all taken apart sonnets, epics, songs, with no permanent damage to the original work; we can do the same to this poem. When we remove the non-Beowulf material, evidence that we have done something right emerges quickly. Though it was not a part of our original criterion, we have separated out the religious material. In the first nineteen hundred four lines of the poem a God is referred to in over seventy lines; He is mentioned only once, perhaps, in all of what was removed, what I term historical chatter. (appendix 1)

The historical chatter contains most of the historical names and none of the religious references, thus this material was interpolated at a later date to make the poem attractive to a more aristocratic audience. Could it be the opposite? Could the pagan material have been the original material and the monotheistic material added at a later time? Not likely, since the monotheistic material makes sense as written, while the pagan material does not. It seems to have been added on at various times and by various poets to please a more aristocratic audience, perhaps related to the houses mentioned in this material. Even in those days flattery ensured position.

How could Paganism come after Old Testament monotheism? It could because the conversion of northern Europe was not a smooth, continuous process. When the Romans left northern Europe in the late fourth century, they left in place a tradition of municipal organization and the Roman Catholic Christian religion. By the middle of the fourth century most of the Northern tribes, the Goths, Burgundians, the Ostragoths, the Suevics the Vandals, had converted to monotheism, but not Roman Catholicism. Instead they went with Eusabian side of the argument at Nicaea. They followed Arias. (Fletcher 98-100) When the Beowulf poet uses material from the Bible but does not mention Jesus he suggests he is a follower of Arias. According to Fletcher these tribes did no change to the Roman Catholic religion until the latter part of the seventh century. Even then it was a matter of public action more than deep religious conviction. (Fletcher. 99)

The Christian priests of the Roman Catholic Church did maintain their connection to Rome, and this offered the northern tribes access to markets and goods not otherwise available in the north. The Eastern Church moved into Europe along the Danube and the Rhine, the route the Vikings would take into the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Pagan Europe. Jones, Prudence and Nigel Pennick. 1995. 136-37. This route may have been the route for the Beowulf poet, who is monotheistic but not Roman Catholic Christian. ( I hesitate to refer to the poet as Christian though he did believe in Jesus as a product of God, but not equal to God, if he was Arian. To refer to him as a Christian confuses him with the Roman Catholic Christian and he loses his distinction.)

Once the base poem was composed, it would have moved from tribal kingdom to tribal kingdom, spreading the basic astronomical timepiece, while picking up local references to ancestors as it went. Since it was an oral rendition it may have existed in several versions as it moved from place to place; each version being a unique gathering of local stories and legends, but always containing the basic astronomical story that gave it it’s strength.

The change in style, the lack of references to a monotheistic god in the added matter, the historic chatter, all indicate a later time and another poet or poets for this material. Efforts to integrate this historical matter with the mythical base story have led to some confusion. They should be treated as separate entities.

With many of the chattering voices elsewhere we can examine the basic poem, which appears to be an easily read story of a hero, Beowulf, and his adventures in a place that is named Denmark but does not appear to be the geographic Denmark. (The sailing south is an astronomical observation not a geographical one.) The country of Denmark is a plain shaped by the last ice age. Denmark, particularly Zeeland, the home of Lejre, the place many believe is Heorot, is made of glacial till, finely ground rock and silt, with the occasional glacial erratic left stand where the glacier dropped it. A few pot holes are scattered where persistent ice kept the till away. This is not the land described in the poem, a place of high cliffs, looming headlands, gushing streams flowing down precipitous mountains to fall at last into deep gloomy tarns.

When Hrothgar and his men ride to the tarn where Grendel’s mother returned under the waters, they ride a narrow path between the sea and the steep mountains. This does not describe Denmark. However his does describe the mythic mountain around which the zodiac circles, the mountain that holds up the northern sky.