The Language of the Beowulf Poem

The primary language of the astronomical part of Beowulf is not Old English, nor Proto-German, nor any of the languages of Northern Europe. This part of the poem is written in the language of sky images that translate no matter what the local language is. They are the same if they are described in Latin, in Greek, in Sumerian, in Egyptian, in Babylonian, Chinese, Japanese, in Mayan, Aztec, in any of the languages of the world, of peoples who could see the night sky and use that sky to determine time.

The coming of the house of the Roman gods signaled the spring sky just as their Greek counterparts had done. The Egyptian Pharaohs were furnished with celestial boats for their journey to the sky through the dark waters under the earth. Gilgamesh dove into those waters in search of the flower of eternal life, and lost it at the well to a serpent, perhaps the well between Sagittarius and Scorpio where serpents dwell. (The Sky, March, 500. In the SE, just up from the constellation Sagittarius in the Milky Way.) The Japanese Goddess Amaterasu stood on the Sky Bridge, the Milky Way, and spilled her breast milk into that dark sea to form the new world. Noah sailed those same waters to take his people from the old world, Taurus, to the new one, Aries. (Allen 1963, 66) The Aztecs watched their celestial canoe, the Milky Way, dive toward the underworld, knowing that in a number of years it would once again come up and their world would be reborn.

All of these are celestial images that occur within what we have long considered mere fairy tales, myth stories that had no real significance, composed for amusement on the long winter nights. But many of these images do have significance; they are the heart of the story, the references, the clocks that told the listeners what they needed to see to determine the time of their year.

Even with the removal of the historical chatter we have not descended to the bone of the poem. In this new clean version the poet says we have two things going on at once.  The coast watcher says,  “ Anyone with gumption / and a sharp mind will take the measure / of two things: what  is said and what is done.” (Heaney, 2000, l. 287-289)  “…what is said ” describes the heroic deeds of Beowulf the Geat; “…what is done.” describes events in the night sky as seen from Northern Europe in the first millennium CE. The poet is describing the sky for a specific purpose, to give the people a calendar that will enable them to determine when they are during the year. These actions are our concern in this analysis.


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