Beowulf There by a Seat

Beowulf

There by a seat the brave young man saw many precious jewels, shining gold on the ground, and works of art on the walls. There in the dragon's den Wiglaf saw the cups of ancient men, ornaments fallen. There were helmets, old and rusty, and many arm-rings twisted with skill. (Treasure, gold in the ground, may be easily seized by any man, hide it who will.)

Wiglaf saw a standard all golden, high over the treasure, the greatest of hand-wonders, woven with the skill of hands. From it a light shone, lit all the ground so he could look over all the treasures. Then, I have heard, he rifled the hoard and into his bosom loaded the ancient work of giants -- goblets and dishes, whatever he chose, even the golden standard (Beowulf, Sec. 12).

In 1939, an important archaeological discovery uncovered the remains of a ship burial at Sutton Hoo, an estate on the estuary of the Deben River in Suffolk, England. Some of the objects in the grave included a sword, shield, and helmet, a harp, and Frankish coins which date approximately to 650-70 a.D., the presumed date of the action of Beowulf (Napierkowski 6).

Beowulf may have been written at any time between circa 675 a.D. And circa 1000 a.D. The single manuscript with the epic poem on it was discovered in the sixteenth century having fallen into the hands of a man named Laurence Nowell. It has always been looked at simply as an example of early Germanic tribes and language, not as the great poem it is.

It tells the story of a king, Beowulf, from his youth to old age, as he saves a neighboring people from a monster, Grendel. He becomes a king and dies when a dragon bites him as he fights it off, defending his people. He is buried as a hero, with the treasures that a young warrior has plundered for him, which included gold items, goblets, dishes, and a golden standard.

Copied down by monks, the poem is probably an originally mythological treatment of a real person who lived during the ages when men did not and could not write. Back then, people passed along stories by word of mouth, rather than printing it in a newspaper. Storytellers, called scops or bards, roamed the seas or countryside and for a hot meal and a bed, would entertain the townspeople with songs and tales of what had happened in neighboring kingdoms. The story of Beowulf includes a professional bard who accompanies himself on a harp and sings or chants traditional lays, who improvises a song about Beowulf's victory.

Perhaps the Bard embellished the real story a little to flatter the great man. The king may not have been fighting a dragon, actually it may have been a bear that had been killing off people in his kingdom. When Beowulf kills Grendel in the beginning of the tale, the monster's mother takes revenge on the warriors by sneaking in to the hall at night and killing one of the king's advisors. Beowulf takes out after her, hunts her down in the bottom of a swamp, and kills her with a sword. He finds the corpse of Grendel there and brings back a hunter's trophy, the head of the monster (which presumably he stuffs and hangs on his wall).

or the mighty king may have killed off neighboring tribes called Grendel, or "a dragon" and in the telling and re-telling of the tale, the tribe became known as a single monster, rather than a group of enemy warriors. We don't know how the words or people in the original story change in the retelling of the tale.

The end of the poem has Beowulf dying. The people in his kingdom are terrified that their enemies will now attack them, since Beowulf is dead. but, according to his wishes, they burn his body on a huge funeral pyre made of wood (according to the custom of the Germanic tribes), overlooking the sea from which he had arrived, as Beowulf was from a far country and had come to Hrothgar's kingdom as a youth on a boat laden with treasures.