Beowulf as Historical Document: Anglo-Saxon Culture and Christianity

Introduction

Although the epic Old English poem Beowulf has all the characteristics of myth and legend that pertain to fiction, as a historical document it is useful in teaching about the past—the values and culture of medieval Anglo-Saxon society, and how Christian culture intersected with the pagan world at a time when Christian conversion was spreading. Not only does Beowulf refer to real kings of the time, grounding the story in a specific historical reality, but it also describes a culture of co-existence: an old-world people situated neatly between paganism and Christianity. As an epic poem, Beowulf describes the heroic journey of the titular character as he accepts the challenge of King Hrothgar to defend his hall against the monster Grendel. Beowulf defeats the monster and then must face the wrath of Grendel's mother. Many decades after his victory over Grendel's mother, Beowulf faces a mighty dragon and, while ultimately victorious (with some assistance) in battle, is mortally wounded.

This paper argues that, as a historical document, Beowulf can teach about the history of the Scandinavian people who serve as the focus of the narrative, their culture and values, and how Anglo-Saxons lived during a period when they were being converted from paganism to Christianity.

Historical Context of Beowulf and Scandinavian Kings

The Anglo-Saxon people actually consisted of three main groups, as their name (partially) implies: the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes.² England today is named after the Angles, but during the Middle Ages the Anglo-Saxon people migrated from Scandinavia and the northern part of Germanic Europe—Jutland, Anglia, the Saxon Coast, and Frisia (modern-day Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands). The migration period (410–560) saw the flow of northern Germanic people moving to Roman Britain as a result of a crumbling empire that left a vacuum for people to fill. When Rome was attacked in 410 by the Visigoths, Roman soldiers were recalled from Britain to other, more vulnerable parts of the empire, leaving the Celtic-Britons behind and the region open for colonization. This set off a wave of migration by warriors willing to fight to gain the farmland of Britain.

The epic poem Beowulf teaches about the way of life for these Scandinavian people. Two tribes in particular are referenced: the Geats and the Danes. The mythical aspect of the poem is that the hero Beowulf, leader of the Geats, travels to the Danes to fulfill a debt and defeat the monster Grendel. The historical aspect of the poem is the reference to King Hygelac, an uncle of Beowulf, who died in a raid on Frisia³ by a group known as the Hetwaras along the Rhine. King Hygelac is understood to represent King Chlochilaicus the Dane, a real Scandinavian king mentioned in Gregory of Tours' History of the Franks, while the Hetwaras represent the Chatturarii Frankish tribe.⁴ Chlochilaicus was killed by the Chatturarii around 521 AD, and the poem reflects this historical fact in its details. Beowulf may be fictional, but it is rooted contextually in the real experiences, lives, and events of the medieval world. Not much is known today about the author or the exact date when it was written, but scholarly consensus suggests it was composed some centuries after these events, and based upon its Christian references it is likely the author was influenced by Christian culture—a topic explored in more detail in the section below.

The Culture and Values of the Anglo-Saxons

The unknown Anglo-Saxon poet weaves into Beowulf elements of Anglo-Saxon culture through the concepts of wergild and wyrd. These cultural values are vividly depicted in the writing and are thus capable of teaching the reader about the history of the medieval world. Wergild, for instance, was a concept best described as "man-payment"—a practice among the ancient Germanic tribes prior to the establishment of Christianity. Man-payment was a law that applied to murder: when someone was killed, the murderer was required to pay the dead individual's family a monetary compensation (in shillings) for the life taken. Wergild was, in essence, a form of monetary restitution.⁵

In Beowulf, the idea of wergild underlies Beowulf's journey to the Danes. The reason for the journey is rooted in wergild: King Hrothgar had once provided a favor for Beowulf's father Ecgtheow, who had killed a major figure of a group called the Wulfings. Ecgtheow tried to pay wergild, but the Wulfings refused to accept it. King Hrothgar's wife was a member of the Wulfing tribe, and it was Hrothgar who persuaded the Wulfings to accept Ecgtheow's wergild. Grateful for the king's intervention, Beowulf felt indebted to Hrothgar and wanted to show his appreciation—that is why he traveled to put himself at the service of the Dane. Lines 456–472 of the poem illustrate this perfectly: "There was a feud one time, begun by your father… I healed the feud by paying: I shipped a treasure trove to the Wulfings and Ecgtheow acknowledged me with oaths of allegiance."⁶ As his father's son, Beowulf is there to make good on those oaths. Thus it can easily be seen that wergild is one of the core reasons underlying Beowulf's decision to fight Grendel. As an honorable and valorous man, Beowulf acknowledges the debt he owes to Hrothgar and seeks to repay it by killing Grendel.

Grendel, too, is described in the context of wergild—and his refusal to pay wergild in reparation for his raids on the Danes serves to cast him as a villain. The poet states of Grendel that "he would never parley or make peace with any Dane nor stop his death-dealing nor pay the death-price. No counselor could ever expect fair reparation from these rabid hands."⁷ Thus, wergild can be seen as an important and defining concept among the Anglo-Saxons during the medieval period.

Then there is the concept of wyrd, which refers to fate. Wyrd was an integral part of the Anglo-Saxon heroic code—a belief in one's personal destiny. Payne defines wyrd as "the force that hovers at the outer edge of man's imaginative space," and she notes that in Beowulf the main character's "three battles with the monsters represent his progression from total freedom in the face of Wyrd to his eventual total confinement."⁸ Indeed, Beowulf understands this and does not resist his fate but accepts it, as one must accept one's cross in the Christian tradition: "Fate goes ever as fate must,"⁹ Beowulf states, expressing the crossover between wyrd and the Christian sense of a hero taking upon himself the cross that God has set before him. For Beowulf, his greatness has made it his duty to counter the greatest of evils—even if it means falling in battle. It is what he must do: it is his wyrd, just as Christ's wyrd was to offer Himself on the Cross for the redemption of mankind. It is this concept of wyrd that served as the great spirit of transformation from the pagan to the Christian world, both in Beowulf and within Anglo-Saxon culture more broadly.

Conclusion

The poem Beowulf can be used to teach about Anglo-Saxon culture and values. It represents a time when the Anglo-Saxons were converting to Christianity, when some were pagan and some were Christian. It shows a Christian spirit in Hrothgar, who could symbolize a kind of Ethelberht—a ruler who converted prior to the conversion of the whole realm. Thus, the king holds a Christian conception of God, as does the author, while the people in their fear turn to pagan idolatry to protect them from Grendel. The hero Beowulf himself represents both the pagan and the Christian: he approaches wyrd and offers himself as wergild to Hrothgar for his father's debts, engaging in a pagan custom while simultaneously symbolizing the Christian concept that one can pay for the debts of others—the very essence of Christ's sacrifice on the Cross.

As the pagan world of the Anglo-Saxons came to Christianity at the end of the 6th century and into the 7th, it had to be educated on the Christian worldview and shown who the Shaper truly was. This concept is found throughout Beowulf, which reflects the historical reality of Anglo-Saxon society: the mixture of the pagan and the Christian as two cultures came into contact with one another—first through the marriage of the pagan king Ethelberht to the Christian princess Bertha, and later when Augustine arrived to convert the Angles and Saxons to Christianity en masse. Beowulf shows a time in history when there was a co-existence of cultures and beliefs—yet ultimately the author expresses a Christian worldview through his own sense of the Triune God as the real Shaper of things.

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