THE “EOTEN” GRENDEL: FROM JUTISH GOVERNOR TO PLANETARY MYTH
Much
ink has been spilt on the nature of Grendel, the chief monster of the
Anglo-Saxon heroic epic poem, BEOWULF.
Although described vividly, the problem has always been coming up with a
decent etymology for his name. Scholars
have also been frustrated by the fact that despite the infamy associated with
this monster, no other sources – Danish or otherwise – see fit to so much as
allude to him in passing.
The
difficulty of assigning a meaning to the name Grendel was well laid out in the
classic study BEOWULF: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE POEM, by R. W.
Chambers, in 1921:
“The
name has generally been derived from grindan, "to grind"; either
directly, because Grendel grinds the bones of those he devours, or indirectly,
in the sense of "tormentor." Others would connect with O.N. grindill,
"storm," and perhaps with M.E. gryndel, "angry."
It
has recently been proposed to connect the word with grund, "bottom":
for Grendel lives in the mere-grund or grund-wong and his mother is the
grund-wyrgin. Erik Rooth, who proposes this etymology, compares the Icelandic
grandi, "a sandbank," and the common Low German dialect word grand,
"coarse sand." This brings us back to the root "to grind,"
for grand, "sand" is simply the product of the grinding of the waves.
Indeed the same explanation has been given of the word "ground."
However
this may be, the new etymology differs from the old in giving Grendel a name
derived, not from his grinding or tormenting others, but from his dwelling at
the bottom of the lake or marsh. The name would have a parallel in the Modern
English grindle, grundel, German grundel, a fish haunting the bottom of the
water.
The
Old English place-names, associating Grendel as they do with meres and swamps,
seem rather to support this.
As
to the Devonshire stream Grendel (now the
Grindle or Greendale Brook), it has been suggested that this name is also
connected with the root grand, "gravel," "sand." But, so
far as I have been able to observe, there is no particular suggestion of sand
or gravel about this modest little brook. If we follow the River Clyst from the
point where the Grindle flows into it, through two miles of marshy land, to the
estuary of the Exe, we shall there find plenty. But it is clear from the
charter of 963 that the name was then, as now, restricted to the small brook. I
cannot tell why the stream should bear the name, or what, if any, is the
connection with the monster Grendel. We can only note that the name is again
found attached to water, and, near the junction with the Clyst, to marshy
ground.”
More
recent scholarship on the question of an etymology for the name Grendel is
found in Klaeber’s Beowulf, Fourth Edition, ed. R. D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork,
and John D. Niles:
“The
following explanations of the name Grendel have been proposed: (1) The name is
related to OE grindan ‘grind’, here ‘destroyer’… and to OE *grandor… ON grand,
‘evil’, ‘injury’. (2) The name is related to OE grindel ‘bar, bolt’, OHG
grindel, krintil… (3) The name is related to ON grindell, a term in a thula for
‘storm’, grenja ‘to bellow’… (4) Formation by means of –ila (cf. strengel) from
Lat. Grandis… (5) Grendel < *grandil-, from *grand ‘sand’, ‘bottom (ground)
of a body of water’… (6) As a deformation of dialectical drindle or dringle,
‘trickle’, ‘small trickling stream’ or of *Drengel, ‘drowned’ or ‘drinker’… (7)
Grendel and Grettir both derive from the root *grandi-.”
More
profitable than the above exploration of the name is the ongoing debate on the
relationship between the Anglo-Saxon words for giants and Jutes: eotenas. Grendel is himself designated an eoten, and
the eotenas play a key role in the Finnsburg fragment. This last describes an early Dark Age battle
in England
between Danes and Frisians, the latter being accompanied by a Jutish
force. The Finnsburg battle and its
aftermath is also told about in Beowulf.
In
reality, the debate as to whether there are Jutes or giants present at
Finnsburg is a moot one. Why? Because the tribal name ‘Jutes’ would have
been associated in heroic legend with giants and, eventually, would have become
indistinguishable from latter. You start
out as Jutes, you end up as giants. And
it may well be that the tribal name originally denoted a fierce race of
unusually tall Northern people. Simek,
discussing the Old Norse cognate jotunn, says simply that
“As
yet it has not been totally explained whether the word originally belonged to
eta ‘eat’ (thus, ‘the big eater’) or to the tribal name of the Etiones.”
Here
is the listing for eoten, extracted from the classical Anglo-Saxon dictionary
by Bosworth and Toller:
EÓTEN
,
es; m. I. a giant, monster, Grendel; gĭgas, monstrum, Grendel :-- Wæs se grimma
gǽst Grendel, Caines cyn, -- ðanon untydras ealle onwócon, eótenas and ylfe and
orcnéas, swylce gigantas Grendel was the grim guest, the race of Cain, --
whence unnatural births all sprang forth, monsters, elves, and spectres, also
giants, Beo. Th. 204-226; B. 102-113. Eóten, nom. sing. Beo. Th. 1526; B. 761.
Eótena, gen. pl. Beo. Th. 846; B. 421. II. Eotenas, gen. a; dat. um; pl. m. the
Jutes, Jutlanders, the ancient inhabitants of Jutland
in the north of Denmark;
Jūtæ :-- Eótena treówe the faith of the Jutes, Beo.Th. 2148; 6. 1072: 2180; B.
1088: 2286; 3. 1141: 2294; B. 1145. [O. Nrs. jötunn, m.] v. ent, eten.
Now,
as the Hall of Heorot is believed to have stood at Lejre in Sealand, not far
east of the Jutland of the Jutes, might not
Grendel himself have been a Jute? The
fact that eoten had the meaning of ‘giant’ may well have imparted much to his
character, and a mere Jutish chieftain or warrior would then have been
transformed in heroic legend to the status of a horrible devouring monster.
As
this seems plausible enough to me, I would put forward as the historical
prototype for Grendel an early 5th century governor of Jutland
called Gervendil. This man was father of
the more famous Horwendillus of Saxo Grammaticus’s History of the Danes, ON
Aurvandil, but Old English Earendel. The
Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson has Thor toss the toe of Aurvandil up into the
sky. The evidence strongly suggests this
toe is the Morning Star (Venus; see below).
As
for Aurvandill, a derivation from a Proto-Germanic reconstructed compound
*auzi-wandilaz "luminous wanderer" or from a Norse borrowing of Latin
aureum, ‘gold’, do not have much credence.
Instead, we must again look to the Norse myth, which has Aurvandill
carried across Elivager, the ‘stormy wave or sea’, thought to be (see Simek)
the name for the proto-sea that surrounds the world. As ON aurr, ‘wet clay, mud, wet soil’, has as
its cognate in OE ear, ‘sea, ocean’, we might assume that at some point in the
development of Norse aur carried the same meaning, which was later lost. Thus Aurvandill may be simply the
‘Sea-wanderer’, i.e. the one who crosses Elivager.
Finally,
I’ve shown elsewhere that aur as ‘clay’ is used poetically for the cloud that
the Norns take from the sea and spread over the sky-tree. As Thor is the thunderstorm god, and he
carries Aurvandill, ‘Cloud-wanderer’ might also work, allowing for a possible
poetic meaning of aur.
If
a form like Aurvandil or [H]orwendillus can become Earendel in Old English,
then Gerwendillus (also from Saxo), which in Old Norse would probably have been
Gervandil or Gerrvandil, could by a very regular and rather simple process
evolve into ‘Grendel’. We first allow
for the dropping of the v/w, and then either propose the dropping of the /e/ in
Ger through elision or a metathesis of Ger- to Gre-, followed by the loss of
the /e/ in –wendil[l].
However,
the vowel in ger-, geir-, OE gar- is long and takes the principle stress. It
does not seem to be a good candidate for metathesis, in which case the Ger- of Gerwendillus is
unlikely to be the word for 'spear'.
Instead, I would propose
ON
gerr, 'greedy, gluttonous', found in Geri, 'the ravener' or 'greedy one', one
of Odin's wolves. The name Geri can be traced back to the Proto-Germanic
adjective *geraz, attested in Burgundian girs, Old Norse gerr and Old High
German ger or giri, all of which mean "greedy". Derived from *geraz is OESc giri, 'greed',
Norw. dial. gir id., OS fehu-giri 'rapacity', OHG giri 'rapacity, greed'. The
word does not appear in Old English.
I
have confirmation of this last possibility from Jackson Crawford of the
Department of Scandinavian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison:
“In
Old Norse (the language in question which I can comment on with most
authority), you can get *ger- > gr-, though the only cases I'm aware of are
those which involve the old perfective prefix *ga-/ge-, like "granni"
("neighbor," cf. Gothic "garazna"). And for the loss of v
in such a position, there is the common verb "gera"/"gøra" which in old
poems rhymes as "gørva."
There
is also the point that from an Old English standpoint, you may not necessarily
have to go from *ger > gr to be cognate with Geri. No exact (pre-)OE cognate
to the adjective "gerr," of which "Geri" is a formation
(and to which OHG ger/giri, Modern German Gier/gierig are cognate), is
attested, but that is not to say that it might not have existed, and that it
might have metathesized (so have been something like *gre-).”
In
either case, we end up quite naturally with Grendel, a Jute or ‘Giant’ who for
12 long years raided Hrothgar’s Hall of Heorot until he was slain in personal
combat by Beowulf.
As
for Grendel being made into a creature of the fen and mere, it is probable this
is a reference to the many pools and extensive peat bogs of ancient Jutland, where hundreds of bodies, well-preserved by tannins,
have been discovered in modern times.
Lastly,
the placing of Grendel’s hand/arm/shoulder high up under the roof as a trophy
suggests that Gerwendil, like his son Orwendil, was featured in a celestial
myth. I’m here reading the roof as symbolic of the heavens, and the
hand/arm/shoulder as being representative of a planetary body or, perhaps, a
constellation.
There
is little reason to doubt the identification of the Old English Earendel with
the Morning Star. For more on this, I
would refer the reader to David Allen Swanson’s “The Old English Christ Poems
and Anglo-Saxon Law”, to be found online here:
http://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4940&context=etd
Earendel,
in these Christ poems, is clearly substituted for Latin Oriens, ‘Morning
Star’. Of more recent interest is
"Eala Earendel: Extraordinary Poetics in Old English" by Tiffany
Beechy in Modern Philology 01/2010; 108(1):1-19. A similar discussion of Earendel as the
Morning Star can be found in her book THE POETICS OF OLD ENGLISH, Ashgate
Publishing, Ltd., 2013.
Most
authorities agree that the –wendil component of the father’s and son’s names
comes from a Germanic root meaning ‘to wander’:
http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/ielex/U/P2144.html
Some
have related such a meaning to our word planet, from the Greek word meaning
‘wanderer’. The Greek word was adopted
into the Latin language. I would note
that in the Old Norse myth, Thor carries Aurvandil in a basket. Old English has windel, ‘basket’, from the
Germanic root mentioned above.
We
do know that Grendel, perhaps the 'ravenous wanderer', as described in
“Beowulf”, is strictly a night creature.
He is never described as being abroad in the day, and all his
devastating raids on Heorot occur after darkness has covered the land. He himself is a ‘deorc death-scua’, a “dark
death-shadow”.
As
the Beowulf account has it, when the monster’s arm was ripped from his body,
‘Grendel
was driven under the fen-banks, fatally hurt, to his desolate lair [beneath the
mere].” (from Seamus Heaney’s translation)
As
we shall see when investigating the nature of the dragon slain by Beowulf at
the end of his life, each of the three monsters of the epic poem are lunar in
nature. The hero Beowulf is placed
either in the 5th or 6th centuries or straddling the two. When I checked NASA's Five Millenium solar
eclipse catalog, there were no notable events for Lejre, Sealand, Denmark
(scene of Heorot) or Ormror, Gotland (again, see the following chapter on the
Beowulf dragon) throughout the 500s.
However, during the previous century, there were three total eclipses of
major significance for the region. The
first had its central path right over Sealand, with its northern and southern
paths nicely matching the northern and southern points of the island. This occurred on April 16, 413 A.D., with the
maximum eclipse happening at 2:53 p.m. The second eclipse covered the southern
half of Gotland, including Ormror and Rone (the last being a site associated
with Beowulf's funeral cairn). This fell
on December 23, 447, with the maximum eclipse happening at 3:15 p.m., about 5
minutes AFTER sunset (although the eclipse would certainly have been noticeable
BEFORE sunset). The third eclipse of May 28, 458 passed over the northern tip
of Sealand, but hit Gotland dead-center, with its northern and southern paths
lining up with the northern and southern points of the island. The time of maximum eclipse for this date was
1:18 p.m.
I
found it remarkable that between the first eclipse and the third, 45 years
elapsed. In the Beowulf poem, we are
told the hero became king some time after his slaying of Grendel and Grendel's
mother, and that he reigned for 50 years before dying as a result of the wounds
he sustained fighting the dragon.
While
the poem's narrative presents the killing of Grendel's mother as something that
occurred immediately - perhaps a single night after - the killing of Grendel, I
would make a case for the interval between the first and second eclipses being
compressed for the sake of dramatic effect.
Furthermore, the fact that the second eclipse only reached maximum AFTER
both sun and moon dipped below the horizon mimics the story of Beowulf's diving
into the mere and being pulled down to the bottom by Grendel's mother, where
the actual combat took place. Thus,
Grendel - the New Moon, the invisible, dark moon, that moves over the land
unseen - would have been "killed" by the solar hero (and later solar
king) Beowulf in 413. The monster's
mother would then have been slain in 447, while the dragon (again see the next
chapter) would perish at Beowulf's hands in 458. All three eclipses took place within the life
span of the hero of the poem.
Grendel's
trophy arm/hand/claw may well be symbolic of the waxing lunar crescent, which
becomes visible after a New Moon. In
other words, Beowulf "killed" the New Moon monster during the 413
eclipse, and by doing so made possible the reappearance of the waxing
crescent. Grendel's mother - the New
Moon of 447 - reclaims the hand/arm/claw of her son when she visits Heorot,
this act representing the disappearance of the waning lunar crescent that
precedes the eclipse. But Beowulf brings
the head of Grendel back after slaying the monster's mother, and we can assume
this means the moon has once again entered its first visible phase.
GRENDEL
GRENDEL'S MOTHER
BEOWULF AND THE DRAGON
I: A QUEST FOR TWO BARROWS
As
long ago as 1985, archaeologist Gad Rausing published his paper “Beowulf,
Ynglingatal and the Ynglinga Saga: Fiction or History?”. In this study, he made a case for finding
both the barrow of Beowulf and that of the hero’s enemy, the dragon, on the
island of Gotland:
“Today,
one of the southern parishes on Gotland is named Rone. Beowulf's "Hronesnes"
has been taken to be derived from anglo-saxon "hron", whale. This
word is not known from any other Germanic language. Although whaling is usually
associated with the Atlantic, until recent times it played a very important
part in the economy of south Scania, of Öland and of Gotland. The dolphins,
(Phocaena phocaena, L.) who enter the Baltic in spring and leave in the autumn,
were netted by the thousand. Their meat, fat, bone and hides were all utilized.
The derivation of the name "Rone" is not known. It appears as
"Ronum" and "Rone" in the fourteenth century (Karl Inge
Sandred, pers. comm. 10.2.1984). It may be no more than a coincidence, there
being no linguistic evidence either way: can possibly "Rone" be
derived from "hron" as "the place where dolphins are
caught?" It is suggestive that a hill on the next headland to the north,
now called cape Nabbu, is called Arnkull, Eagle Hill.”
Rausing
was correct when he states the AS hron, whale, is not found in other Germanic
languages. I confirmed this with Dr.
Scott Mellor of the Department of Scandinavian Studies at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison:
“There
is no old Norse reflex of this word.
However, there are two probable Modern Scandinavian cognates
etymologically related: Swedish harr and Norwegian harr. Both are a type of salmonoid fish. The origins of these words are obscure, which
you may well know. Hellqvist attributes
the modern Swedish to a borrowing from Germanic harju(s), proto Germanic
*harzu, and Lithuanian kirzlys (with the same meaning as modern Swedish) and
Kérzsas with the meaning black and white spotted, back to sanskrit krsna- meaning black (the
computer I currently find myself on has only limited diacritics). Though not certain, Old English is likely
related to these words and has changed through metathesis from har* to hra*
(like brid to bird), and hra* to hro* like stan to stone.”
Modern
place-name scholars prefer to see in Rone the word (h)raun, “stone heap, stone
foundation”(see Swedish place names lexicon. Uppsala : Institute for Language
and Folklore, ed. Mats Wahlberg, 2003).
I've been in communication with Gotlandic place-name expert Professor
Evert Melefors of the University of Uppsala.
His opinion on Rone is pretty much the same:
"One
or two scholars have suggested an interpretation from 'hraun'. I have myself
written a paper where a bunch of old gothl. parish names (very old from the
time of the birth of Crist) containing the vowel o like in Boge, Sproge and
Rone are involved. There is a problem when Rone on a medieval runestone is
written ronum instead of the expected Raunum, so I am not fully convinced of
the interpretation. It is hard to explain why these sounds differ!
Nevertheless, from a matter of fact view it is a very good interpretation;
there are a lot of stones and rocks along the coast and there is on old gothl.
saying that 'the ice along the coast is 'rauning' when the ice blocks turn upon
each other."*
Of
course, there is no reason why a name that RESEMBLED hron could not have been,
at some point, identified by the Anglo-Saxons in England with their own
word. This is a perfectly reasonable
proposition. Nor is there a problem with
situating the Geats of the poem on an island bearing a name that records a form
of this very tribal designation. Nowhere
else in Gotland or in the coastal regions of
the Gotalands in Sweden
– the other homeland of the Geats - do we find a name matching Hronesness that
has a major barrow cairn.
And
the importance of Rone lies in its great Bronze Age burial cairns. The largest of them all – Uggarderojr, i.e.
Uggarde Cairn – is given first or, perhaps, second place (behind the Baticke
cairn in Anga parish) in terms of size for the entire island. As sea level has changed significantly over
the intervening centuries, it is known that at a certain stage in history
Uggarderojr, now a fair distance inland, was once on the coast. Archaeologists now believe it served a double
purpose as both a burial cairn and a beacon for ships. This last may be reflected in Beowulf’s dying
wish that his barrow would
“be
a reminder among my people –
so
that in coming times crews under sail
will
call it Beowulf’s Barrow, as they steer
ships
across the wide and shrouded waters.”
[Lines
2805-2808, Seamus Heaney translation]
As
for which of the various large cairns
in Rone parish may be Beowulf’s barrow, I will return to that question in a
bit.
And
what of Rausing’s Arnkull or Eagle Hill?
It is now usually referred to as Ornkull or Ornkullen, and is a hill at
the headland of Nyan next to Nabban in Nar parish. This is some 20 kilometers NNE of Rone. I’ve checked with the archaeology service of
the Swedish National Heritage Board and there is, indeed, a stone setting and
grave on the hill of either Bronze or Iron Age date. The monument is not very significant,
however, and certainly does not resemble the dragon’s barrow described in the
Beowulf poem. The full record of this
site, as drawn from Riksantikvarieämbetet – Fornsök, reads as follows
(translation from Swedish into English courtesy Johann Andersson of
Riksantikvarieämbetet, FMIS/Fornsök):
"Stone
circle (?), probably round, about 9 meter in diameter and 0,6 meter high.
Covered filling, with in the surface occasional occurring 0,3-0,5 meter large
granite stones. Some clearing stones is applied in the south. Probably a
burial.
Terrain:
Crest of a moraine height. A small islet in farmland. (The first part is about
the surroundings, the second part is about where the burial is placed on.
Tradition:
A treasure is said to be buried in Örnkullen, E. Oxenstierna, 1939." (Eric
Oxienstierna was a Swedish archaeologist who mainly did research on Swedish
Iron Age and the Germanic tribes. I can’t tell where he found the source for
this tradition).”
To
be honest, I have always had difficulty with accepting the AS place-name
Earnaness, the "Eagle's Ness", where the dragon lived in its barrow
before he slain by Beowulf. Here's my
problem with the name: it is given only once, and only at the end of the dragon
battle, when the hero is dead, having slain the monster. Needless to say, there is no 'eagle' in the
story. As given, Earnaness would appear
to be a name bestowed on the headland precisely because it had been the home of
the dragon, and the place where the king had slain the beast.
Let
us suppose the original name utilized a Norse Orm, ‘serpentine dragon, snake,’
instead. It would take but one mistake
in transmission somewhere along the line for the m to be miscopied n. The resulting orn is, in fact, Old Norse
'eagle'. Orm may not even have been
recognizable to the Anglo-Saxons in England, whose word for this creature was
the cognate wyrm. So I would guess that
the reason no one is satisfied with Arnkull – myself included - is because Earnaness should instead be
Ormanes, the Orm's Headland (cf. ON ormaboeli, ormagardr, ormabedr).
If
I’m right here, we must abandon Rausing’s Arnkull and look elsewhere for the
Ormanes.
There
are three or four dozen 'Orm-' place-names on Gotland. The majority of these
contain the common male personal name Orm.
We are looking for an Orm- barrow mound or cairn and a ness, or at least
such a cairn where there may have been a ness when the sea level was higher as
well as, preferably, a ness name still extant in the vicinity. Although various cairns on the island are
associated in modern folklore with orms, as one might expect, there is only one
that actually bears a name like that which we are searching for: Ormror (or
Armror or Arm-rair) just north of Drakarve in Nas parish. Nas is the Swedish form of Old Norse nes,
'nose', a promontory or headland and the cognate of the Anglo-Saxon ness. Ormror is listed in the archaeological
database as being in Havdhem parish, although the place-name database shows
some confusion, possibly due to shifting parish boundaries. Ormror is there shown to be in Nas parish,
and is listed as 'missing' from Havdhem.
In reality, Ormror is about 3.75 kilometers north of Nas, and 5.25 kilometers
southwest of Havdhem.
And,
indeed, I've had this parish change confirmed by Hanna Larsson of
Riksantikvarieämbetet, FMIS/Fornsök:
"There
used to be a parish Näs on southern Gotland. Today it no longer exists as a
parish, it has been taken up into the parish of Havdhem. In Fornsök you can
still find it as a geographical unit, because the archaeological data of
National Heritage Board is divided into the parish units that existed in the
1970ies, with a few exceptions."
According
to Kristina Neumuller of Forskningsarkivarie, Drakarve preserves the Swedish
byname Drake or Draki, ‘Dragon’, known from the Middle Ages, plus the ending
-arve meaning 'inheritance, hereditary estate'. Ormror, a very interesting
ancient site, is literally Orm Cairn (ror, with an umlaut over the o, is a
variant form of rojr, found appended to many cairns on the island), and is under 15
kilometers SW of Rone and only some 2 kilometers from the coast. For the sake of comparison, Uggarde is
approximately one and a half to two kilometers from the coast, depending on direction.
Here
is the full description of Ormror from Riksantikvarieämbetet – Fornsök, again
kindly translated from the Swedish by Johan Andersson:
"1) Grave field, in a area of 70x40 meter
(East-West) with 8 ancient burial monuments. These are 1 cairn and 7 round or
next to round stone circles. The cairn, in the eastern part of the grave field,
is 22 meter in diameter and 1 meter high. The stones is 0,1-0,5 meter big. In
the SSW part of the cairn is a residue of a kerb, 0,2-0,4 meter high, of
0,6-0,7 meter large stones. Otherwise is a partly visible smaller kerb, 0,1-0,2
meter high, of 0,3-0,7 meter large stones. Outside of this kerb is a
stone-brim, 3-4 meter wide and 0,2-0,3 m high, of 0,15-0,3 meter big stones -
largely covered with sod. The cairn is vigorously stirred and the SSW part is
dismounted down to the bottom. The eastern part of the cairn is partly covered
by the burnt mound (Havdhem 38:2). The round or the next round stone circles is
4-7 meter in diameter (six of them is 4-5 meter in diameter) and 0,1-0,3 meter
high. All of the stone circles are covered with sod and have in the surface
numerous visible stones, 0,1-0,5 meter big. One stone circle has a kerb, 0,1
meter high, of 0,2-0,5 eter large
stones. Three stone circles has a pit in the centre part, 1-2 meter in diameter
and 0,1-0,2 meter deep. Mostly of the stone circles are vigorously stirred and
are hard to delineate. The grave field is vegetated with pines and junipers.
Next to and in the eastern part of the grave field is 2) Burnt mound, next to
round, 11 meter in diameter and 1,5 meter high. Covered with sod and have in
the surface numerous visible cracked stones. In the centre is a pit, 3x2 meter
(east north east-west south west) and 0,3 meter deep. The burnt mound is partly
covering the cairn in the grave field. Vegetated with 3 pines and 5 small
junipers.
Terrain:
Flat gravel and limestone soil. Coniferous forest.
Comment
of an antiquarian: The cairn is named Ormrör."
So
all of this looks very promising. But it
is? Alas, no. The name Ormror is modern.
Professor
Evert Melefors of the Department of Scandinavian Languages at the University of
Uppsala reminds me that the name Ormror may be fairly recent, and is due to
real snakes - perhaps common European adders - hibernating in the Ormror mound:
"Translation
into English of P.A. Säve´s Tale nr 616 in R 623:4 UUB (Uppsala Univerity
Library):
616.
Årm-råir (Orm-rör) [Snake-cairn]
On
the border to Havdhem [parish] i the forest belonging to Gann [a farm in Näs]
in Näs there is a stone cairn that now (1871) is called Arm-råir [i.e.
Årm-råir] and consisting of grey-stone: because, when people on the 2-nd of
January 1815 excavated the cairn (treasure-hunting?) unto the depth of one eln
(6 decimeter), they found amongst burned clay and bones 19 snakes that moved
very little because of the cold. [Informant: the farmer] P. P[erso]n Källder,
born 1794."
We
are once again at a loss, it would seem, to find the dragon's barrow! Or, at
least, we are forced to return to ancient Gotlandic traditions in our quest for
the site.
According
to Guta Saga:
"Gotland was first discovered by a man called Thielvar. At
this time Gotland was bewitched so that it
sank by day and [only] surfaced at night. But that man brought fire to the land
for the first time, and after that it never sank.
This
Thielvar had a son called Hafthi. And Hafthi's wife was called Whitestar. Those
two were the first to settle on Gotland. The
first night they slept together she dreamt that three snakes [ormar] were
coiled in her lap. And it seemed to her that they slid out of her lap. She told
this dream to her husband Hafthi. He interpreted it thus:
"All
is bound with bangles,
it
will be inhabited, this land,
and
we shall have three sons."
While
still unborn, he gave them all names:
"Gute
will own Gotland,
Graip
will be the second,
and
Gunnfjaun third."
These
later divided Gotland into three parts, so
that Graip the eldest got the northern third, Guti the middle third, and
Gunfjaun the youngest had the south."
The
significant passage here concerns the sons of Hafthi (or Havde), who are
symbolically represented AS SERPENTS.
From “Guta Saga: The History of the Gotlanders”
(ed. Christine Peel, VIKING SOCIETY FOR NORTHERN RESEARCH, 1999):
“Dreams
about snakes
The
dream that Huitastierna has on her wedding night, of the three snakes issuing
from her womb or breast, has folklore parallels. The
motif
of pregnant women dreaming of events connected with the birth of their children
is very commonplace. There is, for example, a tale concerning William the
Conqueror’s mother who is said tohave dreamed that a great tree grew from her
womb. Equally, dreams concerning snakes are not unusual and the combination of
the two motifs (with the snakes proceeding from some part of a woman’s anatomy)
is also encountered. Henning Feilberg (1886– 1914, IV, 316, s. v. orm) mentions
a motif concerning a snake growing out of a young girl’s back and coiling
itself around her neck. Snakes also figure largely in Celtic myth in various
guises: as protectors, as fertility symbols and in connection with the
underworld and death. The snake motif is common on Gotlandic picture-stones and
one
in
particular, from Smiss in Gotland, is of
interest; see Note to 2/8. It is therefore possible that a literary or oral
motif concerning a pregnant woman’s dream has been combined with snake
iconography to give this version of the tradition. What the true source is for
the dream-sequence it is probably not possible to know: it could have been a
folk-tale applied in a particular case or it could have been a specific story
associated with the island’s settlement, perhaps linked to some native or
foreign mythological element. It could even have been an invented story based
on the seeds of an idea sown by some artefact similar to the disc found in a
woman’s grave at Ihre, Gotland; cf. Note to
2/8.”
According
to archaeologist Per Widerstrom with the Gotland Museum,
“Tjelvavrs
grave is best known and is a ship setting in Boge parish. There is a parish on
the southern island called Havdhem, maybe after Havde. No grave that I know of.
Gute
is a farm in Bäl parish, a bit northeast from Visby. No grave that Im aware of.
Theres
also Graips house (RAÄ Garde 16:1,2 or 3, I don’t remember which one) in Garda
parish, and his grave nearby (RAÄ Garde 1:1).
There’s
an old ruined chapel in Ardre parish that’s called Gunnfjauns chapel (RAÄ Ardre
35:1). Its still in use sometimes and there used to be a trading/market site
nearby during the medieval period.”
The
most important reference here is to Graip’s grave at Garde 1:1. This is the massive Digerrojr cairn (35
meters in diameter and 4-5 meters high), also called Graipershög or ‘Graip’s
Howe’. This is another cairn that would
have been on the coast before the sea-level fell and it has fascinating
traditions associated with it, as is made plain in the account from the
Riksantikvarieämbetet database. One of
these traditions concerns a precious cup or beaker (Swedish dyrbar bagare)
belonging to the trolls of Digerrojr, which sounds suspiciously like the goblet
removed from the Beowulf barrow.
In
my opinion, the great cairn of Graip the Serpent, with its precious beaker, is
the folk remnant of the dragon barrow of Beowulf.
As
for the actual barrow of Beowulf himself in Rone parish, I do not think this is
the famous Uggarderojr cairn. Why? Well, according to the Beowulf poem, after
Beowulf's barrow had been raised about his cremated remains,
"Then
twelve warriors rode around the tomb,
chieftain's
sons, champions in battle,
all
of them distraught, chanting in dirges,
mourning
his loss as a man and a king..."
Now
this story reminded me of a common folklore motif in which men or women or
witches who are dancing or piping in a circle, often on the Sabbat, are turned
to stone. As ancient barrows on Gotland
are often associated with other megalithic monuments - like stone ships or
CIRCLES - could it be that a major burial mound in Rone parish was surrounded
by or very close to a stone circle of EXACTLY twelve stones?
Well,
this seemed too much to hope for, but I went looking, anyway. And, sure enough,
I found what I was searching for: right next to the very large earth-covered
cairn a short distance to the SE of the major Lejsturjor cairn there is a stone
circle composed of twelve stones.
For
a drawing of this circle, see the following link:
http://www.fmis.raa.se/cocoon/fornsok/scanned_ref.pdf?label=Rone+72%3A3&url=09%2F0980%2F959%2Fdokument%2F959-0068-0072-02-D.jpg
BEOWULF'S GRAVE (Photos courtesy Drew Parsons)
But
what is better, the circle itself surrounds a barrow. In the words of Johan Andersson, Information
on archaeological sites and monuments (Riksantikvarieämbetet, FMIS/Fornsök):
"According
to the sketch that was done at the same time when this site was recorded in
1978, there are seven stones in the western part of the stone circle that were
artificially placed. The five larger "naturally" situated stones are
to the east. One of these is a large
stone, flanked by two stones to either side, making for a total of five. The stone circle surrounds a burial mound in
the center. "
The
proximity of this stone circle-surrounded grave to the ancient farm of Anggarde
is significant. Why? From
http://www.segotland.se/servlet/GetDoc?meta_id=1099&file_id=6:
“153.
Lejsturojr
Numerous
remains from the Bronze and Iron Ages can be seen in the beautiful, grazed
meadowlands and pastures at Änggårde near Ronehamn. The earliest monuments are
the two impressive cairns from the Bronze Age, one of which is covered with
soil. Traces of at least two farms from about the Birth of Christ, with house
foundations, prehistoric fields and remains of stone walling, can be seen
beside the cairns.
Approaching
the largest cairn, Lejsturojr, halfway in the meadow, feels almost
supernatural. The huge cairn seems to be guarding a secret, and it is with
great awe that you venture to draw near. Two sturdy standing-stones south of
the cairn attract particular attention. We do now know their function, but
since they are standing south of the cairn, we presume that they might have
been connected with sun worship.
The
actual cairn, like so many others, has a deep crater in the centre. The crater
may be the result of the collapse of some construction, such as a tower or wall
inside the cairn. However, the crater may have been deliberately incorporated
in the cairn construction, quite simply to save stones. Several people have
often been buried in cairns, over a long period of time. Few cairns have
actually been excavated, however. There is another cairn further on in the
pastureland, although this one has been covered with soil. Soil or peat-covered
mounds are rare on Gotland, although they are common in Scania and Denmark.
Since air, which destroys all organic material, cannot gain access to
soil-covered mounds, their graves tend to be much better-preserved than graves
in stone cairns.
There
were two farmsteads here during the Iron Age, up to the 6th century A.D. There
are five house foundations at the front end of the field, and beside these you
can see remains of stone walling, which once enclosed the fields and meadows. A
nature and culture trail will lead you through the grounds, passing all the prehistoric
remains. By road from Visby: Drive along road 142 to Hemse. Turn off towards
Ronehamn and then along a minor road signposted to Lejsturojr.”
As
Beowulf was of the 5th century A.D., this farm may well have been his primary
residence. The Lejsturojr cairn is
Bronze Age and 40 meters in diameter and 4 meters high, while the earth-covered
cairn by the stone circle burial is 47 meters in diameter and 2 meters
high. The last is dated to both the
Bronze Age AND the Iron Age. The actual
stone circle surrounded grave, numbered Rone 72:3 in the Swedish National
Heritage Board's database, is also considered to be of Bronze Age and/or Iron
Age date.
Anggarde
is approximately 20 kilometers SSW of Digerrojr/Graipershög.
*
Professor Melefors was kind enough to also forward me information on the other
place-names I've discussed above:
"The
majority of Gotlandic farmstead names are medieval (from the 13th century);
very few can be dated back to the Viking age. About 50% contains personal
names, but that is not the case with the ones you are asking about. Äng-garde
means the farm-stead ('gård' = farm) situated in or built in a meadow ('äng' =
meadow), Lejstu is the name of an deserted farm originally called Lei(l)-stuga,
meaning 'the little cottage'. Uggarde is the farm situated in the outskirts of
the parish Rone, derived from *U(t)-gard, Out-gard, the farm that is situated
out 'ut' from the center. Later the form *Ut-garde is pronounced, by
assimilation, Ug-garde."
BEOWULF'S DRAGON
BEOWULF AND THE DRAGON
II: ANCIENT CULT AND HERO’S DEATH
In
“The Hill of the Dragon: Anglo-Saxon Burial Mounds in Literature and
Archaeology”, H.R. Ellis Davidson makes her case for the fiery dragon of the
barrow being a symbol for the cremation blaze that consumed the dead. While she makes a good case, and her argument
is compelling, there are some obvious problems in her chain of reasoning.
For
one, the sources make it plain that the dragon is not itself the fire that it
breathes. Second, these dragons are
aerial beings. A comparison of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MSS. seems to suggest they are storm-cloud monsters whose
movements generated the wind:
Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle Laud (E) and Parker Chronicle (A):
ormete
ligræscas, 7 wæron geseowene fyrene dracan on þam lyfte fleogende.
immense
flashes of lightning , and fiery dragons were seen flying in the air.
Worcester
Chronicle (D) variant:
excessively
high winds and flashes of lightning
Modern
folklore in Gotland often identified a dragon with an eldklot or fireball, i.e.
a meteor or, presumably, a comet. From
Professor Ulf Palmenfelt, Institutionen för humaniora och samhällsvetenskap,
Etnologi, Gotland University:
"There
are quite a few folk legends collected by Per Arvid Säve about dragons and
snakes on Gotland. There are no sharp limits between the different legend
categories, but mostly the snake stories emphasize how scary these beings were
and how difficult they were to get rid of. The dragon legends are typically
associated with buried treasures. According to popular belief, you were
supposed to bury a live animal together with your treasure. The animal would
then be transformed into a magic guard in the shape of a dragon. These treasure
dragons were said to move the hidden treasures from one place to another, and
at such times they could be observed as fireballs moving over the night
sky."
Finally,
we must take into account the Viking dragon-ships that were burned during
ship-funerals, and the ancient stone ship-settings found all over Scandinavia.
Thus there are a number of characteristics of dragons that point to their being
something other than the cremation blaze.
Let
us take a closer look at the nocturnal habit of the Beowulf dragon. We are told quite specifically:
“So
the guardian of the mound,
the
hoard-watcher, waited for the gloaming
with
fierce impatience…
…Then,
to his delight,
the
day waned and he could wait no longer
behind
the wall, but hurtled forth
in
a fiery blaze…
…Then
back to the hoard
he
would dart before daybreak, to hide in his
den.”
[Lines
2302-2320, Seamus Heaney translation]
As
with Grendel, we are dealing with a monster that is active and most powerful
only at night. In my mind’s eye, I saw
the crescent moon – not only in the form of a boat, i.e. a Viking ship, but in
that of a serpent that like the moon could shed its skin, forever becoming new
again.
The
Norse dragon Nidhoggr from the Eddas carries dead men across the sky. To quote from Voluspa 62 (Ursula Dronke’s
translation):
There
comes the shadowy
Dragon
flying,
Glittering
serpent, up
From
Dark of the Moon Hills [Nidafiollom].
He
carries in his pinions
-
he flies over the field –
Malice
Striker [Nidhoggr], corpses.
The
name Nidhoggr is usually rendered something like the above, deriving Nid- from
ON nid, contumely, derision, libel, insult, cf. nida, to libel, lampoon,
nidingr, villain, scoundrel, vile wretch, nidstong, pole of insult. However, there is also nidr, ‘down’ and,
significantly, nid, THE WANING MOON, TIME BEFORE NEW MOON. In keeping with the symbolism of a glittering
dragon flying up into the sky from the waning moon hills, I would opt for
‘Waning Moon Striker’ as the real name of this monster.
The
Viking ship of the dead was called Naglfar.
Simek (in his Dictionary of Northern Mythology) explains how the name
betrays folk etymology, as "Nail-ship" should be
"Dead/Corpse-ship". However,
the tradition records that the ship is made of the unshorn nails of the dead. I would only mention that the white portion
of fingernail, which we commonly keep trimmed off, forms a white crescent. Such a color and shape may have reminded
people of the crescent moon and as the death-ship symbolized this heavenly
body, the name "Nail-ship" may be an intentional poetic
metaphor. Or such an observation could have
contributed to the folk etymology from an earlier meaning
"Corpse-ship".
The
ship of the gods is called Skidbladnir, literally ‘Wood-Leaf’, and it belongs
to Freyr in most sources, but to Odin in YNGLINGA SAGA. Among its magical properties it has this:
“when not at sea, it is constructed so skillfully and of so many parts that it
can be folded up like a cloth and put in a pouch.” A lunar boat conforms nicely to this
description, as it “folds” up when going from waning crescent to New and
becomes invisible – presumably being stored then in the said pouch. When
unfolded, it appears as the waxing crescent.
Draugs
– revenants inhabiting barrow mounds – are often told about in the Norse
sagas. The most famous draug is Glam of
Grettir’s Saga, whose name is literally a poetic word for the moon. At least in the Norse sources, then, the dead
man in the barrow, guarding his grave-goods, became identified with the moon.
The sagas record instances of men like Fafnir who, after death, transform into
dragons in their barrows (see H.R. Ellis Davidson, “Gods and Myths of Northern
Europe”, p. 161). It may be significant
that in Norse belief the moon is male, while the sun is female.
Beowulf,
then, slays the lunar dragon that guards its golden sun-hoard within the earth-barrow.
Likewise Sigurd the Dragon-slayer slays the dragon Fafnir, who was sitting on
his solar gold inside the barrow on Gnita Heath. That the dragon breathed fire
appears to be a later development.
Initially, the lunar dragon or ship, bearing dead men, would have been
visualized as coming down from the sky, passing through the fiery cloud –
itself symbolic of the cremation blaze – before it could set into the
earth. The sun, too, made this dangerous
passage of the flaming cloud (clouds during sunset or sunrise can appear as if
aflame), and the many stories recounted in the Norse sources of heroes,
heroines and gods wading through fire, smoke and water before they can enter a
barrow or the underworld represents the same passage through watery, fiery
cloud. In all likelihood the Norse
underworld river Slidr in Voluspa 36, said to be full of knives and swords, is
actually full of lightning-weapons. We
are often told streams "burst" forth from barrows and some of these
may also be symbolic of the "cloud-river" one has to wade in order to
enter the underworld.
But
why kill the moon monster at all? Unless
it were considered inherently malicious and dangerous?
The
answer to this question could lie in a unique phenomenon experienced only in
the far North: the major lunar standstill.
To quote from Dr. Judy Young, Department of Astronomy, University of
Massachusetts, Amherst (personal correspondence):
“The Moon could be said to "die" if
one observed from high latitudes in a Major Standstill year. Then, the full Moon of summer might not be
visible (above latitude 61 degrees, i.e. Orkney), but it would be visible a few
days before full (and then reappear a few days later).
Even
at latitude +57 degrees, the Moon could 'disappear' if there are sufficient hills
on the horizon. At Callanish, lat=58, the Moon is only 3 degrees above the
horizon when full near summer solstice in a Major Standstill year. So big
enough hills could hide that. But not if
one is looking over the ocean...”
Rone,
Gotland, the location of both Beowulf's barrow and that of the dragon (see Part
1 of this essay), is a bit above the 57th line of latitude. However, a major
lunar standstill does not take into account Beowulf’s presence during the
slaying of the dragon. Furthermore, we
could not account for so many other dragon stories set in much lower latitudes!
The
solution to the problem is to rely on good old-fashioned solar mythology –
specifically, the kinds of stories that arise from the occurrence of a total
solar eclipse.
Running
dates from NASA’s Five Millenium Catalog of Solar Eclipses, and restricting
myself to the generally agreed upon floruit of Beowulf being 5th or 6th
century, I found a total solar eclipse whose central path crossed Gotland on
May 28, 458 A.D. The northern and
southern path limits of the eclipse covered exactly all of Gotland from its
northernmost extremity to its southernmost.
For
a map showing the eclipse, go here:
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEsearch/SEsearchmap.php?Ecl=04580528
See
also the following diagram of the eclipse:
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/5MCSEmap/0401-0500/458-05-28.gif:
This
would have been a major event for the Iron Age inhabitants of the island. Not only is the eclipse total, with its
central path crossing the midpoint of Gotland, but the eclispe was at maximum
at 1:18 p.m., so the whole event played out around noon. Beowulf as a solar hero vanquishes the lunar
dragon, but himself succumbs during the struggle.
NOTE
ON THE SMISS STONE
"The
Snake-witch (Ormhäxan), Snake-charmer (Ormtjuserskan) or Smiss stone
(Smisstenen) is a picture stone found at Smiss, När parish, Gotland, Sweden.
Discovered in a cemetery, it measures 82 cm (32 in) in height and depicts a
figure holding a snake in each hand. Above the figure there are three
interlaced creatures (forming a triskelion pattern) that have been identified
as a boar, an eagle, and a wolf.] The stone has been dated to 400–600 AD."
[Description from Wikipedia]
To
confirm the date, I contacted the chief archaeologist of the Gotland Historical
Museum, Per Widerstrom. His response:
"That
stone is in the shape of the stones from appx 200- 600 AD. And in that span it
is believed to belong to the later part, the 5th or 6th centuries."
This
is, of course, the floruit of Beowulf.
As
the triskelion or triskele is often a solar symbol, the goddess on the lower
register of this stone, holding two snakes, is probably a moon deity. The reader will observe that the primary bend
of the snake on the left conforms to a waxing crescent moon, while the main
bend of the serpent on the right bears the shape of the waning crescent. The goddess herself, or more likely her head,
would be symbolic of the full moon. While
some theories have attempted to connect her with Celtic Cernunnos figures sitting
in the 'yogi' posture, this figure is plainly either in a birthing position or
a receptive sexual one.
In
my opinion, this figure is "evidence" of the worship of a pre-Viking
era lunar snake goddess on Gotland.
