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Beowulf, Wiglaf and the Wægmundings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Norman E. Eliason
Norman E. Eliason
Affiliation:
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
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Extract

In the second part of Beowulf (2200–3182) two crucial questions are posed, neither of which has ever been satisfactorily answered: precisely how is Beowulf related to Wiglaf and what is Beowulf's connection with the Wægmunding family? The fact that the poet himself does not provide a clear cut answer to either of the questions or indeed any kind of answer at all is as surprising as it is puzzling. Throughout the poem he takes pains to make family relationship clear, usually specifying it and repeating it when the relationship is particularly significant and sometimes mentioning it even when it is pointless. But in the final and climactic episode of the poem recounting how the aged hero Beowulf fights his last battle and meets his death, accompanied only by one loyal and fearless follower, his young kinsman Wiglaf, the poet is content to leave their relationship obscure.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 7 , December 1978 , pp. 95 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

page 95 note 1 He designates Beowulf as Ecgtheow's son fourteen times, a fact firmly established twice earlier (262–3 and 373).

page 95 note 2 As, for example, when Heardred is referred to as the nephew of Hereric (2206b), who is unidentifiable, or when Wiglaf is called a kinsman of Ælfhere (2604a), who is also unidentifiable (see below, p. 101, n. 1).

page 95 note 3 Textual citations are from Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, ed. Klaeber, F., 3rd ed. (Boston, 1950).Google Scholar

page 95 note 4 In Beowulf the Swedes are often called Scylfings. Although leod may merely mean ‘man’, it more probably means ‘prince’ here. Whether the phrase refers to Wiglaf or to Weohstan is immaterial.

page 96 note 1 Cyan has a wide range of meanings in Old English. Here, as the three following lines make clear, it means ‘family’ or ‘kindred’.

page 97 note 1 Benson, Larry, ‘The Originality of Beowulf’, Harvard Eng. Sttid. 1 (1970), 1–45, at 32.Google Scholar

page 98 note 1 Thus Klaeber, who supports the claim by confidently declaring, ‘the rich homestead of the Wægmundingas must clearly be sought in the land of the Geats’ (p. xliv). But the lines referring to their homestead (2606–8) say nothing about its location, and since the family is Swedish their homestead ought rather be sought in Sweden. It is thus that I interpret the lines, taking them to mean that after Weohstan's death Beowulf had interceded for Wiglaf, getting Onela to grant him the homestead and other holdings of his father. Klaeber's brief summary of the various theories about the Wægmundings is useful and reveals incidentally that the whole problem of identifying the Wægmundings and determining Beowulf's connection with them is one which continued to perplex him.

page 98 note 2 This view of Beowulf and his position in the Geatish royal line has been reaffirmed in Benson, ‘Originality’. Whether it was the Beowulf poet or some predecessor who inserted him there is immaterial.

page 99 note 1 Note on 2395 f. About both the text is quite clear, line 2391 declaring that Beowulf avenged the death of Heardred and lines 2395b–6 saying, as I read them, that Beowulf slew Onela.

page 99 note 2 Farrell, Robert T., Beowulf, Swedes and Geats (London, 1972), p. 8.Google Scholar

page 100 note 1 Its inclusion is significant, I think. Certainly the poet's mention of Weohstan's part in Onela's invasion of Geatland is more significant than his failure to mention Beowulf's part there. The latter has occasioned much discussion, most of it futile, it seems to me. (See Bonjour, Adrien, ‘Beowulf and Heardred’, ESts 32 (1951), 193–200Google Scholar, repr. Bonjour, , Twelve Beowulf Papers (Neuchatel and Geneva, 1962), pp. 67–76.Google Scholar) The brevity of the account of the invasion (2379b–90) and especially the fact that it ends with Onela's establishment of Beowulf on the Geatish throne more than adequately explain the poet's silence about any part Beowulf might have played in opposing Onela.

page 100 note 2 I find nothing puzzling or doubtful in the poet's remark, ‘Se ðæs leodhryres lean gemunde’ (2391), where Se clearly refers to Beowulf, lean gemunde means in effect ‘requited’ and leodhryres means ‘the fall of the prince’, i.e. the death of young Heardred, mentioned three lines earlier.

page 101 note 1 The text of the poem offers no other choice than the one I suggest. No relatives of Beowulf's father are mentioned, and none of the relatives of his mother (her brothers Herebeald, Hæthcyn and Hygelac, her sister-in-law Hygd and her nameless niece married to Eofor) qualifies, for they have no connection with the Wægmundings. This is also true of Hereric (2206b), regularly regarded as Heardred's uncle and therefore assumed to be Hygd's brother. Hereric may, however, not be a name at all but be a descriptive epithet, ‘battle leader’, signifying Onela, and the phrase ‘nefan hererices’ would then refer to Onela's nephews, Eanmund and Eadgils, whom Heardred had sheltered. Ælfhere, though usually taken to be the name of a kinsman of Wiglaf (2604a), has been conjectured to be the true name of Beowulf (Beowulf being his nickname) or the name of the father or the brother of Wiglaf's mother. It would be no more far-fetched to conjecture that Ælfhere is the name of Wiglaf's mother, Beowulf's sister – a conjecture which I hasten to disavow.

Beowulf's remark to Hygelac that, save for him, he had no other relatives (2150b-1), though seeming to deny the existence of a sister or nephew, actually does not, for at that time Wiglaf would presumably not yet have been born and the term used, beafodmagas, signifying ‘royal relatives’, I believe, rather than ‘close relatives’, would properly exclude Beowulf's sister, who was not royal by birth or by marriage. Besides, it is doubtful that in such family reckonings a woman would have figured at all.

page 101 note 2 I find no place in the text where emendation could succeed in restoring mention of Beowulf's sister effectively. The most tempting place might seem to be the notoriously frustrating damaged passage near the end of the poem (3150–5a) describing the lamentation at Beowulf's funeral by a Geatish woman. If this woman was identified, then it must have been in line 3151, where all that remains is -undenheorde, regularly emended to either bundenheorde, ‘with hair bound up’, or wundenbeorde, ‘with braided hair’. Tilman Westphalen, who, in his Beowulf 3150–55 (Munich, 1967),Google Scholar presents an elaborate argument why she must be identified, does so by adopting bundenheorde and filling out the preceding part of the line with Beowulfes cwen, who, he believes, is Hygd, formerly Hygelac's wife and later Beowulf's. In the poem, however, there is no mention of Beowulf's wife nor any grounds for supposing he ever married. Her existence depends solely on the emendation of the line. It could, of course, be emended otherwise - to Beowulfes sweostor, alliterating with bundenheorde, or Wiglafes modor, alliterating with wundenbeorde. Neither of these emendations, however, would establish her in the rôle I ascribe to her, i.e. both Beowulf's sister and Wiglaf's mother. Moreover, mention of her as both would have come too late here, for it is absurd to think that the poet wanted to startle us with a surprise ending. My reason for bringing up this passage is not to argue against the emendation identifying the woman as Beowulf's wife but rather to point out that my supposition that Beowulf had a sister is at least no more foolhardy than the groundless supposition of Westphalen and many other scholars before him that Beowulf had a wife. His wife is not needed in the poem; his sister is.

page 102 note 1 Sisam, Kenneth, The Structure of Beowulf (Oxford, 1965), p. 57Google Scholar. Sisam's view is endorsed by Farrell, Beowulf, Swedes and Geats.

page 103 note 1 To the Franks and Frisians he devotes only a few lines (2910b–21), far fewer than he devotes to the Swedes (2922–3007a), thus intimating that it is the Swedes, long-time enemies of the Geats, who are to be largely responsible for the Geatish disaster.

page 103 note 2 ‘The forebodings of war are best taken as part of the poetic representation of a people's grief and fears when their great king dies’ (Structure of Beowulf, p. 58).

page 103 note 3 Ibid. p. 53. Here and in the next quotation the italics are mine.

page 103 note 4 Ibid. p. 58.

page 104 note 1 Ibid. p. 59.