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‘Warriors’ in Beowulf: an analysis of the nominal compounds and an evaluation of the poet's use of them

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Caroline Brady
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Extract

Beowulf is a secular heroic story. Its main action is set in the three great fifthand sixth-century Scandinavian kingdoms of the Danes, the Geats and the Swed.s, with other action recounted or alluded to in exemplary or informative ‘episodes and digressions’ placed in the same kingdoms or in lesser ones along the northern coastlands. The most important human characters in its dramatis personae are warriors. The present study comprises an analysis of the eighty-eight nominal compounds, thirteen genitive combinations and the many (uncounted) genitive collocations which the poet uses with direct reference to these warriors. However, although the poet refers to warriors by all these terms, some of them do not mean ‘warrior’, even periphrastically, and not all refer to a warrior in respect of his military duties. (The genitive collocations are especially numerous if we count all the epithets of kinship (e.g., Ecglafes bearn) and of tribal relationship (e.g., Wendla leod).)

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 11 , December 1982 , pp. 199 - 246
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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References

1 ‘Beowulf, though it may contain elements intended for edification,’ says Dorothy Whitelock in The Audience of Beowulf (Oxford, 1951Google Scholar; repr. with corrections 1958), p. 20, ‘is surely first and foremost literature of entertainment, and as such, intended mainly for laymen.’ G. V. Smithers writes, ‘There is probably no reader of Beowulf today who does not think of it as a heroic poem’ (‘Destiny and the Heroic Warrior in Beowulf’), Philological Essays: Studies in Old and Middle English Literature in Honour of Herbert Dean Meritt, ed. Rosier, James L. (The Hague, 1970), pp. 65–81, at 75Google Scholar. In the past two decades, however, divers opposing views have sprung up. Of these writings eight of the most prominent and influential are reviewed, incisively and delightfully, by Campbell, A. P., ‘The Decline and Fall of Hrothgar and his Danes’, Revue de l' Université d' Ottawa 45 (1975), 417–29Google Scholar. I concur with his conclusions.

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3 One group of warrior-actors, however, is excluded – kings. At first glance this may appear perplexing, since a king, whether in the Heroic Age or in Anglo-Saxon England, was perforce a warrior. But a king in either age had duties other than fighting, and it is these other peculiarly royal obligations – to his personal troop of warriors (comitatus), his kin and his people as a whole – which the Beowulf poet chooses to stress: his ‘king’ vocabulary is on the whole substantially different from his ‘warrior’ one.

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30 The eminent Icelandic scholar, Einar Ólafur Sveinsson (‘Dróttkvæða þáttur’, Skírnir 121 (1947), 15Google Scholar) lists this group as his second sort of kenning, ‘outwardly similar’ to the majority, ‘yet unlike them in their nature’. See also Kärre, ‘Nomina Agentis’, pp. 209–10.

31 Kärre lists words found only in prose (Ibid. pp. 143–7 and 157–76) and those found only in glosses (pp. 147–50 and 176–91) as well as those found both in prose and in poetry and those found both in glosses and in poetry.

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58 See Ilkow, , Die Nominalkomposita, pp. 52–3Google Scholar, on the development from PGmc *ambahta-< Celt *amb(i)aktos of a nomen agentis in Gothic, Old English and Old High German and then of a nomen actionis in all the Germanic languages.

59 Ilkow, Ibid. pp. 130–1 and 198–203, gives a keen, detailed analysis of the etymological, historical-geographical and semantic approaches to the -togo (of Common Germanic origin) in OS folk-logo and beri-togo.

60 Bede was much concerned about the thanes whom he believed to be entitled to marry and set up households of their own but who were being deprived of their land by Northumbrian royal charters to new sham monastic foundations; see Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, p. 74 and n. 2, and Whitelock, , Audience, pp. 89–92.Google Scholar

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63 Die Nominalkomposita, pp. 208 and 92–4.

64 Listed as such by Robinson, Fred Colton, ‘Variation. A Study in the Diction of Beowulf’ (unpubl. Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of North Carolina, 1961), p. 44.Google Scholar

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66 ‘Interpretations and Emendations IV, p. 112.

67 Historia Ecclesiastica 11.13, trans. Whitelock, , EHD 1, 671–2.Google Scholar

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70 Cleasby, Richard, An Icelandic–English Dictionary, rev. Gudbrand Vigfusson, 2nd ed. with supplement by SirCraigie, William (Oxford, 1957Google Scholar; hereinafter CV).

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73 Die Nominalkomposita, pp. 164–6.

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81 Hatto, A. T., ‘Snake-Swords and Boar-Helms in Beowulf’, ES 38 (1957), 156.Google Scholar

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86 The byrnwiga ‘fighter in mail byrnie’ (2918a) is an expressive term for ‘warrior’, but it refers to a king and thus must be excluded from this study.

87 Ed. Wrenn.

88 Die altenglischen Kenningar, p. 254.

89 ‘Variation’, p. 48, n. 38. See Stanley's, E. G. analysis of these three ‘digressions’, Continuations and Beginnings, pp. 117–24Google Scholar, and also Bonjour, , Digressions, pp. 46–53.Google Scholar

90 For the literature on the subject and my own interpretation of Hengest's winter and spring, see ‘“Weapons’”, pp. 96–101 and nn.

91 ‘Epithetic Compound Folk-Names’, p. 134.

92 Brodeur, Arthur Gilchrist, The Art of Beowulf (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1959), p. 165.Google Scholar

93 Back, , Synonyms, pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

94 Smithers takes the compound as possibly meaning ‘wedding attendant’ (‘Four Cruces in Beowulf’ Studies in Language and Literature in Honour of Margaret Schlaucb, ed. Brahmer, Mieczyslaw et al. (New York, 1971), pp. 397–430, at 429.Google Scholar) His argument is persuasive and decidedly preferable to those he criticizes, but I am not convinced.

95 See Wilson, , The Anglo-Saxons, pp. 111–12 and fig. 23b.Google Scholar

96 ‘Epithetic Compound Folk-Names’, p. 126.

97 ‘Variation’, p. 113. See his complete discussion of this problem, Ibid. pp. 110–22.

98 See Robinson's, enlightened analysis of this passage and of Wulfgar's following speeches in ‘Two Non-Cruces in Beowulf,‘ Tennessee Stud. in Lit. 11 (1966), 155–8.Google Scholar

99 Digressions, p. 20.

100 Ibid. p. 19; Bonjour's, ‘tactical retreat’ from these views (‘Unferth: a Return to Orthodoxy’, Twelve Beowulf Papers 1940–1960, With Additional Comments (Neuchatel, 1962), pp. 129–34Google Scholar, esp. 130–2) is a delight to read but is too typically the tongue-in-cheek Bonjour to be accepted by one who agreed with him in the first place.

101 Die altenglischen Kenningar, p. 258.

102 Both CV and Fritzner, Ordbog, give this material and references to the sagas.

103 Ilkow, , Die Nominalkomposita, p. 194.Google Scholar

104 Die altenglischen Kenningar, p. 254.

105 E.g., von Schaubert, ‘den Herrn der Br¨nne, den Krieger’.

106 Kärre, ‘Nomina Agentis’, pp. 45–51, 54–5 and 57.

107 Prokosch, , A Comparative German Grammar, p. 170, §580.Google Scholar

108 On these patterns, see my ‘“Weapons”’, p. 89.

109 For the make-up of an Anglo-Saxon court, see Whitelock, , Beginnings, pp. 56–8Google Scholar, and Blair, Hunter, An Introduction, pp. 204–14.Google Scholar

110 In the ‘king’ vocabulary I have found a very high percentage of genitive combinations in both number and repetition.

111 Kärre, ‘Nomina Agentis’, p. 19–76.

112 Ibid. pp. 195–211 and 217. Unfortunately, Kärre seems never to have completed ‘the other part of my treatise, which is not yet worked out’ (Ibid. p. 121), in which he planned to deal with the an-formations, the type of nomina agentis to which five of our seemingly inappropriate six belong.

113 Stern, , Meaning, 14.83, p. 408Google Scholar; see also 14.81, pp. 404–5.