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1. Introduction: Beowulf, an Early Anglo-Saxon Epic

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1. Introduction: Beowulf, an Early Anglo-Saxon Epic The Waning Sword E Conversion Imagery and Celestial Myth in Beowulf DWARD The Waning Sword Conversion Imagery and EDWARD PETTIT P The image of a giant sword mel� ng stands at the structural and thema� c heart of the Old ETTIT Celestial Myth in Beowulf English heroic poem Beowulf. This me� culously researched book inves� gates the nature and signifi cance of this golden-hilted weapon and its likely rela� ves within Beowulf and beyond, drawing on the fi elds of Old English and Old Norse language and literature, liturgy, archaeology, astronomy, folklore and compara� ve mythology. In Part I, Pe� t explores the complex of connota� ons surrounding this image (from icicles to candles and crosses) by examining a range of medieval sources, and argues that the giant sword may func� on as a visual mo� f in which pre-Chris� an Germanic concepts and prominent Chris� an symbols coalesce. In Part II, Pe� t inves� gates the broader Germanic background to this image, especially in rela� on to the god Ing/Yngvi-Freyr, and explores the capacity of myths to recur and endure across � me. Drawing on an eclec� c range of narra� ve and linguis� c evidence from Northern European texts, and on archaeological discoveries, Pe� t suggests that the T image of the giant sword, and the characters and events associated with it, may refl ect HE an elemental struggle between the sun and the moon, ar� culated through an underlying W myth about the the� and repossession of sunlight. ANING The Waning Sword: Conversion Imagery and Celesti al Myth in Beowulf is a welcome contribu� on to the overlapping fi elds of Beowulf-scholarship, Old Norse-Icelandic literature and Germanic philology. Not only does it present a wealth of new readings that shed light on the cra� of the Beowulf-poet and inform our understanding of the poem’s S major episodes and themes; it further highlights the merits of adop� ng an interdisciplinary WORD approach alongside a compara� ve vantage point. As such, The Waning Sword will be compelling reading for Beowulf-scholars and for a wider audience of medievalists. As with all Open Book publica� ons, this en� re book is available to read for free on the publisher’s website. Printed and digital edi� ons can also be found at www.openbookpublishers.com Cover image: Freyr, adapted from an illustrati on by Johannes Gehrts (1855-1921), public domain, htt ps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Freyr_by_Johannes_Gehrts.jpg Cover design: Anna Gatti book ebooke and OA edi� ons also available OPEN ACCESS www.openbookpublishers.com EDWARD PETTIT OBP https://www.openbookpublishers.com © 2020 Edward Pettit This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Edward Pettit, The Waning Sword: Conversion Imagery and Celestial Myth in Beowulf. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2020, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0190 In order to access detailed and updated information on the license, please visit https://doi. org/10.11647/OBP.0190#copyright Further details about CC BY licenses are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ All external links were active at the time of publication unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web Digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at https://doi. org/10.11647/OBP.0190#resources Some of the images have been reproduced at 72 dpi in the digital editions of this book due to copyright restrictions. Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher. ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-827-3 ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78374-828-0 ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-78374-829-7 ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 978-1-78374-830-3 ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 978-1-78374-831-0 ISBN Digital (XML): 978-1-78374-832-7 DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0190 Cover image: Freyr, adapted from an illustration by Johannes Gehrts (1855-1921). Wikimedia, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Freyr_by_Johannes_Gehrts.jpg Cover design by Anna Gatti. 1. Introduction: Beowulf, an Early Anglo-Saxon Epic The Old English heroic poem known today by the editorial title of Beowulf survives, albeit damaged, in a single source: Cotton Vitellius A.xv of the British Library in London. This is a composite of two manuscripts, often called the Southwick Codex and the Nowell Codex, which were probably combined in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century. The latter manuscript, which contains Beowulf, is thought likely to date from between the late tenth and early eleventh centuries AD.1 Beowulf, however, is almost certainly older than its sole surviving witness. How much older has long been a matter of scholarly debate, with opinions ranging widely, in the main from the seventh to the early eleventh centuries. However, recent detailed research into the poem’s language, metre and textual transmission argues forcefully that there was a version in the Mercian dialect c. AD 700, and for the existence of a written archetype in the early eighth century.2 In this study I accept 1 On the Beowulf-manuscript, see N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957), 281–3 (dates it ‘s. x/xi’); KB, xxv–xxxv. Editions of Beowulf include ASPR 4; E. von Schaubert (ed.), Heyne-Schückings Beowulf, 17th edn. (Paderborn, 1958–61); M. Swanton (ed.), Beowulf (Manchester, 1978); C. L. Wrenn and W. F. Bolton (ed.), Beowulf with the Finnesburg Fragment, rev. 3rd edn. (Exeter, 1988); G. Jack (ed.), Beowulf: A Student Edition (Oxford, 1994); B. Mitchell and F. C. Robinson, Beowulf: An Edition with Relevant Shorter Texts (Oxford, 1998); K. Kiernan (ed.), Electronic Beowulf, 4th edn., http://ebeowulf.uky.edu/ebeo4.0/start.html; and KB, the latest scholarly edition. Quotations from Beowulf in the present study are punctuated and translated according to my understanding of the text, unless otherwise indicated. Full modern English translations of the poem are legion; for a recommended prose example, see S. A. J. Bradley, Anglo-Saxon Poetry (London, 1982). 2 See R. D. Fulk, A History of Old English Metre (Philadelphia, 1992); M. Lapidge, ‘The Archetype of Beowulf’, ASE 29 (2000), 5–41; D. Cronan, ‘Poetic Words, Conservatism and the Dating of Old English Poetry’, ASE 33 (2004), 23–50; L. Neidorf (ed.), The Dating of Beowulf: A Reassessment (Woodbridge, 2014), the title of which references © Edward Pettit, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0190.01 2 The Waning Sword such a date for the earliest traceable form of the Old English poem, if somewhat anxiously, given that scholarly dissension is likely to continue over what remains, for this field, a hot topic.3 The many arguments that have been advanced down the years to date Beowulf’s composition are often highly detailed and highly divergent in their conclusions. They will not be rehearsed in this book, but two fundamental and readily apprehensible linguistic points strike me as most significant. The first is that Beowulf appears to contain no loanwords from Old Norse, despite comprising well over three thousand lines of verse about Scandinavians in Scandinavia.4 The second is that none of the poem’s many proper nouns, some of which have equivalents in Old Norse texts, appear to show any influence from Old Norse phonology.5 In my view, these C. Chase (ed.), The Dating of Beowulf (Toronto, 1981); L. Neidorf, The Transmission of Beowulf: Language, Culture and Scribal Behavior (Ithaca, 2017). This dating is not very far removed from that of surviving artefacts suggestive of some items and traditions described in the poem, such as those found in the seventh-century ship- burial in Mound One at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk. In addition, Anglo-Saxon place-name evidence suggests that ‘by the tenth century at least, and no doubt much earlier, it was customary to name pits, meres and bogs after someone or something called Grendel, presumably a demon, water-monster or other sort of “genius loci”’, and it might point to a link between Grendel’s mere and a precursor of the figure of Beowulf before the early tenth century; see M. Lapidge, ‘Beowulf, Aldhelm, the Liber Monstrorum and Wessex’, rpt. in M. Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature 600–899 (London, 1996), 271–311 at 299–304 (quotation at 301); earlier, R. W. Chambers, Beowulf: An Introduction to the Study of the Poem with a Discussion of the Stories of Offa and Finn, 3rd edn. with supplement by C. L. Wrenn (Cambridge, 1963), 304–10. For an influential study of Beowulf in a seventh-century context, see R. Girvan, Beowulf and the Seventh Century: Language and Content (London, 1971). For surveys and discussion of the dizzying number of views about the date and origins of Beowulf, see R. E. Bjork and A. Obermeier, ‘Date, Provenance, Author, Audiences’, in R. E. Bjork and J. D. Niles (ed.), A Beowulf Handbook (Exeter, 1997), 13–34; R. Frank, ‘A Scandal in Toronto: The Dating of ‘Beowulf’ a Quarter Century On’, Speculum 82 (2007), 843–64. 3 For dissenting views, see B. R. Hutcheson, ‘Kaluza’s Law, the Dating of Beowulf, and the Old English Poetic Tradition’, JEGP 103 (2004), 297–322; E.
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