Farnsworth-Everhart 1

THE DEATH OF ALL WHO POSSESS IT: GOLD, HOARDING, AND THE

MONSTROUS IN EARLY MEDIEVAL NORTHERN EUROPEAN LITERATURE

By Lauren Farnsworth-Everhart

April 2021

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A Thesis Presented to the Honors Tutorial College at Ohio University

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In partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation from the Honors Tutorial College

with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in English Farnsworth-Everhart 2

Table of Contents

Introduction ...... 3

Becoming the Dragon: Monstrous Transformation and Gold in the Völsunga Saga ...... 17

Anatomy of an Extinction: Liminality, Violence, and Inevitability in Beowulf ...... 44

Afterword ...... 64

Works Cited ...... 69

Additional Bibliography ...... 74

Farnsworth-Everhart 3

Introduction

Now, earth, hold what earls once held and heroes can no more; it was mined from you first by honorable men. My own people have been ruined in war; one by one they went down to death, looked their last on sweet life in the hall. I am left with nobody to bear a sword or burnish plated goblets, put a sheen on the cup. The companies have departed. The hard helmet, hasped with gold, will be stripped of its hoops; and the helmet-shiner who should polish the metal of the war-mask sleeps; the coat of mail that came through all fights, through shield-collapse and cut of sword, decays with the warrior. Nor may webbed mail range far and wide on the warlord's back beside his mustered troops. No trembling harp, no tuned timber, no tumbling hawk swerving through the hall, no swift horse pawing the courtyard. Pillage and slaughter have emptied the earth of entire peoples. -Beowulf, 2247-2266

We begin with a hoard.

Years before the larger events of Beowulf, a lone survivor of war brings all the objects he can save into a barrow—traditionally used as a burial site. He has nobody left; Farnsworth-Everhart 4 all he has is gold and memories of times gone by, never to return.1 Thus, he commits the treasure to the earth and wanders off “until death’s flood brimmed up in his heart” (2269-

2270). At some point, however, the barrow comes to house a dragon, who seems to regard the hoarded gold as its own. The dragon guards the gold in the dark quiet of the earth for the span of “three centuries” (2278), during which, presumably, it is left undisturbed. After the passage of hundreds of years, however, the seemingly-secure barrow is breached—a thief manages to find a “hidden passage” (2213). Interestingly, the poem narrates that this was not a bid for personal wealth on the part of the thief—the thief was a “social outcast…a homeless fugitive”2 (Andersson 506). He, according to the poem, “had never meant” (2222) to “[move] the dragon to wrath” (2221). However, he still elects to take a “gem-studded goblet” (2217) from the hoard. According to Mary

Kate Hurley, “the thief’s action is clearly purposeful” (Hurley 174), likely enacted that he might gain “pardon from exile” (Hurley 174). He goes to the king—Beowulf—goblet in hand, and asks for mercy and, presumably, admittance once more into the broader community.

Meanwhile, the dragon wakes, realizing that a thief had breached its hoard while it slept. It seems to notice that a cup has vanished from the hoard. Enraged, the dragon proceeds to emerge at nightfall from its barrow and terrorize Geatland; as described in the poem: “the dragon began to belch out flames and burn bright homesteads; there was a hot glow that scared everyone, for the vile sky-winger would leave nothing alive in his wake”

1 “Death had come and taken them [the lone survivor’s people] in times gone by and the only one left to tell their tale, the last of their line, could look for nothing but the same fate for himself” (2236-2240) 2 The thief can also be read as being an enslaved person; however, the language is unclear and could be a ᚦegn (freeborn warrior); a ᚦeof (thief); or a ᚦeow (slave) (Andersson 506). Farnsworth-Everhart 5

(2312-2314). It is up to the king of Geatland, the eponymous hero Beowulf, to defend his people and stop the dragon’s ravages. As I address in greater detail in the second chapter of this thesis, in the very act of protecting his people, Beowulf would doom them—and the catalyst for the impending ruin of the Geatish people? None other than the panicked theft of a single object from a vast hoard of gold. However, gold’s involvement in the decline of Geatland should not be a surprise.

Gold—especially hoarded gold—is a transformative force in early medieval northern European literature. It is capable of causing monstrous change on both a mental and a physical level. However, this transformation is less the problem with hoarding gold and more the symptom of a larger problem. Simply put, it is impossible to handle gold well because it is, in its most essential form, a catalyst and agent of violence, even when seemingly used as a system stabilizer. In this thesis, I will demonstrate the inherently destructive nature of gold, a corrosive substance that razes the very societal structures it is purported to strengthen.

Gold was an essential part of early medieval northern European culture. In the societies of early medieval Iceland and England, it functioned as more than a currency or a means of trade, but also as a system stabilizer, and its sharing served as a tangible way of demonstrating generosity and lordship.3 Although gold and its distribution could serve to both create and retain stability in Iceland and early England, this function worked in tandem with its role as a source of discord. In many early medieval tales, gold serves as

3 See Rapaport et. al, “Hwæt!: adaptive benefits of public displays of generosity and bravery in Beowulf”: “The early Scandinavian society depicted in Beowulf, the king supported loyal retainers through the giving of treasure, the hosting of feasts, and the building of mead-halls. Retainers—the thanes—were expected in turn to risk their lives in military service to the king” (1334). Farnsworth-Everhart 6 an agent of change—for better or for worse. Oftentimes the gold is a catalyst, such as in

Völsunga Saga, when Hreidmar is given Andvari’s gold as a wergild. This initial use of gold in the saga sets off a chain of events that leads to the destruction of both his family and others. Simultaneously, there is evidence which points to gold maintaining the social order—Beowulf calls King Hrothgar a good king due in part to his generosity in doling out gold rings and torques. In many ways, gold seems to possess a sort of duality: on the one hand, it seems to be portrayed as a destructive influence, but on the other, it can also be a resource with which allyships can be solidified and lord-retainer relationships upheld.

I argue that gold is an inherently harmful substance that does not, in fact, ever cease to be a negative force in early medieval northern European societies. Even when it is being used “positively”—such as in pursuit of maintaining lord-retainer relationships— it serves to further violence. Its adverse effects are bad enough when it is in motion, passed back and forth between warriors and the lord whom they serve, but it is when it is hoarded that the nearly-malicious qualities truly begin to shine through. It is as though the already-deleterious effects of gold fester when held in stasis, becoming something that exceeds gold’s usual capacities for destruction. In its truest and most brutal form— the hoard—the gold operates as a site of transformation. Its transformative abilities, even when affecting an individual, are powerful enough that whole societies can suffer as a result. Gold—and especially hoarded gold—has the power to change both psyche and sinew into something new and altogether monstrous.

My thesis is divided into two chapters; the first of which focuses on Völsunga

Saga, while the second focuses on Beowulf. In the first chapter, I focus on Otter’s Farnsworth-Everhart 7

Ransom, a story-within-the-larger-story of Völsunga Saga. The events of the saga can, at times, almost resemble the convoluted plots of a soap opera; however, Otter’s Ransom is a clear, concise account of a family ruined by cursed gold. I further focus on events that directly relate to Hreidmar, Regin, and Fafnir, such as Regin’s mentorship of the young

Sigurd and the death of Fafnir. While the rest of Völsunga Saga is fascinating, the focus on gold is less clear-cut than it is in is the section on Hreidmar and his family; thus, it will only be briefly referenced. In the second chapter, I turn to Beowulf, and my interest is less in specific moments in the poem and more on the distinct themes, such as violence, monstrosity, and above all, inevitability, that emerge in the poem. I discuss the violence with which early English society is fraught, the liminal space between the heroic and the monstrous, and the fragility of a system founded upon, essentially, the promise of continued violence. King Hrothgar provides a vital case study for this work—his nobility, his generosity, and the utter failure of either to save him, either from Grendel or from eventual familial betrayal suggests that the societal system portrayed in Beowulf is not a truly tenable arrangement.

An initial query into the nature of gold seems to reveal that hoarding is distinctly the problem: it changes the nature of the gold. As a result, one might think that it is possible to use gold rightly and well – possible that gold could be used as positive force.

However, further study reveals that this is a false hope: that gold, even when used by people who may have been considered “good” in their era, was still but an instrument of violence. Hoarding may cause gold’s negative properties to become more potent, but it does not impart to it a quality that had been nonexistent before. Early medieval northern Farnsworth-Everhart 8

European societies were incredibly violent and conflict-centered,4 even by today’s standards. In being used as a system stabilizer, gold is being used to uphold the violence endemic to the era. Even now, wealth is used to reinforce the status quo and social boundaries, and it was not so different in the early medieval period. Gold was—and is—a tool of the wealthy and powerful; Beowulf and Völsunga Saga do not escape this reality.

I. Literature Review

My primary texts for analysis are Beowulf and Völsunga Saga. Beowulf is an early

English text dating to approximately to the 10th- 11th century, while Völsunga Saga is slightly more recent, being written in the late 13th century in Iceland. Both of these texts almost certainly predate their transcription, likely having existed previously as oral tales.

I selected these texts for a variety of reasons. Firstly, they have each received enough scholarly attention to be conducive to research—there is a large body of work to draw from for each, a useful quality for an undergraduate thesis. More importantly, however, I have found that each neatly represents a facet of my argument. Völsunga Saga is characterized by both the transformative properties of gold and the endemic violence found in the early medieval northern European world: one of the most important antagonists—the dragon Fafnir—was once a man who only became a dragon after extensive contact with a cursed hoard of gold; while the rest of the story is filled with conflicts and murders between family members. Beowulf, on the other hand, is more representative of the innate instability of a system which is based upon conflict, as well as with issues of monstrosity and liminality. These texts were also chosen in the interest of accessibility—neither is particularly obscure, and each have enough cultural cachet that

4 Richard P. Abels refers to Britain, specifically, as a “patchwork of tribal kingdoms” (Abels 1) that were engaged in near-constant warfare with one another. Farnsworth-Everhart 9 even someone who is completely uninterested in early medieval northern European culture has likely heard of them or at least of something influenced by them.

A variety of secondary sources inform my reading of the function of gold specifically in northern European cultures based upon the lord-retainer model. These texts helped me to build my arguments by giving me a sense of the culture that such societies would have had. These sources contextualize the period at hand, and allow for a clearer image of the use of gold in northern early medieval Germanic societies to come into focus. A brief overview of the most relevant of these sources will help to situate the argument this thesis will pursue.

In “The Best Kept Secret: Ransom, Wealth, and Power in Völsunga Saga”,

Andrew McGillivray addresses the trail of bloodshed that follows Andvari’s gold throughout the events of Völsunga Saga. McGillivray approaches the gold from both a literary and sociological standpoint: he builds much of his argument from Aron

Gurevich’s writings on the treatment of precious metals by the ancient Germanic and

Scandinavian peoples, but illustrates said argument by delving deeply into the movement of gold in Völsunga Saga. His use of Gurevich’s writings provide welcome context for the world that helped produce Völsunga Saga, allowing us to have some idea of how the original audience may have interpreted certain portions of the saga. McGillivray helpfully emphasizes the importance of wealth in medieval Icelandic society, writing that it was

“important to their sense of identity, not merely their economic status” (McGillivray,

366). This importance helps contextualize the value of Andvari’s gold: it was not simply treasure to flaunt, but rather a lynchpin of nobility. McGillivray’s argument usefully outlines the cultural world that played a part in producing Völsunga Saga, in all its wealth Farnsworth-Everhart 10 and violence. It thus makes clear the stakes that lead to Sigurd’s decision to claim

Fafnir’s hoard. What would have seemed downright irrational becomes unfortunate but understandable in light of McGillivray’s argument.

As shown by McGillivray, it is clear that gold wasn’t regarded as a purely negative substance in early medieval northern European literature. However, its portrayal is anything but simple. In “Wreoþenhilt Ond Wyrmfah: Confronting Serpents in Beowulf and Beyond,” Sarah Symons explores the relationship between dragons and gold in both

Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian literature. She argues that the nature of draconic gold is, at its core, tainted and corrupt: it fulfills none of the positive aspects of gold, such as being used as a gift, and instead stagnates. It is, as she phrases it, “at best redundant to human society and at worst a hidden menace” (Symons, 79). For Symons, the key aspect of this corrupted gold seems to be the greed it is capable of inspiring. In other words, it is not necessarily an innate function of the gold to cause corrupt transformation, but rather an inner quality on the part of the transformed. Thus, it is almost as though Fafnir is destined to become a dragon whose fate is inextricably tied up with the hoard.

In “From Saga to Romance: The Use of Monsters in Old Norse Literature”,

Kathryn Hume argues that the monsters that appear in sagas are there to act as a sort of foil to the heroic. She proposes that, in the sagas, the confrontations with the monsters seem to take one of four patterns (Hume 3). These patterns are as follows: pattern 1, where the monster is an obstacle the hero must overcome to prove his heroic mettle; pattern 2, where the monster’s functions are to simultaneously threaten society and show that the hero is a bolster to said society when the hero confronts its ravages; pattern 3, where the hero is brought down to a slightly more conventional level of humanity by Farnsworth-Everhart 11 their dealings with the monster, a “comic or ironic device” (Hume 3); and pattern 4, where the monster “forms part of a deliberate comment on the nature of heroism” (Hume

3). In my research, I found that patterns 1, 2, and 4, especially, were a useful framework through which to consider both Völsunga Saga and Beowulf.5 Both patterns are used to further the definition of both the hero and the nature of heroism, thus cementing the usefulness of monsters as a literary device.

Beyond being a literary device, the monsters of Beowulf and Völsunga Saga demonstrate the paranoias held by early medieval northern European societies, but many of these also hold true today, as pointed out by Adam Miyashiro in “Homeland

Insecurity: Biopolitics and Sovereign Violence in Beowulf”. In this article, Miyashiro argues that the Danes’ fears of Grendel could be interpreted as having arisen from biopolitics—that Grendel and his mother function on a sort of “proto-Indigenous”

(Miyashiro 384) level, and, as such threaten the Danes’ “territorial and political stability”

(Miyashiro 384). The actions of both Grendel and his mother disrupt the lives of the

Danes, leading to their portrayal as “violent” (Miyashiro 386). He points out that in the poem, Grendel is regarded as a “banished figure who can kill without being murdered”

(Miyashiro 385), bringing him into a place most often occupied by Indigenous peoples who have been the victims of colonization. The rune— ᛟ6 —that is normally transcribed as eþel is written in its original runic form throughout the first part of Beowulf. According to Miyashiro, this is intentional: an effort on the part of the poet to “not only to antiquate

5 Perhaps Beowulf’s fateful battle with the dragon could possibly be read as a form of pattern 3— his death in said battle certainly renders him as being more on a level with most humans. 6 This rune is also known as the odal or othala rune, and has unfortunately been appropriated by both the Third Reich and neo-Nazis. Farnsworth-Everhart 12 his text, but to stress the power of antiquity in the foundations of sovereign power”

(Miyashiro 388).

Miyashiro’s argument demonstrates how Grendel and his mother are coded as indigenous—the language used ties the Danes’ concept of “homeland” firmly to the past, which could possibly imply that the place they are defending so aggressively is not, in fact, their homeland. If this interpretation is followed, Heorot, portrayed as a haven for the good warriors of Hrothgar, is built on stolen land and occupied by colonists. This view lends an additional layer of liminality to the Beowulf story, shifting the borders between the roles of hero and villain. If understood thusly, Grendel is less of a cannibalistic monster and more of a tragic hero/antihero, fighting a hopeless battle against those who seek to exterminate him and his mother. Hrothgar, seen as such an admirable figure in most interpretations, is an invader who seeks to rule over land that is not his own at the expense of its original inhabitants. Beowulf, then becomes almost a mercenary. The violence that underpins Danish society affects not only the Danes, but also the original inhabitants of the land. Their system of gold-fueled warfare and its inherent toxicity lead to the deaths of some of the last Indigenous peoples in Denmark.

II. Conceptual Framework

Central to the use of gold are two major concepts that structure early Germanic society: the lord-retainer relationship and the uses to which gold was put. In both chapters of my thesis, I briefly reference the lord-retainer relationship—a fundamental aspect of early medieval northern European societies. Here, I provide a slightly more focused view of it.

The lord-retainer relationship was of paramount importance in early medieval northern

European culture, and it was treated as such: if the retainer did not fulfill their sworn Farnsworth-Everhart 13 duties, their lord was permitted to impose penalties upon them (Abels 12). Conversely, nobility was exemplified by the willingness to distribute treasure to one’s deserving warriors (Marshall 5). When used in this way, treasure serves as a sort of “delineator of social bonds” (Symons 78) in which those in power serve as patrons and providers for those below them in socioeconomic class, so long as they continue to execute their societal duty. As a result of this system, then, treasure was almost the physical embodiment of power—with it, you could provide for your family; with it, you could provide for the protection of your interests. As shown in the earlier section on

MacGillivray’s argument, it was nearly impossible in early medieval northern European society to be a personage of note without the aid of wealth; without wealth, there is no power. Thus, the giving of gold from one party to another effectively functioned as a transfer of power, power which allowed those to whom it was granted to secure a place for themselves and their families. As observed by Paul Beekman Taylor, “The bestowing of artifacts transfers to the recipient something of the donor's person, his power, and his luck” (Taylor, 202). In early medieval England and Iceland, then, treasure was most valuable while in the process of transfer. When gold is hoarded, it is not in the process of transfer; rather, it remains stationary: it is not passed from hand to hand, but rather gathered in one place by an individual. As my paragraph above states, this goes against the lord-retainer relationship, which can only lead to societal instability further down the line.

In an act that is both fitting and ironic, the hoarded gold—creator of instability, which leads to more violence and death—is often placed inside of a mound,7 which has

7 As mentioned earlier, the dragon’s hoard in Beowulf is piled up inside a mound: a “stone-roofed barrow” (2213). The case of Fafnir and his hoard are slightly more difficult to parse, as he had Farnsworth-Everhart 14 tomblike associations. While early English and Icelandic lore concerning mounds are not identical to later beliefs that such places were the haunt of the faerie, it is intriguing that many European cultures tend to view such places as being the dominion of the Other.8 In early medieval northern European traditions, this Other is often portrayed in the form of the dead, likely due to the fact that mounds—also known as barrows—were often erected over deceased persons. Traditionally, these barrows would contain some form of treasure in a custom that dated back to earlier pagan traditions, a custom of which, as Sarah

Semple points out in the writer of Beowulf would have been well aware (Semple 110).

Semple also argues that barrows, in early medieval northern European culture, were thought of as the haunts of “goblins, elves and Woden himself” (Semple 111), as well as serving as the designated resting-place of criminals, suicides, and the unbaptized (Semple

112).

This dark reputation may have derived from either possible human sacrifice that occurred near the barrows or, as noted earlier, the choice of the location surrounding the barrows for the burial of executed criminals. In his book The Age of Sutton Hoo, Martin

Carver observes that it is often difficult for modern archeologists to tell the difference between victims of execution and victims of sacrifice (Carver 353). As such, it is difficult to say beyond the shadow of a doubt that barrows were the site of sacrifice or merely the

gathered the gold himself after murdering his father—a different case from the Beowulf dragon, who is described as “the burning one who hunts out barrows” (2273). See Hurley, “Beowulf’s Collectivities” and Carver, “Burial as Poetry”; both argue that burial and the objects in the hoard can be read and analyzed in much the same way as a poem is read and analyzed. 8 See White, “Devil’s Stones and Midnight Rites: Megaliths, Folklore, and Contemporary Pagan Witchcraft”, “In early modern folktales and witch-trial accounts, fairies were often associated with, or said to dwell within, mounds, and it was through hills that one could reach the realm of faerie” (65); Hutton, “Witch-Hunting in Celtic Societies”, “The Irish myths and legends are also filled with interactions between humans and a parallel world of supernatural beings, organized into their own parallel society and dwelling within hills, mounds and lakes” (64). Farnsworth-Everhart 15 site of burial. Andrew J. Reynolds speculates that the pre-Christian early English people may have chosen to bury certain individuals—as he terms it, the “suspicious dead—near the barrows due to their reputation in life, such as being a ‘cunning woman’, or due to odd circumstances surrounding their death (Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burials, Reynolds,

236). Regardless, the choice to bury bodies in the manner and locale as those found near barrows suggest that there such places were regarded as being somehow different from the more traditional burial grounds. There is a certain dark poetry to hoarded gold being kept in these burial mounds; although all gold plays a role in violence in both Beowulf and Völsunga Saga, hoarded gold’s power is especially potent. Thus, the catalyst of violence is being placed in a location associated with the ultimate cost of violence.9

III. Conclusion

As my thesis will demonstrate in the coming chapters, the centrality of gold in early medieval northern European cultures is inarguable. Without gold and the closely-related practice of gift-giving, the system portrayed in both texts would likely collapse: without their lord’s gifts, the hall-warriors are left without the “security land brings” (2493); without the service of the warriors, the lord would be helpless against the violence that was so rampant in the era. Both Völsunga Saga and Beowulf demonstrate gold’s import, but in doing so, illuminate its darker side. Gold is heavily associated with transformation in early medieval northern European literature. At times, this transformation may be as simple as that of Heremod—who grew “bloodthirsty” (1719) and greedy; changes that

9 See also Carver, “Burial as Poetry”, “A burial is itself not reality and is not meant to be; like poetry, it is a palimpsest of allusions, constructed in a certain time and place” (Carver PAGE #) Farnsworth-Everhart 16 mainly seemed to affect his mental state. However, as will be shown in “Becoming the

Dragon: Monstrous Transformation and Gold in the Völsunga Saga”, the transformations triggered by gold can be literally monstrous, as evinced by Fafnir’s transformation into a dragon. Gold’s transformative qualities demonstrate its inability to be a stable foundational aspect to the early medieval northern European cultures. When hoarded— improper use, according to early English and Icelandic cultures—it causes disaster for both individuals and families, as shown by Fafnir’s shift into draconic form and the ruin of his family that prefaced this transformation. Proper use of gold, however, remains rooted in violence: the lord is not paying his retainers solely so they can drink mead and listen to scops with him, but rather so that they will fight for him against his enemies.

Ultimately, gold is useless for anything beyond being an agent of death and destruction.

The very fact that it was used as a system stabilizer in early medieval northern European cultures exhibits their lack of sustainability—a society that requires violence to function is not a society that will continue to function in any real sense. From violence is birthed chaos, and from chaos, extinction. The world of Beowulf and Völsunga Saga is not aspirational; it relies on the very thing that proves to be its undoing.

Farnsworth-Everhart 17

Becoming the Dragon: Monstrous Transformation and Gold in the

Völsunga Saga

Sigurd said: “[…] I will ride to your den and there take the massive hoard of gold

that your kin possessed. Fafnir replied: “You will ride there, where you will find

so much gold that it will be plentiful for the rest of your days. And that same gold

will be your death, as it will be the death of all who possess it.”

–Völsunga Saga

In this chapter, my focus lies with Völsunga Saga, a story in which the transformative properties of gold play the starring role. Despite the saga’s medieval provenance—its transcription dates back to the 13th century and was predated by oral storytelling of similar tales—it continues to influence popular culture. If you’ve ever heard Richard Wagner’s sweeping “Ride of the Valkyries” or read and watched J.R.R.

Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings novels and their cinematic adaptations, you have seen an example of the influence of Völsunga Saga has had through the years. The curse laid upon the gold, a central plot point in Völsunga Saga, has proven to be especially compelling: Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings especially builds upon the idea of a cursed object—in this case, a ring—that has the power to transform bodies and minds. Those who possess the One Ring—or even some who come into contact with it—are forever changed, and not for the better. The One Ring was forged with dark magic; those who dared wield it eventually found that the Ring would wield them, as well—as evinced by the barely-human Gollum, who was so affected by the One Ring that his personality Farnsworth-Everhart 18 splintered into two distinct identities. The effects of the One Ring are strikingly similar to those of the cursed gold portrayed in Völsunga Saga. Just as the One Ring transforms

Smeagol into the fractured, murderous Gollum, so does the curse put upon the gold transform Fafnir from son and brother to a dragon who spits poison. The effects the One

Ring had upon Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam were so great that the three eventually left Middle-

Earth entirely to live in the otherworldly realms of the West—they left the human realm completely because they were so changed. Not only did Fafnir functionally leave human society following his transformation, but so did Sigurd and his family—only they left through death, rather than by way of monstrous transformation.

As seen in the quote from Fafnir in the epigraph, the nature of the hoarded gold in

Völsunga Saga is very much known by the characters within it. From the very beginning, it is described as cursed—as the dwarf Andvari hands it over to Loki, he states that it will be “the death of whoever owns it” (Völsunga Saga, 58)—hardly an ambiguous statement.

Here is another area where a comparison to the One Ring in Tolkien’s works is beneficial—while the One Ring is evil, it is still highly desirable: it brings power and control over others. Likewise, the cursed gold in Völsunga Saga has proven deleterious effects, but in the same way brings power: Sigurd hopes to be a successful leader, and it was socially necessary to have wealth in order to gain a following in Icelandic society.10

While the gold is a prominent player in most of the events that take place in Völsunga

Saga, the Otter’s Ransom—an early narrative in the saga—truly demonstrates the gold’s transformative power.

10 See Andrew McGillivray’s “The Best Kept Secret: Ransom, Wealth, and Power in Volsunga Saga” (2015), which will be discussed in greater detail at a later point in this chapter. Farnsworth-Everhart 19

A brief overview of the narrative will help situate my argument regarding the key role that the cursed gold plays in Völsunga Saga, both in terms of its transformative properties and in its ability to cause violence. In the story of Otter’s Ransom, we are introduced to a family: the father, Hreidmar, and his three sons, Otr, Fafnir, and Regin.

Otr is a shapeshifter, able to take the form of an otter, and it is while he is in this form that he is killed by the Æsir—Odin, Loki, and Hœnir. In return for Otr’s life, Hreidmar demands a blood-price. The Æsir pay this blood-price with gold stolen from the dwarf

Andvari, who pronounces a curse upon the gold that will result in the death of the claimants. Shortly after receiving the gold, Hreidmar is murdered by Fafnir. This murder is shown to be a direct result of Fafnir’s desire to have the gold for his own, and Fafnir refuses to share any of this gold with Regin. He flees into the wilderness and gathers the gold in a heap, which he lies down upon. In time, Fafnir becomes a monstrous dragon.

This tale can perhaps be best summed up by Sigurd’s succinct statement following

Regin’s telling of it: “You have lost much, and your kinsman has been vile” (Völsunga

Saga, 59).

The story of Otter’s Ransom is an enormously helpful lens through which to view the events that follow it in Völsunga Saga. It both gives background insight into the gold that Sigurd is about to pursue and also instills a measure of foreboding into the reader regarding the fate of Sigurd. In the Otter’s Ransom, Andvari’s gold destroys a family. A father is murdered at the hands of his own son. Fafnir is murdered by his brother Regin; as discussed earlier, although Sigurd may have wielded the blade, he was encouraged to kill Fafnir and claim the treasure by Regin.11 Despite all of his machinations, Regin

11 As Sigurd’s foster father, Regin had a unique position of mentorship over the younger man, and he used this position to build the perfect weapon to end his brother. He even goes so far as Farnsworth-Everhart 20 doesn’t manage to escape the curse, either: after Sigurd finds out that his foster father is planning to kill him and take the treasure, he kills him, too. Indeed, it could even be argued that, in a way, Sigurd is almost part of Regin’s family: as mentioned earlier, Regin assisting in the raising and training of Sigurd, and likely grew at least somewhat close to him during that time. Thus, the Otter’s Ransom isn’t simply a warning against greed, but a tragedy. As an audience, we are given a front-row seat to the destruction of a family.

But the downfall of Hreidmar and his sons is far more poignant than simply a matter of outside forces causing a rift. Instead, we as the audience bear witness to something far more traumatic: a family that devours itself. As if this realization wasn’t enough, there is the definite sense that something of the same catastrophic nature may happen to Sigurd.

If the gold is cursed and the curse made its way through the family who owned it before, then it only follows that Sigurd’s family is likely to suffer in the same way.

In his analysis of the account of Otter’s ransom, McGillivray emphasizes the complete destruction of Hreidmar’s family due to the gold they received. This is only the beginning of the Niflung hoard, and already it is inflicting devastation on those who dare lay claim to it. Hreidmar was neither god enough nor strong enough to possess the gold with impunity, as evidenced by the events that followed (McGillivray 370). His actions contribute not only to his own death, but indirectly to the deaths of both Fafnir and Regin.

Although Sigurd may have dealt Fafnir the killing blow, his actions were guided by

Regin. It is an event that manages to be concurrently heroic and underhanded. On one hand, Sigurd’s daring cannot be contested. However, it also cannot be contested that

Regin seems to have trained Sigurd for the sole purpose of exacting revenge on his

crafting the very sword that Sigurd eventually uses to kill Fafnir (Volsunga Saga, 59-60). Regin both literally and figuratively forged the weapons used to murder his brother. Farnsworth-Everhart 21 brother and obtaining the gold. Of course, Regin’s own deception comes back to haunt him in the end. Sigurd, after gaining the ability to understand the speech of animals, hears the birds speaking of Regin’s plans to kill him and claim the gold for his own. He then proceeds to kill Regin and claim the gold for his own (Völsunga Saga 66). Thus, the gold falls into the hands of a new family.

Issues of gold, greed, the inhuman, and liminality are deeply intertwined in the story of Otter’s Ransom, revealing much about how the curse put upon the gold can cause those who come into contact with it to become something other than what they had previously been. An examination of the titular character proves to be an intriguing starting point. Fafnir’s transformation, it seems, is not without precedent: his brother, Otr, is also capable of transformation.12 Otr is described as being a “great fisherman”

(Völsunga Saga, 57), and—incredibly usefully for one of that profession—possessed the ability to take the form of an otter. Otr’s shapeshifting abilities raise important questions about their nature and extent: Are his shifting abilities genetic in some way, passed down from his forebears? Should this be the case, perhaps Fafnir’s transformation into a dragon is less an enactment of the curse and more a natural tendency towards shapeshifting. Or, more interestingly, is there something about Otr—something innate, something psychological—which causes him to be able to turn into an otter at will?

From what has been shown in Völsunga Saga as a whole, Otr’s shapeshifting abilities are an example of the interior becoming the exterior. Otr is described as excelling as a fisherman, surpassing all others in this. He is also said to be “in many ways

12 Bodily transformation is an important part of the Norse mythological tradition: see, among others, Guðmundsdóttir’s “The Werewolf in Medieval Icelandic Literature” and McGlynn’s “Bears, Boars, and Other Socially Constructed Bodies in Hrólfs Saga Kraka.” Farnsworth-Everhart 22 like an otter” (Völsunga Saga, 57): he returns from fishing at a late hour (presumably due to his skill and enjoyment of the craft) and eats “with his eyes closed” so that he does not have to see his food disappear into his stomach (Völsunga Saga 57). Even when he is slain by the Æsir, Otr is in his otter form, signaling that, perhaps, his animalistic habits may have had a hand in his unfortunate demise. However, as animalistic as his behavior may have been, Otr is not an otter. As mentioned above, the saga describes him as being

“in many ways like an otter” (Völsunga Saga 57; emphasis mine), but he is not outright said to be an otter. Although it may seem to be an overly exacting description, it also is an insightful one. While Otr may act like an otter, may wear the form of an otter, may even spend the majority of his time as an otter, he is decidedly not an otter. He is a shapeshifter, and while there is a clear outer transformation, it does not necessarily seem to change who he is as a person.13

Otr’s shapeshifting existence is fascinating in itself, but moreover becomes the catalyst for many of the events that follow in Völsunga Saga—it is through it that

Hreidmar, then Fafnir, and eventually Sigurd and his family come into contact with the gold. How Hreidmar came to possess Andvari’s cursed gold, however, is yet another facet to this complicated story. Both the Prose Edda and the Völsunga Saga are in agreement when it comes to the circumstances of Otr’s death: he died while in his otter

13 At this time, I think it important to note my limitations and admit that I have no way of knowing what Otr was like prior to regularly shapeshifting into an otter (assuming that there was a time before he did so). Otr could very well have been profoundly changed by the amount of time he spent inhabiting the body of an animal, perhaps becoming more otter-like over a period of time. However, we are not really given a portrayal of Otr where we see him in a human form in either Volsunga Saga or in the Prose Edda, and as such I am approaching this from the viewpoint that Otr is a human who simply wears the skin of an otter due to both his nature and due to his affinity for fishing. Farnsworth-Everhart 23 form, and was killed by a stone thrown by the god Loki.14 The Prose Edda goes into more detail of the events that follow. The Æsir go to the house of a farmer nearby, asking to take shelter there for the night. The farmer—Hreidmar—is, according to the Prose

Edda, a “powerful man…[who is] very skilled in magic” (Prose Edda, 95), which perhaps gives further insight into the characteristics of his three sons. Upon their arrival, the Æsir assure Hreidmar that they will not need anything more than shelter, as the salmon and the otter will provide them with food aplenty. They then proceed to show

Hreidmar the corpse of his son (Prose Edda, 95; Völsunga Saga, 58). Hreidmar and his surviving sons are reasonably irate—“seizing and binding” (Prose Edda, 95) the Æsir until they promised to pay a blood-price to Otr’s family in return for his life. Hreidmar determines that the trio must fill Otr’s skin with “red gold” (Prose Edda 95), as well as cover the outside of the skin with gold.

Even the gods, it seems, are at the mercy of the custom of blood-price. Although the gods clearly are stationed above the human players of Völsunga Saga, they are still subject to the societal rules followed by the humans. Despite this, although Odin, Loki, and Hœnir took possession of the gold, they seemingly faced no ill effects. If anything, claiming the gold was to their benefit: it paid their wergild. McGillivray points to this as evidence of their “supernatural ability” (McGillivray 370) to circumvent what seems to be an otherwise universal price to dealing with Andvari’s gold: “Whether cursed or inherently malevolent,” he writes, “the gold is responsible for a large share of the bad fortunes experienced by many characters in the saga” (McGillivray 369).

14 Adding insult to injury, both accounts agree that Otr was sleeping when he was slain (Volsunga Saga, 58; Prose Edda, 95) Farnsworth-Everhart 24

To their credit, the Æsir do end up paying the blood price for Otr’s death. As they hand it over, Loki warns Hreidmar of the curse laid upon the gold:

With gold you are now paid

And as payment you have

Much for my head.

No ease

Is assigned to your son;

Death it is to you both. (Völsunga Saga, 59)

There is no recorded response on Hreidmar’s part; however, he seems to have no trouble claiming the gold for his own, despite the warning he had received. Although we aren’t given much of a character background on Hreidmar prior to the events of Otter’s

Ransom, his actions following his reception of the wergild are still somewhat surprising.

When Fafnir and Regin request a portion of the gold—it was their brother who had been murdered—Hreidmar refuses to give them even “a single gold coin” (Prose Edda, 96). As mentioned earlier, Hreidmar is described as being a “powerful man” (Prose Edda, 95) in the Prose Edda. The Völsunga Saga is in accord with the Edda here—in it, Hreidmar is said to be a “great and wealthy man” (Völsunga Saga 57). As McGillivray demonstrates, wealth was an integral part of Icelandic societal positions, and how it was handled mattered: gaining it would often lead to “dishonorable behavior and grave misfortune”

(McGillivray, 370). If Hreidmar was indeed a man of some position, it stands to reason that he would have a comprehension of how to handle gold and of the innate risks of greediness when gold is involved. But in both Völsunga Saga and Prose Edda, he does not: he greedily elects to keep all the gold for himself, despite his sons arguably having Farnsworth-Everhart 25 right to at least some of it. This is perhaps an example of the transformative curse of the gold beginning to work upon Hreidmar and his family. A presumably-reasonable man is suddenly unreasonable after having been paid in cursed gold, and the consequences that follow are dire.

Following Hreidmar’s refusal to give a portion of the gold to his sons, he is murdered by one or by both of them. The sources disagree on the roles played by his sons. In the Prose Edda, both brothers are said to have killed their father for the gold, while in Völsunga Saga, Fafnir alone is described as murdering Hreidmar.15 Whether both Regin and Fafnir killed their father or whether it was solely the latter, both sources agree that it was not an accident.16 Like his father before him, Fafnir refuses to share any of the gold with Regin. He then tells Regin that, should he continue to ask for a share in the gold, he would kill him as well (Prose Edda, 96). While Völsunga Saga describes

Fafnir as an individual who “wanted to call everything his own” (Völsunga Saga 57), there are no other textual indications that he is a particularly murderous person. Even when describing Fafnir’s transformation from brother to dragon, Regin’s language is telling: he says that Fafnir “became so ill-natured that he set out for the wilds” (Völsunga

Saga 59, emphasis mine). The use of the word ‘became’ implies that Fafnir was not always so foul-tempered as to require him to retreat into the wilderness. It seems clear

15 Interestingly, the story told in Prose Edda is narrated by someone outside of the story altogether. It is told in the segment Skáldskaparmál, which is a series of questions and answers between two gods on the origins of various kennings. The version of the story told in Volsunga Saga, on the other hand, is narrated by Regin as he tells it to his foster-son, Sigurd. Although it is not directly relevant to the story, the possibility that Regin may have lied to make himself look better is still intriguing. 16 In Volsunga Saga, Regin states that Hreidmar’s death was “murder, because he [Fafnir] hid the body” (Volsunga Saga, 59). Farnsworth-Everhart 26 that his sudden taste for familicide and solitude is less the result of latent bloodlust and more the work of Andvari’s curse.

Like his father before him, Fafnir responds negatively to the presence of the gold.

It causes his already-present greed to deepen in intensity until he can think of nothing else but the gold and how he can both keep it entirely for himself and defend it against others. Following his retreat to the wilderness, Fafnir made himself a lair, in which he heaped all the gold. He then turns (or is turned) into a dragon. This transformation seems to be portrayed differently in Völsunga Saga and the Prose Edda. In Völsunga Saga, it seems as though Fafnir’s transformation is involuntary—or, at least, a bit unexpected.

According to Regin’s account, Fafnir, after leaving to live alone away from others, has

“since become the most evil serpent” (Völsunga Saga, 59, emphasis mine). Although

Regin’s perception of his brother’s transformation could be flawed, the language used implies that Fafnir’s shift from human to dragon happens to him, rather than something

Fafnir causes to happen of his own will. Conversely, in Prose Edda, Fafnir is said to have

“[changed] himself into the likeness of a serpent” (Prose Edda 97). As it is described in this text, Fafnir himself decides that he would like to be in a different form, and thus— like Otr before him—changes into a shape that fits his desires: protecting the gold from others so that it belongs solely to him.

While the texts may differ slightly on exactly how Fafnir came to inhabit the shape of a dragon—whether by choice or by happenstance—both demonstrate the ability of the curse to transform individuals, both physically and mentally. Like his brother Otr,

Fafnir’s transformation—if willing—is a matter of convenience. It was useful for Otr, a fisherman, to have the ability to shapeshift into one of nature’s most gifted aquatic Farnsworth-Everhart 27 animals. Likewise, it was useful for Fafnir, a patricidal hoarder of gold, to have the ability to guard the gold in a way that a human never could. Fafnir likely would not have turned into a dragon had the gold not entered his life. Even if he seems to have decided to shapeshift into a dragon, it is likely that this frame of mind was brought about by corruption triggered by the gold rather than by an organic desire to be a dragon. It is a clear-cut declaration of priorities. Perhaps the gold served as the catalyst for Fafnir’s transformation, but the gold alone was not to blame for it. Rather, Fafnir’s own lust for the gold caused him to transform into a serpent (Symons, 79). Fafnir’s desire to live alone with his hoard in the wilderness is not simply the whims of a miser, but rather a rejection of societal norms. He is not following the footsteps of his father—prior to his father’s own transformation, of course—and becoming a powerful, influential man. Rather, Fafnir rejects even the form of a man, choosing instead to become a being that could only be described as monstrous.

In his article “The Hoard Makes the Dragon: Fafnir as a Shapeshifter”, Santiago

Barreiro admits that Fafnir is an interesting case of transformation due to the “ontological ambiguity” (Barreiro 54) exhibited by his family. Just as Otr behaved in a manner fitting an otter (enjoyed swimming and fishing, greedy of food) and was able to shapeshift into the form of an otter, so, it could be argued, Fafnir’s grasping personality presages his ability to shapeshift into a dragon. Barriero goes on to point out that, unlike mythological figures who could shift at will between humanoid and inhuman forms, Fafnir’s tale is marked by motifs of hoards and mounds (Barreiro 59), objects that often seem to represent greed. Otr seemed as though his ability to shift was something natural to him;

Fafnir, on the other hand, needed the corrupted power of the gold to trigger his first and Farnsworth-Everhart 28 seemingly final transformation. Although Otr was admittedly greedy for his food—eating alone and with closed eyes because “he could not stand to see his food diminish”

(Völsunga Saga 57)—this is rather a natural (if a tad extreme) case: food is necessary, after all. Fafnir’s greed, conversely, is of an entirely different kind. Otr’s love of food is understandable because it is a necessary component of life; Fafnir, on the other hand, murdered his father for gold, which he then proceeded to render useless by doing absolutely nothing with it. Barreiro argues that Fafnir’s transformation came about because of his “inhuman love of wealth [and] his lust for useless wealth” (Barreiro 59).

He does not want the treasure for the sake of wealth and power, but merely “for its own sake” (Barreiro 60).

Fafnir takes on a far greater role in Völsunga Saga than simply that of a monster or that of a plot point. In her essay “From Saga to Romance: The Use of Monsters in Old

Norse Literature,” Kathryn Hume—whom I discuss in greater detail in the introduction— writes of the ways that the monsters of Norse sagas act as a “foil” (Hume 3) to the heroes of said sagas. She argues that meetings between monsters and heroes tend to follow certain “patterns” (Hume 3) which advance the storyline. Hume’s argument, when thought through alongside Barreiro, allows for a better understanding of Fafnir. While both scholars are concerned with the nature and role of the monstrous, Barreiro focuses a bit more intensely on the role of the hoard and how this hoard shaped and warped the formerly-human Fafnir’s mind, turning him into a creature that possessed a way of reasoning that is almost human but also deeply alien. Hume, on the other hand, focuses more on Fafnir’s contribution to storytelling. When we read Völsunga Saga, Hume writes, Sigurd’s encounter with Fafnir—especially the parts where the dying Fafnir is Farnsworth-Everhart 29 having a conversation with his killer—is imbued with heavy significance. Fafnir’s

“wisdom” (Hume 9), his “dry, analytic…conversation” (Hume 9), his “range of knowledge of and sensitivity to human motives” (Hume 9) serve to lend credence to his words when he warns Sigurd of the consequences that will surely follow his claiming of

Andvari’s gold. As a literary device, Fafnir’s presence raises the stakes: now Sigurd can claim no ignorance of what is about to befall him.

On a more character-based level, especially when compared to Barreiro’s points on the alien other that Fafnir embodies, Fafnir’s otherworldly qualities are amplified.

Fafnir appears to have a knowledge both wide and deep and is able to express that knowledge through conversation. The fearsome monster is not merely a dumb beast, but a shining-scaled, articulate other that arguably exists somewhere in the outer territories of both monstrous and human delineations. This ambiguity is only amplified by the readers’ knowledge of Fafnir’s backstory. We know that he has not always been this way; we know his history; we know his family; we know that the gold that Sigurd is about to take is tied with great misfortunate in Fafnir’s own life.

Moreover, as Hume argues, Fafnir is not like other saga monsters. Rather, she writes, Fafnir has roots (Hume 11), which we know—we get to hear from Fafnir’s own brother the account of the events leading up to his transformation into a monster.

Although some monsters may lack “kin or history” (Hume 11), Fafnir’s history is all too real. At first thought, one might expect a historied monster to be less frightening than a rootless monster. Surely, you could argue, Fafnir’s human-seeming past makes him more

“relatable”, and thus, less frightening. However, Fafnir’s past life as a son and brother who inhabits a human form serves to both make him the object of empathy and horror. Farnsworth-Everhart 30

Draconic body aside, Fafnir exists in the peripheries of both human and monster.

Although he ended life as a dragon, it is clear in the text that he is not a mindless, animal- like monster. This is perhaps most obvious in that he was not originally draconic, but is also evidenced by his actions after Sigurd has dealt the killing blow. Fafnir is clearly aware that he is now dying, but rather than continue to thrash and fight like a dumb beast, he engages Sigurd in conversation (Völsunga Saga, 63). His words are far more sophisticated than one might expect for a “worm” (Völsunga Saga, 63); he seems to calmly ask Sigurd of his lineage and does not allow his killer to wriggle out of answering.

Furthermore, Fafnir clearly possesses great wisdom: he manages to ascertain that it was

Regin who instructed Sigurd to kill him (Völsunga Saga, 64); is able to answer a series of questions related to Scandinavian legend (64); and manages to trick Sigurd into revealing his backstory.

Perhaps most importantly, however, Fafnir wisely warns Sigurd of the misfortune that would follow him from then on, after his subsequent claiming of Fafnir’s gold. He tells Sigurd not once, but twice that the gold “will be your [Sigurd’s] death” (Völsunga

Saga, 64, 65), adding that it would also spell the doom of anyone else who took it.

Sigurd, as is to be expected, ignores aforementioned counsel and claims the gold for his own. As shown by this brief encounter, then, Fafnir, dragon though he may be, is neither entirely bestial nor—obviously—entirely human. In her paper “The Monster in Me:

Social Corruption and the Perception of Monstrosity in the Sagas of Icelanders”, Rebecca

Merkelbach argues that monstrosity in medieval Icelandic sagas runs the gamut between human and inhuman, existing on a sort of “fluid scale” (Merkelbach 23). This fits in entirely with my perception of Fafnir: a monstrous Other who is, somehow, not entirely Farnsworth-Everhart 31 other. In both Völsunga Saga and the Prose Edda, his portrayals range between being deeply inhuman—described as a “worm…blowing poison” (Völsunga Saga, 63)—to demonstrating a nearly-human level of concern17 or wisdom regarding Sigurd’s fate after the hero who just slew him revealed that he intended to claim the cursed gold that Fafnir had lain upon for so long. The latter example, especially, is poignant: were we the audience not aware that it is a scene between a dying monster and his killer, parts of the dialogue feel like an elder imparting wisdom to the younger, brasher generation. There is a surprising lack of bitterness to the exchange—although this may be reading far too much into the text, one might even get the impression that Fafnir has some very slight tinge of relief. Although he is dying, the curse is no longer resting upon his shoulders alone—it is soon passing to another.18 While his form may be monstrous, his mind— alien as many of its thought processes may be—is just human enough to unnerve us.

Fafnir’s eventual defeat at the hands of Sigurd comes as no surprise to anyone with even the slightest of passing knowledge in either sagas or fantasy; he is a monster,

Sigurd a hero, and monsters exist to be defeated by the heroes. However, the event itself is multifaceted. At its core, Völsunga Saga—specifically Otr’s Ransom and the events that follow—is a story detailing the way that families can destroy one another. Fafnir’s death is no exception to this. Although Sigurd, at first glance, seems to be the agent of

Fafnir’s demise, this is not the case. While Sigurd is the instrument used to kill Fafnir, the

17 “Concern” may not be the right word, here. However, I thought it important to continue pointing out how adamantly Fafnir warned Sigurd against the effects of the cursed hoard. I will not entirely dismiss the possibility of Fafnir wanting others to avoid his fate—after all, few would wish his monstrous lot upon another. In fairness, however, I will admit that it could have been a sort of last-ditch effort to maintain possession of his hoard, even in death. 18 Of course, what I am reading as “relief” could also be interpreted as the satisfaction of knowing that your killer is not going to be able to fully enjoy the gold that he pillaged from your body— that he himself, along with others he holds dear, are likely set to follow you in death soon enough. Farnsworth-Everhart 32 author of the plan is Fafnir’s own brother Regin. According to Völsunga Saga, Regin is

Sigurd’s foster-father, a sort of mentor figure for the younger man in the court of King

Hjalprek. Regin teaches Sigurd “sports, chess, and runes”, as well as languages, “as was the custom for a king’s son” (Völsunga Saga 56); and likely his mentee grew to trust the older man. From the very beginning of Regin’s entrance into Sigurd’s story, we see him laying the groundwork for the act that would come to define Sigurd as a hero. Regin starts by questioning Sigurd of his familial wealth, and whether or not he trusts his elders to watch over it for him. Although Sigurd declares it “fitting” that the kings should oversee it for the time being and that they could watch over it better for the time

(Völsunga Saga 56), one can imagine his confusion. Here is his mentor figure questioning the wisdom of his relatives—someone he trusts asking whether he has faith in others that he presumably trusts. Regin continues to push Sigurd to question the older kings, seeming to needle the younger man about his position. For instance, prior to

Sigurd’s claiming of the horse Grani, Regin remarks how “strange” it is that Sigurd would not want a horse, asking if he wanted to be a “stableboy of kings” or to “go about like a vagrant” (Völsunga Saga 56). Although Regin’s comments seem to be casual concern on the surface, there is a sharpness underneath. He is pricking Sigurd, reminding him that he is still a boy, putting him in a position where, eventually, he would be able to manipulate him to his advantage. And manipulate him he does: he eventually tells Sigurd that he has “too little wealth” and that he “run[s] around like a messenger boy” (Völsunga

Saga, 56).

Regin then chooses to take a different tactic to persuade Sigurd to kill Fafnir: he takes advantage of Sigurd’s youthful bravado and hunger for glory. As Sigurd’s mentor, Farnsworth-Everhart 33 he would have been well aware of the younger man’s basic personality traits and how he could best be manipulated. Furthermore, he is almost certainly aware of Sigurd’s delicate position as a fatherless young man of noble blood, a man who wants to lead but lacks the means by which he can do so. Regin details the treasure that could be his for the taking if only he killed the dragon Fafnir—and not only material wealth, but also the glory that would come from defeating such a formidable foe. It is unsurprising that Sigurd is interested in accomplishing such a mighty feat, but he points out that Fafnir is of great

“size and ferocity” (Völsunga Saga 57) and that due to this, few wished to go against him. Regin then proceeds to dismiss Fafnir’s repute as overblown, comparing him to a

“grass snake” (Völsunga Saga 57). As if this falsehood was not enough, Regin mocks

Sigurd, remarking that he “does not have the spirit of that [Volsung family line] kin”

(Völsunga Saga 57). After this, of course, Sigurd agrees to fight Fafnir and claim the treasure. Even after Sigurd says that he will fight Fafnir, Regin continues to push him towards doing so, perhaps in an effort to ensure that his mentee will not back out. Sigurd requests that Regin make him a sword, and Regin agrees, adding that Sigurd “will be able to kill Fafnir with this sword” (Völsunga Saga 59). Although Sigurd mentioned that he would be using the sword to kill Fafnir, it was in a more offhanded way: he wanted to

“work great deeds” (Völsunga Saga 59) with the blade, and mentioned that if Regin wanted Fafnir dead, he would have to make the sword. After Regin makes the weapon, he then takes every opportunity to remind Sigurd of his vow: first when he had initially given him the sword;19 then again after Sigurd consults his uncle Gripir as to what his

19 “Regin said ‘You must fulfill your vow, now that I have made the sword, and go to meet Fafnir.’” (Volsunga Saga 60) Sigurd then tells him that he must avenge his father’s death first. Farnsworth-Everhart 34 future holds;20 and then yet again when Sigurd has returned from his battle against the kings who had wronged his family.21 Clearly, Regin is not willing to let Fafnir go on living the way he has up until this point—but why?

Despite Regin not having been in direct contact with the gold for many years, the curse has still corrupted him. In the Prose Edda, he played a role in his father’s death. He only lacks the gold at this point in the story because Fafnir was both stronger and fiercer than him. This fact doesn’t necessarily mean that Regin sees Sigurd only as a useful tool: there simply isn’t enough information given on Regin’s interactions with Sigurd to say.

However, it seems safe enough to say that Regin was willing to use Sigurd as a way to both avenge his father and to come into possession of Andvari’s gold. It is, of course, not entirely a one-sided relationship—Sigurd, like many heroes of saga, has an eye out for glory, and killing a mighty and infamous serpent such as Fafnir would certainly bring him much repute. Of course Sigurd was not going to abandon Fafnir’s hoard to the scavengers; he was a warrior and of noble blood, and an absence of wealth would fail to convey his position. Although greed likely played a role in the interactions the gold had in Völsunga Saga, honor and status also must be taken into consideration (McGillivray

367). Although Regin may have been using Sigurd to bring about Fafnir’s death, it is also true that Sigurd was not blindly following his mentor, but instead taking a calculated risk that would—should he not perish in his attempts—greatly improve his chances at becoming a personage of note.

20 “Regin said: ‘Kill Fafnir, as you have promised’.” (Volsunga Saga 60) Sigurd reminds Regin that he must avenge his father and other family members first. 21 “When Sigurd had been home a short time, Regin came to speak to him and said: ‘Now you will want to strike the helmet from Fafnir, as you have promised, because you have now avenged your father and other kinsmen.’” (Volsunga Saga 62) Sigurd agrees, saying that he will not forget the promise he had made earlier. Farnsworth-Everhart 35

However, it seems apparent that Regin is exploiting his foster-son’s clear martial ability in order to accomplish a task—the killing of Fafnir—that he is either too weak or too frightened to accomplish on his own. Although he is not quite as openly violent in his efforts to claim the gold as his brother was earlier in the story, Regin is still very clearly willing to use violence to accomplish his end goal. Like Otr and Fafnir, Regin is also skilled in the art of transformation, albeit in a different way. While his brothers take the form of an otter and a dragon, respectively, Regin causes other objects to take different forms: he is a metalworker. As he himself describes in his telling of Otter’s Ransom in

Völsunga Saga, Regin worked with a variety of metals—iron, gold, and silver—and

“from everything could make something useful” (Völsunga Saga 57). This ability serves him well; although he may have lost his family, his skills in smithing led him to the employ of King Hjalprek, where he met Sigurd. He later uses his transformative skills to craft the very weapon that Sigurd would use to kill his brother: Gram, a sword so sharp that it could cut a tuft of wool floating in a river (Völsunga Saga 60). Regin’s forging of

Gram mirrors his forging of his other weapon: Sigurd. Just as Regin shapes the blade, so did he train and goad Sigurd into willingness to fight his battles for him. It is a different sort of murder that Regin orchestrates. Fafnir’s killing of Hreidmar was open and admitted; Regin, conversely, uses his mentee to avenge his father and gain the gold in one fell swoop in a way that is far more subtle; Sigurd serves as a sort of unknowing assassin on behalf of Regin, doing that which his mentor was either unwilling or unable to do (McGillivray 371). However, similarly to Fafnir, close contact with the gold causes

Regin to become more directly violent. Farnsworth-Everhart 36

Following Fafnir’s death, Regin approaches the victorious Sigurd and hails him as a hero, saying that he has won a “great victory” (Völsunga Saga 65) in slaying Fafnir and that “none before” (Völsunga Saga 65) had even attempted the deed. Immediately after commending Sigurd, however, Regin reflects on what has just happened. He is now the last surviving member of his family. There are now no more living sons of Hreidmar, save himself. Although Regin is clearly estranged from his brother, and has been for some time, it is clear that he still considers Fafnir as belonging to his family. According to Völsunga Saga, Regin “stood and looked at the ground for a long time” (Völsunga

Saga 65). His grief is palpable. Ever since Regin has been introduced, he has been working towards this moment. And here, at the moment where one would assume he would be rejoicing, he seems to realize for the first time what the victory means: he is now completely alone in the world. Furthermore, he played a key role in Fafnir’s death, though he did not deal the killing stroke. He pressured Sigurd into the deed and even went so far as to create the weapon that he would use to kill Fafnir. To his credit, Regin owns up to this: “…he said with much emotion, ‘You have killed my brother, but I am hardly blameless in this deed.’” (Völsunga Saga 65). In this moment, Sigurd shows his immaturity: he tells Regin that he was “quite far away when he [Sigurd] performed this deed”22 (Völsunga Saga 65). Regin argues that Sigurd only succeeded due to Regin’s forging of Gram; however, this comes across as less of a boast and more of a self- indictment. It seems as though Regin is only now beginning to realize the reckoning that would follow upon his claiming of the gold.

22 Sigurd adds that Regin was “lay[ing] confused in a heather bush, not knowing whether it was heaven or earth” (Volsunga Saga 65). Farnsworth-Everhart 37

Unfortunately, this realization does not change the course of the story. Regin is clearly distraught, but Sigurd seemingly has little concern that he would bear the brunt of his foster-father’s regret. Even more key than the fact that Sigurd killed Regin’s brother, however, was the fact that the much-coveted gold carried the curse. The curse ensures the death of claimants, and Regin’s actions clearly begin to be influenced by the gold.

Furthermore, the slow transformation from brother and son to plotter comes to a head— only this time, Regin is willing to kill on his own, rather than by use of a proxy. The stage is set when Regin requests a “trifle” (Völsunga Saga 65) of Sigurd: he wishes his foster- son to cook Fafnir’s heart for him to eat. Sigurd agrees and does so, and as the heart cooks, tastes a bit of the juices on his fingertip to check for doneness. As soon as he does so, Sigurd can understand the chirpings of the birds in the underbrush nearby. The birds speak on the benefits of eating the dragon heart—should Sigurd eat it, he “would be wiser than any man” (Völsunga Saga 66). But then the words of the birds take a darker turn: they speak of Regin’s meditations on betrayal;23 the wisdom of killing Regin and thus being the default owner of the gold;24 and lastly, the foolishness of leaving Regin alive after having killed Fafnir.25 Regin’s reasons for desiring Sigurd’s death are likely varied—although much of it could be written off as greed and longing to possess the gold entirely on his own, it is also likely that he would wish to avenge his brother’s death

(despite having played the main, if not active, role in planning it).

23 “There lies Regin, who wants to betray the one who trusts him.” (Volsunga Saga 66) 24 “He should strike Regin’s head off, and then he alone would control the huge store of gold.” (Volsunga Saga 66) 25 “He is not as wise as I thought if he spares Regin after having killed his brother.” (Volsunga Saga 66) Farnsworth-Everhart 38

However, I would argue that, in addition to the previous reasons, Regin’s desire for blood is actually the curse of the gold. Although the gold has been shown to make those in the vicinity of it violent towards others, as evinced by every interaction written about previously, it’s not simply a case of gold causing bloodshed. Rather, it is as though the curse laid upon the gold is subtly causing Regin to kill himself. Regin’s desire to kill

Sigurd is a dangerous one: Sigurd, as seen in his battles that took place beforehand, is a formidable warrior. As it is, Regin doesn’t even get a chance to raise a hand against

Sigurd. Sigurd declares that Regin will not cause his death (Völsunga Saga 66), and, using the sword Regin himself forged for him, beheads his foster-father. After killing

Regin, Sigurd goes to Fafnir’s lair, where he discovers “an enormous store of gold”

(Völsunga Saga 66) along with other treasures. Predictably, Sigurd claims the gold, and in doing so, seals his fate.

McGillivray admits that Sigurd’s downfall is not due solely to the gold—there are a variety of factors that lead to his death, mostly related to his romantic partners.

However, he argues, the gold is “undoubtedly central” (McGillivray 374) to the ultimate destruction of Sigurd’s family. This seems a reasonable point to make, as we have already seen the gold cause the deaths of Hreidmar and two of his sons due to its cursed nature. It is not possible to know for sure whether or not Sigurd died because of the gold, but precedent dictates that the gold at least played a part in the tragedy to follow.

Although Gunnar—Sigurd’s brother-in-law—is spurred to his actions by his wife

Brynhild,26 he is not unaware that, should he kill Sigurd, the gold would then belong to

26 Interestingly, Brynhild also was in possession of some of that cursed gold for a time. Prior to his marriage to Gudrun, Sigurd gifted Brynhild with a ring from the hoard—not just any ring, but the ring Andvari was so loathe to give up. He later took the ring back and replaced it with another, but it still stands that, for a time, Brynhild possessed a portion of the hoard. Although Farnsworth-Everhart 39 him.27 And even were there any doubt that the cursed gold played a starring role in the causation of Sigurd’s death, the fate of Gunnar and his family strongly disprove this: he and his brothers are, in turn, murdered by their own (more recent) brother-in-law, Atli.

Atli, as should be expected by this point, later dies after unknowingly eating his own sons.28 Does human greed feature prominently in the Völsunga Saga? Few would argue to the contrary—Sigurd, after all, almost nonchalantly claims the gold after being warned in multiple instances of the horrors it would bring down upon his head; his desire for wealth, glory, and social standing seemingly greater than his sense of self-preservation and common sense. However, it is clear that there is a greater force at work: the gold itself.

This begs the question: do the effects of gold manifest differently from person to person? The answer seems to be yes. While Sigurd’s later life is disastrous—arguably due to the curse laid upon the gold—his woes do not include a transformation into a scaled and clawed beast.29 Although his misfortunes may have their roots in Sigurd’s

Brynhild’s actions may have been due to Sigurd’s own curse or due to jealousy—or some combination thereof—I still was fascinated by the implications her erstwhile possession of the ring may have had. Brynhild—for a time—possessed the hoard, and then plotted to kill the man she once loved: her current brother-in-law, her family. After succeeding, she then followed him in death. These events certainly echo other instances of the gold causing the death of its possessors. 27 Far from being unaware, Gunnar outright states that the gold would be his after Sigurd’s death: “We will then control the gold and have all the power.” (Völsunga Saga 89) 28 The poets of medieval Iceland were many things, but subtle they were not. 29 This is not to say that Sigurd had an easy time of it. He is unable to marry Brynhild, to whom he pledged himself (Volsunga Saga, 72), after being drugged into forgetfulness by Queen Grimhild (Volsunga Saga, 79) and married to Gudrun as a direct result of that. He then is forced to see his brother-in-law marry Brynhild, and eventually meets his death at the hands of said brother-in-law’s warrior. Adding insult to injury, Gudrun goes on to suffer even more due to her association with Sigurd (and by extension, the gold), as do her children—her daughter is trampled to death by horses following her marriage to a man she does not love; two of her sons Gudrun herself kills and serves as a meal to their father; another one of her sons is murdered by his brothers; and her final two sons die in battle following their realization that they perhaps should not have killed aforementioned brother. To further drive home the point of the power of the gold’s curse, we see almost everyone connected to Sigurd’s family die horribly: Brynhild kills Farnsworth-Everhart 40 claiming of Fafnir’s hoard and, in doing so, his shouldering of the curse, they are all events that happen to him. This is not necessarily a labelling of Sigurd as a victim, but it is an intriguing contrast to the case of Fafnir. Both parties ended up suffering greatly as a direct consequence of their possession of Andvari’s gold. Sigurd is portrayed as a recipient of the gold’s curse for the most part, while Fafnir’s case is more complicated. It could be argued that Fafnir’s actions and the monstrous transformation that followed were largely inevitable due to the curse laid upon the gold. I would argue, however, that

Fafnir is portrayed as having a personality ripe for monstrous transformation. As his brother Regin points out in Völsunga Saga, Fafnir “wanted to call everything his own”

(57). This statement illustrates that even before Fafnir had any idea of the gold’s existence, he was a greedy man. As such, he may have been predisposed towards becoming a dragon. This predisposition may have lain dormant were it not for the effects of the cursed gold.

Barreiro argues that perhaps this tendency of hoarding for the sake of hoarding is even more “inhuman” than other actions that we might associate with dragons (Barreiro

59). He points out that behavior we can easily code as “bad”—for example, burning villages, devouring maidens, and similar acts—serves to further delineate the monstrous from the human. To put it simply, if Fafnir simply behaved like a wild animal, his actions would not be as frankly weird. “The monstrosity is alien,” Barreiro writes (60), and this unfamiliar portrayal of monstrosity serves to underscore just how much the gold’s curse has changed Fafnir. Not only has Andvari’s gold caused Fafnir to kill his own father and

herself (after orchestrating Sigurd’s death, it must be said), while both of his brother-in-laws die in horrible ways at the hands of Atli. All of this bloodshed is set against a backdrop of seemingly endless war. It is literal overkill. Farnsworth-Everhart 41 take the shape of a monstrous serpent, but it has also seemingly changed his motivations.

Few people would condone someone murdering their parent for treasure, but it is still possible to understand the motivators behind such an action, even as one condemns them.

However, the act of killing someone for treasure and then lying upon the treasure and doing nothing with it confuses the motivation. It is less of a desire for what gold can bring and more a desire for the idea of gold. It cuts us off from emphasizing with Fafnir, for his behavior is far beyond the realms of normal human behavior. In portraying such a drastic shift in greed (‘normal’ greed versus this strange and inhuman greed), Völsunga

Saga demonstrates the extent of which the hoarding of gold is able to transform an individual. Fafnir is not merely inhuman in shape, but also inhuman in psyche.

Just as Fafnir’s identity exists in a liminal space, so do his motivations for many of his actions. On one hand, we have textual evidence that Fafnir was not exactly the most upstanding of men, even prior to coming into contact with Andvari’s cursed gold.

However, it also cannot be contested that the gold had a powerful curse laid upon it, one that would cause the death of whomever possessed it. It then follows that, perhaps,

Fafnir’s actions were inevitable and out of his control: he did not murder his father; rather, the gold, using him as a conduit or as a vessel, is the true murderer. This is likely an oversimplification, but for sake of illustration, I will continue to analyze Fafnir’s story as such. If we are to argue that the gold is cursed, then we would do well to question what effects that curse may have. Could the hoarded gold have a corruption that could cause a son to do what most would think unthinkable: killing his own father? Or was Fafnir simply a greedy individual who saw the gold, realized that his father stood in between his Farnsworth-Everhart 42 becoming wealthy by virtue of said gold, and then decided to eliminate the obstacles which stood in between him and his goal of wealth?

I argue that the answer likely lies somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. It is entirely possible that Fafnir is simultaneously a victim of circumstance and a violent and greedy man who was willing to commit fratricide to enrich himself.

Obviously one of these portrayals is far more sympathetic than the other, but it is more than probable for each to exist in conjunction with one another. As such, the argument that the truth lies in both camps greatly complicates Fafnir as a character and serves to better our understanding of the corrupting power of the cursed, hoarded gold. Although one argument might attribute Fafnir’s monstrous transformation to his twisted psyche and the other, to the corrupting influence of the curse, both positions acknowledge the role that the hoard plays in his transformation from a man with father and brothers into the poison-spewing wyrm that is eventually killed by the young Sigurd.

Clearly, as shown by the scholarly arguments I have presented here, there is a decided link between cursed or hoarded gold and negative consequences, including but not limited to: death of both individual and family; societal instability and war; unsoundness of the mind; and, last but certainly not least, a change from human shape to that of a dragon. I would argue that all of these consequences are natural results to an unnatural phenomenon: the act of hoarding the gold. The story of Otter’s Ransom (and the rest of Sigurd’s tale, as well) does not beat around the bush or make broad implications—it bluntly states that the gold is cursed, and then backs up this statement with the death of Hreidmar at the hands of his own son and the transformation of said son into a foul-tempered dragon. In the span of a few pages, it undermines everything that the Farnsworth-Everhart 43 audience might have taken for granted about treasure—namely, that gold is not necessarily solely a sign of incoming fortune and prosperity, but also of death, destruction, and the upheaval of that which may have once seemed immovable. This ties into my argument regarding the transformative qualities of gold: it exists as an inherently unstable object that can easily be corrupted. Through this corruption, it can then distort motives, individuals, and even societies. Moreover, since the stability of gold is so questionable, so is the stability of a society that holds gold in high regard—a society bound to a substance that is neutral at best and nearly radioactive in corrosiveness at worst. In its transformation from treasure to cursed object, the gold becomes a site of transformation in and of itself, turning Fafnir into a dragon and family into mortal enemies. Hreidmar’s request for monetary recompense over the death of his son, Sigurd’s desire for wealth and glory—neither of these are necessarily bad. But both actions lead to disaster for two separate families, with effects that spanned generations and even nations.

In seeking stability, they unknowingly unleashed a horrific curse. The societal expectations which they seek to uphold—the tradition of wergild, the tradition of ruling- class wealth—lead to their undoing. Rather than creating stability, they cause violence.

Farnsworth-Everhart 44

Anatomy of an Extinction: Liminality, Violence, and Inevitability in

Beowulf

Unlike Völsunga Saga, Beowulf hardly needs an introduction. It has survived the ravages of time, escaped a disastrous fire, and has become a lynchpin of both high school and university required reading lists.30 It is likely the best-known text that the early medieval English people produced and has been the subject of endless study and debate alike among academics. Like my other focal text, Völsunga Saga, Beowulf is immensely concerned with the intersections of the monstrous, treasure, and violence. However, while Völsunga Saga exemplifies the transformative nature of gold in a monstrous sense,

Beowulf focuses more on the ramifications of societal dependence upon both gold and violence. In Völsunga Saga, gold—if it hasn’t been cursed by a malicious dwarf, that is— might appear to be a neutral, if not necessarily benevolent, force. Beowulf, on the other hand, demonstrates that gold and violence are intrinsically connected. In the previous chapter, I demonstrated how, for Völsunga Saga, gold is a site of transformation. In this chapter, I will show how, in Beowulf, this transformation is less the problem with hoarding gold and more the symptom of a larger problem. Simply put, it is impossible to handle gold well because it is, in its most essential form, a catalyst and agent of violence, even when seemingly used as a system stabilizer.

In its most basic form, Beowulf is the classic heroic epic: there is a problem—in this case, a monster—that none can defeat. A hero resolves the situation, is celebrated for

30 Robert Zemeckis has even directed a movie based on Beowulf and featuring none other than Angelina Jolie as Grendel’s mother—which is proof of some cultural currency, at least. Farnsworth-Everhart 45 this deed, and then rides off into the sunset, presumably to continue their acts of heroism.

Here is where Beowulf deviates from the tropes, however. Beowulf doesn’t simply ride off into the sunset. Instead, we see Beowulf return to his homeland and tell his lord,

Hygelac, of what had transpired. Following this, Beowulf becomes the ruler of his people, the Geats. Here, again, would be a traditional end point. But the author of the

Beowulf poem goes still further. The poem glosses over Beowulf’s reign, for the most part—he ruled well, and defended the Geats from all manner of attack but his reign as king is not the point of the story. Rather, the next scene that is covered in-depth is the awakening of a dragon. Said dragon proceeds to lay waste to Geatland, and Beowulf announces that he—and he alone—will kill the dragon and end its depredations. And he does—but in doing so, dies. Shortly after, the poem ends, and in that ending is heavily implied that the Geats, defenseless without their king and protector, would soon fall victim to the enemies who surrounded them.

Beowulf does not focus nearly as much on the physical aspects of the transformative nature of gold as my other focal text does: while Fafnir’s transformation into a dragon is detailed in Völsunga Saga, we get no such thing in Beowulf as far as the dragon goes: there is buried gold, and then a dragon finds it and claims it as its own. As

Denis Ferhatovic states in Borrowed Objects, the dragon “is not a person”, lacking even the “humanoid” qualities of Grendel or his mother; it “does not follow the rules of human society” (Ferhatovic 149). More briefly, the dragon is just a dragon. However, it is possible to discern shades of human/monstrous liminality in the relationship between humans and the hoards they have reclaimed as their own, as Asa Simon Mittman and

Patricia McCormack point out in their article “Rebuilding the Fabulated Bodies of the Farnsworth-Everhart 46

Hoard-Warriors.” Mittman and McCormack argue that, after donning bejeweled armor and bearing intricate weapons, human warriors are essentially “shift[ing] their fundamental ontology”, and, in doing so, cease to exist as simply human. Admittedly, they focus less on Beowulf as a text and more on the weapons, armor, and other accoutrements borne by Old English warriors and found in the buried Staffordshire hoard.31 However, their arguments regarding hoards, objects, and transformation are deeply fascinating and provide additional depth to an understanding of Beowulf. Mittman and McCormack detail the archeological findings of the Staffordshire hoard and what it means for warriors to wear items so richly decorated. In Beowulf, we see much being made of rich decorations, both in the halls of Heorot and in the trappings of warriors.

Hrothgar, noble king that he is, gives out rings and torques to his loyal followers (80-81); while Beowulf’s arrival is heralded by the “glittering” (231) shields of those who accompany him, even as they are decked in “shining war-gear” (214). Here we see the intertwining of violence and shining things: the gleaming rings given by Hrothgar to his warriors are in exchange for battles hard-fought, and Beowulf and his warriors are suited up in preparation for battle. Mittman and McCormack echo this, describing the fearsome appearance of a hoard-clad warrior as a sign of “imminent acts of violence”

(McCormack, Mittman 357). In the act of preparing for battle, as the warriors don their armor and prepare their weapons, they enter a liminal state. They are not solely human, nor yet solely monstrous, but exist in a state the authors describe as “posthuman.” The

31 The Staffordshire Hoard is the largest collection of early medieval Anglo-Saxon metalwork found to this date. For an archeological perspective of the hoard, see Blakelock, et al. “Secrets of the Anglo-Saxon Goldsmiths: Analysis of Gold Objects from the Staffordshire Hoard.” For a perspective that centers more on art history, see Overbey, “Passing Time with the Staffordshire Hoard.” Farnsworth-Everhart 47 process of donning their armor is, therefore, not simply that of putting on articles of clothing, but rather that of forming a sort of symbiotic relationship with the hoard. The hoard, Mittman and McCormack argue, is “not a series of objects, [but rather] embodied apparatuses inextricable from those wearing them” (McCormack, Mittman, 357). Even as a hero like Beowulf readies himself to fight his dragon, the process of doing so transposes him from the human realm to a sort of in-betweenness. The gleam of his armor and his fearsome strength sets him apart. He is no longer simply human, but begins to enter the realm of the Other. While his actions may be lauded as heroic, there is a sense of separation between him and his fellows—not simply in the way a superior warrior might be separated from an inferior warrior, but almost as though an innate quality previously held by the hero has been forever warped. In the act of fighting the monster, even in the act of preparing to fight said monster, Beowulf has been forever changed.

Similarly to Mittman and McCormack’s ideas of the hero becoming posthuman upon donning war-gear, Kate Koppelman writes of the hero’s departure from the realm of the human and subsequent entrance to a sort of liminal space. While Mittman and

McCormack focus more on the act of the warrior arming himself, Koppelman takes a different approach. In her paper “Fearing Thy Neighbor: The Intimate Other in Beowulf and the Old English Judith”, she discusses the transformative nature of contact with the outsider, framing Otherness as a sort of contagion. Koppelman views the violent interactions between human and Other (in this case, the interactions between Beowulf,

Grendel, and Grendel’s mother) as scenarios where the opposing parties are “quite literally drawn to one another” (Koppelman 4). It is impossible for Beowulf to defeat

Grendel or his mother at a distance; thus, we see him literally wrestle with both of them. Farnsworth-Everhart 48

The physical proximity shown in the methodology of Beowulf’s fight demonstrates the way that contact with the inhuman can cause even heroes to enter the liminal space between human and monstrous. Although wrestling alone isn’t necessarily an indicator of inhumanity, Beowulf’s ability to take down not one but two monsters alone and with little to no physical weapons demonstrates an inhuman level of strength.

When fighting Grendel, Beowulf grasps the arm of his enemy and grapples with him for a time; for, as the poem goes, “no blade on earth / no blacksmith’s art / could ever damage their demon opponent” (801-802). The fight is only ended when Beowulf literally rips off

Grendel’s arm. In the same manner, when Beowulf engages Grendel’s mother in combat, the two wrestle after she pulls him into her lair.32 Although Grendel’s mother eventually meets her end by the edge of the sword, the fighting to that point is incredibly physical in nature. Just as he wrestles with her son, Beowulf finds himself in the “grim embrace”

(1542) of the mother—in other words, this was not a choregraphed, measured fight: it was a brawl.

The way in which Beowulf kills Grendel and his mother paints a clearer picture of human-monstrous liminality when compared the ideology concerning monsters in early medieval English culture. As detailed in the Wonders of the East (an Old English text that is found in the same codex as Beowulf and dates to approximately the 11th century) there were certain qualities that set humans and the inhuman apart. Throughout the text, the author repeatedly writes of the fantastic denizens of the East, both of humanoid shape and those that more closely resemble animals. Although the beings may not be outright called

32 In order to reach Grendel’s mother, Beowulf first must enter the lake in which lay her hall. He dives for “the best part of the day” (1495) before even reaching the bottom of a lake. Since he is diving, it is safe to say that he is not surfacing for air—thereby demonstrating his liminal state even further. Farnsworth-Everhart 49 monsters—and in many cases are described as “people” who are “thought to be men”— the ways that they are both described and treated leave little doubt of them being anything but. The monstrous nature of these eastern beasts is depicted through descriptions of both behavior and appearance. Some of the beasts are particularly fanciful in appearance, such the wild beasts of Lentibelsinea, who have “eight feet, and valkyrie eyes, and two heads” (Orchard §4 ); as well as the Lertices which dwell near the River

Brixontes, who have “donkey’s ears and sheep’s wool and bird’s feet” (Orchard §14).

Conversely, some of the other beasts/persons described seem to demonstrate their

“otherness” through behavior, such as the chicken who “immediately burns up” (Orchard

§3) the bodies of those who handle it; or, more disturbingly, the Donestre—part human in form, but who utilize trickery to “beguile and capture” (Orchard §20) human victims, then “eat him [them] all up except for the head” (Orchard §20), over which they then mourn. These descriptions of behavior and physical appearance work in tandem to demonstrate that these inhabitants of far-off lands are not like the inhabitants of early medieval England: they are barbarous, dangerous, and above all, different.

The depiction of the creatures in the Wonders of the East—and by extension, in

Beowulf—leaves little doubt to why they might be considered monsters. In his book The

Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought, John Friedman writes of the “marks of the alien” as exhibited in Wonders of the East, which are as follows: unusual diet

(Friedman 27), possession of speech (Friedman 29), living outside of society (Friedman

30), and lacking the trappings of humanity, such as clothing or more sophisticated weapons (Friedman 32).33 Many of these signifiers are found in the descriptions of

33 In these categories of monster are contained different subsets of inhuman creatures: some that are clearly an amalgam of known creatures such as horses, boars, and sheep; others, however, Farnsworth-Everhart 50

Grendel and his mother: they eat human flesh, as shown by Grendel’s nightly depredations into Heorot; they “dwell apart” (1357) from civilization in a hall at the bottom of a dark mere; and neither of them are shown speaking to each other or anyone else.34

However, Grendel’s mother, especially, does not completely fall in line with these criteria. During her fight with Beowulf, she “pulled out a broad, whetted knife” (1546) and proceeds to attack him with it. Although she fails to defeat Beowulf, she also proves that she is not wholly bestial. Alien peoples35 are often portrayed in medieval manuscripts as wearing skins and wielding clubs; as Friedman writes, “those who carry clubs are ignorant of […] the military customs of civilized westerners” (Friedman 33). As problematic and as ethnocentric as these portrayals are, the logic of the propaganda is clear: the process of gathering the materials, refining the metals, forging of bladed weapons, and then using said weapons is a sophisticated one, and if a people group can’t manage to do that, then they are a lesser people.

Beowulf consistently presents Grendel and his mother as lesser, monstrous beings.

They live in the fetid mire of the mere, and an audience might pity them for that, but it is not supposed to be the same sort of pity that you have for an equal. However, in her moment of distress, Grendel’s mother does not seek to use claw or fang upon Beowulf, nor even reach for a club. Instead, she uses a sharpened knife against her foe, aiming true

“are not cobbled together […] but deviate from the norm through excess or lack,” as Asa Simon Mittman and Susan M. Kim put it in “Monsters and the Medieval Exotic”. 34 This, of course, does not necessarily mean that they were incapable of speech. However, for the purposes of brevity, I am taking what the Beowulf poet writes at face value. 35 A number of these “inhuman creatures” are distinctly racist caricatures of non-European peoples. This was wrong then and continues to be wrong now; however, for the sake of my argument, I am focusing more on the idea of weapon choice demonstrating the user’s humanity (or lack thereof) and less on the ignorance that led to such thinking. Farnsworth-Everhart 51 enough that were it not for his chain mail, Beowulf “would have surely perished” (1550).

As discussed above, monstrous beings were not usually portrayed as wielding bladed weapons, being limited to simpler weapons such as clubs which signify their “savage and uncivilized nature” (Friedman 135). In showing that she is capable of using a knife,

Grendel’s mother illustrates the deep complexity that is present in the monstrous. Despite her portrayal as a “swamp-thing from hell” (1519), Grendel’s mother is able to defend herself for a time against her foe in a manner that resembles that of a human.36 Although the audience is seemingly meant to view her as a monstrous adversary, she transcends the simplicity that such a definition entails: while remaining the antagonist of the scene, she meets Beowulf as (nearly) an equal. This scene, as well as Beowulf’s fight with Grendel, exemplifies both the liminality of monstrous beings and the manner in which contact with the monstrous can cause some form of transformation on the part of the hero. In

Beowulf’s battle with Grendel, he literally rips the monster’s arm off: Grendel finds himself in “a handgrip harder than anything he had ever encountered in any man” (750-

751), a grip so hard that his fingers are described as “bursting” (759). Although this action could simply be illustrative of how strong and heroic Beowulf is, it almost has the opposite effect. Beowulf is using his physical gifts for good, yes, but the ability to literally rip someone’s arm off is deeply inhuman.

Beowulf recreates his fight with Grendel when he encounters Grendel’s mother: when fighting her, Beowulf is said to “grip her shoulder” (1538) just as he had done to

36 The portrayal of Grendel’s mother is complicated by the ideologies surrounding the feminine held by the early medieval English people; as James Paz puts it in “Æschere’s Head, Grendel’s Mother, and the Sword That Isn’t a Sword: Unreadable Things in Beowulf”, “The poem refers to Grendel’s mother in a variety of ways: she is both a noble lady (OE ides) and a monstrous or warrior woman (OE aglæcwif); she is of the kin of Cain and linked to a race of giants, but is still in the likeness of a woman (idese onlicnes) and dwells in a roofed hall (hrofsele)” (Paz 232). Farnsworth-Everhart 52

Grendel in the previous battle. He eventually does end up using a sword against her, but it was not his first impulse; rather, Beowulf’s first impulse was to repeat the process of ripping off limbs in order to claim his victory. In a way, this is a style of killing that is even lower than a club. The act of choosing a club and swinging it at another requires, at least, some modicum of intelligence. Seizing, ripping, and tearing, on the other hand, resembles nothing so much as the actions of a wild animal. Even Beowulf’s actions after he kills Grendel’s mother are disturbing: he is “determined to take revenge” (1577) for the warriors that Grendel and his mother had devoured, and he does so by hacking into

Grendel’s corpse. Rather than leave the body of his already-vanquished enemy intact,

Beowulf instead chooses to remove the head. This is not a calm decision in the slightest;

Beowulf cuts off Grendel’s head in a “fury” (1584) after regarded the clearly-deceased body. There is a fine line between the hero and the monster they fight, and it often becomes blurred in the process of defeating said monster.

After the fight with Grendel’s mother, the liminality between monsters and men becomes apparent in an entirely different scenario: Hrothgar’s sermon, which pulls together many of the problems that we have already seen with the northern early medieval societies in both Beowulf and Völsunga Saga, compiling them into a story- within-a-story. Sarah Symon’s argument in “Wreoþenhilt Ond Wyrmfah” again offers an instructive point of view on how greed, gold, and monstrosity are interlinked in these northern Germanic texts. Symons discusses at length the meaning of the sermon Hrothgar gives following the hero Beowulf’s triumphant return from doing battle with Grendel and his mother. He opens by declaring Beowulf a “protector of his people” (1700), comparing him to the less-noble King Heremond, who brought “death and destruction” (1712) to the Farnsworth-Everhart 53

Danes. Hrothgar describes King Heremond’s vices: the murder of his own comrades

(1714); the way he “vented his rage” (1713) on those who feasted in his hall; and, perhaps most damningly, his greed.37 He charges that Beowulf must “learn from this”

(1724), adding that his many years have given him this perspective.

The negative exemplum of Heremod – and Hrothgar’s exhortation that Beowulf learn from that story – prefaces Hrothgar’s “sermon” proper. He opens by asserting that all “fulfilment and felicity” (1730) a king might have is a gift from God, but that even if the king grows forgetful of this, death is a constant danger. In Hrothgar’s illustration, though, death follows greed, which is metaphorically portrayed as an archer “who draws a deadly bow” (1744). When this illustrative greedy king dies, his wealth is inherited by another, more generous king. Following this illustration, Hrothgar then admonishes

Beowulf to “choose the better part” (1759); that is, humility and generosity. Even the strongest must die, he warns the younger man, and even good kings will often face adversity. He himself is an excellent example of this, and he admits as much: although he was able to “defend them [the Danes] in wartime” (1770), his defenses were brought low by Grendel’s nightly depredations. One might wonder why Hrothgar chooses now, of all times, to give a sermon—after all, Beowulf has only just returned from completing what had henceforth appeared to be an impossible task: ending the ravages of Grendel upon

Hrothgar’s people. However, Symons points out that Hrothgar is taking on a sort of mentoring relationship with the younger warrior. After Beowulf has killed Grendel and his mother, he was then able to lay claim to their treasure hoard deep within the mere, in addition to being richly rewarded by Hrothgar himself for his bravery.

37 Line 1719-1720, “[…] he gave no more rings to honor the Danes.” Farnsworth-Everhart 54

Hrothgar’s warning against greed and unnecessary strife was not simply the pontifications of an old man, but advice to one less experienced in such matters than he.

According to Sarah Symons, one of the main points of the sermon is the importance of gift-giving (Symons 79), wise advice for one so clearly destined for future leadership as

Beowulf. However, this emphasis on gift-giving is not simply so Beowulf knows to keep his retainers happy and loyal; Hrothgar’s message has deeper layers underneath this initial housekeeping sort of message. Hrothgar emphasizes the cursed nature of hoarded treasure, even implying that the gold had a sort of “malicious” (Symons 79) consciousness all of its own. As noted before, both of the kings mentioned in his sermon—Heremod and an undefined illustrative character—are described as being greedy. Heremod “grew bloodthirsty” (1719) and “gave no more rings to honor the

Danes” (1719-1720). The unnamed man/king is shown to have been struck by the temptation to become greedy and has yielded entirely to this impulse: his old supplies of gold seem insufficient to him; he “covets and resents” (1749) the wealth that others have; he “dishonors custom” by refusing to “bestow” gold upon others (1749-1750). Even heroes such as Beowulf are not immune to the ravages of cursed gold, as evinced by the calamities that befell Sigurd and his family in Völsunga Saga. Hrothgar’s message is simultaneously a cultural warning that addresses the necessity of gift-giving in a proper lord-retainer relationship; a literary foreshadowing whispering that something, whether in the near or distant future, is going to go poorly for Beowulf; and a deeply practical word of advice that can be distilled down to: greed is not only morally wrong, but is also deeply dangerous and likely to lead to disaster. Farnsworth-Everhart 55

Hrothgar’s wisdom is born of both years38 and of the practical experience that comes from both ruling and defending his people. As such, he is nearly the ideal mentor figure for young Beowulf. Although Hrothgar isn’t a perfect king, he is nonetheless a good example of the lordly generosity and nobility which were held in high regard by the early English people. Therefore, a careful examination of both Hrothgar as a character in the poem and the cultural mores that prop up this depiction give us a good picture of the

English ideal of gold as a tool for peacekeeping. Although I am less concerned with positive portrayals of gold as opposed to portrayals of hoarded gold and the resulting complications that surround it, it is still vital to look at the wider context of gold as it is portrayed in Beowulf. If we are to study instances where gold is used “properly” and well by a king such as Hrothgar, we are better able to understand why Hrothgar might take it upon himself to impart advice to Beowulf. Since he himself was experienced in handling gold successfully, then it follows that his sermon came from a place of knowledge and concern.

Intent of the sermon aside, it provides welcome insight to later happenings in

Beowulf. As anyone who has done even a cursory reading of the text knows, Beowulf himself is slain by a dragon guarding its hoard. For a moment, however, I want to ignore the dragon. Instead, I want to focus on the “inlaid hilt” (1614) that Beowulf claimed after he killed Grendel’s mother with the blade formerly attached39 to aforementioned hilt.

Beowulf mentions that there is a great store of treasure in Grendel’s mother’s hall (1613).

It is from this hoard that Beowulf seizes the blade with which he ultimately kills

38 Hrothgar ruled for fifty years prior to Grendel’s attacks (1770). 39 The blade itself perished in the lair beneath the mere, “wilt[ing] like gory icicles” (1606) in the aftermath of Grendel’s mother’s death. Farnsworth-Everhart 56

Grendel’s mother, the storied Hrunting having failed him (1523-28). This sword is described as an “ancient heirloom from the days of giants” (1558-1559) and so large that only Beowulf could use it. Following the killing of Grendel’s mother, Beowulf takes only what remains of the sword from the hall under the mere,40 despite there apparently being large amounts of treasure. He then gives this hilt and Grendel’s head to Hrothgar as tribute, keeping neither for himself.

Here, I argue, Beowulf has taken an item from what is, essentially, a hoard. If the principles laid out in Symons’ piece—and in many of my other texts—follow through with all hoarded gold and not simply draconic hoarded gold, could Beowulf’s claiming of the hilt have later resulted in his own death while fighting the dragon, and, through this, the downfall of the Geatish people? Perhaps this is a reach—however, it is interesting to note that later, Heorot would be destroyed in a “barbarous burning” (83) perpetrated by members of Hrothgar’s own extended family. Furthermore, Beowulf himself predicts that the coming marriage between Freawaru—Hrothgar’s daughter—and Ingeld of the

Heathobards would not result in the intended peace, but rather more bloodshed (2026-

2069). Although there are doubtless many factors at play in the eventual downfall of the

Shielding line, could a cursed object have hastened along the ending of an already-fragile peace?

In order to give broader context to the reasons Hrothgar may have seen fit to speak to Beowulf on the difficulties of handling gold and the rationale for taking the younger man under his wing, it may be helpful to examine Hrothgar, the lord-retainer

40 He also takes Grendel’s head (1614), which he hacked from his dead enemy’s body in a rather shocking display of bloodlust. Farnsworth-Everhart 57 relationship system that he upholds, and his reign as king of the Danes. Beowulf establishes that Hrothgar came of a line of noble rulers: he is descended from the great

Shield Sheafson, a “scourge among many tribes [and] a wrecker of mead-benches” (5) who managed to gain supremacy over many tribes who then paid him tribute. “That was one good king!” (11) the poem exclaims, describing Shield Sheafson’s violence and seemingly conquest-centered nature. Although it took more than a warlike nature to make a good king, Shield was notable in that he carved out a kingdom among warring peoples for himself and for his descendants, and in doing so, created a legacy. This is evinced in the sheer magnitude of the funeral that followed his death—which, the writer hastens to add, came when he was still “thriving” (26), not enfeebled and weak like a lesser man might have been in his advanced age.41 The Beowulf poet goes on to describe the reigns of Beow, Hrothgar’s grandfather, and Halfdane, Hrothgar’s father. Each is described as ruling well and maintaining the supremacy that their ancestor Shield Sheafson had established. Both men ruled for long periods, as well, implying that in addition to being good rulers and storied warriors, they were of a vigorous and strong bloodline.

Clearly, then, Hrothgar is of no ordinary stock. There is a simple reason why

Hrothgar’s ancestors are mentioned before Hrothgar himself, and that is to establish that

41 Shield is buried at sea in a grand war-ship described as being “fit for a prince” (33). This ship is filled with all manner of treasure, as well as armor and weapons. To fill an essentially disposable object such as a funerary vessel with such wealth is demonstrative of both the riches and the eye to position that the Danes had at this time. Firstly, doing so shows respect to the deceased by way of showering wealth upon him that was customarily seen as being of use in the afterlife. But the action of piling valuable weapons and treasure into the floating grave of the deceased would also serve as a warning to those who may have been eying the hall Shield left behind. It is a way of saying, in essence, that though the king was dead, his people still remained so powerful that they might afford to take items of such value and, essentially, throw them away. Why would they not, when they already had more and to spare thanks to the power of their warriors and of the name of their ruling family? Farnsworth-Everhart 58 this is a man and king of note. Hrothgar is not simply an upstart who came to power in that same generation, but rather a king of a heritage and a lineage “of courage and greatness” (2) who has a God-given right to his land, status, and hall. However, Hrothgar is not content to merely coast upon the reputation of those who came before him. He is portrayed as a powerful king and a good ruler in his own right, a man of charisma whose forces swelled as a result of those who “flocked to his ranks” (65). As a result of this,

“the fortunes of war” (64) came down solidly in his favor, and both he and his people prospered. To demonstrate this prosperity, Hrothgar builds a hall that would memorialize this greatness and be a fitting dwelling-place for a king of his stature. The building of

Heorot, though, is not portrayed as a vainglorious act by a selfish man. It seems only fitting that a king of Hrothgar’s repute should have an equally impressive hall. But

Heorot is shown to function as more than simply a place for Hrothgar and his family to live. Hrothgar intended Heorot to be a “wonder of the world forever” (70); thus, a structure that would immortalize his people and set them up for continued greatness. It would also provide his descendants and their own retainers with a place of identity—

Heorot would not simply be a hall, but also an anchor and a symbol of the Danes’ storied past, continuing might, and, should things continue as they were, their bright future.

In addition to serving as a symbol, Hrothgar intends Heorot to serve as his throne room, a place where his people could come to him and a place where he would give out rich gifts to those who followed him (71-72). In building a hall with such great purpose,

Hrothgar shows himself not to be only a good warrior and king, but also a man of great generosity and vision. Here was not a king who would selfishly hoard all of his gold for himself, but rather give gifts of “rings and torques” (80-81) to all those who served him Farnsworth-Everhart 59 on the fields of battle and at Heorot. A lesser man might have erected such a structure in honor of himself, but Hrothgar clearly meant it to be a place that would not only cement his line as great, but also give his people a sense of place and a space where they could seek their king, and then be feasted and given noble gifts.

In many ways, Heorot is a physical representation of the bond between Hrothgar and the warriors who serve him. As is the case with many ancient cultures, it can be difficult to ascertain exactly how certain aspects of early English society operated. The nature of the writings that remain also influence this uncertainty, in a way: although there are legal writings from early English society, a good portion of modern scholars’ cultural data comes from what is presented in the literature of the period. While the early English legal writings are indeed very helpful, the anthropological nature of early English literature is invaluable to begin to cultivate a picture of what ideals the early English held and how society operated outside of a strictly legal sphere. However, as Peter Marren points out in Battles of the Dark Ages, modern scholars “do not know these people very well except through the doubtlessly idealized form of poetry” (Marren 15). Even when keeping this in mind, the early English writings that remain point to a society in which a lord-retainer relationship was key. As noted previously, this relationship—fundamentally unequal as it was—benefitted both lord and warrior. In a way, Heorot as a concrete location would symbolize this relationship between Hrothgar and the warriors who served him. It operates as a solid location that they would defend from harm, and, upon their return from the battles and skirmishes that were so common from the period, they would be feasted and given gifts. The honor and gifts the warriors were given were paid Farnsworth-Everhart 60 for, if the poetry is to be believed, with “absolute loyalty and devoted service” (Marren

15).

Bearing this in mind, then, Grendel’s attack on Heorot becomes more sinister.

Even from a very straightforward perspective, Grendel’s doings are horrific: he is a

“powerful demon” (86) who appears from the shadows in the dead of night and enters into what had henceforth seemed to be a safe space—the very hall of the king. Once there, he proceeds to glut himself on human flesh and, once satisfied, retreats once more into the shadows. The language that is used to describe Grendel serves to drive home the point: he is a “fiend out of hell” (100); a member of “Cain’s clan” (106); a “God-cursed brute” (121). However, if one views Heorot as a sort of an ideal of early English society,

Grendel’s deeds appear all the more frightening. In laying waste to Heorot, Grendel is desecrating a stand-in for the lord-retainer relationship that Beowulf espouses. He is effectively decreeing that the sacred bond of loyalty between king and those who served him were useless: the hall the king has provided is useless in fending him off; the warriors, as well.

In a way, Grendel’s actions are especially shameful for Hrothgar. His warriors are a “company of the best” (118), and he has treated them accordingly. However, they are being slaughtered, and not on the field of battle—where that might have at least been expected. Rather, they are being “butchered” (125) and eaten in what should have been a place where they are safe. Furthermore, the carnage happens at night while they are sleeping, “insensible to pain and human sorrow” (119-120)—that is, while they are in a vulnerable position due to their trust in their king. In a perfect world, the lord-retainer relationship would result in a sort of mutual protection. The warriors would fight battles Farnsworth-Everhart 61 for their lord abroad and protect his material assets, and in return, the lord would provide them with safety and security at home. In Beowulf, we see that Hrothgar’s warriors had served admirably in the field of battle for their king. In return, Hrothgar attempts to provide them with honor and a place to call home. Unfortunately, he fails miserably in the last aspect: Heorot, magnificent though it may be, is utterly unsafe and ravaged by a monster. In the morning following Grendel’s initial attack, the survivors are left to

“[weep] to heaven” (128) and “[mourn] under morning” (130). To add insult to injury,

Hrothgar—their “mighty prince [and] storied leader” (129-130)—seems utterly at a loss as to how to solve this problem. Just as the poem lauds Hrothgar for his leadership abilities, so does it unflinchingly portray his grief and helplessness: Hrothgar is

“humiliated by the loss of his guard” (131), “numb with grief” (134), and “bewildered and stunned” (132). Furthermore, these emotions were present after only one night of carnage; as the years wore on with no relief from Grendel’s night prowlings, one can only imagine the “heart-breaking” (170) impotence that Hrothgar felt. Grendel is both seemingly invincible and unwilling to “parley or make peace with any Dane” (155). He continues to lay waste to Hrothgar’s hall and lands for long years.

It takes an outsider—Beowulf—to step into the shoes of both Hrothgar and his warriors: Beowulf fights for Hrothgar much as a retainer might, but he clearly possesses a power advantage. In his joy at his peoples’ liberation from Grendel, Hrothgar rashly declares that he wishes to “adopt you [Beowulf] in my [Hrothgar’s] heart like a dear son”

(946). Wealhtheow, Hrothgar’s queen—herself a “peace-pledge between nations”

(2017)—appears to be far less caught up in the emotions of the moment and far more cognizant of the threat Beowulf poses to the Danes—specifically Hrothgar’s and her Farnsworth-Everhart 62 sons’ roles as rulers. Skillfully, she reminds Hrothgar of his sons, telling him to “bask in your fortune, and then bequeath kingdom and nation to your kith and kin, before your decease” (1177-1180). Even while maintaining her family’s interests, Wealhtheow is ever-diplomatic, both to her husband and to Beowulf. Even as her tone is gently chiding towards Hrothgar, she reminds him to be “open-handed” (1171) towards the Geats and to

“relish their company” (1172). Simultaneously, she never outright accuses Beowulf of desiring Hrothgar’s kingdom; instead, as mentioned previously, she is the voice of reason for Hrothgar as he celebrates. Wealhtheow remains a graceful hostess to Beowulf, being the one to present him with a torque and with mail from “our [her] people’s armory”

(1218). Additionally, she asks Beowulf to bestow “kindly guidance” (1219) upon her sons in a carefully-calculated request: she is both asserting her children’s position while placing Beowulf in a position of trust. The situation Hrothgar and his family found themselves in necessitated this delicate dance; Beowulf demonstrates the fragility of the lord-retainer relationship. Grendel’s arrival is alarming on a personal level, of course, but is far more alarming on a societal level. He manages to throw a henceforth-successful people into disarray for years, with both warriors and king helpless against his attacks. It fell to an outsider to fight their battles for them. While Beowulf was a noble man who did not presume to take Hrothgar’s lands or otherwise threaten his rule, one wonders what would have happened had he not been quite as upright. In fact, we don’t even truly need to wonder what would happen: Germanic literature is rife with tales of families and peoples being thrown into disarray by conquering newcomers.

It is this section of Beowulf that truly drives home the point I made earlier: gold is both a catalyst for and an agent of violence. Even when it is being used “properly”, as Farnsworth-Everhart 63

Hrothgar exemplified, it’s not a neutral object. As a foundational aspect of the lord- retainer relationship, it is an object that furthers violence: in order to receive gold from their lord, the warriors agree to serve him on the field of battle. Hrothgar is described as generous with his gold, giving his retainers torques and rings, and by all accounts, he was a good king. But even if he gave his retainers more than he was obligated to give, these gifts were not truly gifts. The torques may have been marks of favor, but were also a sort of physical reminder of the role Hrothgar’s followers played: they were expected to fight for their king, even to die for him, if the need arose. Gold is often described as a system stabilizer, and in a way, it is; it upheld the societal rules of the time and ensured that everyone kept to their traditional roles. But in being a tool to uphold societal mores, it was also a tool to uphold a system that is inherently rooted in violence. Moreover, it is a system that demonstrably didn’t work: Hrothgar’s warriors were unable to defend him or his hall, and Hrothgar was forced to accept the help of an outsider in order to be free of

Grendel. Beowulf is in many ways a less dramatic epic than Völsunga Saga is; there are no shapeshifters, no love triangles, no talking dragons. But it is an absolutely scathing indictment of a failed system. In many ways, it serves as the anatomy of a societal extinction. A society that is so firmly grounded in violence is not a society that is truly viable, and Beowulf is painfully clear when showing the fatal consequences of this lack of viability.

Not every text needs to teach a lesson; not every text needs to be relevant. In many ways, Beowulf is just Beowulf: a thousand-year-old poem that is about events and people that likely didn’t exist the way they are portrayed as having existed in the poem.

But in a way, Beowulf is devastatingly current. If you live in the West, you are living in a Farnsworth-Everhart 64 society that was created by violent imperialism and colonialism. Western nations were forged in bloody battlefields in Europe, tempered in ethnocentric conquest in non-

European countries, and furthered today by claims of patriotism. We shouldn’t need

Beowulf to tell us that a society based on violence is doomed to fall; if you’ve ever taken a class on western civilization, you’ve seen the fates of empires that once seemed invincible. Perhaps that is one of the reason why Beowulf resonates so powerfully, even today: in the culture depicted in its pages, we see echoes of our own; and in its demise, we see our future.

Afterword

Farnsworth-Everhart 65

We call Beowulf and Völsunga Saga epics. We call them heroic tales. We assign them as required reading in English classrooms across the globe. And this is not to say that we shouldn’t; they are important literature, vibrant relicts of their time that serve as a sort of window into the past. I myself read Beowulf in high school and found myself transfixed: how could something written so long ago have the level of fire and emotional immediacy that this poem did? And yet, for all of the dazzling heroics, for all the gods who walk among men, for all the heaps of gold amassed by protagonists and villains alike, we often forget a fundamental fact: these are not happy tales. We don’t get to see

Sigurd live to a ripe old age and pass peacefully, surrounded by his descendants.

Likewise, we don’t finish Beowulf with the knowledge that, even if the titular character is dead, his legacy shall live on. Sigurd and Beowulf both die, and their deaths result in disaster for those who were under their protection. King Hrothgar—who seemingly did everything right—is forced to rely upon outside help when dealing with the attacks of the ravaging Grendel, but his care for his people will not prevent his downfall. He will later fall victim to the treachery of his in-laws. Hreidmar abides by the cultural traditions of wergild in return for the murder of his son Otr, and is in turn consumed by the curse gold and killed by another one of his sons. One can argue that either makes a variety of mistakes, but it does not seem like the intention of their actions is bad. Thus, the world that these tales portray is a terrifying one. A king can follow every cultural code he knows, and still wind up on the receiving end of violence.

Yet for some, this world is aspirational. White nationalists and supremacists have been a threat for as long as white westerners have been able to fear the “other”; despite the relatively-recent furor, they are by no means a new phenomenon. Their love of Farnsworth-Everhart 66 northern European medieval culture is hardly a new trend, either: Hitler and his Third

Reich utilized many Scandinavian runes and symbols in their Nazi iconography in the first half of the 20th century;42 this has been continued by neo-Nazis and other members of the racist right into the present day, such as by the recent Christian Patriarchy movement,43 in which boys “undergo knighthood ceremonies” (Kaufman 204) and girls attend purity balls with their fathers after entering “under an archway of crossed swords”

(Kaufman 204).44 As such, academic medievalists are undergoing a reckoning, of sorts— how do you come to terms with the fact that your field of study is beloved by people whose ideologies are repulsive to you45? And, more importantly, how do you combat their influence and utilization of the field? There is, of course, not a one-size-fits-all approach to combating white supremacy. Not every article on medieval literature or history needs to contain extensive critical race theory, per se, but moving towards a broader awareness of racism and issues within the field is essential. It is absolutely necessary to avoid neutrality on an ideology as dangerous as white supremacy; you are either antifascist or an ally of fascism. In short: silence is complicity.

White supremacy is not often a thought process that has resulted from careful consideration of evidence. It’s not a logical mindset—there are manifold scientific and

42 For more information on the intersection of medievalism and Nazism in the Third Reich, see Link and Hornburg, “‘He Who Owns the Trifel, Owns the Reich’: Nazi Medievalism and the Creation of the Volksgemeinschaft in the Palatinate”. 43 Beyond the Christian Patriarchy movement, extreme far-right Christians have also adopted a neo-crusader mentality that often becomes practice; see Koch, “The New Crusaders: Contemporary Extreme Right Symbolism and Rhetoric”. 44 Kaufman also writes of medieval ideals at play in the antebellum and reconstruction-era American South. See also Utz, “Intervention Two: Race and Medievalism at Atlanta’s Rhodes Hall”. 45 See Kao, “Identarian Politics, Precarious Sovereignty”; and Wilton, “What Do We Mean by Anglo-Saxon: Pre-Conquest to the Present”. Farnsworth-Everhart 67 sociological arguments that make a case against the idea of the superiority of the “white race”, but arguments are rarely effective against an illogical and paranoid set of beliefs.

Perhaps this is why white supremacists and nationalists continue to hold these early medieval societies in such high regard. It is obvious that these societies—like our own— were not perfect. However, for white supremacists, early medieval societies represent a return to what they believe is their past: a white culture untainted by even the ghost of multiculturalism.46 This view is incorrect; the medieval period was far more global than it is often portrayed as having been. To the white supremacist, however, this doesn’t matter: the medieval period—specifically, the societies that created Beowulf and Völsunga

Saga—are less about a true history and more about the idea of wanting, needing an Aryan fantasy-land that gives credence to their beliefs.

But, as my thesis reveals, these societies they idolize so much didn’t work. We see that they don’t work in every ending. If anything, stories such as Beowulf and

Völsunga Saga are less glorious epics than they are a slow marching to the end of all things. It may be a march with heroic deeds and sweeping adventures, but the endpoint remains the same: extinction. The violence upon which these societies were based do not make for a good foundation, and the key to keeping the system running—gold—is an inherently toxic substance which serves as a site of monstrous transformation and as a catalyst of violence. In their most basic essence, the worlds these narratives portray were not truly viable. No society that relies on violence can ever truly be viable. It is a system

46 See Elliot, “Internet Medievalism and the White Middle Ages”, “The power of banal medievalism to underscore nation, then, is that it covertly rejects any form of alignment with outsiders in the form of political correctness, multiculturalism, or European integration as inherently deleterious to the interests of national sovereignty and as a historical impossibility within a homogeneous White medieval culture” (Elliot 4). Farnsworth-Everhart 68 that exists only to serve the strong and the powerful. The events of both Völsunga Saga and of Beowulf are therefore tragic, but expected; there is no other real possibility, no solution that would have resulted in less loss of life.

Both Beowulf and Völsunga Saga are intensely human tales. Maybe that is why they continue to resonate so much today. The concerns contained within their pages— greed, monstrosity and the other, violence, and grief—all of these are concerns that are still deeply relevant today. In many ways, our own societies are based upon violence and fueled by money. Perhaps that is why white supremacists have seen fit to attempt a wholesale appropriation of these stories and others like them. Yet, the violence and false purity valorized by white supremacists is not alien to modern society: indeed, by accepting the incorrect portrayal of early medieval northern European culture, one also implicitly accepts those values that our own culture holds most problematically at its core

– violence, wealth, hatred of difference. Accepting this flawed vision of the world by extension validates the endings of both Beowulf and Völsunga Saga. Indeed, in the destructive endings of these stories, the modern world can see its own possible ending.

For a white supremacist, this spells nothing but ruin. It is a resounding affirmative to any idea they might have had that their ideology is rotten to the core, born of fear and fed through bloodshed. But for those who stand against hate, this ending signifies a paradoxical opportunity: the chance to reject and try to move beyond the violence of our past and into a better, kinder future.

Farnsworth-Everhart 69

Works Cited

Abels, Richard P. Lordship and Military Obligation in Anglo-Saxon England. Berkeley

and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 1988.

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