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Farnsworth-Everhart 1 the DEATH of ALL WHO POSSESS IT 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 ______________________ A Thesis Presented to the Honors Tutorial College at Ohio University _______________________ 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.
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