An illustration of Grendel by J. R. Skelton from the 1908 Stories of Beowulf. Grendel is described as "Very terrible to look upon."

Grendel is a character in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf (700–1000 CE). He is one of the poem's three antagonists (along with his mother and the dragon), all aligned in opposition against the protagonist Beowulf. He is referred to as both an eoten and a þyrs, types of beings from wider Germanic mythology. He is also described as a descendant of the Biblical Cain and "a creature of darkness, exiled from happiness and accursed of God, the destroyer and devourer of our human kind."[1] He is usually depicted as a monster or a giant, although his status as a monster, giant, or other form of supernatural being is not clearly described in the poem and thus remains the subject of scholarly debate. The character of Grendel and his role in the story of Beowulf have been subject to numerous reinterpretations and re-imaginings. Grendel is feared by all in Heorot but Beowulf, who kills both him and his mother.

Story

Beowulf's author often uses various substitute phrases for Grendel's name like mearc stapa ("mark-stepper"), an inhabitant of the borderland.

Grendel is a figure in the poem Beowulf, preserved in the Nowell Codex.[2] Grendel, being cursed as the descendant of the Biblical Cain, along with elves and other eotens, is "harrowed" by the sounds of singing that come every night from the mead hall of Heorot built by King Hroðgar. Unable to bear it any more, he attacks Heorot. Grendel continues to attack the Hall every night for twelve years, killing its inhabitants and making this magnificent mead hall unusable. To add to his monstrous description, the poet details how Grendel consumes the men he kills, "now that he could hope to eat his fill."[1]

Beowulf hears of these attacks and leaves his native land of the Geats to destroy Grendel. He is warmly welcomed by King Hroðgar, who gives a banquet in celebration. Afterwards Beowulf and his warriors bed down in the mead hall to await the inevitable attack. Grendel stalks outside the building for a time, spying the warriors inside. He then makes a sudden attack, bursting the door with his fists and continuing through the entry. The first warrior Grendel finds is still asleep, so he seizes the man and devours him. Grendel grabs a second warrior, but is shocked when the warrior grabs back with fearsome strength. As Grendel attempts to disengage, the reader discovers that Beowulf is that second warrior. Beowulf uses neither weapon nor armour in this fight. He also places no reliance on his companions and has no need of them. He trusts that God has given him strength to defeat Grendel, whom he believes is God's adversary.[3] Beowulf tears off Grendel's arm, mortally wounding the creature. Grendel flees but dies in his marsh den. There, Beowulf later engages in a fierce battle with Grendel's mother in a mere, over whom he triumphs with a sword found there. Following her death, Beowulf finds Grendel's corpse and removes his head, which he keeps as a trophy. Beowulf then returns to the surface and to his men at the "ninth hour".[4] He returns to Heorot, where a grateful Hroðgar showers him with gifts.[5]

Narrative role

Tolkien argues for the importance of Grendel's role in the poem as an "eminently suitable beginning" that sets the stage for Beowulf's fight with the dragon: "Triumph over the lesser and more nearly human is cancelled by defeat before the older and more elemental." Tolkien argues that "the evil spirits took visible shape" in the characters of Grendel and the dragon; however, the author's concern is focused on Beowulf.[6] Tolkien's essay was the first work of scholarship in which Anglo-Saxon literature was seriously examined on its literary merits – not just for scholarship about the origins of the English language, or what historical information could be gleaned from the text, as was common in the 19th century.[7]

Identity and physical description

Description in the poem

During the decades following Tolkien's essay, the exact description of Grendel was debated by scholars. Indeed, because his exact appearance is never directly described in Old English by the original Beowulf poet, part of the debate revolves around what is known, namely his descent from the biblical Cain (the first murderer in the Bible). Grendel is called a sceadugenga – "shadow walker", in other words "night goer" – given that the monster was repeatedly described to be in the shroud of darkness.[8][9]

After Grendel's death, Hroðgar describes him as vaguely human in shape, though much larger:

Old English text[10] Tolkien translation[11]
... óðer earmsceapen
on weres wæstmum wraéclástas træd
næfne hé wæs mára þonne aénig man óðer
þone on géardagum Grendel nemdon
... the other, miscreated thing,
in man's form trod the ways of exile,
albeit he was greater than any other human thing.
Him in days of old the dwellers on earth named Grendel

Grendel's disembodied head is also so large that it takes four men to transport it. Furthermore, when Grendel's torn arm is inspected it is described as being covered in impenetrable scales and horny growths.[12]

Old English text[13] Heaney translation[12]
steda nægla gehwylc stýle gelícost
haéþenes handsporu hilderinces
egl unhéoru aéghwylc gecwæð
þæt him heardra nán hrínan wolde
íren aérgód, þæt ðæs áhlaécan
blódge beadufolme onberan wolde
Every nail, claw-scale and spur, every spike
and welt on the hand of that heathen brute
was like barbed steel. Everybody said
there was no honed iron hard enough:
to pierce him through, no time proofed blade
that could cut his brutal blood caked claw

Relationship to Biblical traditions

Some scholars have linked Grendel's descent from Cain to the monsters and giants of the Cain tradition.[14] Alfred Bammesgerber looks closely at line 1266 where Grendel's ancestry is said to be the "misbegotten spirits"[15] that sprang from Cain after he was cursed. He argues that the word in Old English geosceaftgasta should be translated "the great former creation of spirits".[16]

Relationship to wider Germanic traditions

Identity as a eoten

In 1936, J. R. R. Tolkien's Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics discussed Grendel and the dragon in Beowulf. Tolkien points out that while Grendel is the descendant of the Biblical Cain, he "cannot be dissociated from the creatures of northern myth". He notes that Cain is presented as the ancestor of beings such as eotenas and ylfe, which he equates with their Old Norse cognates of jötnar and álfar. He further argues that this blending of traditions is intentional and seen throughout the poem more generally.[17] Grendel specifically is described as both a eoten and a þyrs, cognate with Old Norse: jötunn and þurs respectively; it has been proposed that the poet and the audience of the poem would have seen Grendel as belonging to this same group of beings as the jötnar of Scandinavian tradition.[18] While jötnar in Old Norse accounts are highly diverse, lacking a single physical appearance, and best thought of as a social grouping, some broadly shared traits have been identified such as living in the periphery of the world, outside of society.[19][20] In both Old Norse and Old English accounts, these borders between the realms of humanity and those of supernatural beings are often marked by water, such as rivers or the surface of lakes.[21][22] This is notably consistent with Grendel's depiction as living in marshes and Maxims II, which identifies fens as the characteristic living place for þyrsas.[22][21][23]

Other

Katherine O'Keefe has suggested that Grendel resembles a berserker, because of numerous associations that seem to point to this possibility.[24]

Sonya R. Jensen argues for an identification between Grendel and Agnar, son of Ingeld, and suggests that the tale of the first two monsters is actually the tale of Ingeld, as mentioned by Alcuin in the 790s. The tale of Agnar tells how he was cut in half by the warrior Bödvar Bjarki (Warlike little Bear), and how he died "with his lips separated into a smile". One major parallel between Agnar and Grendel would thus be that the monster of the poem has a name perhaps composed of a combination of the words gren and daelan. The poet may be stressing to his audience that Grendel "died laughing", or that he was gren-dael[ed] or "grin-divid[ed]", after having his arm torn off at the shoulder by Beowulf, whose name means bee-wolf or bear.[25]

Other interpretations and discussions

Peter Dickinson (1979) argued that seeing as the considered distinction between man and beast at the time the poem was written was simply man's bipedalism, the given description of Grendel being man-like does not necessarily imply that Grendel is meant to be humanoid, going as far as stating that Grendel could easily have been a bipedal dragon.[26]

Other scholars such as Sherman Kuhn (1979) have questioned Grendel's description as a monster, stating:

There are five disputed instances of āglǣca [three of which are in Beowulf, lines] 649, 1269, 1512 ... In the first ... the referent can be either Beowulf or Grendel. If the poet and his audience felt the word to have two meanings – monster and hero – the ambiguity would be troublesome; but if by āglǣca they understood a fighter, the ambiguity would be of little consequence, for battle was destined for both Beowulf and Grendel and both were fierce fighters (216–217).

Place-names

Grendel likely features in English place names dating to the Anglo-Saxon period such as grendeles pytt ("Grendel's pit"), grendles mere ("Grendel's mere) and gryndeles syllen ("Grendel's bog"). It has been further noted that these places are often nearby, or are, watery places, such as lakes and marshes, or other locations away from human habitation.[27]

Depictions

Grendel appears in many other cultural works.

Citations

  1. 1 2 Jones 1972, p. 12.
  2. ↑ Heaney 2012.
  3. ↑ Nicholson 1963, p. 236.
  4. ↑ George 1997, p. 123.
  5. ↑ Beowulf (OE), Stanzas 1651-1793.
  6. ↑ Tolkien 1936, p. 128.
  7. ↑ Tolkien 2014.
  8. ↑ Thorpe 1855, p. 48.
  9. ↑ Heyne 2018, pp. 129, 228, 298.
  10. ↑ Beowulf (OE), Stanza 37 & 38.
  11. ↑ Tolkien 2014, p. 52, Stanzas 1128-1131.
  12. 1 2 Heaney 2012, Stanzas 983-989.
  13. ↑ Beowulf (OE), Stanza 985 & 990.
  14. ↑ Williams 1982.
  15. ↑ Heaney 2012, pp. 41–108.
  16. ↑ Bammesberger 2008, pp. 257–260.
  17. ↑ Tolkien 1936, p. 11.
  18. ↑ Monikander 2006, pp. 145–146.
  19. ↑ Jakobsson 2006.
  20. ↑ Heide 2014.
  21. 1 2 Semple 2010, p. 30.
  22. 1 2 Monikander 2006, p. 146.
  23. ↑ Abram 2019.
  24. ↑ O'Keefe 1981, pp. 484–485.
  25. ↑ Jensen 1998.
  26. ↑ Dickinson & Anderson 1979.
  27. ↑ Leneghan 2022.

Bibliography

Primary

  • George, Jack (1997). Beowulf: A Student Edition.
  • Heaney, Seamus (2012). Beowulf (9th ed.). New York: Norton. pp. 41–108. ISBN 978-0-393-91249-4.
  • Heyne, Moriz (2018). Beówulf. Franklin Classics. ISBN 978-0341833826.
  • Thorpe, Benjamin (1855). The Anglo-Saxon poems of Beowulf, the Scôp or Gleeman's tale, and The fight at Finnesburg; with a literal translation, notes, glossary, etc. Oxford Parker.
  • Tolkien, J. R. R. (2014). Beowulf: a translation and commentary. London: HarperCollinsPublishers. ISBN 9780007590070.
  • Slade, Benjamin. "Beowulf". heorot.dk. Retrieved 2 July 2023.

Secondary

  • Media related to Grendel at Wikimedia Commons
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