Manejo de recaídas

The Old English epic Beowulf contains a much-debated analogue of the Baldr-slaying and the revenge-cycle in lines 2432-2489. The passage describes how Herebeald was slain by Hæðcyn (cf. Baldr and Höðr: §10.3.1) in some sort of hunting accident with a bow, which Harris (2006:80) points out is nonetheless portrayed with terms indicating conflict and hostility. The grief of the father is given emphasis and he apparently dies of sorrow (as Baldr‟s wife Nanna does, according to Snorri: Faulkes 1982:46), and there follows an account of a special avenger and revenge cycle (§21.2.4).66 The account appears to be a variety of euhemerization of the Baldr-Cycle. It is relevant and interesting as a source, but the uniqueness of Beowulf in the OE corpus leaves it something of a black swan, not unlike the Rök Stone inscription.

Beowulf is preserved in a single manuscript copy dated to the beginning of the eleventh

century (Fulk et al. 2008:xxvii), or approximately two centuries before Saxo wrote his

65 _{Cf. Lönnroth (1977:49): “it is useless to speculate about the exact content of this story or about the exact}

relationship between Vilin and Vili, Thor and Váli, Frigg and the Earth Goddess, etc. Names come and go in Norse mythology; stories are transformed as they are placed in new social contexts. For this reason it is more important to consider the structural typology than the individual motifs or names.”

66 _{See further Lindow 1997b:141-144; North 1997b; O‟Donoghue 2003:83-85; Orchard 2003:116-119;}

Gesta or Snorri wrote Edda. This is a copy of an earlier written copy of unknown date.67 It is the longest OE poem, a heroic epic, but we lack a framework for approaching OE epic as a genre, and in fact we are unable to fully assess the degree to which it accurately reflects generic conventions. The vernacular heroic framework and epic mode of expression are clearly fused with an emerging Christian ideology and worldview, and the composition is clearly manipulating material according to priorities of the work as a whole, even if the exact priorities remain mysterious (Orchard 2003). It also contains a number of referential manipulations of what appear to be mythological narratives (§10.3.1), but there is almost no evidence of vernacular OE forms of such mythological narrative traditions: the references can only be assessed through comparison with ON sources. The same is true to a slightly lesser degree with references to the heroic sphere. Moreover, the acknowledgement of mythological lore in the poem does not necessarily resolve the question of whether the traditions (inevitably euhemerized) reflect an Anglo- Saxon vernacular heritage or Scandinavian cultural contact closer to the era of the manuscript copy (cf. Frank 1981a, North 1997b, Harris 2006). Conversely, the hero Beowulf and the account of his great feats appear to reflect a range of models and referents (very probably including Þórr), yet there is no evidence that either the hero “Beowulf”68

nor his opponents Grendel and Grendel‟s mother were conventionally established traditional figures – at least as the figures encountered in the poem (Dronke 1969, Orchard 2003, Falk et al. 2008).

I am inclined to consider Beowulf the work of a highly skilled vernacular oral poet,69 who composed it in relation to the process of writing the work (whether writing it himself or via an amanuensis), and that this poet drew on a diverse range of traditional material.

67 _{According to Kiernan (1981:171): “The MS is certainly a copy, for the scribal errors are, for the most}

part, manifestly copying errors”. Dating the poem‟s first documentation has been blurred with questions of the date of its “original” composition. Although it is common to date the poem to shortly prior to the Viking Age, ca. 700-750 (Fulk et al. 2008:clxxix), Fulk et al. (2008:clxxx) point out that “[i]n the present state of scholarship, the lack of scholarly consensus would in fact appear to depend less on the volume of evidence available than on scholarly disagreement about the relative weight to be attached to the varieties of evidence.”

68 _{A relationship of Beo-wulf to the mythic Beow as a referent would be consistent with other names in the}

work (§10.3.1).

69 _{In a recent statistical analysis, Golston (2009) has shown that Beowulf exhibits an exceptional degree of}

awareness of the subtleties of the metrics employed. This has implications for the relationship of composition/dictation and documentation, which would necessarily have to be verbatim.

However, I am inclined to doubt that the traditional material was necessarily handled any more traditionally by this poet than by Snorri or Saxo. I am highly sceptical concerning the possibility that the work was ever subject to oral transmission as a coherent entity, although the poet may have worked out the complex narrative in song before committing it (or having it committed) to writing (cf. §17.3). Although we are clearly faced with an “oral” poet, I am inclined to discuss the poet/singer in this case as an “author” in order to emphasize his potentially unique adaptation of “tradition” which was potentially constructed specifically for the written mode of expression and “reading”.70

As in the case of Saxo, the manipulation of mythological referents is a strong indication that these were a current, recognizable and interesting part of the cultural knowledge of both the poet and his intended audience(s). The problem is that we have no points of reference for what those traditions might be, and our only valid points of reference for how such traditions might be being manipulated are either internal to the Beowulf text itself, or through comparisons with products generated in other cultures. Comparisons with corresponding material from Old Norse sources imply that the poet has manipulated names and only retained a minimum of recognizable motifs, which means that we can use our understanding of ON material to approach the corresponding material in Beowulf, but there is no way to judge the significance of any variation as symptomatic of the poet‟s conception of the mythological referent without additional points of reference. I am inclined to consider the mythological traditions reflected in Beowulf to be part of the Anglo-Saxon heritage relevant to a (predominantly) Anglo-Saxon audience, but even that cannot be satisfactorily demonstrated.