Marijane Osborn

Skep (Beinenkorb, *beoleap) as a Culture-Specific Solution to Exeter Book Riddle 17

The solution to Exeter Book Riddle 17 (Muir’s numbering)1 was formerly such a mystery that editors despaired, both Williamson (Old English Riddles 176) and Muir (2: 618) labeling the riddle “uncertain” in their editions. The rune Beorc (B) above the text has suggested burg and ballista, but German and Dutch scholars have recently favored a solution involving beekeeping. My essay endorses this solution, examines a crux, argues for a connection with a riddle by Aldhelm, and concludes with an emphasis on the importance of specificity for a modern reader of Anglo-Saxon texts. Many of the Exeter Book riddles have so far failed to find clear solutions. Along with a few classical “arbitrary riddles”2 for which the answer is well known (like Riddle 85, “a one-eyed seller of garlic”) and a number of religious riddles and translations from earlier Latin riddles, the majority of these brief poems depend on a knowledge of objects and creatures familiar to the Anglo-Saxons for their answer: ships, swans, the bull whose hide becomes leather, chickens, quill pens, a book-eating moth, and so forth. Even the few salacious riddles refer to items such as onions, helmets, dough, and butter churns. A number of riddles are clear to a degree but leave the specific solution in doubt: for example, is the musical instrument in Riddle 31 a bagpipe, a “Sutton Hoo” type lyre, or a related stringed instrument (since it is described as sellic “rare” in the hall, it is probably not the familiar lyre, now confirmed by several additional English finds3), and does Riddle 15 refer to a fox or a hedgehog?4 Yet even these alternatives, with the arguments that are made for them, give us scraps of a culture.

Dogode in Wulf and Eadwacer and King Alfred's Hunting Metaphors

The Old English Wulfand Eudwacer is a mysterious poem. The voice of the speaker is clearly poignant with longing, yet who she and the other characters are, or even how many other characters there are and the nature of her relationship with them, are all uncertain. In 1883, MoritzTrautmann first introduced the idea of reading Wulfund Eadwacer as a poem about animals. His purpose was to identify as Cynewulf the author of the riddles that follow the poem in the Exefer Book; he interprets the “Wulf’ for whom the speaker yearns as an element of Cynewulf‘s name. Although a wide range of suggestions has been offered about the subject of this enigmatic poem since Trautmann’s discussion,’ the usual interpretation takes the characters themselves as human and more or less follows Henry Bradley’s 1888 “sexual triangle” view that the unnamed speaker is a captive or hostage, perhaps in a foreign land, Wulf her lover (some would now say son)* and an outlaw? and Eadwacer her husband (see, for example, Baker 402); other relationships among the three characters also have been proposed. Although I do not agree with Trautmann’s view, nor with the many variations on his proposal by others, that these three persons are animals, strong animal imagery clearly does run throughout the poem. In light of that imagery and similar imagery used by King Alfred, it seems reasonable that the nonce word dogode in line 9 should be retained and understood within this “animal” context rather than emended. In this article I will concentrate entirely on dogode and its context for interpretation to argue for retaining this word. In discussing Wulfand Eudwucer in his 19 15 edition and translation of the Old English elegies, Ernst Sieper pointed out that the word bdgum, in the sense of “shoulder” at line 1 1, was always used in reference to animals, never humans (181); and in 1931 W. J. Sedgefield offered a sustained reading of the poem as a canine romance, the daydream of “a female dog of a romantic temperament” (74). This reading astonished and, with some justification, drew the scorn of scholars who followed, though Alain Renoir points out that the effect of stories about dogs, as well as of those about human beings, “all depends on the kind of dogs or human beings the author chooses and what he has them do” (14849). In 1985, however, Peter Orton offered a long and careful reading of the poem, arguing that Wulfund Eudwucer actually was about animals, as Trautmann and Sedgefield had proposed, “though they seem to consist of a family not of domestic dogs, as Sedgefield believed, but

The Battle on the Ice

focusing on the people involved and not mentioning the ice explicitly (see below), the Bjarkarímur poet presents it as a dramatic clash of arms. The second story, in two versions, tells what happens after Hamlet (Amlæd) avenges his father’s death. In no Scandinavian account does he die following that vengeance, as in Shakespeare’s final scene, and the two versions offered here of the events that follow, translated by Janice Hawes, put an entirely different spin on the drama that is so familiar to us in English. Amlæd’s wife Yngafred is especially a surprise.

Afterword: Amlæd (Hamlet)

The two brief accounts that conclude this issue offer different versions of what happens after Hamlet (called here Ambløthæ and Amlæd) avenges his father. In no Scandinavian version of the story does he die with his uncle as in Shakespeare’s tragedy. In the first version of the aftermath story that follows, he dies in battle somewhat later, and in the second version, we are told that his death occurs in a battle specifically with “the king of Norway” (Shakespeare’s Fortinbras), but then, in a surprising addition to the story, Amlæd the avenger is himself avenged. Amlæd’s story finds a place in this issue because of the way it continues Scylding history after the end of the Danish part of Beowulf. At least six extant king lists, including that implied by Skjöldunga saga, suggest that Hrethric (Rørik, various other spellings) comes to be king of Denmark after Hrothulf (Hrólf kraki) dies without progeny, and usually following the briefly reigning Heoroward (Hjarvardus, Hartwar).1 Some of these lists insert an additional series of rulers, based on the Baldr myth, between Hrolf and Rorik.2 According to Saxo Grammaticus and others (such as Gesta Danorum in the translation below), Rorik is the father of Amlæd’s mother (Shakespeare’s Gertrude), thus: Rørik (Beowulf’s Hrethric) –> Gerutha (his daughter or sometimes his sister) –> Amlæd.3 Regarding his heritage thus makes the childless Amlæd “the last of the Skjöldungs,” thereby completing the story that began with the coming of Scyld. The first version of the Hamlet story given here is from Codex Holm. C 67 of Gesta Danorum po Danskæ, edited by Marcus Lorenzen in GammelDanske Krøniker (17). It conforms most closely to the story by Saxo Grammaticus (History of the Danes, books III–IV), from which Shakespeare’s plot ultimately derives, and may in fact be a summary of Saxo’s story. The second version, in a sense a continuation, includes narrative elements unknown to Saxo or else avoided by him; it is from Sagnkrønike i Stockholm, edited in the same volume by Lorenzen, 205.

Yuletide Beasts at Lejre

In the more or less realistic fiction of the fifteenth-century Bjarkarímur [Rhymes about Bjarki], the hero Bjarki trains the young and cowardly Hjalti to be manly by having him drink the blood of his first kill. These are animals (a wolf and a bear), not monsters, so the slaying of these “yuletide beasts” is nothing like Beowulf’s killing of the monster Grendel, or even like the killing of a makeshift dragon (called a troll, and winged) that substitutes for this episode in the closely related Hrolf Kraki’s Saga (chapter 23). Nevertheless, the very existence of this story suggests that a creature of some kind preying on the hall in midwinter—or perhaps two in succession—could well have been a tradition associated with Lejre, the legendary home of the Scylding kings. By following the original line by line (in Finnur Jónsson’s 1904 edition), Stephen A. Mitchell respects the form of these “Rhymes about Bjarki”1 in a way that previous translations do not. He partly imitates the alliteration2 and rhythm (but not the rhymes, as rhyming would have required excessive deviation from the meaning of the text), and he refrains from standardizing alternating tenses to one tense, as in modern English. The protagonist is sometimes named Bjarki, sometimes Böðvar; he is the Böðvar Bjarki of Hrolf Kraki’s Saga. As the passage begins, Bjarki has just saved young Hjalti from being bullied by King Hrolf Kraki’s men.

Trolls in the Isefjord

Cardew, Philip. “Grendel: Bordering the Human.” The Shadow-Walkers: Jacob Grimm’s Mythology of the Monstrous. Ed. Tom Shippey. Tempe: Arizona State UP, 2005. 189–205. Müllenhoff, Karl. Sagen, Märchen und Lieder der Herzogthümer Schleswig, Holstein und Lauenburg. Kiel: Schwerssche, 1845. Shippey, T. A., and Andreas Haarder, ed. and trans. Beowulf: The Critical Heritage. Routledge: London, 1998. Tolkien, J. R. R. “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” Proceedings of the British Academy 22 (1937): 245–95.

Skjöld: A Song by N. F. S. Grundtvig

2. Joseph Harris has proposed that Beowulf, like the Divine Comedy and the Canterbury Tales, provides an anthology of culturally endorsed types of literature current when it was composed. The “retrospective and comprehensive” poem “presents a unique poet’s unique reception of the oral genres of the Germanic middle ages” (17). Harris considers a broader range of genres than are represented in this story-focused anthology, however, including non-narrative genres found in Beowulf such as genealogy, panegyric, creation hymn, and elegy. 3. For discussion concerning what he terms the “immanence” implicit in traditional oral narrative, see Foley, Immanent Art, and more briefly, “Texts That Speak.” 4. The halls at Lejre are discussed in detail in Niles’s splendidly conceived and edited book Beowulf and Lejre. The Viking Age hall, digitally conjured by Nicolai Garhøj Larsen onto that Lejre landscape traditionally associated with the Scylding kings, may be seen in Niles; plate 32 facing p. 115 and figure 1 on p. 165.

Harthgrepa (from Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, Book I)

15. Preferring Quin’s forniata “very valorous” to Joynt’s formata (? compare formad, gen. -aid “envy”). 16. Apparently a by-form of Eithne, mother of the god Lugh and in late medieval tradition Fionn’s maternal grandmother. 17. The word for “honor” is eineach, literally “face,” a punning echo of dreach “countenance” in the first line. 18. Tír Tairngire “Land of Promise,” although biblical in origin, is a common name for the Otherworld, especially if it is regarded as overseas. 19. Reading “eidir cheathearnaibh” for sense as well as meter (eidir cheathaibh according to Joynt); the noun appears again in line 1887. 20. Interpreting gan ghus “without force” in bono here; alternatively, read as a cheville, “without conflict.” Joynt’s suggestion of “deathless” relies on a couple of doubtful glossarial remarks. 21. Manannán mac Lir is a god of the sea in Irish tradition (his patronymic also means “son of the sea”); his herds are fish. He is frequently associated with Tír Tairngire (see note 18).

Tir as Mars in the Old English Rune Poem

Mistaken understandings of both medieval and modern astronomy have interfered with the acceptance of an obvious meaning for the Tir stanza of the Old English Rune Poem. Because the context of the Tir stanza is at the heart of the misunderstanding, I first introduce the runelist, then place the rune Tir in its Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian context, and finally argue that the Rune Poem stanza for Tir, despite the reluctance of recent scholars to accept this identity, describes Mars, but only in a carefully limited sense. As the first two sections provide well-known background essential to the discussion, runologists may wish to proceed directly to the argument in section 3.

Two-Way Evidence in Beowulf Concerning Viking-Age Ships

Recent work on Old English poetry has revealed an increasing interest by literary scholars in certain matters previously explored chiefly by Scandinavian nautical scholars and archaeologists. For example, in the solution “ship” for Riddle 19 of the Exeter Book advanced by Williamson (186-92) and others, Mark Griffith has cleverly solved some problems by reading in the runes an acronym spelling the mainly Baltic ship designation snacfc);’ Overing and Osborn, in traversing a route described by King Alfred’s informant Wulfstan, offer a possible analogue for Beowulf’s voyage to Denmark (1-37); and Roger Smith argues that, since the Anglo-Saxons did not convert from oar to sail power as the primary propulsion of ships until after A.D. 800, the Beowulf poet’s familiar references to masts, sails, and “high ships” (brentingas, line 2807)* offer an indication of a date for the poem sometime in the ninth or tenth century. Against this final argument, however, should be weighed John Haywood’s careful reassessment of the “current orthodox opinion . . . that the sail was not adopted into common use by the Germanic tribes on the North Sea coast until as late as the seventh century” (19). Giving attention to primary historical texts to supplement current archaeology, Haywood asserts that “contemporary literary evidence points to the sail being in widespread use on Anglo-Saxon vessels well before A.D. 700” (137; see also Paddy Griffith 48-49). I would like to offer as an alternative to Smith’s argument about sails the possible evidence for dating of the coiled prow mentioned in Beowulf, an ornamental feature that we know best archaeologically from the circa 800 0seberg ship (Bragger and Shetelig 11 1-15). The spiral-prowed ship representations on Swedish high stones (Foote and Wilson, pl. 12, discussed 294-95) and Danish coins (Haywood 133) suggest that the feature was probably introduced around this time, so that Asa’s ship, if that found at 0seberg was indeed hers (Bragger and Shetelig I15-22), was fairly stylish when afloat. After her death it became her lavish burial ship, much as Scyld Scefing’s vessel became his funeral ship (he being set adrift rather than buried). Thus if the word hringedstefna referring by synechdoche to Scyld’s ship in line 32 of Beowulfmay be understood, as Chambers understands it (364), as a “coiled prow” instead of merely a “curved prow” (Jack 29), such an understanding would help to confirm the later dating of the poem based on ship style for which Smith argues. The visual analogy of Scyld’s prow with that of the 0seberg ship may be supported by the word