SOURCE: “Beowulf and Grettis Saga: An Excursion,” in Saga-Book, Vol. XIX, Part 4, 1977, pp. 347-57.

[In the following essay, Turville-Petre compares and contrasts several specific episodes in the Grettis Sagawith comparable ones in Beowulf.]

Beowulf pursues Grendel's mother into her lair, deep below the water.¹ Grettir plunges under a waterfall, to reach the habitat of a troll-woman. Each of them destroys the enemy, after great struggles.

So we have two works, separated by 500 years or more; and in each of them the hero overcomes a visitant from the other-world, in basically similar circumstances.

Direct influence of the poem on the author of the saga is easily ruled out. Even if he could have read the poem, the saga writer could not possibly have constructed his account from this source. Yet there are striking similarities, in general and in detail. We have to ask in what kind of literary tradition this episode was formulated, and how it was transmitted. The affair has been so fully discussed that much that was once taken for granted can bear re-examination. In the literary foreground, how does it fit each of these quite different heroes? And in the background, where did they find it?

One preliminary distinction must be made: Beowulf is a mythical figure, Grettir is not.

There was a real Grettir, who lived in the early eleventh century. His family and contemporaries are independently attested, and some of his own activities can likewise be cross-checked.² But essentially the saga is imaginative reconstruction, based on an idea of the kind of person Grettir was, and how he came to live as he did. I take it that the writer of the final recension was not making any significant changes in representing the central figure.³ Overall there is close attention to character and motive. Although there is a non-human element in Grettir, his humanity is clearly shown in his ready wit: he answers back effectively, and makes shrewd comments.

Beowulf did not live in history; he does not belong to any known dynasty. The poem is organized to show a hero in action. The story is the outline of Beowulf's career, presented in sharply-focused incidents. These are linked by narrative of a more discursive kind: allusions back and forward in time, subsidiary characters and supporting incidents, all held together by comments from the poet or from leading characters (e.g. Beowulf, Hroðgar, Wiglaf). The human society depicted in the poem is generalized and symbolic, a tissue of mutual obligations and benefits.⁴ Beowulf is the exemplary figure who illustrates the rules and the virtues of this society.

When I say that Beowulf is a mythical figure, I do not mean that he represents any divine being, nor that his activities have any connexion with ritual practices. I mean “myth” in Northrop Frye's sense:⁵ an abstract fictional design, a story (fabula) constructed for a purpose. In this sense, Professor Quinn describes the Aeneid as “a poetic myth”.⁶ The elements of such a story (persons, places and situations) are already familiar to the audience. The central figure also may exist in a previous literary context; but essentially he is the poet's creation. His actions are directly related to the main themes. What the poet particularly has to say is also conveyed in new combinations of stock figures and events (archetypes), used to evoke the main themes.

The poet of Beowulf touches on various themes, but there is one central idea, as I see it. This is the ancient religious concept of the deliverer. The hero pits himself against evil powers, the enemy that presses on the borders of the human world. Now Grettir's situation is formally similar to this, though very different in quality. I shall not discuss Grettir as a deliverer; the motive is present, but not dominating. I point only to the entirely different conception of the “outside”. Grettir himself has strong connexions with this region and its supernatural inhabitants. Grettis saga is the spookiest of the major family sagas, dealing freely with the surrounding world of spirits, which is still a living element of Icelandic culture. This environment is strange rather than terrifying, entirely different from the awesome setting of Beowulf's exploits.

To come now to actual events in the encounter of these two heroes with man-like monsters from the outside. It follows a certain pattern, and the underwater episode is the climax. The essential points are:

(1) the enemy is a male-and-female pair, living underwater;

(2) one of the pair attacks a dwelling at night (Hroðgar's hall, the farm at Sandhaugar), and carries away one or more men to devour in the underwater lair;

(3) the hero waits alone in the house, and when the enemy comes there is a fierce hand-to-hand struggle, indoors;

(4) the enemy breaks out and makes for the water, but is fatally wounded by loss of an arm;

(5) the hero, some time after, plunges into the water, and kills the other member of the pair.

Notice that this pattern does not apply to Grettir's encounter with Glámr (ch. 35). Only point 3 is present here, the indoor wrestling. Glámr is not a member of a pair. He does not live underwater, and he is not a maneater. He is not a nature-monster at all, but the revenant of a heathen Swede: a living corpse, another intruder from outside which is not unusual in Icelandic literature. I think the brilliant description of this episode has led critics of Beowulf to overvalue it as an analogue.

Now for section 5 of the pattern. Here, it has often been observed that the account of Grettis saga (chs. 64-7) makes sense, whereas in Beowulf (1345-1622) neither place nor sequence is clearly visualized. I do not therefore suppose that the prose narrative has preserved some original more faithfully than the poem. It seems rather that certain motifs (archetypal situations) have been used by two artists, each practising the technique appropriate to his work.

The components common to both are logically organised in Grettis saga. The hero dives under a waterfall, and his struggles in the eddies are described. He enters a cave, where a good fire is burning. A giant was waiting, and he attacked with a heptisax; but Grettir broke the handle with a blow of his sax (short-sword). While the giant was reaching back for his own sword, Grettir struck again, sliced out the giant's entrails, and finally killed him. Then he kindled a light and explored the cave.

In Beowulf, these same components are not organised into a sequence. There is a special weapon, a hæftmece, which like heptisax is an isolated compound. But it is identified as the hero's sword, which is found useless at the first encounter. There is a waterfall, but it belongs to Hroðgar's impressionistic description of the environment of the monsters' lair (1357-76). There is no waterfall in the accounts of approach (1400-21) and entry (1492-1517). When Beowulf enters the hall of Grendel's mother, he finds that it is free from water and a fire is burning. A human sword cannot touch her, but in the nick of time he sees a giant-sword. He does not have to kindle a light, for a heavenly light irradiates the place.

Let us leave the hæftmece for the moment, and consider the waterfall, the fire, and the miraculous light.

The poet relegates the waterfall to a preliminary general description, where it is an image of the power and peril of the world of nature. In Grettis saga, the hero's physical prowess is displayed against a realistic waterfall—although there is no waterfall in Bárðardalr.⁷ This is not a normal monster-habitat; in Iceland it occurs otherwise only in reproductions of this episode in later romantic sagas. Trolls live in crags and rocks, but the trolls of Bárðardalr live in a cave accessible only through water.

The fire, in each work, is the focus of domestic life, showing that these underwater creatures use the same means of heating and cooking as human beings.

The sword, which in Grettis saga is merely part of the furniture, in Beowulf makes the point that no human weapon can penetrate so evil a monster, and Beowulf alone among humans can wield it. As for the light, it is the external sign of God's saving grace, which released Beowulf from the grip of the giantess, and willed the destruction of her evil power. The incident has caused some confusion; first, because of the narrative sequence, and second, because of the inherent symbolism. In the passage 1545-72 the order of narration depends not on logic, but on poetic rhetoric. First, we are told that Beowulf would have perished, if God had not rightly ordained the outcome (1550-6). Next, Beowulf finds the sword, and kills the giantess (1557-69). Third, se leoma shines out; it is described as heavenly, i.e. not malignant (1570-2). The reason for the demonstrative se is that this light had been a factor at the first stage, but is not identified until the third. Chambers perceived this, and explained the inconsistency with a general reference to Old English poetic technique.⁸ On a smaller scale, the device of illogical order was freely used by Virgil.⁹ The light is symbolic, in so far as it has no physical origin. At the same time, it is a real light that persists, for it enables Beowulf to explore the whole cave. There is no inconsistency here, for symbolism is not a hard-and-fast scheme, but a momentary allusion to a different level of meaning.¹⁰ When the poet associates sudden emergence of light with the destruction of the monster and God's grace to Beowulf, he strikes out symbolic meanings for the incident. Light projects different images. Two are appropriate here: release, and the cleansing of the infested place.

The heptisax or hæftmece is the most striking point of agreement. It appears to be a technical term, specifically associated with cave-warfare. Each author interprets this special term in his own way.

The poet equates it outright with a proper sword, but introduces it with some elaboration: “Then, it was by no means the least of strength-supporters [an unusual periphrasis for the sword, but there are paralles¹¹] that the spokesman Unferð lent him at his need; that hæftmece bore the name Hrunting” (1455-7). He proceeds to describe it as an ancient treasure, a blade of special workmanship.

The author of Grettis saga has more trouble, because he is describing realistically. He first states that the giant in the cave seized a fleinn. This word means “arrow” or “light spear” in poetry, or in prose derived from verse. But in original prose the word appears as a typical giant's weapon, a pointed iron stake.¹²Fleinn does not occur in verse 61 of Grettis saga,¹³heptisax and skepti do (skepti only here in poetry). Apparently for this reason, the author adds a tréskapt to the fleinn, and comments “in those days it was called a heptisax”. He says also of this fleinn that it was suitable for both cut and thrust. This is a typical description of a sax,¹⁴ which, unlike the two-edged sword, had a pointed tip. So it seems that the author was describing an impossible composite weapon.

Perhaps it was a mistake to assume that hepti had the usual current sense “grip, handhold”. This concrete meaning was common for hepti, rare for hæft. A hepti is appropriate to a knife (sax, knífr),¹⁵ also to the lower end of an axe-shaft;¹⁶ it is too humble or too unspecific for a sword.¹⁷Hæft usually means “fetter” or “captive”.¹⁸ The semantic divergence is best shown in the related verbs: hepta “bind, put in bonds; hobble a horse”; hæftan “bind, hold captive”. This sense is formally distinguished in the OI noun hapt “fetter, halter”; pl. “bondage”, and hopt, like bond, is a poetic term for the gods. If hepti-/hæft- is a verbal adjective (as in sendimaðr), the compound could mean “blade attached / bound in some way”. Hæftmece would then be comparable to fetelhilt, Beow. 1563,¹⁹ derived from a fetlian “attach, connect”. In historic times, the sword or sax could be fitted with a loop to hang on the arm.²⁰ A weapon attached in this way would be especially useful in an underwater adventure; Grettir “girded himself with his sax” before he dived in.

Why was this particular episode brought into the careers of these two very different heroes? In some way it must fit the concept that each author had of his leading character.

The author of the saga shows that Grettir's great strength was his misfortune. In spite of good intentions, he was progressively estranged from society. He was impulsive and uncontrolled, and as a result appropriate outlets for his strength were more and more restricted. Grettir was an outlaw for 19 years. He is depicted as an outsider, a man who naturally consorted with strange beings: such as Hallmundr, who called himself Loptr²¹ and lived in a cave, and the half-troll Þórir in his happy valley. Grettir sought out and defeated hostile supernatural beings, partly to meet the challenge, and partly through goodwill. The last of these exploits was the encounter with the trolls of Bárðardalr, and Grettir approached it as an expert: með því at honum var mjok lagit at koma af reimleikum eða aptrgþongum (ch. 64) “because he was much by way of getting rid of hauntings and walkings” (or, “had a natural facility for …”).

Both the first and the last of Grettir's attacks on the supernatural took him into the underworld. The first²² is set in Norway, where Grettir broke into a grave-mound, overcame the dead man, and returned with all his treasure. He handed it over to the owner, his host Þorfinnr, who later gave Grettir the most precious object of all: a sax which Grettir had coveted, and used ever after. So it seems that Grettir, like some other heroes,²³ acquired his special weapon from the land of the dead.

The final underworld adventure is as different in theme as it is in setting. Grettir is now a fugitive, and his enemies are closing in. He is able to deliver the people of Bárðardalr from the attacks of a troll-woman, and through their gratitude he gains a temporary refuge. His feats of strength begin with a happy prelude: Christopher-like, he carries the housewife and her child across the dangerous river to attend church.

In Beowulf, the underwater episode is the culmination of the hero's testing-period. Beowulf had become Hroðgar's visiting champion; with this exploit he attains the full status of a hero. At this point, the poet had to project the action beyond the human world. The preliminary account of the setting, given in Hroðgar's speech, contains the same elements as Aeneas' approach to Hades (Aen. vi, 237-41), for it has the same purpose of suggesting gloom and horror. There is a great gulf, dark water, shadowing trees, and the place is shunned by wild creatures. Additional elements, frost and fire, are derived from The Vision of St Paul. The succeeding factual account of the route taken by Hroðgar and his troop leads steadily away from man's world. Yet a tableau of vigorous human activity is mounted on the very brink. First there is a hunting scene, then the ceremonial arming of the hero. The arming evokes a flash-back to court life, when Unferð presents his sword, and Beowulf addresses farewell words to his master. He breaks away from this scene, by jumping into the pool and entering the ælwihta eard below.

The symbolism of this setting is in keeping with Beowulf's nature. Beowulf is not a historic person, but an incarnation of the hero-ideal. Like Aeneas, he has a mission, and this is the subject of the epic. Beowulf does not come to found a city; his mission is to deliver mankind, represented by the Danes and the Geats, from attacks by creatures of the otherworld. The historic element, which establishes Beowulf in the human world, is the spread of Northern dynasties, with their political and military involvements.

Grettir did actually belong to his setting of historic contemporaries. Yet the part he plays in public affairs and family rivalries is less important than for other tragic heroes of the sagas. His encounters with the supernatural are the fabric of his life, as this author sees it. For the Grettir shown to us is formed by the story-teller's art, a literary medium which developed rather rapidly in Iceland during the thirteenth century. It seems that this author perceived in Grettir some of the patterns of heroic life which had been set in ancient poetry.²⁴ Writers of this period could create tragic heroes from people of past ages, because their literary inheritance offered them such patterns. This inheritance had been developed and enriched by the antiquarian interests of their predecessors in the twelfth century.

In Grettis saga there is no overt reference to heroic poetry: no straight comparison, as in Gísla saga, where some incidents are modelled on events in the Sigurd poems and where there is a direct reference to that story. Yet some association with the heroes of antiquity is implicit when Grettir gets his special sax from the land of the dead. Among his great deeds, the two indoor wrestling-matches (the first with Glámr, the second with the troll-woman) had some place in heroic legend, since they are generically related to the cleansing of Heorot. The underwater adventure with its heptisax seems more like a direct allusion. If so, the poetic source of this episode has not survived.

The Old English poem stands nearer this source, in literary form as in time. The underwater episode is entirely appropriate to Beowulf himself, indeed it is necessary to his career. In Grettis saga, it is one more remarkable adventure.

When we look for the antecedents of this Beowulf in heroic legend, there is something in his name. It pretty certainly means “bee-wolf”, circumlocution for “bear”. The name was not fanciful; it is recorded for two historic persons. One was a seventh-century Northumbrian monk,²⁵ the other was Bjólfr the landnámsmaðr.²⁶ The most likely reason for giving this strange name is that it was current in heroic legend. Far back in pagan antiquity, the name would denote a theriomorphic divinity. In historic times, a bear-hero appears in two divergent literary traditions: in heroic legend (Bjarkamál, Beowulf) and in the folklore of the Northwest Germanic area. Chambers has shown that a hero of bear-ancestry is well represented here (his chief exploit is to enter the underworld through a hole).²⁷

There is not much of the bear left in heroic legend. Bjarki has only his name, and his fierce courage in defence of his lord; according to Saxo, he also slew a bear. In Beowulf, the animal attributes implied do survive as poetic imagery. The superhuman grip of the hero reminds us that he is not as other men are. Although his activities are in the human world, he has access to regions beyond it. Beowulf is firmly set in human society, and conforms to its rules. But he can pass beyond these limits, and return unscathed. The excursion increases his human stature; for he begins as a wandering champion, and ends as a king defending his people.

Notes

1. References are to F. Klaeber, Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg (3rd edition, 1950), by line; and to Guðni Jónsson, Grettis saga (Íslenzk Fornrit VII, 1936), by chapter.

2. Saga writers did invent incidents in which historical characters are concerned, and also attributed to them situations borrowed from other sagas; see Kathryn Hume, ‘The Thematic Design of Grettis saga’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology LXXIII (1974), 476-82.

3. There are persuasive reasons for thinking that Sturla Þórðarson composed a life of Grettir c. 1280, and that this work survives in outline in the present redaction of the early fourteenth century; see Sigurður Nordal, Sturla Þórðarson og Grettis saga (Íslenzk fræði 4, 1938).

4. Cf. E. B. Irving, A Reading of Beowulf (1968), ch. ii.

5. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (1957, reprinted 1971), 135; see also 366, “a narrative in which some characters are superhuman … a conventionalized or stylized narrative not fully adapted to plausibility or ‘realism’”.

6. K. Quinn, Virgil's Aeneid; a Critical Description (1968), 52-4.

7. This is one sign that conventional elements have been naturalized. Another is the fate of the troll-woman. In the description of the fight itself (ch. 65), Grettir freed himself by cutting off her right arm, whereupon she fell into the gorge. Later in the same chapter, an alternative account is given: “but the people of Bárðardalr say that she was overtaken by daylight as they wrestled, and succumbed when he struck off her arm; and there she still stands on the cliff in the shape of a woman.” On the substitution of this popular belief see H. Dehmer, Primitives Erzählungsgut in den Íslendinga Sögur (1927), 53 f.

8. R. W. Chambers, Beowulf, an Introduction (3rd edition, 1959), 467-8.

9. See T. E. Page, The Aeneid of Virgil Books I-VI (1894), 468-9. It consists of two co-ordinate statements, the second of which functions as a clause defining the first in terms of an antecedent event. The Beowulf poet achieves a similar effect with a summarising statement explained by a brief syððan-clause, in 1554-6 and elsewhere.

10. See Quinn, op. cit., 55 and note.

11. See H. Marquardt, Die altenglischen Kenningar (1938), 223.

12. H. Falk, Altnordische Waffenkunde (1914), 67.

13. Verses 60 and 61 (ch. 66) concern this adventure. They cannot be dated. The rime fjón: kvánar (v. 60) would not have been acceptable in court-poetry of the eleventh century; but this is not court-poetry. On these two verses, see P. A. Jørgensen, ‘Grendel, Grettir and Two Skaldic Stanzas’, Scripta Islandica 24 (1973), 54-61.

14. Falk, op. cit., 9 (quoting Stjórn 541).

15. Falk, op. cit., 10.

16. Falk, op. cit., 118.

17. Klaeber's translation “hilted sword” (Glossary, s.v. hæftmece) shows the impasse of this interpretation; there is no such thing as a sword without a hilt.

18. Hæft is figurative in O.E. poetry and can mean “bondage”, “imprisonment” etc., cf. J. Bosworth and T. N. Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (1898, reprinted 1973), s.v. hæft. Cf. also hæftnyd “captivity”.

19. See J. Hoops, Kommentar zum Beowulf (1932), 172, 179.

20. Falk, op. cit., 38.

21. Grettis saga ch. 54. Loptr is here an Óðinn-figure; his face is obscured by a drooping hood. In poetic sources, this appellative is applied to Loki only, and its etymology is uncertain.

22. See A. R. Taylor, ‘Two Notes on Beowulf’, Leeds Studies in English and Kindred Languages 7-8 (1952), 13-17.

23. Hervor gets Tyrfingr from Angantýr in his grave-mound (A. Heusler and W. Ranisch, Eddica minora (1903), 15-20). Miðfjarðar-Skeggi robbed the grave-mound of Hrólfr kraki and took his sword (Jakob Benediktsson, Íslendingabók, Landnámabók, Íslenzk Fornrit I, 1968, 212).

24. As observed by W. P. Ker, Epic and Romance (1908), 202; Björn K. Þórólfsson, Gísla saga (Íslenzk Fornrit VI, 1943), xxv; J. de Vries, Heroic Song and Heroic Legend (1963), 98.

25. H. Sweet, The Oldest English Texts (1885), 163. It is interesting that the next name is Arthan, a Welsh diminutive form for “bear”, which appears in early genealogies and in a poem of the twelfth-thirteenth century; see references in J. Lloyd-Jones, Geirfa Barddoniaeth Gynnar Gymraeg (1931), 43.

26. Jakob Benediktsson, Íslendingabók, Landnámabók, 302-3, 306.

27. Beowulf, an Introduction, 365-81.