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PRIMITIVE ARCHER MAGAZINE
Hunting Through
Medieval Literature

 
INTERDISCIPLINARY HUMANITIES
Peter Pan

HORSE & RIDER MAGAZINE
A Whisper and a Prayer

CONFERENCE PAPER
The Masculine Mind
of Shakespeare's Women

COURSE CURRICULUM ARTICLE
Christine de Pizan

CONFERENCE PAPER
Nature to the Rescue in the
Hero(ine)'s Journey

CONFERENCE PAPER
Hostages in the Rose Garden

SEMINAR TOPIC
Murder Will Out

"If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research."  Wilson Mizner, 1876-1933, American Author
(Please use appropriate citations)

WHEN PAGANS MEET CHRISTIANS: A Comparative Study of Beowulf and Grettir's Saga

By Doré Ripley, ©2004

IN THE DEAD OF THE NIGHT, someone or something, is murdering the local townsfolk. As fate provides, a stranger marches into the local saloon and declares, "I'll kill the outlaw." When the outlaw returns to the scene of his crimes, the outsider is waiting and mortally wounds the criminal after a fight. All the villain can do is limp off to a hidden lair. The hero and his comrade(s) track the wounded felon to an underwater cave and the ensuing fray results in the death of the villain's sidekick. The stranger/hero goes in alone to explore the cave, discovers the carcass of the original fugitive, alongside his treasure and booty. Meanwhile, the stranger's posse thinks the hero has died and abandons him, and the hero's surprising return marks the end of the mission. Excluding the underwater cave, the plot line of Beowulf and Grettir's Saga is the premise for countless songs, sagas, epics, stories and movies. These two oral tales contain similar action sequences, but different elements and tones. From the older Beowulf and its pagan society that is working to integrate Christianity, to the newer Grettir'sSaga with a Christian population that wants to cast out its older heroic heathens, the dogmatic tonal shift can be discovered by noting the variation of the characters' attitudes and looking at how the differing communities act in relation to the hero.

          Dating oral works creates myriad problems. Oral tales were written down at a particular moment during their evolution, not when they were first created. Using historical evidence, it appears that the Anglo Saxon Beowulf was recited 900 years earlier than Grettir's Saga because, according to Howell Chickering, Jr. Hygelac's death as portrayed in Beowulf, occured in 521 during a raid on the Frisians (247), while historians believe Grettir's Saga was "originally written in Icelandic, sometime in the early 14th century" (Killings 1). The time gap between Grettir's and Beowulf can be narrowed to 400 years because, even though the oral tale may be much older, Beowulf was not written down until the 10th century. As to the origins of the tales, Chickering asserts Grettir's Saga and Beowulf, "go back independently to a common original" (254), and are not evolutionary partners.

          The plot played out above illustrates the many close parallels between books 64 to 67 of Grettir's Saga and the first book of Beowulf. However, the underlying religious tenor shifts significantly from work to work. The later Grettir's Saga immediately identifies itself as a Christian tale through the introduction of a priest, who, after becoming the stranger's sidekick, banishes the hero. Grettir's monster only appears at Yuletide, a time of Christian festivity formalized by attendance at mass. Grettir's monster reflects the same anti-celebratory mood as Beowulf's Grendel, who, lacking any holiday spirit, arrives at Heorot and "suffered fierce pain, for each new day / he heard happy laughter loud in the hall" (87a-89b). On the other hand, Beowulf's Christian references are nebulous, but do mention heaven, hell and God, the King, or Lord along with mixed references to the Biblical deluge and the race of giants. Of significant note, is what Beowulf doesn't mention; the deluge story does not reference Noah and the ark, an integral part of the Genesis flood story, nor does it mention Christ or any other New Testament tale or icon. In addition, Beowulf's ceremonies involve pre-Christian ideals of hospitality, unlike the Christian mass found in the later's Grettir's Saga. Moreover, Beowulf contains heathens who, "prepared sacrifice in temples, / war-idol offerings, said old words aloud" (175b-176b), while the runes found on Grendel's mother sword also reflect old words. Its hilt, part of Beowulf's booty, is described as an "old work of giants" (1679a), "from magic smithies" (1681a) which has engraved on it "the origin of past strife, when the flood drowned, / the pouring ocean killed the race of giants" (1689a-1690b). Genesis tells us the primordial past contained, "giants in the earth in those days" (Gen. 6:4), but in the Biblical story of the deluge (Gen. 7:10), God destroys mankind (Gen. 6:5), not giants. Beowulf's "old words" and its mention of the Biblical flood and race of giants indicates a willingness to blend Beowulf's older pagan roots with Christianity.

          Flood stories can be found the world over. From Mesopotamia (2700 to 1000 BC), the cradle of civilization, comes the tale of Gilgamesh, where a prehistoric deluge lasted "six days and seven nights" (XI 127), like that in the Bible. Around 700 BC, Hesiod offers an early account of primordial giants (Theogony 185) and Ovid's Metamorphoses, circa 5, also mentions giants and a deluge where, "everything is ocean, / An ocean with no shore line" (1.291-92). Farther north, the Icelandic Edda, written down between 1000-1300 AD, records the death of the giant Ymir, whose ice-water blood submerges the world (Isaak 6). Early Germans were convinced a related series of events, beginning with a burning louse, led to the calling forth of spring water that drowned everything (Isaak 6). The Celts believed Heaven and Earth were giants whose children cut them up, and whose lifeblood drowned all mankind except a single male/female pair of humans (Isaak 7). The watery Welsh disaster mirrors the biblical deluge as Dwyfan and Dwyfach escape a flood, in a mastless ship, containing two of every living creature (Isaak 7). While stories of floods and giants may have older historical roots, Grendal's ancestors are disctinctly Biblical.

          In Beowulf, Grendel and his mother are identified as descendants of the brother- murdering, Cain (102b-107b; 1258b-1267a), a story found only in the Old Testament (Gen. 4:8 ff.). Anglo Saxon paganism and Christianity are mixed because Grendel existed before the Christian era, "unblessed, unhappy, / he dwelt for a time in the lair of the monsters / after the Creator had outlawed, condemned them / as kinsmen of Cain" (104b-107a). Hrothgar later recalls that, "two such things, / huge, vague borderers, walking the moors, / spirits from elsewhere" (1347b-1349a) inhabit his lands who, "know of no father / from the old time, before them" (1355b-1356a). Grendel and his mother were adopted into the house of Cain because their birth took place in an older time, before Christianity found its way into Beowulf's society. Another seemingly Christian reference containing pagan overtones occurs during the opening scene of Beowulf as King Scyld's funeral barge is set upon the waves for his final journey. "Men cannot say, / wise men in hall nor warriors in the field, / not truly, who received that cargo" (50b-52b). Scyld's final destination vacillates between heaven and a pagan counterpart. But in the time between the recording of Beowulf and the newer Grettir's Saga, religious ambiguousness has been erased between Christians and pagans, as the icons of the old religion are systematically ignored, banished or destroyed.

          The mistress of the hall in Grettir's Saga leaves her home "to spend Yule at Eyjardalsa" (1). Her husband and his men remain behind, and sometime during the night, the husband vanishes. The next year at Yule-time the mistress goes to mass, telling a servant to remain behind. When she returns, the servant has disappeared. This time, "people thought it very strange and found some drops of blood upon the outer door" (1). The hero, Grettir, hears of these disappearances, and since he is, "well accustomed to deal with ghosts and specters turned his steps" (1) to the mistress's house, appearing, seemingly, from out of nowhere. Grettir's arrival at Yule-eve in the dead of winter, contrasts with Beowulf's arrival during a time when ships can roam freely, and, "warriors made their horses rear, / let fine dark steeds go racing in contest / whenever the footing was straight and firm" (864a-866b). Good weather is essential to scouting, as Beowulf's warriors follow Grendel's mother whose "tracks / were plainly visible through the wood-paths, / her trail on the ground" (1403b-1404a). Heavy mud and snow would not be conducive to the footing needed by horses to rear and race, or for scouts to follow tracks. The coming of a stranger in these two tales only differs in the season of their arrival. Their sudden entrance is also marked by the outward appearance of their physical prowess. Beowulf has the strength of 30 men, and Grettir is described as a giant who scares all the servants. The physically powerful stranger/hero is essential to the continued existence of the communities' halls with its feeble leaders. In Grettir's Saga the mistress is a member of the so-called, weaker sex, while Beowulf's King Hrothgar is too old to fight. Neither one has done anything to investigate the deadly phenomenon occuring in their midst, there is just a vague indifference towards ghosts and monsters. They need a warrior hero to repay the fiend in their hall(s) for its deadly crimes.

          While Beowulf battles the monster in its underwater lair, God is present. "The warrior Geat might have perished then, / Ecgtheow's son, somewhere under the earth, / had not his war-shirt given good help, / hard ring-netting, and holy God / controlled the fight, the mighty Lord, / Ruler of skies, decided it rightly" (1550a-1555b). But is the "Ruler of skies" truly the Christian God, or some amorphous combination of pagan and Christian deities. God's adversaries on earth are Grendel and his monster mother. When Beowulf defeats these monsters he presents a sword to King Hrothgar as booty. Its "strange gold hilt was placed in the hand / of the gray-bearded king, wise war-leader, / old work of giants; after the fall of the devils / it came to the hands of the lord of the Dane-men, / from magic smithies; once the fierce spirit, long God's opponent, guilty creature, / and his murderous mother had quitted this world" (1676a-1683b). When distributing the spoils of combat, some older pagan magic is at work in combination with God's righteousness. Hrothgar's sermon speaks of God's wonder, not in his miraculous works, but as a commentary on fate. "It is always a wonder how God the Almighty / in His full understanding, deals out to men / their wisdome of mind, their lands, nobility" (1725a-1728b). Further, the King's speech contains a parable of the king whose pride and avarice leads to God's anger. "Angry and covetous, he gives no rings / to honor his men. His future state / is forgotten, forsworn, and so is God's favor, / his portion of honor from Heaven's hall-ruler" (1749a-1752b). Pagan warriors depended on the generosity of their war leaders, and the stingy king commits a sin against the community. Christian peace is never mentioned. In other words, Beowulf's community acts like pagan warriors while talking like Christians. This dichotomy can be juxtaposed against Grettir's community, which relies on a priest for direction. A man who continually frets about his flock's pagan penchants. Even though vengeance is a key value in Beowulf's community, Beowulf's Danish warriors, like the farmers of Grettir's Saga, make no effort to rid themselves of the monster. In either case, it takes the sudden appearance of a strange warrior or heathen giant to bring hope to each community.

          The coming of the unknown hero marks the point of divergence between Grettir's Saga and Beowulf. Grettir suspects villainous ghosts and makes numerous excuses to get rid of the hall's mistress, so he can investigatel. She treats the hero with the same ambivalence as the monster, not appearing suspicious of Grettir's motives, or sudden appearance. She assumes Grettir must be a brave man, and he makes clear he does not " care for a monotonous life" (1). At this point, the characters of Grettir's Saga still have no definite idea about the source of the grusome happenings that take place in the hall each Yule-eve. Grettir faciliates the mistress's trip to church by carrying her across an overflowing river. He places the mistress and her little daughter on one arm, while clearing away icebergs with the other. When the mistress finally arrives at mass, everyone wonders how she got there, to which she quips she doesn't know whether a man or a troll delivered her. The priest rejects the pagan possibility, "it was certainly a man though unlike other men. 'Let us keep silence over it; may be that he means to help you in your difficulties'" (2). Like Beowulf, Grettir has superhuman strength, however, the ceremony of acceptance at Hrothgar's aristocratic hall is replaced with a Christian mass from which the hero is excluded. The priest unsure of Grettir's Christian status decides it's best to keep quiet about the whole thing. Like Beowulf, Grettir's hero fights alone against an unknown entity, but unlike Heorot's society of warriors who accept, albeit ignore, the murdering demon in their midst, Grettir's community condemns their pagan roots, including not only the troll, but the hero, to construct a society based on destructive denial.

          After delivering the mistress to mass, Grettir returns to her hall and barricades himself inside. Towards midnight, "a huge troll-wife" (2) enters and rushes at Grettir with a "trough in one hand and a rather large cutlass in the other" (2). Both Grettir and Beowulf face cannibalistic opponents, however, while Beowulf first battles the male Grendel, Grettir's first fight is with a female, whose strength equals his own. By contrast, Beowulf's female opponent doesn't share his might, "Terror was the less / by just so much as the strength of women, / attack of battle-wives, compared to armed men" (1282b-1284b). This passage not only acknowledges the contribution of "battle-wives" to a warrior community, but also highlights the physical differences between men and women. The hero must battle a male and a female opponent before delivering their respective communities from danger and reinstating the hospitable sanctity of the hall.

          By the time Grettir and the troll-wife tumble outside the hall "they had broken up all the fittings of the outer door and borne them away on their shoulders" (2). Likewise in Beowulf, the hero's battle with Grendel, results in the hall being "badly damaged / despite iron strapping inside and out, / its hinges sprung open" (997b-999a). Finally, Grettir lops off the troll-wife's arm with his sword rather than ripping it from the socket with his bare hands like Beowulf. While Beowulf nails Grendel's arm to the hall, Grettir takes no trophy. The hall in Grettir's Saga was first the domain of a farmer, then inherited by his wife, making it the domain of a woman, not the mead-hall of warriors who revel in tales of vengeance while admiring and distributing booty from their seemingly endless conflicts. After the heroes' first conflict they both re-enter the hall and while Beowulf returns unscathed, Grettir is badly wounded.

          During his battle with the troll-wife, Grettir is beaten black and blue and when he returns to the mistress's hall, he asks for a priest. The priest arrives and Grettir tells the holy man his tale of titanic struggle. The priest does not believe Grettir, telling the warrior he needs physical proof. As before, when the priest rejects the notion of a troll delivering one of his congregation through a flood, the prospect of a genuine heathen hero battling a troll-wife, again forces the priest into denial. While there may be religious ambiguousness in Beowulf, with pagans treated as a subset religious order that from time to time loses its Christian way; the priest of Grettir's Saga questions the veracity of the hero. Not so in Beowulf, where kings praise the efforts of the warrior, and the priests are nowhere to be seen.

          Grettir's troll-wife vanishes after recieving a deathblow, making it impossible for Grettir to prove his story to the priest. When Grettir recovers, he leads the priest to the spot of the troll's disappearance where the two men discover a cave under a waterfall. Grettir decides to investigate, and leaves the priest behind, in the same way the warriors in Beowulf were left to wait for their hero. Like Beowulf, Grettir dives in and discovers the underwater lair of a giant. Both heroes arrive at their respective monster dens, greeted by a burning fire (Beowulf 1517; Grettir 3). The heroes are grabbed by horrible fiends and another deadly battle ensues. Beowulf's "mere-wife" (1519a) is killed by her own sword, "a victory-bright blade / made by the giants" (1557b-1558a). But, when Grettir's giant reaches back to get a sword hanging on the wall of his cave, Grettir takes advantage of the move and "struck at him and cut open his lower breast and stomach so that all his entrails fell out into the river and floated down the stream" (3). Both caves contain swords; Beowulf's expressly magical, Grettir's monstrous. After gutting the giant, Grettir's priest spots the body parts floating on the river and runs home, certain Grettir is dead. Likewise, when Beowulf's Scyldings viewed "the turbulent water saw blood drifting up, / a churning foam" (1592a-1593a), they "gave up the cliff-watch; the gold-friend departed, / went home with his men" (1601a-1602a). Both Grettir's Saga and Beowulf contain follow-up monster fights in underwater caves involving magical blades, where the heroes are mistakenly given up for dead by their companion(s).

          Left alone the heroes explore their respective caves. After Beowulf kills Grendel's mother, a magical "cave-light shone out / a gleam from within, / even as from heaven" (1570b-1571b). But Grettir gets no holy assistance and has to kindle a torch to explore his cave. Both heroes explore the underwater dens, with Beowulf uncovering the corpse of Grendel, which he hacks up (1585-1590), while Grettir's search leads to the discovery of the bones of two missing men. Grettir wraps the bones in a skin; while Beowulf whacks off Grendel's head for a trophy. Beowulf also takes the hilt of the magical sword, whose blade has now melted, "as ice itself when the Father unwinds / the bonds of frost" (1608a - 1609a). Beowulf's magic hilt contains a magical text, "runes / set down in order, engraved, inlaid, / which told for whom the sword was first worked" (1694b-1696b). He gathers his trophies and heads for the mead-hall to celebrate with his men. In the other cave, Grettir leaves the sword of the giant. He is returning to a town of farmers that fears warriors and their prizes--people who will not praise Grettir's plunder and booty. When Grettir escapes the lake, he goes to church. Alongside the bones of the two men, Grettir carries a "rune-staff" (4) recording his victories over the two monsters (4), and leaves it at the church for the priest to find. When Grettir again runs into the priest, he complains that the priest was unfaithful by running away, while Beowulf is more magnanimous towards the Scylding's abandonment, making no mention of it when he celebrates with Hrothgar in his hall. At the close of the battles, Beowulf's gold rune-covered hilt and bloody booty of vengeance celebrated in the mead-hall, is replaced by a rune-staff and empty church in Grettir's Saga. The execution of the monsters highlight the different values of the two communities: Beowulf has avenged his fellows, while Grettir rids the world of some distasteful pagan leftovers. Beowulf remains a vibrant integral part of his psuedo-pagan culture, whereas Grettir disappears, an outcast in a Christian society.

          Beowulf and Grettir's Saga started out as oral tales written down at least four hundred years apart with differing moral tones that are offset by contrasting story details. The winter's high Christian holiday marks the invasion of the monster in Grettir's Saga, but Beowulf's monster arrives nightly. Irregardless of location, the Christian farmers and pagan warriors seem unable to deal with the monster in their midst. It takes a stranger of unknown origin to rid their respective communities of the danger lurking in their halls. The two stories highlight tactics of hand to hand combat, monsters, the type and role of plunder--and magic. Both Beowulf and Grettir's Saga make specific Christian references, alongside many pagan allusions, however, while the heathens of Beowulf accept the Christian God, the Christians of Grettir's Saga banish the pagan hero.

Works cited

Beowulf. Trans. Howell D. Chickering, Jr. New York: Random House, 1989.

Chickering, Howell D. "Introduction." Beowulf. Trans. Howell D. Chickering, Jr. New York: Random House, 1989. \

The Epic of Gilgamesh. Trans. Maureen Gallery Kovacs. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1989.

Hesiod. Theogony. Trans. Richard Lattimore. Ann Arbor: U of MI P, 1991.

Isaak, Mark. "Flood Stories from Around the World." The Talk. Origins Archive. 4 July 2004. <http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html>

Killings, Douglas B. "Introduction". The Saga of Grettir the Strong (Grettir's Saga). Online Medieval and Classical Library Release #9. 28 June 2004. <http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/OMACL/Grettir/>

Ovid. Metamorphoses. Trans. Rolfe Humphries. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1983.

The Saga of Grettir the Strong (Grettir's Saga). Online Medieval and Classical Library Release #9. 28 June 2004. 1-19. <http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/OMACL/Grettir/gr64-81.html>