Barbarous Burnings and Beloved Kings

The Importance of Cycles in Beowulf

Welcome to The Whale-Road, a brief exploration of medieval literature and its impacts on modern culture!

I begin with the Old English poem Beowulf as translated by Seamus Heaney. In this post, my first one, I will focus on the first two sections (or chapters), “Prologue: The Rise of the Danes” (lines 1-85) and “Heorot is Attacked” (lines 86-188), as well as the very end of the poem, from line 3156 to line 3182.

Beowulf is, among many things, a story of cycles: the brave Beowulf comes, fights, celebrates, fights again, celebrates again, leaves…fights some more… Yet our hero is not introduced until line 194 and not even named until much later, in line 343—unlike Shield Sheafson, who survives all of twenty-four lines (4-27) but, nevertheless, is named at the beginning of the poem and set up as an introduction to the poem’s narrative. Shield Sheafson’s life and death foreshadow Beowulf’s: like the people at the death of Shield Sheafson, “the chief they revered who had long ruled them” (31), Beowulf’s people, upon his own death, “gave thanks for [Beowulf]’s greatness; which was the proper thing / for a man should praise a prince whom he holds dear / and cherish his memory” (3174-6). Beowulf was meant to die, to mirror the heroism and greatness of Shield Sheafson and the love that his people had for them.

The story tells us as much at the beginning: “So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by / and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness. / We have heard of those princes’ heroic campaigns” (1-3).

So what? Well, if Beowulf is a beloved hero of courage and greatness whose death, like Shield Sheafson’s, will provoke the love and gratitude of his people, then he must succeed in his quests, and his enemies must fall. There is no subversion of expectations here, nor is there a moment of doubt; Grendel and the monsters that follow him do fall, and Beowulf succeeds, even if he does die at the end. The beginning and ending of the poem constitute a cycle.

The importance of cycles is built up in another way in the prologue. Before the end of the prologue, the reader (or listener) is told of the great hall built by Hrothgar, son of Beow, son of Shield Sheafson: “Heorot was the name” (78). Heorot “towered, / its gables high and wide and awaiting / a barbarous burning” (81-3). Well, hang on! Heorot was only just built! And you were just talking about how great it was!

It doesn’t matter. This construct is not nearly as important as the conflict which is about to come to it. Beowulf is not about the buildings, never mind this great hall constructed by Hrothgar. The hall will burn. The people inside it are doomed.

Nor is it about the individual people, as Beowulf’s name comes much later, long after he is introduced, and Shield Sheafson dies quickly, and Hrothgar’s greatness is undone by the “barbarous burning” of a monster soon to come, and so many people are left unnamed {maybe it is for the best that we are left with “[Grendel] grabbed thirty men” (22) and not thirty individual names}.

Nor still is it about the heroic campaigns themselves. After all, “We have heard of those princes’ heroic campaigns” (3), a line which contains the implication that the audience of this poem has already heard these stories.

All of the stories, including Beowulf, are unambiguous. The protagonists are all heroes, great and courageous. Grendel is “a powerful demon, a prowler through the dark” (86), “a fiend out of hell” (100), some sort of monster who “nursed a hard grievance” (87) and “began to work his evil in the world” (101) when Heorot rose. There is no room for gray here; we are told up front who is good and who is bad, who is right and who is wrong, whom the people love and whom the people hate. The most powerful—the hero—will triumph in the end.

But for a time, Grendel, like Shield Sheafson and Beow and Hrothgar, is the most powerful. Grendel “took over Heorot, / haunted the glittering hall after dark” (166-7). Even if “he was the Lord’s outcast” (169) and doomed to failure, Grendel’s own campaign ensured that “these were hard times, heartbreaking / for the prince of the Shieldings” (170-1). Beowulf will defeat him. Grendel is the villain that must be vanquished by our foreshadowed, unambiguous hero. But Grendel still has a moment of victory. He is the strongest, and he cannot be defeated, until Beowulf comes along.

Beowulf is not as concerned about buildings, people, or heroic stories in and of themselves. These pieces of the poem are vehicles to something greater: the importance of cycles. The cycle of life and death. The cycle of power and power and power. The cycle of celebration and destruction. We are meant to know that there were great kings and terrible monsters and that Heorot is about the burn explicitly, unambiguously, because these details all point to cycles. Buildings, people, and stories are contained within these cycles, and the cycles are driven by them, but it is the cycles themselves that take center stage in Beowulf.

Thank you for reading! Until next time!