Paganism in Beowulf?

So, here’s the thing about Beowulf: It exists in relative isolation. We have no idea who wrote it. We know vaguely when it was written, but not specifically when. We can’t be sure whether it’s an ancient story that developed through oral tradition, or whether one person composed the whole thing in circa the tenth century. It also isn’t referenced anywhere else in contemporary literature, at least not explicitly. It also survives only in one manuscript, so there are no additional copies or versions of it. It’s this grand epic and a phenomenal piece of literature, and… it’s kind of just there, without any context around it. We don’t have anything to compare it to except itself, so we don’t know very much about the background against which it was written. But you’d better believe that scholars have tried to figure out what Beowulf’s deal is ever since it was first transcribed.

For a long time, it was popular among nineteenth-century and some twentieth-century scholars to claim that Beowulf was an obviously pagan poem that had Christian elements slapped on it in order to make it acceptable for a Christian audience. Unfortunately, most of their scholarship was predicated on a particular set of biases and faulty methodology. One of the most influential of these scholars was Jacob Grimm (as in the brothers Grimm, that one) who looked at the poem through a decidedly capital-R-Romantic — and nationalistic — lens. Using a very florid metaphor, he describes Anglo-Saxon literature as “autumnal,” referring to the approaching death of the pagan culture before the artistically barren (Christian) winter. Regarding Beowulf, he writes that its paganism is “suppressed” and “half-veiled,” but that one can “feel the genuine foundation.” He took it for granted that Beowulf must be fundamentally pagan. His evidence was mostly etymological analysis of Beowulf’s vocabulary, without taking into account the context in which they were being used in the poem itself. Just because wyrd was once a pagan concept doesn’t mean it’s being used that way in Beowulf.

Grimm and the scholars that followed him took Beowulf to be a kind of window into prototypical Englishness, or Germanness, which was was then distorted or marred by Christianity. As an example of one such “distortion,” there’s a famous set of lines when the people of Denmark go and pray to pagan gods to save them from Grendel, and the narrator interrupts the story to condemn them with Satanic-Panic-level ardour:

hwilum hie geheton æt hærgtrafum wigweorþunga wordum bædon þæt him gastbona geoce gefremde wið þeodþreaum swylc wæs þeaw hyrain mod sefan metod hie ne cuþon dæda demend ne wiston hie drihten god ne hie huru heofena helm heirian ne cuþon wuldres waldend. Wa bið þæm ðe sceal þurh sliðne nið sawle bescufan in fyres fæþm, frofre ne wenan, wihte gewendan wel bið þæm þe mot æfter deaðdæge drihten secean ond to fæder fæþmum freoðo wilnian. (175–188) Meanwhile they vowed at temples worshipped the pagan gods, with words begging, for the killer-spirit [i.e. the Devil] to perform [give them] help against the great calamity. So that was the custom of the heathens hope; hell remembered in their minds; they did not know the Creator, the judge of deeds, they did not understand the Lord God, nor did they know how to praise the Guardian of the heavens, the Ruler of glory. Woe to the one who through the terrible event casts their soul into the embrace of the fire never to expect comfort or change! Well be them that must, after death-day, seek the Lord and to the Father’s embrace desire protection!

So, early scholars looked at stuff like this and thought that it was an interjection, a bit of Christian moralizing to cover up what was fundamentally a pagan story. The problem with that — well, actually, there’s a lot of problems with that. For one, of course Beowulf is going to look pagan once you take all the Christian stuff out of it! (I’m paraphrasing E.G. Stanley, “The Search for Anglo-Saxon Paganism.”) That’s like saying that The Lord of the Rings is pagan once you take all of the Catholic references out of it.

Another problem is that Christianity is much more baked-into Beowulf than those scholars wanted to admit. It’s not just the really overt passages like the one above — Christianity influences almost every aspect of the poem. Much like with LotR, it’s impossible to take the Christian stuff out of it and have it still be the same story. This was proven in a long series of essays by Frederick Klaeber in 1911, and it has since become the scholarly consensus. Beowulf is Christian, full stop.

I sympathize with the desire to look for paganism in Beowulf. I mean, I did it, too! We know so little about Anglo-Saxon paganism, that anything that could potentially tell us something would be valuable. Unfortunately, the Anglo-Saxons didn’t write anything down until a few centuries after paganism had already died out, and none of them were interested in talking about paganism. The most we’ve got telling us about Anglo-Saxon paganism is some place names and a couple tantalizing lines from the Venerable Bede, who was definitely not interested in talking about paganism.

We can make educated guesses about certain sites having been pagan temples, or certain places having been named after deities whose names are otherwise lost, or the remnants of posts potentially having been carved images of gods, but it is all nearly impossible to prove. How can we know that the maybe-temple was burned by zealous Christians, and not in war or by accident? How can we know that a place was named after a god and not a local lord? How can we know that the post was a pagan object, and not a cross? Often, we can’t.

So what do we know? Well, we know that the most significant gods in the Anglo-Saxon pantheon, Woden, Thunor, Tiw, and Friya, were the English versions of the Norse gods Odin, Thor, Tyr, and Frigg or Freya. We know this because the days of the week were (and still are) named after them: Tiwesdæg (Tuesday), Wodnesdæg (Wednesday), Þunresdæg (Thursday), and Frigedæg (Friday). We know that Woden had most of the same trickster/traveler/magician associations as Odin, that he was still the chief god (his name appears in place names the most often), and that Thunor was associated with storms and symbolized by his hammer. That’s kind of it. The thing we know the most about is funerals, because so many pagan Anglo-Saxon burials have been found. We know they’re pagan because pagans cremated their dead, which Christians at the time would have found abhorrent, and they were filled with elaborately-decorated grave goods.

The most overtly pagan thing in Beowulf are the funerals. There’s three of them in the story, and they’re all very pagan. The story starts off with one of them, as if to inform you that the characters are pagans:

Þær æt hyðe stod hringed-stefna, isig ond ut-fus, æþelingas fær; aledon þa leofne þeoden, beaga bryttan on bearm scipes, mærne be mæste; þær wæs madma fela of feor-wegum, frætwa, gelæded. Ne hyrde ic cymlicor ceol gegyrwan hilde-wæpnum ond heaðo-wædum, billum ond byrnum; him on bearme læg madma mænigo, þa him mid scoldon on flodes aht feor gewitan (32-42). There at the harbor stood a ringed vessel icy and ready to go, a prince’s vessel; [they] laid their beloved lord, giver of rings, on the bosom of the ship, great near the mast; there was much treasure ornaments brought from distant places. I’ve not heard of a more splendidly prepared ship, battle-weapons and battle-armor, swords and corselets; they laid many treasures on his chest, that with him should go far away into the sea’s possession.

The poet goes out of their way to praise the beauty of the boat with its pile of treasures, despite this being a distinctly pagan practice. The poet also doesn’t condemn the people for this practice, as they do for worshipping the gods in the other passage. Pagan funerals are evidently more acceptable to a Christian audience, at least in the context of the story, than the idea of worshipping pagan gods.

SEE! A Viking Funeral!

The poem is bookended with Beowulf’s own funeral, in which his people build a great barrow and a pyre for him, pile it with treasure from the dragon’s hoard, and cremate him. Then they sing songs about his life while they mourn.

The other most overtly pagan part of Beowulf is the dragon fight, because that has analogues in the rest of the Germanic legendary tradition. Early on in the poem, as a clever bit of foreshadowing, a scop (bard) tells a story about a dragon-slayer named “Sigemund.” This is one of the earliest known versions of a story that appears in both Eddas and the Volsung Saga, about the hero Sigurd killing the dragon Fafnir. Sigemund is Sigurd’s father, but Beowulf treats them like they’re the same character, so maybe they were at one point. Artistic depictions of this legend suggest that it is much older than the literary versions of it, so, it might actually be a real pagan myth embedded in Beowulf.

It’s also possible that the entire fight between Beowulf and the dragon that ends the narrative is an intentional reference to this legend. There’s a lot of tropes that they both share. One is the simple trope of the dragon guarding a hoard of treasure, which is mentioned in other sources as just what dragons do. The gold is acquired differently in each instance (in the Volsung legend it’s weregild, a ransom paid for having killed someone; in Beowulf, the dragon just found an empty barrow and moved in). Regardless, the trope itself is pretty standard. Another shared trope is the way the dragon is killed, by stabbing its belly because it’s hide is too tough to pierce. A more specific parallel is the fact that in both stories, the treasure is cursed. Fafnir tells Sigurd with his dying breath that the treasure will be the death of him and all who possess it. And later, a ring from that hoard ends up causing a lot of Game-of-Thrones-level drama. The curse on the treasure in Beowulf isn’t really relevant to the plot, it’s just mentioned at the very end:

swa hit oð dom’s dæg diope benemdon þeodnas mære, þa ðæt þær dydon, þæt se secg wære synnum scildig, hergum geheaðerod, hell-bendum fæst, wommum gewitnad, se ðone wong strude; næs he gold-hwæte gearwor hæfde agendes est ær gesceawod. (3069-75) as it [the treasure], until doom’s day, the excellent lords who put it there deeply declared, that the man was guilty of sins, restrained from sacred places, held fast in hell-bonds, known for evil, he that plundered the earth; he [Beowulf] was not at all greedy for gold, he had readily possessed grace before he looked upon it.

It’s kind of weird that this is even here. I mean, why mention it? Beowulf is already dead at this point, so, the curse is not going to come back to bite him later in the story like it does Sigurd. The poet describes stealing the treasure as a terrible sin that will definitely send one to hell, but then goes out of their way to say that Beowulf didn’t claim the treasure out of greed and that he was a good person. So why use the trope at all? My theory is that it’s a standard part of the dragon trope, like it living in a cave and having a hoard to begin with. If a dragon’s hoard is always cursed by default, then the poet would have to compensate by specifying that Beowulf was a good person, and only is affected by the curse insofar as he dies a heroic death.

That’s it for the more overtly pagan stuff. So, here’s my hot take: I think that Beowulf is syncretic.

I’ve observed lots and lots of newbie pagans on the internet by now. I’ve seen them struggle with something called “latent Christianity,” unconsciously maintaining Christian mindsets and values even after you’ve converted. I’ve also struggled with that myself. Conversion doesn’t happen overnight, and cultural values are one of the things that takes the longest to shift. I know pagans from widely different cultures don’t universally have the same values, but I recognized some pagan values in Beowulf, ones that I’ve talked about in the context of Ancient Greek paganism, like xenia (sacred hospitality) and kleos, the desire to win glory for yourself so people will remember you after you die.

Klaeber has this to say about values in Beowulf:

The atmosphere is no longer pagan. The virtues of benevolence, moderation, self-control, consideration for others, and selflessness stand in sharp relief against the backdrop of the old Scandinavian setting. The main characters, Beowulf and Hrothgar, have undergone an astonishing spiritualization and moral refinement.

I mean, sure, Christian values like the ones he listed are definitely present in Beowulf, but do you know what else is present? Viking values, like valor, that desire for glory, sacred hospitality, their drinking culture, their preoccupation with blood feuds and weregild, and the importance of treasure in their culture. I disagree with Klaeber — I think that Beowulf does have a pagan “atmosphere,” and that these values are one of the reasons why. I can’t point to Ancient Greek sources to justify that interpretation, though. I need a Germanic source. Luckily, I’ve got one — The Hávámal.

The Hávámal, or “Sayings of the High One,” is one of the poems in the Poetic Edda. It’s kind of a weird, composite poem that partly consists of advice for how to live a good life (known as “gnomic sayings”), partly a mythological narrative about the adventures of Odin, and then a list of spells that Odin knows. The manuscript it was written in is from the thirteenth century, long after Beowulf, but it probably originally composed around the same time as Beowulf, towards the beginning of Norway’s conversion to Christianity. So, it’s as close as I’m going to get to a purely pagan set of Germanic cultural values. It’s certainly a lot more pagan than Beowulf, because the speaker is Odin himself.

Here’s what the Hávámal has to say about bravery:

The cowardly man thinks he’ll live for ever, if he keeps away from fighting; but old age won’t grant him a truce even if spears spare him. (16)

That’s not really a statement that bravery is moral, it’s a pretty blunt admission that you’re gonna die eventually, so you may as well face death now. Sigurd expresses a similar sentiment in the Volsung Saga, when Fafnir tells him that the treasure is cursed, “Well I’m gonna die anyway so I may as well be rich until then, lol.” Better to have the gold and die than to not have it and still die.

Beowulf doesn’t exactly express that sentiment, but one of his main virtues is his complete lack of fear of his own death. Before his monster fights, he repeatedly announces how unafraid he is to meet death. This is what he says before fighting Grendel:

“…ic anunga eowra leoda willan geworhte, oþðe on wæl crunge, feond-grapum fæst. Ic gefremman sceal eorlic ellen, oþðe ende-dæg on þisse meodu-healle minne gebidan.” (634-638) “…I [will] absolutely work your people’s will, or in slaughter fall, [held] fast in the enemy-grip. I shall do heroic deeds, or experience my end-day in this mead-hall.”

Beowulf is completely willing to be eaten by a monster if it means that he can perform a heroic deed. The word I am translating as “heroic,” eorlic, literally means “manly,” directly tying valor to masculinity. Perhaps Beowulf is subtly mocking the Danes for the fact that none of them have managed to kill Grendel in twelve years, or maybe he is simply reaffirming his own heroic conviction.

Later, before fighting Grendel’s mother, he makes a similar declaration: “ic me mid Hrunting / dom gewyrce, oþðe mec deað nimeð” (I myself with Hrunting [will] achieve glory, or death take me.) (1490-91). Beowulf will not flee like a coward, so those are the only two possible outcomes. He “nalles for ealdre mearn” [not at all mourned for his life] (1442), he simply dives headfirst into an apparently-bottomless hell-like pool, with complete acceptance that he may not come back up again. He also makes a similar declaration before the dragon fight, though it’s a bit more tragic that time because the audience knows he won’t make it.

It’s not enough to simply be brave — gaining a heroic reputation is also important. Here’s what the Hávámal says:

Cattle die, kinsmen die, the self must also die, but the glory of reputation never dies, for the man who can get himself a good one. (76)

And Beowulf says almost the exact same thing before fighting Grendel’s mother:

Ure æghwylc sceal ende gebidan worolde lifes; wyrce se þe mote domes ær deaþe; þæt bið driht-gumanun lifgendum æfter selest. (1386-89) Each of us shall experience the end of life in the world; [one] who is able to achieve glory before death, that would be best for unliving men.

This strikes me as especially pagan, because it seems to be based on the assumption that this is the best that one can hope for after death. Pagan afterlives usually aren’t something to look forward to for the majority of people. What the Greeks called kleos, the Anglo-Saxons called dom or mærðu, and that’s lasting glory that ensures you will be spoken about after you die. The very last lines of Beowulf focus on exactly this:

cwædon þæt he wære wyruld-cyninga, manna mildust ond mon-ðwærust, leodum liðost ond lof-geornost. (3180-82) said that he was, of world-kings, the most benevolent and most gracious of men, pleasant to his people and most desiring of praise.

The poet uses three different words that all mean some variation on “most gracious,” and then the last word is lof-geornost, “most desiring of praise.” Not “deserving” of praise, but desiring of praise. So, desiring praise isn’t vanity. Because this follows up a list of Beowulf’s other good qualities, desiring praise is an admirable quality that his people fondly remember as they mourn him. This is where the poet chooses to end, because Beowulf’s glory is what makes the story worth telling.

Another really important value mentioned in the Hávámal is the exchange of treasure and gifts:

With weapons and gifts friends should gladden one another, those which can be seen on them; mutual givers and receivers are friends for longest, if the friendship keeps going well. (18)

There is so. much. treasure in Beowulf. Whenever Beowulf is not fighting monsters, treasure is being exchanged between parties, and there’s extremely long descriptions of what the treasure is and what it looks like and who previously owned it and yada, yada. It’s clear that treasure is an extremely important part of social and courtly life. Hrothgar lavishes treasure on Beowulf after he kills Grendel:

Forgeaf þa Beowulfe brand Healfdenes segen gyldenne sigores to leane, hroden hilde-cumbor, helm ond byrnan; mære maðþum-sweord manige gesawon beforan beorn beran. Beowulf geþah ful on flette; no he þere feoh-gyfte for sceotendum scamigan ðorfte. Ne gefrægn ic freondlicor feower madmas gold gegyrede gum-manna fela in ealo-bence oðrum gesellan. (1020-1029) He [Hrothgar] gave to Beowulf the brand of the Halfdane, the gilded banner of victory as a reward, adorned war-banner, helm and corselet; a splendid precious-sword that many saw carried before the man. Beowulf accepted a cup in the hall; he did not need to be ashamed of the gift on account of the warriors. I have not heard of a friendlier group of many men on the ale-benches to give four gold-adorned treasures to others.

The treasure that Hrothgar gives to Beowulf becomes a symbol of the permanent social tie between them. This is clearly something that kings were expected to do just as part of their royal office, becuase kings (including Hrothgar, Hygelac, and eventually Beowulf himself) are constantly referred to with epithets like sinces brytta or sync-gyfan, “giver of treasure,” or beaga bryttan, “ring-giver,” or hringa þengel, “lord of the rings” (now you know where that title comes from!). There’s also a part in which Hrothgar tells Beowulf a cautionary tale about an evil king named Heremod, and says of him, ““nælles beagas geaf / Denum æfter dome” [he gave no rings at all / to the Danes for glory] and “nallas on gylp seleð / fætte beagas” [in pride would not at all give gold-adorned rings]. So, giving rings is what kings do, and not doing so makes you a bad king. This is because the rings or treasure represent the bond of loyalty between a king and his thane.

Of course, none of these values are incompatible with Christianity. Heroic values were still around after Christianization, obviously, but if the same values appear in other (more) pagan Germanic literature, then they were probably pagan first, and were kept. They also had to have been relevant to the poem’s contemporary audience, becuase medieval writers and artists didn’t usually go out of their way to be “historically accurate.” That wasn’t really a concept back then. It was more common for writers and artists to project their contemporary culture onto the past. That’s why you get pictures in manuscripts of characters from the Bible or from Greek mythology dressed like fourteenth-century lords and knights. So if there are pagan values in Beowulf, it isn’t because the writer was trying to accurately portray their pagan characters, it was because their own culture still held those values.

Like I said, this is a hot take. Most of the research I’ve read about this was from the 90’s, meaning it’s certainly outdated by now, and I’m sure there have been more recent developments. (Although I could not find anything recent about paganism in Beowulf on Google Scholar, except for a godawful essay by a person who was definitely Wiccan.) I’m also definitely not the first person to observe parallels between Beowulf and Norse literature. Literally every aspect of Beowulf has been picked over by scholars, and I’ve only been studying it for a few months, so take this with a grain of salt. But, my personal opinion is that post-Klaeber scholars have overcompensated for the bad “Beowulf is really pagan” scholarship of the nineteenth century, and now dismiss any potential traces of paganism. Maybe I’ve fallen prey to the same wishful thinking, but I think it’s more likely that Beowulf is some degree of both.

Works Cited

Byock, Jesse L. The Saga of the Volsungs: The Norse Epic of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer. Penguin Books, 1990.

Frank, Roberta. “Germanic Legend in Old English Literature.” The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature. Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge, editors. Cambridge University Press, 1986

Hutton, Ronald. Pagan Britain. Yale University Press, 2013.

Klaeber, Frederick. Klaeber’s Beowulf. R.D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles, editors. University of Toronto Press, 2008.

Klaeber, Frederick. “The Christian Elements in Beowulf.” Paul Battles, translator. Old English Newsletter Subsidia, 1996.

Larrington, Carolyne, translator. The Poetic Edda. Oxford University Press, 1996.

Niles, John D. “Locating Beowulf in Literary History.” Exemplaria. Vol. 5 no. 1, 1993.

Niles, John D. “Pagan Survivals and Popular Belief.” The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature. Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge, editors. Cambridge University Press, 1986

North, Richard. Pagan Words and Christian Meanings. Rodopi B.V., 1991.

O’Keefe, Katherine O’Brien. “Heroic Values and Christian Ethics.” The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature. Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge, editors. Cambridge University Press, 1986

Rauer, Christine. “The Dragon Episode.” Beowulf and the Dragon: Parallels and Analogues. D.S. Brewer, 2000.

Sorrell, Paul. “Oral Poetry and the World of Beowulf.” Oral Tradition, Vol.7. no.1. 1992.

Stanley, E.G. Imagining the Anglo-Saxon Past: The Search for Anglo-Saxon Paganism and Anglo-Saxon Trial by Jury. D.S. Brewer, 1975