Beowulf: a regime of enforcement
Frank Battaglia
Abstract
Marking alliances at the highest levels of Germanic society, Migration Period Scandinavian gold bracteates
increasingly are viewed as a 'political medium.' 329 D-forms of the 1000-plus bracteates depict a defeated monster. If ever
we would expect monster stories to have been current in Germanic Europe, it would have been then. So we may look for the
origin of the Beowulf poem in the period of D-bracteate production and circulation. Because continuation of society required
the death of such creatures, we may conceive the stories as rationalizing a regime of enforcement on which were based many
early Germanic kingdoms.
Eliminating opposition might provide control, but divine descent gave the elite a special claim to authority. Divine
favor warranted the shift of religious practice from natural places to 'constructed sacred sites at new centres.' Gudme, Funen,
the earliest Scandinavian kingly hall may have preceeded this development. Eleven ceramics from the area, probably
contemporary with the hall, incorporated crushed, burnt, possibly-human bone as temper, likely a vestige of the ritual endocannibalism of early Danish farmers, acknowledged even by Cambridge Ancient History. Another such vestige is a human
shoulder blade ritually treated at Forlev Nymølle, the Danish fertility site in use for six centuries until 400 C.E. that
dramatically exemplifies veneration like that recorded of the dísir.
Besides fertility religion, Grendel and his mother represent an alternative gender order being suppressed in the
poem. Beowulf, like Sigemund, avenged nìî, manhood-challenging insult (attested in 6th century Gaul, later elaborated as an
institution, with scorn poles as well as a type of poetry, then forbidden in Old Norse society). The poem sketches permissible
behavior for elite women. Advisories are provided [sèlre...wrece... êonne...murne] for a newly normative
hyper-masculinity that would first be formulated in law under apparently ethnic labels.
Key words: Beowulf, enforcement, D-bracteates, fertility religion, endo-cannibalism, bog weapons deposits, war-god religion,
militant orthodoxy, nìî, earg.
*****
Marking alliances at the highest levels of Germanic society, Scandinavian gold bracteates increasingly are viewed as a
'political medium' representing elements of Germanic mythology that would not be given written form for centuries.i This
evaluation has followed upon interpretation of the "iconographic context" of the images presented on these pendants,
especially by Karl Hauck and associates over the last quarter century.ii
At least 329 D-forms of these 1000-plus bracteates depict a defeated monster (Figure 1).iii If ever we would expect
monster stories to have been current in Germanic Europe, it would have been while D-bracteates were being exchanged. iv So
we may look for the origin of the Beowulf poem in stories circulating during the period of D-bracteate production and
circulation – roughly the 6th century. Heroic narratives and origin myths associated with the bracteates 'served to create
identities for warrior elites', and can be conceived as rationalizing a regime of enforcement on which were based many early
Germanic kingdoms.v
I approach the Beowulf text as a discourse valuable in the process of constituting early Germanic kingdoms, specifically,
Denmark and those which would give name to England. I will talk about the possible relationship between the poem and
events in Denmark, then suggest how similar connections may have obtained in early Britain.
Figure 2 shows a proposed area for the early Danish kingdom, with South Jutland, Funen and Zealand at its core, and
North Jutland, South Halland, Scania and Bornholm as close periphery. vi Although the data are not enough for certainty, I
incline to the view of Jyette Ringtved, Ulf Näsman, Lotte Hedeager and Karen Høilund Nielsen that “a Danish kingdom had
appeared not later than the end of the Migration Period, in the 6 th century.”vii One indicator of such a development is the
adoption of a uniform weapons kit across the region, a horizon of uniform weaponry after which all areas supported similar
kinds of armed groups with, presumably, similar social organization.viii A second and analogous indicator is that elite female
dress, which had been marked by contrasting ornamentation in some parts of the region, came to display a uniform style
(Figure 3).ix We may imagine a Danish kingdom at this stage having an over-king who exercised authority over lesser kings.x
The first Danish kingly hall (Figure 4) had been erected prior to this period, perhaps before the end of the 3rd century, at
Gudme on Funen, one of eleven Danish sites whose name means 'home of gods.' xi In the vicinity of Gudme, Funen other place
names also denote a sacral landscape. Five areas of Funen have 'indicators of wealth, power and cult.' xii Gudme hall is thought
to have been erected by a confederation of districts on the island. xiii Of the regions which formed this confederation, only the
Gudme area 'cannot be associated with any booty sacrifices', prompting the suggestion that it was a 'sacrosanct meeting place
and a supra-regional sanctuary.'xiv
Religious practices of South Scandinavia show continuity through the Iron Age until the middle of first millennium C.E.
in the use of wetlands as devotional places. Forlev Nymølle, one of the largest fertility religion sites of northern Europe, has
been excavated in the Illerup Å watershed of east central Jutland. The site was in use for about seven centuries, until about 400
C.E., with observances beginning with what Silkeborg Museum characterized as the erection of a 10-foot-tall natural wood
form representing a goddess (Figure 5).xv At one of the ten concentrations at Forlev Nymølle where animals or pottery had
been sacrificed was found a piece of human shoulder blade that had been carried as an amulet before its deposit. Features of
the treatment of this bone suggest it is a late vestige of a ritual endo-cannibalism well attested in the older Danish past. xvi That
religious tradition of endo-cannibalism may also be represented by eleven ceramics recovered in the Gudme area which had
used crushed, burnt, possibly human bone as a temper. Figure 6 shows a fragment of one of those ceramics which had been
used as a amulet that the pottery analyst thought was considered to have special power because of the bone-tempering. Since
the bone tempered ceramics of the Gudme area date from the late 2 nd through early 4th century, they were very likely in use
during the time when the excavated great hall was standing.
Meanwhile, late in the second century, a new ritual began to be carried out across South Scandinavia, the deposit in a bog,
after defacement, of weapons from a defeated enemy.xvii
Danish war booty sacrifices in bogs have been studied for about 150 years. The most extensively excavated, Illerup in
Jutland, yielded over 15,000 objects from three major offerings, two of the 3rd century and one of the early 5th.xviii Such
sacrifices are plausibly interpreted as communal thank-offerings for victory, and war-deities have been hypothesized as the
intended recipient of such devotions.xix The Illerup booty sacrifices are in the same watershed as Forlev Nymølle, where
deposits continued until about the end of the 4th century. So a conclusion that weapons deposits were to war deities may be
overly simple. But in some locales, such as southwest Funen, fertility sacrifices ended with the booty sacrifice at Kragehul.xx
Bog deposits of weapons tapered off in the 5th century in South Scandinavia, accompanying a general decline in the use of
watery sites for even individual votive dedications. Religious practice shifted from natural places to 'constructed sacred sites at
new centres.'xxi 'Religious objects are found hoarded in settlement contexts, sometimes – and this is a new phenomenon... in
the postholes of the great halls of the magnates. This indicates a change whereby the elite has taken over the control of
religion in a new way: they have made a personal institution of religious practice.'xxii
The 5th century also sees the development of metalwork displaying Germanic Animal Art. About the motifs of Salin's
Style I, the figural mounts of Anglo-Saxon shields, and the gold bracteates, Tania Dickinson has observed that the 'ornament
seems to focus on images of monstrous, underworld embodiments of death and evil, and on gods or sorcerers, or their animal
transformation, who can defeat or offer salvation from them.'xxiii Especially worthy of attention: just as the bogs are being
abandoned as locations of sacrifice, an artistic style emerges which sees the watery world as evil, the source of monsters to be
killed, the older mythology become demonic.
D-bracteates represent a concentrated version of this perspective, because the threatening monster is not just an element,
but the central motif. It is perhaps not surprising then that D-bracteates have been suggested as representing a different
political and ideological spectrum, a 'competing power structure' to that found in the areas where A-, B-, and C-bracteates are
found.xxiv Karen Høilund Nielsen, who offered this analysis, thought that consolidation of the different areas where D- and
other kinds of bracteates were found was the last stage in the development of the Danish kingdom.
Which brings us to Beowulf, where a hero from an area with D-bracteate concentration (a Geat) helps stabilize the
kingdom of the Danes.
A special relationship between a ruler and a deity - of the sort that justified the shift of religious practice from natural sites
to constructed ones - is certainly represented in the poem: 'The wielder of wonder granted world honor' – woroldàre forgeaf to Scyld's son (line 17); 'to Hrothgar was war-success given' - wæs Hròîgàre herespèd
gyfen
(line
64).xxv
Skjoldunga Saga, surviving as an abstract, offers testimony that 'has arisen independently in the north' of Scyld's descent from
Odin.xxvi All but one of the earliest Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies claim related ancestry.xxvii
The exclusive association of one deity name with places of community worship in late pagan Denmark has led to the
conclusion that “a single god, Othin, played a completely dominant role in the public cult.” xxviii This militant orthodoxy may
have expressed the ethos of the D-bracteates, which considered its opposition as monstrous. I see in that ethos an element of
ruthlessness, of willingness to destroy anyone or anything standing in conflict, a drive to control others, with little capacity to
accept them as equals.
The success of the ideological program of pagan henotheism or monotheism, a militant orthodoxy, has been said to show
the concentration of political power in the hands of the Danish aristocracy. Enactment of such power is represented by the 8th
century burial of two beheaded males on a magnate's (lesser king's?) farm at Tissø in western Zealand.xxix
Kristian Hald concluded his analysis of Danish theophoric place names showing public worship with an observation
whose possible significance for the Beowulf poem has never been pursued: “the complete dominance of a single god in the
public cult was of great significance in bringing about the relatively painless transition to the new monotheistic religion,
Christianity.”xxx I suggest that the 'stirring verse' about 'Beowulf’s deeds' which Tolkien said we can be 'practically certain'
existed before the current form of the poem celebrated the power of the war god Woden/Othin, especially in the hanging of
Grendel's arm.xxxi
The presence of bone-tempered ceramics at Gudme and in nearby communities during the period of the excavated great
hall stands in marked contrast to the perspective of the poem. At two points the poem does seem to acknowledge that Grendel
represents an alternate religion. He is said to want to 'mark his moor retreats' - mearcaî mòrhopu (450) - with Beowulf's
body. It sounds exactly like a ritual activity which the poem is declaring to be forbidden, the use of the bogs as religious sites.
Even more pointedly, Beowulf complains in line 600 that the Danes have allowed Grendel 'to sacrifice', with the verb sendan
usually emended by editors because of its connection with 'old heathen sacrificial terminology.' xxxii The native Danish tradition
of endo-cannibalism has been transformed in Beowulf to exo-cannibalism, with Grendel who practices it hardly human and
certainly not a Dane.xxxiii
Besides fertility religion, Grendel and his mother represent an alternative gender order being suppressed in the poem.xxxiv
The Beowulf poem's program for a new masculinity comes into high relief when we consider one of the repeated terms, nìƒ,
in relation to its background. xxxv The lexeme has a complicated and charged history with both the meaning 'hostility' and the
meaning 'insult' in several languages, notably Old English and Old Norse.xxxvi According to linguist Thomas Markey, 'at its
oldest derivational level… nìƒ implied a curse of lack of masculinity.' xxxvii In Scandinavia, nìƒ had extensive elaboration as
a ritual taunt to this effect, with a kind of poetry, níƒvísur, and/or a physical display, the erection of a scorn-pole,
níƒstông, with or without runes or carved caricatures or a slaughtered animal’s head – all for the sake of attacking the
masculinity of another man.xxxviii
In Germanic society of the first millennium CE a quite violent homophobia emerged. It can be measured in a provision of
the “Grey Goose” Grágás of Icelandic law that “if a man calls another man” one of three words, “ragr, stroƒinn...
sorƒinn,”xxxix all indicating penetrated male same-sexuality, “the victim has the right to kill in retaliation.”xl Earg, the
Anglo-Saxon version of ragr occurs in Beowulf as the hero advances on the dragon. Line 2541 establishes his character by
litotes: ne biî swylc earges sìî! – 'such is not an earg way!'xli
The word nìƒ occurs in Beowulf at least forty times, both as a simplex and in compounds.xlii Friedrich Klaeber and
Robert Fulk have glossed the term variously as 'ill-will,' 'envy,' 'violence,' 'hostility,' 'rancor,' 'persecution,' 'trouble,' 'affliction,'
'battle,' 'contest' or 'force.'xliii Another meaning which seems appropriate at points is “manhood-challenging insult.” The first
occurrence, in lines much emended, follows the building of the hall: ne wæs hit lenge πà gèn,/
†æt se
ecghete à†umswèoran/ æfter wælnìƒe wæcnan scolde (lines 83b-85). Which translates: “nor was it
then much longer til the sword-hate would wake for the oath-swearers after slaughter nìƒ.” Rather than an anticipation of
trouble with Ingeld, the lines may forsee a deadly challenge to the masculinity of the builders of the hall.
In the poem’s next use of the term, Grendel is said to carry out hate-nìƒas (152). To Hrothgar’s special misery, this was
“manifestly and sadly known in song,” undyrne cùƒ/ gyddum geòmore (150-51), words even more resonant if
Grendel’s nìƒas had a sexual taunt to them. A further reference to nìƒ calls Grendel’s “violent persecution” nìƒgrim
(193). Robert Fulk glossed this as “cruel,” and it may have been as cruel as a sexual taunt. The immediately following line is:
Êæt fram hàm gefrågn Higelàces †egn (194), “That, from home, heard Higelac’s thegn.” Beowulf’s trip to
Denmark is in response to hearing about a nìƒ against Hrothgar.
These lines suggest, I hope, that nìƒ is an important term in the argument of the poem. Line 423 may give a fuller sense
of why this is the case. When Beowulf first speaks to Hrothgar, he says that he has heard of the “†ing” of Grendel, his
'meeting' (409), because of which the hall stands idle. Diplomatically, Beowulf does not use with Hrothgar the term nìƒ for
what has gone on in Denmark, although the word will be used for events in his own land. Beowulf continues that he was
advised to seek Hrothgar by those who knew he “came from fights bloodied by enemies where he bound five, destroyed the
kin of giants, and on the waves slew nicors by night” (419-422). “I endured severe distress,” he says, adding: wræc
Wedera nìƒ (423), “I avenged the nìƒ of the Weders,” that is, of his own people. From 'avenged,' nìƒ evidently entails
some kind of insult. But what insult? Beowulf does not say that the kin of giants or the nicors did anything to the Weders to
affront them. Why was vengeance necessary?
The answer, I think, is that the giants and the nicors were associated with the older fertility religion of the North whose
links to the former authority of women made such creatures themselves an affront to the new male dignity. Ritual practices at
sites like Forlev Nymølle likely were considered earg. Earlier in the millennium, exhibits of sacrificed animals' heads, hides
and forelegs had marked fertility sacrifices, but now they appeared as tokens of womanishness in níƒ displays.
The tenderness of Germanic male sensibilities in this matter is suggested by a níƒ episode in Egils saga.xliv In Chapter 57
Egil raises a níƒ-pole (níƒstông) against Norwegian king Eric Bloodaxe on grounds stated in an accompanying verse,
including that he “is governed by his wife.”xlv Surely it was worse to be linked to the ancient society where kinship was based
on female lineage and women held significant authority.
After Grendel flees, mortally wounded, the poet says: hæfde †à gefålsod... / ...sele Hròƒgàres,/
genered wiƒ nìƒe (825-27). Beowulf “had then cleansed… the hall of Hrothgar, defended it against nìƒ," which,
we see, has been the essence of the problem of Heorot.
Besides sketching permissible behavior for elite women, the poem provides advisories for a newly normative hypermasculinity. For example, Beowulf tells Hrothgar, the king when his friend Æschere is killed: 'Ne sorga.... Sèlre
biî ...wrece... êonne...murne' – 'Mourn not. It is better [for each that he] avenge than... mourn' (1384-85).
Such discourse shaped the behavior of the Germanic military class which is now understood to have been formalized in law
under apparently ethnic labels that, in fact, described social function rather than race.xlvi
An image of lasting interest in the "medieval penal imaginary"xlvii had its origin in the bracteate period to which I believe
we should look for the origin of the monster stories of the poem. The D-bracteate from Grinheim, Norway (Figure 7) is
abstracted here, with alternate animals darkened below. The motif of self-biting animals (self-punishing animals?) would
become commonplace in Style II themes of Germanic animal art, contributing to the Book of Durrow and later illuminated
manuscripts.xlviii I believe the bracteate design may have stood for an emotional premise: that if a warrior is sufficiently fierce
and courageous, the enemy is apt to prove craven cowardly, earg. The bracteate icon may have been a visual prod in support
of, a reminder of the need for, the indominable will that J.R.R. Tolkien said characterized northern Germanic heroic literature
and which he found so valuable in Beowulf.xlix
A few remarks about the English context of the poem. The proportion of Scandinavian gold bracteates found in England
which are D-designs, that is, depicting monsters overcome by Othinic heroes, is more than twice as high (68%) as their ratio in
the bracteate corpus as a whole (33%), which probably has a connection with Woden's regnal potency among the English.l
We know that, especially after 580, Anglo-Saxons took over ritual enclosures of the native Romano-British elite and
converted them to their own use.li This may have been the result of an attitude similar to that which would produce Othinic
monotheism in Denmark.
It is my understanding that some deity names in Beowulf have been changed to Christianize it. But if I am correct, core
sentiments of the poem express war god religion. The usefulness of such militancy is not far to seek in the Anglo-Saxon
period. For applauding the killing of 1200 Christian monks at the Battle of Chester, Bede, in my view, deserves to be
notorious. Of Oswald Bede says: 'He wished the whole whom he was beginning to rule to be initiated into the grace of the
Christian faith, which he had already put to the most searching test in defeating the barbarians.' In a paradigm-shifting
moment, Eric John has said of this passage: 'The sentiment is centered on Christ instead of Woden, but it is the same
sentiment.'lii
Reveling at the killing of hundreds of monks at the Battle of Chester, Bede characterized them as 'perfidious' – perfidi,liii
echoing the term used by another cleric to condemn the armed rebellion of Paul at Septimania in 672.liv In Languedoc, as in
Britain, "there was no rhetorical space for disagreement, whether ideological or political, even as the kingdom... changed
line."lv The same was true in Beowulf on gender and earlier religious issues as well.
Notes
i
Anders Andrén,'Guld och makt – en tolkning av de skandinaviska guldbrakteaternas funktion', in Samfundsorganisation og
Regional Variation, ed. Charlotte Fabech and Jyette Ringtved (Moesgård: Jysk Arkåologisk Selskab, 1991), 245-256, 253; Marit
Gaimster, 'Scandinavian Gold Bracteates in Britain. Money and Media in the Dark Ages', Medieval Archaeology 36 (1992): 1-28;
Idem, 'The Scandinavian gold bracteates', in Roman Reflections in Scandinavia (Rome: ‘L’Erma’ di Bretschneider, 1996), 218-221,
219.
ii
The system now commonly used to identify bracteates, with IK numbers from their place in an Ikonographische Katalog,
"iconographic catalogue," was developed by Hauck and others including Morten Axboe, Urs Clavadetscher, Klaus Düwel and Lutz
von Padberg, Die Goldbrakteaten der Völkwanderungszeit, 3 Vol. (Munich: Fink, 1985, 1986, 1989); now supplemented by Morton
Axboe, Charlotte Behr and Klaus Düwel, 'Katalog der Neufunde', in Die Goldbrakteaten der Völkwanderungszeit, Auswertung und
Neufunde, ed. Wilhelm Heizmann and M. Axboe (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 893-1024 and Tafeln.
iii
1003+ bracteates known in 2010, Axboe, Behr and Düwel, 'Neufunde,' 893; 329 D-bracteates as of 1990, Morten Axboe and Anne
Kromann, 'DN ODINN P F AUC? Germanic "Imperial Portraits" on Scandinavian Gold Bracteates', Acta Hyperborea 4 (1992), 279.
iv
Forthcoming, Frank Battaglia, Beowulf and the bracteates', in The Dating of Beowulf: A Reassessment, Essays on the Theme of the
Harvard University Conference, September 2011, edited by Leonard Neidorf and Joseph McMullen (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for
Medieval and Renaissance Studies).
v
Lotte Hedeager, 'Migration Period Europe: The Formation of a Political Mentality', in Rituals of Power, From Late Antiquity to the
Early Middle Ages, ed. Frans Theuws and Janet L. Nelson (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 15-57, 17, with the later writing down of elements
of this oral literature representing 'the Germans' integration into the Classical Roman imperial tradition' (Ibid., 18); Charlotte Behr,
'Do bracteates identify influential women in Early Medieval kingdoms?' in Kingdoms and Regionality, ed. Birgit Arrhenius
(Stockholm: Archaelogical Research Laboratory, 2001), 95.
vi
Näsman, Kuml, 2006, 225, Fig. 6, 226.
vii
Näsman 1999, 8; Hedeager 1992a; Høilund Nielsen 1998, 5; Jytte Ringtved, 'The geography of power: South Scandinavia before
the Danish kingdom', Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History, 10 (1999), 49.
viii
“Uniform sets of weapons and a large component of equestrian equipment” are in evidence by about 550 C.E. (Nørgard Jørgensen
1997, 206).
ix
Høilund Nielsen 1998, 5; 1991, 132-5, Fig. 5.
x
Johan Callmer, 'Aristokratiskt präglade residens från yngre järnåaldern i forskningshistorien och deras problematick', in '...GICK
GRENDEL ATT SÖKA DET HÖGA HUSET...', Arkeologiska källor till aristokratiska miljöer i Skandinavien under yngre järnålder,
ed. Johan Callmer and Erik Rosengren (Halmstad: Hallands länsmuseer, 1997), 15; Ringtved, 'Geography of power', 60-61; Lars
Jørgensen, 'From tribute to the estate system, 3 rd – 12th century', in Kingdoms and Regionality, ed. Birgit Arrhenius (Stockholm:
Archaeological Research Laboratory, 2001), 80; Birgit and Peter Sawyer, 'The Making of the Scandinavian Kingdoms', in Die Suche
nach den Ursprüngen, ed. Walter Pohl (Wien: Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2004), 261-64.
xi
Frank Battaglia, 'Not Christianity versus Paganism, but Hall versus Bog: The Great Shift in Early Scandinavian Religion and its
Implications for Beowulf', in Anglo-Saxons and the North, Essays Reflecting the Theme of the 10 th Meeting of the International
Society of Anglo-Saxonists in Helsinki, August 2001, ed. Matti Kilpiö, Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, Jane Roberts, and Olga Timofeeva
(Tempe, AZ: Arizona Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2009), 57-58. Radiocarbon testing placed the building later in
the Iron Age than had initial excavation reports, but early and very late date for wood in fill material creates “great uncertainty”
about the results. The majority of the samples, which were of fill material, not wood from the structure, produced datings with an
60% likelihood (1 sigma) of being between 420-530 C.E. (Rasmussen, Rahbek, and Sørensen 1995, 56, Tab. 1). Stilborg considered
the chronological position of the hall 'an open question' (1997, 63). Jørgensen and Vang Petersen think the building was used until
the beginning of the 5th century, then reconstructed in another Gudme location where late 5th and 6th century treasures have been
found (1998, 202, 204).
xii
Charlotte Fabech, 'Reading Society from the Cultural Landscape: South Scandinavia between Sacral and Political Power', The
Archaeology of Gudme and Lundeborg, ed. P.O. Nielsen, K. Randsborg, and H. Thrane (København: Universitetsforlaget, 1994),
177.
xiii
P.O. Sørensen, 'Gudmehallerne, Kongeligt byggeri fra jernalderen', Nationalmuseets Arbejdsmark (København, 1994), 25-39;
Fabech, 'Sacral and Political Power', 174-78, Fig. 7; Battaglia, 'Great Shift', 56.
xiv
Fabech, 'Sacral and Political Power', 177; John Hines, 'Ritual Hoarding in Migration-Period Scandinavia: A Review of Recent
Interpretations', Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 55 (1989), 196, Fig. 1. Crumlin-Petersen 1991 'peace of Nerthus.
xv
W.A.B. van der Sanden and Torsten Capelle, Mosens Guder/ Immortal Images (Silkeborg, 2001), Fig. 90; Jørgen Lund, “Forlev
Nymølle, En offerplads fra yngre førromersk jernalder,” Kuml 2002), 143-95.
xvi
Battaglia, 'Hall versus Bog', 66; Ibid., 'Cannibalism in Beowulf and older Germanic religion', presented at MANCASS 2010,
University of Manchester and forthcoming in a volume edited by Gale Owen-Crocker.
xvii
Birger Storgaard, 'Himlingøje, Barbarian empire or Roman implantation?', in Military Aspects of the Aristocracy in Barbaricum
in the Roman and Early Migration Periods, ed. B. Storgaard (Copenhagen: National Museum, 2001), 97; Ilkjær 2003, 52. Dating
chart, Nørgård Jørgensen 2003, 200. Recent contributions include The Spoils of Victory, The North in the shadow of the Roman
Empire, ed. Lars Jørgensen, Birger Storgaard and Lone Gebauer Thomsen (Copenhagen: Nationalmuseet, 2003); Susan MöllerWiering 2011; Battaglia, 'Hall versus Bog', 47.
xviii
Ilkær 2003, 46.
xix
Hines 1989, 195.
xx
Andersen, Kuml 1993-94.
xxi
Fabech 2006.
xxii
Näsman 1999, quoted in Battaglia 2009, 48.
xxiii
Dickinson 2011, 650.
xxiv
Høilund Nielsen 1998, 6.
xxv
R.D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles, ed., Klaeber's Beowulf and The Fight at Finnsburg, 4th Ed. (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2008); all references to this edition. Although associated with female deities, the metaphor of one's fate being 'given'
may have been so deeply embedded in the mid-first-millennium Scandinavian world view that it was necessary to use it to be
understood – Frank Battaglia, 'Gifeîe as "granted by fate" in Beowulf', In Geardagum, 23 (2002), 52. This article has a lengthy
errata sheet, available from <[email protected]>.
xxvi
Bruce 2002, 66.
xxvii
Dumville 1977. Hedeager is among those who see this claim as related to Germanic Animal Art – 'Political Mentality.'
xxviii
Hald 1963, 108.
xxix
Lars Jørgensen, 'En storgård fra vikingetid ved Tissø, Sjælland – en foreløbig præsentation', ed. Larsson and Hårdh, 1998, 23348; hung man and other deviant burial, Tom Christensen 1997, 34-35.
xxx
Hald 1963, 108.
xxxi
Tolkien 1984, 30-31. I expect to offer discussion elsewhere about the display of Grendel's arm, making use of H.M. Chadwick,
The Cult of Othin (London: Clay, 1899, 19). In a nuanced argument, the poem names the female deity Gefion linked with the Danes
or Scyld in some of the sources, and discredits her – Frank Battaglia, 'The Germanic Earth Goddess in Beowulf', Mankind Quarterly,
31 (1991): 415-46.
xxxii
Battaglia, 'Hall versus Bog', 65-66.
xxxiii
'It is a post-Foucauldian truism that they who successfully define and superintend a crisis, furnishing its lexicon and discursive
parameters, successfully confirm themselves the owners of power, [with] the administration of crisis operating to revitalize
ownership of the instruments of power even as it vindicates the necessity of their use' - Heng and Devan 1997, 107.
xxxiv
For the poem's critique of matriliny, Battaglia, 'Earth Goddess?' 425-26, 430.
xxxv
'Cognates of nìƒ are attested from all of the older Germanic languages: OHG nid, OS, OFr. nìth, OIc., OE nìƒ, Goth. neiî'
- Markey, 'Níîvísur,' 14.
xxxvi
The meaning “manhood-challenging insult” for Old English is established by a gloss of ear(h)lice, nìƒlice as
muliebriter, i. enerviter (Napier, An. Oxon. I 744, in Markey, "Níîvísur," 17).
xxxvii
Markey, "Níîvísur," 18; Jochens, "Old Norse Sexuality"; Clover, "Regardless," 372-377; Meulengracht Sørensen,
Unmanly, 11; Bo Almqvist, Norrön niddiktning, Traditionshistoriska studier i versmagi, 1, Nid mot furstar, (Stockholm: Almqvist &
Wiksell, 1965).
xxxviii
A positive function in ancient Germanic fertility religion for the display of an animal head on a post is suggested by bog finds
at Rislev in Denmark and Oberdorla in Germany, where “horse’s heads with the skin and the foot bones left on [may have been]
mounted on poles” [Charlie Christiansen, “The sacrificial bogs of the Iron Age,” The Spoils of War, 346-54; J. Ferdinand and K.
Ferdinand, “Jernalderofferfund i Valmose ved Rislev,” Kuml (1961): 47-90; other sites: Bertha Stjernquist, “The Basic Perception of
Religious Activities at Cult Sites such as Springs, Lakes and Rivers,” The World-View of Prehistoric Man, Lars Larsson and B.
Stjernquist, ed. (Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, 1998), 157-78; Stuart Piggott, “Heads and
Hoofs,” Antiquity, 36 (1962): 110-18]. This ritual element become derogated in the religious shift from bog to hall, earth/fertility
deities to sky/war deities, Vanir to Æsir [Battaglia, 'Hall versus Bog'; Anne Monikander, "Borderland-stalkers and Stalking-Horses,
Horse Sacrifice as Liminal Activity in the Early Iron Age," Current Swedish Archaeology, 14 (2006): 143-58, 156]. A story of a
religious ritual employing a horse penis (Vôlsa Êáttr ) is preserved within the Saga of Saint Olaf in Flateyarbók (II, 331)
[E.O.G. Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North (NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), 256-58; further refs., idem,
“Fertility of Beast and Soil in Old Norse Literature,” Old Norse Literature and Mythology, Edgar C. Polomé, ed. (Austin: U Texas P,
1969), 244-64, 263n74]. Of a mare’s body being used to set up a ní∂ pole in Vatnsdæla saga, Meulengracht Sørensen has
offered “a fair guess that the mare is a symbol of the absent man [not having appeared to answer a challenge to combat], who by this
means is accused of cowardice” (Unmanly, 29, 38).
xxxix
“The second word sor∂inn is the same as sor∂it, from ser∂a,… for the male role in heterosexual intercourse. Another
word with the same meaning, stre∂a, was created by metathesis. The past participles of these two words, sor∂inn and
stro∂inn, were joined by the adjective ragr [….which] had a broad semantic range that included both lack of courage and the
general condition of effeminacy, whereas the two other words referred explicitly to the sex act in which one man – designated as
having been stro∂inn or sor∂it – played the passive role, while the other performed the action of stre∂a or sor∂it.
These three words constituted the Norse ní∂, defined as general accusations of effeminacy and/or specific charges of passive
homosexual behavior…. Such insults resulted in outlawry or even the killing of the offender.” However, noted Jochens, “the law did
not penalize the two performers of the same-sex act, but an outsider, a third person who accused one of the men of having played the
passive role” (Jochens, "Sexuality," 382). See also Fulk, "Homoeroticism," 29n81. Clover observed that “for all its associations with
the female body, the word argr (ergi, ergjask, ragr, etc.) finally knows no sex (Clover, "Regardless," 385).
xl
Gg 2: 393 in Jochens, "Sexuality," 382; Kari Ellen Gade. “Homosexuality and Rape of Males in Old Norse Law and Literature,
Scandinavian Studies, 5 (1986): 124-141, 132; Meulengracht Sørensen, Unmanly, 100; Markey, "Níîvísur," 9.
xli
Two inscriptions datable to the mid 7th century in Southern Sweden appear to threaten: anyone who desecrates the stones will be
*ergia, 'a substantive… corresponding to West Norse ergi' (Markey, 'Níîvísur,' 8; Fulk "Homoeroticism," 29n81).
xlii
Louise Corso, 'Some Considerations of the concept "Ni∂" in Beowulf,' Neophilologus, 64 (1980):121-26. Between 550 and 570,
a Frankish count Palladius seems to have taunted a Gaulish bishop Parthenius in an act of nìƒ (Pizarro, 'Nìƒ'). The event,
including divine vengeance, was recorded by Gregory of Tours in the same History of the Franks (IV.39) in which he reported
Hygelac’s raid in Frisia (III.3).
xliii
Friedrich Klaeber, Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, 3rd ed. (Lexington, MA: Heath, 1950), 380; Fulk et al., Beowulf, 418.
xliv
Clover refers to 'the frantic machismo of Norse males, at least as they are portrayed in the literature, [which] would seem on the
face of it to suggest... being born male precisely did not confer automatic superiority,... distinction had to be acquired, and constantly
reacquired, by wresting it away from others' ('Regardless,' 380). 'Frantic machismo' describes the response by Gunnarr of
Hlí∂arendi, a main character in Njáls saga, to being accused of weeping because of a cheek wound: he and his
brother avenge this affront by killing eight men (chs. 53 and 54) (Meulengracht Sørensen, Unmanly, 21).
The possibility of structuring insult into or reading it out of almost any utterance led to detailed prohibitions of poetry in
Icelandic law intended to control níî. The section 'On poetry' in Grágás opens with a ban on composing any poetry about
people: 'No man is to versify either praise or blame about another' – Hvarke a maîr at yrkia vm mann löst ne löf
(Unmanly, 70, 109). The Konungsbók version of Grágás specifies a penalty of three marks if a man composes a stanza
about another man and banishment if he composes three stanzas. 'The reason for this prohibition must have been that it was common
practice to conceal níî in ostensibly innocent stanzas… and therefore one could not feel confident as to what was praise and what
blame. This problem emerges clearly in the next provision of the law, in which the severest penalty, outlawry, is decreed for one who
composes a half-stanza containing blame or scorn, "or the kind of praise that he composes in order to insult" – eîa lof êat er
hann yrkir til haîungar' (Unmanly, 70, 109).
xlv
Markey, "Ní∂vísur," 10; Battaglia, 'Cannibalism in Beowulf. Meulengracht Sørensen observes that the gift of a silk cloak in
Njáls saga, as part of wergild payment for a killing, has a “feminine implication” and thus is “so emotionally loaded” with insult
it causes further killing (Unmanly, 10).
xlvi
Paul Barnwell, “Britons and Warriors in Post-Roman South-East England, Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History
(ASSAH), 12 (2003): 1-8; Heinrich Härke, “Early Anglo-Saxon Social Structure,” The Anglo-Saxons from the Migration Period to
the Eighth Century, An Ethnographic Perspective, John Hines, ed. (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 1997), 125-70, 150; Patrick
Amory, “The meaning and purpose of ethnic terminology in the Burgundian laws,” Early Medieval Europe 2 (1993): 1-28; Halsall
1998, 4.
xlvii
Robert Mills, Suspended Animation: Pain, Pleasure and Punishment in Medieval Culture (London: Reaktion, 2005), 16.
xlviii
George Speake, Anglo-Saxon Animal Art and Its Germanic Background (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980), 69-71, 73; Uta Roth, “Early
Insular Manuscripts: Ornament and Archaeology, with Special Reference to the Dating of the Book of Durrow,” Ireland and Insular
Art A.D. 500-1200, Michael Ryan, ed. (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1987), 23-9, 25; Günther Haseloff, “Insular Animal Styles
with Special Reference to Irish Art in the Early Medieval Period,” ibid, 44-55, 46.
xlix
“Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics,” The Monsters And The Critics and other essays, Christopher Tolkien, ed. (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1984), 5-48, 18, 21, 26.
l
Of Scandinavian gold bracteates found in England, D-bracteates make up 31 out of 45, or 68 percent.
Using recent but not current data, D-bracteates make up 329 of the 1003 known Scandinavian gold bracteates. This is slightly less
than 33%.
li
John Blair, ‘Anglo-Saxon Pagan Shrines and their Prototypes’, ASSAH 8 (1995): 1-28.
lii
Eric John, 'The Point of Woden,' Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 5 (1992).
liii
HE 2.2.
liv
lv
'Perfidia', Halsall, 'Introductory Survey', 10.
Wickham, Framing, 96.
Figure 1. D-bracteates from Djurgårdsäng, Västergötlnd, Sweden (IK 418, upper left), Nørre Hvam,
Westjütland, Denmark (IK 469), Nebenstedt, Niedersachsen, Germany (IK 468), Killerup, Fyn, Denmark
(IK 455,1, number incomplete) [after Axboe 2007, 20; Pesch 2007, 281, 274].
____________________end Figure 1.
Figure 2. Early Danish kingdom.
__________________________________end of Figure 2.
Figure 3. Women's dress ornaments, first half of 6th century.
_________________________end of Figure 3.
Figure 4. The Gudme hall was the largest in Scandinavia in the Roman Period/Migration Period
[after Karsten K. Michaelsen and P. Ø. Sørensen, “En kongsgård fra jernalderen,” Årbog for
Svendborg og Omegns Museum 1993 (1994), 24–35].
________________________________________end of Figure 4.
Figure 5. The bog shrine at Forlev Nymølle, find concentration I [after Sanden and
Capelle, Mosens Guder, Fig. 90].
____________________________________________________end of Figure 5.
Figure 6. Bone-tempered ceramic from Gudme area used
as an amulet (after Stilborg, Shards, Fig. 49).
___________________________end of Figure 6.
Figure 7. D-bracteate from Grindheim, Norway (IK 437) with alternate animals highlighted
[after Pesch, Thema und Variation, 252 and Roth 1986, 113 following Haseloff 1981, 229, Abb. 135].
end of Figure 7.