[gothic-l] Re: Beowolf--the Goth?

[Tim O'Neill]

I'm coming to this a little late, so forgive me if I'm
asking questions which have already been answered.

trbrandt at post9.tele.dk wrote:

[The Ermanaric/Hama episode passage snipped]

> Why did the author connect the Geatic king Hugleik dying in Frisia
> around 520 AD with the Ostrogothic king Ermaneric dying in the Black
> Sea region around 375 AD - and the mythical Hama? Why should we care
> about Ermaneric and Brisings' necklace unless they represent the
> background of our hero?

I'm very puzzled by this.  It's a common technique in OE
poetry to emphasise the significance of a point or deed
by drawing a parallel between it and a similar element in
an older story.  We see this in several places in Beowulf,
such as where his feats against Grendel and his Mother
are compared to the dragon fight of Sigemund.

In this passage the narrator makes it clear that he's
making such a 'renown comparison' when he says:

'Ne'er heard I so mighty, 'neath heaven's dome,
a hoard-gem of heroes, since Hama bore
to his bright-built burg the Brisings' necklace,
jewel and gem casket.'

He's comparing Hygelac's hoard with the legendary
story of the theft of Ermanaric's treasure by the
adventurer Hama, and drawing on the associations and
resonances that story has by evoking the tale and
giving a exposition on its main points.

There's no indication that this story represents 'the
background of our hero' - it's a reference to and
evocation of a story which was common knowledge throughout
the Germanic world.  The Beowulf poet's English audience
would have been familiar with the Ermanaric/Hama story
already.

> Once this necklace - Brisingamen/The sun - was probably told to
> belong to Freja, but in the Christian version this cannot be the
> reason.

The 'Brosinga mene' of Beowulf and the 'Brisinga men' of
ON myth seem to be related in some way, though there's no
indication that the OE version of the story paralleled the
later, mythological version we find in the ON corpus.

> Even to day elected mayors and chairmen of clubs sometimes
> wear a golden chain as a symbol of power. The royal crown was without
> doubt earlier a ring around the neck (or sometimes a helmet?).
> Ingemar Norgren has written an article about the ring as an important
> Germanic symbol of oath and power.

All quite true.

> The above mentioned necklace in
> Beowulf was probably the "crown" of the people of Hugleik -
> the unknown Geats.

Sorry, I can't see your reasoning behind this.  The poet
tells us of a great treasure and then compares it to
another great treasure of legend - the treasure stolen
by Hama from Ermanaric which included the 'Brosinga mene'.
He is clearly referring obliquely to another legend of
treasure from long ago - he doesn't imply any connection
between Hygelac and the Geats and Ermanaric or Ermanaric's
treasure.  To interpret the passage this way is a bit like
taking a WWII journalist's figurative comment that
Winston Churchill was 'the greatest British leader since
King Arthur' as being historical evidence Churchill was
keeper of the Holy Grail.

In other words, you seem to be overinterpreting a literary
device.  Beowulf is *literature* and should not be read
too closely as *history*.

I also don't understand what you mean by 'the unknown
Geats'.  We don't know much about them, but they are
referred to, with Hygelac, as a southern Scandinavian
people in a number of sources other than Beowulf.
There's no connection between them and the Goths of
Ermanaric's Ukrainian kingdom that I can see.

> If so the authors idea behind the Geats could be that they had been
> in contact with Ermaneric near the Black Sea region.

??? But the author doesn't say or imply anything like
that.  He makes a literary digression for poetic
effect.  The only connection between the Ermanaric
story and that of the Geats is the *poetic*
comparison of the size and richness of the treasures
being discussed.  The poet makes no connection between
the Scandinavian Geats and the far off kingdom and
ancient kingdom of Ermanaric.

> In a report from the camp of Attila all the followers of the Huns
> were called Goths by Priscus,

???
Priscus makes it clear that there were many Goths in
Attila's camp, but that's not the same as saying all
Attila's followers 'were called Goths'.

> and in cronicles from that time (a.o.
> Jordanes) Goths in the Dacian region were sometimes confused with the
> Getes, who were an earlier Tracian tribe like the Dacians.

Which was a common confusion at the time. These Thracian
Getae had nothing to do with the Goths, who in turn had
little to do with the Scandinavian Geats, though the Goths
and Geats may have once shared a common, cultic origin in
Scandinavia many centuries before.

> The episode of Hugleik took place 50 years after the army of Attila
> was disbanded. At this time Gregory of Tours called the people of
> Hugleik Dani and Liber Monstrorum called them Getorum.

The episode recorded by Gregory of Tours and its
parallels elsewhere, including in Beowulf, all make it
clear that Hygelac was a *Scandinavian* king of a
*Scandinavian* people.  Are you saying that they were
refugees from Attila's kingdom and came from the
steppes?

In ships?  ;>

> Around 1000 AD Dudo wrote: "... the Getae, also known as Goths,
> Sarmatians and Amacsobii, Tragoditae and Alans ...".
> (http://orb.rhodes.edu/ORB_done/Dudo/chapter02.html ). These people
> seem to be followers of the Huns together with Rugians, Heruls and
> Gepides. He also told about Danes being Dacians from Dacia, where
> both Attila, the Goths and the Getes settled.

Such folk etymological confusions are common in writers
of this period, especially when writers tried to account
for 'new' peoples (like the Danes) by having them
descended from 'known' peoples (like the Dacians).  This
was done because it was thought the ancient authorities
on ethnography couldn't have simply been ignorant of these
'new' peoples, so they had to be simply offshoots of
peoples 'known' through the ancient sources.  Unlikely
etymological connections like 'Danes=Dacians' were thus
invented.

> Dudo wrote his "Gesta Normannorum" at the same time as our
> version of Beowulf was written down. Are the names in our version of
> Beowulf based on the same information as Dudo?

There's every indication that Hygelac, the Geats etc
and the cycle of tales about their wars with the
Swedes had been part of the nother western Germanic
oral literature since the sixth century and had
found its way to England with some of the earliest
Germanic invaders.  Everything about these legends
indicate that they have their origins in some obscure
tribal wars in Scandinavia and I can't see any evidence
in the poem or in the extensive scholarly literature
on the subject of the Geat/Swede elements in the poem
that it has anything to do with far off Gothic
kingdoms rather than its clear Scandinavian setting.


> Were the Geats of
> Hugleik a Gothic tribe or one of the tribes Ermaneric subdued?

Given that every piece of information we have about
the Geats indicate that they were a southern
Scandinavian tribe, I don't think so.

> This makes the Geats a tribe with Eastgermanic connections settled
> around the Bay of Helgoland from Jutland to the Rhine or in England.
> Therefore they could tell about Beowulf swimming home. However we
> should not expect a tribe from this area to fight against the Swedes
> around Uppsala as well as we should not expect a tribe from Western
> Sweden attacking the Francs as early as around 500. Therefore the
> narrator of Beowulf must also have mixed up stories about Hugleik and
> the Geats with Scandinavian stories about the Swedish Goetes.

Gregory the Great, the _Gesta Francorum_ and several other
sources, including Beowulf, make it clear the raiders
under Hygelac came from Scandinavia.  I can't see anything
in what you've written to make that seem in any way
unlikely and I can't see any reason to think the Geats
had anything to do with the Goths of Ermanaric.

> Just an idea!

Interesting, but Beowulf scholars have been going over
that poem and all of its analogue material for centuries
now.  If there was any hint of what you're suggesting I'm
sure someone would have noticed.  The fact that the
Ermanaric passage you place so much weight on is not
an historical connection with Hygelac at all but a
literary device seems to me to weaken your case quite
a bit.

But I have come to this thread a little late, so
maybe I missed some other evidence.
Cheers,

Tim O'Neill

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