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

[Tim O'Neill]

trbrandt at post9.tele.dk wrote:

> You normally seem more sure than I am - but I don't see how we can be
> sure of anything in Beowulf.

I've studied Beowulf for many years, so i certainly
wouldn't disagree with that!  But there's a big difference
between saying we can't be certain of anything in Beowulf
and saying that we can't, therefore, subject any proposed
interpretation to critical scrutiny.

The interpretation you've proposed is a fairly radical
departure from the way this passage is usually interpreted,
so, before we suppose Geats who are Goths from eastern
Europe ending up in north-western Europe, I think it's
best to take some other, less radical, interpretations
into account first.

> --- In gothic-l at y..., Tim O'Neill <scatha at b...> wrote:
>
> ......
> > 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.
>
> Yes this is one of the obvious possibilities - but I have always
> wandered why Ermaneric should have any value as an example in England
> and why he was a key figure in Widsith, if there was no connection
> between a tribe Ermaneric met in his far off region and one of the
> tribes invading England.

Why is Attila ('AEtla') part of the English tradition?
The Anglo-Saxons had no contact with the Huns.  And why
is Albion ('Aelfwine') part of the English tradition?
Or Sigmundr ('Sigemund')? Or any of the many and various
heroes and kings of the Germanic oral tradition who had
no contact with the people of England and/or their
original Continental homeland?

The answer is that all these figures became part of a
corpus of story traditions and oral folklore which usually
left the historical personages far behind and took on a
life of their own as these stories were told across the
Germanic world over many centuries.  The audience of
Beowulf knew nothing of the historical 'Airmanareiks', but
the literary character of 'Eormenric' was as familiar to
them as King Arthur, Sherlock Holmes or James Bond is
to us - part of a cultural heritage which stretched
well beyond England.

> Apart from his dubious role in Getica he was
> not one of the great figures of the history according to the sources
> around his own region. Therefore I have looked for another
> explanation.

There are nine separate Germanic sources that I can think
of, in various languages ranging over several centuries,
which preserve versions of the legend of Ermanaric/
Eormenric/Jormanrekkr.  Clearly he was a major figure
in early Germanic oral legend, beginning with poems
and songs of his own people and then spreading
throughout the Germanic world.  Jordanes says that
he was a 'Gothic Alexander' and Ammianus attests
that his fame was known in the Roman Empire as well.

He was far from an obscure figure in the Germanic
tradition - in fact he was one of the most important
and enduring.  It is no mystery that he should
be referred to in Beowulf. We have only a handful of
heroic poems and fragments in Old English, yet
Eormenric appears in no less than *three* of them.
Clearly he was a major figure in this Europe-wide
oral tradition.

> > > 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 ......
>
> Isn't it a little careless to bring the great treasure of your people
> with you on a raid - if it is only a treasure? As you agreed in your
> mail the necklace is often being a symbol of power. This is an
> obvious explanation here.

That it had significance as a piece of artistry and portable
wealth and therefore a symbol of Hygelac's lordship and
power is hard to question.  It seems a logical leap to
go from this to assuming it was the 'crown' of the Geats.
This conclusion goes far beyond what the evidence says and
it doesn't seem 'obvious' at all.  The text says it was
a rich ring won when the Geats were in their ascendancy
(ie when Beowulf aided Hrothgar) and lost as they began to
be eclipsed (when Hygelac falls).

In other words, it's another literary device of a kind the
Beowulf poet often uses.

> > 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.
>
> You repeat this three times in your mail. Which source except Beowulf
> has described the "Geats" and referred them to Scandinavia?

Gregory of Tours, the _Liber Monstrorum_, the _Gesta
Francorum_, Saxo Grammaticus, and the _Heimskringla_  all
mention Hygelac.  Three make him a 'Dane', one (Snorri) a
Swede and one (_Monstrorum_) has him as king of the 'Getae'.

All have him coming from Scandinavia, though the author of
the _Monstrorum_ may have confused the Geats with the
classical Dacian 'Getae'.  Whether the two Frankish authors
really thought him a 'Dane' or was using this as a
term for any Scandinavian raiders (much as later English
writers used the term for any Vikings) is not clear.

Saxo also says Hygelac ('Hugletus') killed Eanmund of
Sweden ('Homothus'), showing that this element at least
of the Beowulf allusions to the war/feud between the
Swedes and the Geats in southern Scandinavia was known
elsewhere as well.

> If you
> believe they were Scandinavians because Chochillaicus was called a
> Dane then the Geats were the Danes. This conclusion will give you
> some troubles interpreting Beowulf. If you use names similar to
> the "Geats" you can find a lot of them.

I believe Gregory of Tours and other such writers probably
didn't have a very good grasp of which northern raiders
came from where.  All of the sources I cite above have
Hygelac as a Scandinavian king.  One has him as a king of
'Getae' and another has him fighting and killing rulers
in Sweden.  All this squares very well with the Beowulf
poet's depiction of the Geats as southern Scandinavian
neighbours of the Swedes who weren't adverse to raids
across the Baltic into Frisia and Frankia.

> > > 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'.
>
> Sorry! Here I did not refer my source properly. According to Priscus
> there was a Hunnic speaking and a Gothic speaking group (also having
> different barbarian tongues). Several followers of the Huns were not
> mentioned at all in that period, which in combination with Priscus
> indicates they were regarded as one group - probably called Goths.
> This may have caused the mistake.

Okay, but I'm still having trouble seeing the relevance
of this to Beowulf and the Geats in Scandinavia.

> > 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.
>
> Exactly. That is my point.

The (possible, but far from certain) common cultic
origins of the Goths and Geats?  Even if this is
true, and it's far from proven or even provable,
all this means is that, 500-600 years before the
period in which the poem seems to be 'set' and
possibly as much as 1000 years before it was
composed, the ancestors of the people who later
came to be called 'the Goths' belonged to the same
cultic league as the people who later came to be
called 'the Geats'.

This doesn't mean 'Geats' are 'Goths' and that Beowulf
is therefore 'a Goth'.

Have I misunderstood you?  Is this really what you
mean when you say 'Beowulf - the Goth'?

> > > 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?  ;>
>
> I did not say they came directly from Attila. Hugleik was killed at
> least 60 years after the death of Attila. Actually I suggested
> England as one of several possibilities.

The poem suggests southern Scandinavia and there's nothing
in the other sources to discourage this idea.  Where does
England come into it?

> > 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.
>
> Yes. As I wrote an English writer might have confused the Goetes (or
> Guter) in Sweden with Hugleik the Geat (or Goth?) in Frisia. As you
> said: Beowulf is 'literature'.

The English writer seems to have been drawing on a very
well known oral tradition about a tribal war in southern
Scandinavia and the other writers mentioned above seem to
have preserved parts of some garbled versions of the same
tale.  What none of them indicate is *any* connection with
the Goths of Ermanaric's kingdom, or any later Goths
descended from them.

The only connection you've made between the Geats of
Beowulf and the Goths proper is via the Eormenric/Hama
passage, which *doesn't* connect Hygelac and the Geats
with the Goths, it simply says the precious ring Hygelac
gained from Hrothgar via Beowulf was as precious as
the one stolen from Eormenric by Hama.  If we knew more
of the details of this latter story it's very likely
the literary point the Beowulf-poet is making here would
be clearer, but as it is it seems clear enough - the
poet is drawing a literary parallel between the two
rings.

What he certainly *doesn't* seem to be doing is making
any historical claims about the Geats actually being
Goths.

> > > 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.
>
> But I think most scholars agree that a satisfying answer has not been
> found yet.

Mainly because the details of the Eormenric/Hama story are
lost, as I said above.  I can't think of any scholar who's
suggested the poet is making some historical claim about the
origins of the Geats in this passage.

> I don't claim I have found it, but if all scholars argued
> as in your last sentence, it is temptating to claim, that we do not
> need scholars reading ancient history.

But the passage in question is literature and doesn't
seem to be anything to do with history. ;>
Cheers,

Tim O'Neill

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