Nonhuman voices in Anglo-Saxon literature and material culture

James Paz

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781526116000
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: History of Medieval Art

This book explores the voices of nonhuman things in Anglo-Saxon literature and material culture, making a valuable contribution to 'thing theory'.

1

Æschere’s head, Grendel’s mother and the sword that isn’t a sword: Unreadable things in Beowulf

When Grendel’s mother attacks Heorot, her victim, Æschere, is described by Hrothgar as ‘min runwita ond min rædbora’ [my rune-knower and advice-bearer] (1325).¹ Later, when Beowulf returns to Heorot, having slain Grendel’s mother, he hands the hilt from the giants’ sword he used to kill her over to Hrothgar, who looks at the artefact before issuing a warning to Beowulf about becoming monstrous and foreshadowing the hero’s later encounter with the wyrm (1677–784). By examining this passage in Beowulf, this chapter highlights connections between Grendel’s mother and the giants’ sword found in her underwater hall, arguing that they are both riddle-like things that resist the kind of reading that Æschere was meant to offer King Hrothgar. Indeed, Æschere’s death provokes an anxiety in the text about ‘things’ that defy human interpretation and convey monstrous, marginal or altogether unknowable messages instead. While Beowulf is sensitive to the fact that a range of artefacts, including swords, have always been legible, the text also reveals that certain enigmatic things exceed the community of readable objects. Through their liminal status, these things carry alien stories and histories into the safety of the mead hall, unsettling the shared body of knowledge held within reading communities.

The first part of this chapter reconsiders Grendel’s mother’s slaying of the counsellor Æschere, examining the significance of both figures. The poem refers to Grendel’s mother in a variety of ways: she is both a noble lady (OE ides) and a monstrous or warrior woman (OE aglæcwif); she is of the kin of Cain and linked to a race of giants but is still in the likeness of a woman (idese onlicnes) and dwells in a roofed hall (hrofsele). Well known, also, are the critical debates about who or what Grendel’s mother is: from Klaeber’s glossing of aglæcwif and its influence on later translators to arguments that she is a warrior woman or a valkyrie figure.² Since Grendel’s mother ultimately eludes efforts to name and identify her, it is significant that, unlike her son who randomly grabs thirty men, young and old, in his raids, her one victim is the counsellor Æschere. He has been carefully selected, for he is a rune-knower and advice-bearer, and Grendel’s mother is therefore killing Hrothgar’s reader. Nicholas Howe traces the etymology of the Old English rædan to show that it gives the meanings ‘to give advice or counsel’ and ‘to explain something obscure’ but also ‘to exercise control over something’.³ Therefore, even though Grendel’s mother says no words in the text, in her slaying of Æschere she is making a clear statement that she will be neither explained nor controlled by the community of Heorot.

What is more, acts of reading – giving advice and solving riddles – were a means of ‘creating and then enlarging the bounds of a textual community’.⁴ While not literate in the modern sense, the community of Heorot is nonetheless bound together by ‘reading’ in this way. The second part of this chapter focuses on the giants’ sword to argue that, even as Grendel’s mother threatens a community through her refusal to be read, the sword hilt also enters Heorot from the outside and has the ability to destabilise its set of beliefs and knowledge. In both cases, this power is linked to the elusive or riddle-like nature of a ‘thing’ that exists on the margins of a human community. As Grendel’s mother refuses to be named, identified and objectified, we can similarly see the giants’ sword transforming from a functioning blade into something else.

In the absence of his runwita and rædbora, Hrothgar is confronted by the thing that the giants’ sword has become and must try to read its runes himself. But when he looks at the rune-engraved hilt he cannot entirely make sense of it and what he does see is a historical narrative of giants, which is more closely connected to the Grendelkin than to the Danes. Hrothgar ‘reads’ that hilt all the same and, urged by an alien history, warns Beowulf through the figure of Heremod against becoming monstrous to future generations. Thus, the hilt might be seen as a self-reflexive literary device; it asks whether Beowulf itself is the story of an alien, monstrous past. The hilt embodies a concern over how stories of the present are conveyed to future audiences and, specifically, how histories may be transformed by the kinds of artefacts that carry them. Unreadable things can disrupt a longstanding human reliance upon legibility, altering the way we interpret that which has come before us.

Killing the reader

Readers of Beowulf do not really encounter Æschere (he is not singled out as a recognisable individual, nor is he named) until he is dead. In line 1251, there is this allusion to him: ‘Sum sare angeald / æfenræste’ [one paid sorely for his evening-rest]. Here, Æschere is merely ‘a certain one’ among the retainers who has been chosen to pay a penalty. Although not mentioned by name, we are given the sense that this ‘one’ has been marked out for death beforehand, at least by the narrator. And yet a mere eighteen lines earlier we are told that the sleepy hall-thegns ‘Wyrd ne cuþon, / geosceaft grimme’ [did not know the grim shape of formerly-fixed fate] (1233–4). Tricky to translate in this line, geosceaft essentially means ‘that which has been shaped of old’, thus adding to the notion that Æschere has been chosen for death from the start. The other brief reference to Æschere, before his name is mentioned, tells us that ‘Se wæs Hroþgare hæleþa leofost / on gesiðes had be sæm tweonum’ [He was to Hrothgar the most beloved of men among the retainers he had between the two seas] (1296–7). It is telling that, after ravaging Heorot for twelve years, seizing thirty men at a time, night after night, Grendel somehow misses the king’s most beloved thegn; but in her one attack, Grendel’s mother’s single victim is this trusted counsellor, Æschere. This is no coincidence: Æschere’s death is a very deliberate statement.

Why Æschere? Perhaps his name will provide a clue, or perhaps Æschere is not a name at all. The narrative context would suggest that it is, or at least it is used as a name when Hrothgar tells Beowulf that ‘Sorh is geniwod / Denigea leodum: dead is Æschere, Yrmenlafes yldra broþor’ [Sorrow is renewed for the Danes: Æschere is dead, Yrmenlaf’s older brother] (1322–4). Yet it is not commonly used as a name elsewhere in Old English. The online Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England (PASE) informs us that there is only one Æschere (male) recorded in Domesday Book m xi.⁵ In the poetry, ‘æschere’ appears not as a name but as a noun in The Battle of Maldon, meaning a (Viking) army in ships. In this instance, æsc is used as a metonym for ships in the same manner as it is often used as a poetic metonym for spears, both being made from ash wood.

This takes us to the two elements that comprise the name: æsc and here. As well as referring to warships and battle-spears, æsc also carries connotations of obscure, or runic, knowledge. For example, the TDOE gives us (1) ash tree; (2) a light, swift ship, especially a Viking ship; (3) in poetry: a spear; but then (4) ash, the name of the runic letter (cf. æ). An example of æsc being utilised in this latter capacity can be found in Exeter Book Riddle 42, where the riddler claims that he can reveal the names of the creatures through runstafas: ‘þær sceal Nyd wesan / twega oþer ond se torhta Æsc / an an linan’ (8–10). It is also interesting to note that, as a noun, æ has the meaning (1) law (divine and secular), statement of law (written or customary), code of behaviour.⁶ This could well be significant when we consider that, in her slaying of Æschere, Grendel’s mother adhered to the heroic ethic of the blood feud.⁷ And yet, as an aglæca, she is also one who violates some natural or moral law.⁸ Evidently, the first element of Æschere’s name identifies him as a fitting victim for her. The second element of the name, here, is glossed by Klaeber as ‘army’ and is used many times in Beowulf to form compound words such as here-grima (war-mask or helm), here-net (war-net or mail shirt) and here-sceaft (battle-shaft or spear).⁹ It is apparent that in the name ‘Æschere’ there is the simultaneous combining and opposing of knowledge (both lore and law) and violence (warfare).

This is also the case when one considers Æschere’s role in the narrative. At around line 1320, Beowulf asks if Hrothgar is well rested, and the king tells him about Grendel’s mother’s attack. He describes Æschere as follows:

‘Ne frin þu æfter sælum! Sorh is geniwod

Denigea leodum: dead is Æschere,

Yrmenlafes yldra broþor,

min runwita ond min rædbora,

eaxlgestealla ðonne we on orlege

hafelan weredon, þonne hniton feþan,

eoferas cnysedan. Swylc scolde eorl wesan,

æþeling ærgod, swylc Æschere wæs. (1322–29)

[Don’t you ask after well-being! Sorrow is renewed for the Danes: Æschere is dead, Yrmenlaf’s elder brother, my rune-knower and advice-bearer, my shoulder-companion when we guarded heads in war, when in battle the troops clashed, the boars crashed together. So should a nobleman, a good prince, be, so Æschere was.]

Here, then, Hrothgar describes Æschere as ‘min runwita ond min rædbora’ (1325). Runwita is glossed by Klaeber as ‘confidant, trusted adviser’ and rædbora as ‘counsellor’.¹⁰ Translators of the poem usually opt for similar terms: Michael Alexander has Hrothgar describe Æschere as his ‘closest counsellor’ and ‘keeper of my thoughts’; Heaney has him as a ‘soul-mate’ and a ‘true mentor’; Dick Ringler, in a more recent translation, still has ‘counsellor, confidant, and closest friend’.¹¹ Although ‘counsellor’, ‘adviser’ and ‘confidant’ are all acceptable modern translations, more is revealed about Æschere’s role in Heorot if we look back at the Old English: in particular, the pairing of run and ræd.

Run carries the sense of secret consultation, of words that must not be overheard. It is used early on in Beowulf (again paired with ræd) when Grendel is ravaging the hall and ‘Monig oft gesæt, / rice to rune; ræd eahtedon’ [Many powerful ones often sat at secret counsel; they deliberated advice] (171–2). The word run also, of course, carries the related meaning of ‘mystery’ or ‘a secret’, as well as ‘that which is written, with the idea of mystery or magic’.¹² As a noun, wita pr...