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Grendel is the first of the three monsters killed by the great hero Beowulf in the epic Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf. Here’s how the story goes:
Heorot, the magnificent hall of the great Danish king Hrothgar, is being terrorized by the monster Grendel. Night after night, Grendel swoops in from the misty moors to slaughter Hrothgar’s thanes (warriors) where they lie sleeping on benches around the hall. The devastating attacks go on for twelve long years until word of Hrothgar’s plight comes to his young kinsman Beowulf. With his band of 14 loyal thanes, Beowulf travels by sea from the land of the Geats on the west coast of Sweden. He swears to Hrothgar that he will battle Grendel in single combat, spurning weapons to fight the monster hand-to-hand.
The night’s feasting ended, Beowulf and his men push their mead-benches against the wall and lie down to sleep. In off the moors comes the monster and rips the door off its iron hinges, mad for the blood of the sleeping men. He mauls one of the men and heads for Beowulf who is feigning sleep. Just as Grendel reaches to grab him, Beowulf locks him in a handgrip so strong that when Grendel tries desperately to escape, his arm is torn off at the shoulder. The poet comments, with the dry wit so beloved of those times, that it was the worst trip the terror-monger had taken to Heorot. The monster skulks back to his lair in the fens to die a terrible and lonely death while the hero remains to be feted and rewarded by Hrothgar and his Queen Wealtheow.
It turns out to be convenient that Beowulf, whose name means ‘bear,’ wants to fight the monster with nothing more than his own physical strength. It comes out when his men attack Grendel with their swords that Grendel is demonically protected from injury by mortal blade. But more than that, it’s a choice that reveals Beowulf’s true nature. Here I’m moving beyond the Beowulf poem to the hero’s analogues in Scandinavian sagas, where he emerges as a shape-shifter who is transformed in battle by his bear spirit.
But back to Grendel. The poet describes Grendel as “a powerful demon, a prowler through the dark” [l.86]. More, he is described as one of the many banished monsters (think ogres and giants) descended from Cain, outlawed and condemned by God as outcasts. The image of satanic malice raised by his descent from Cain would automatically have been understood by the poet’s Anglo-Christian audience. But there are plenty of bad guys in the Bible—why choose Cain?
Surely it’s because Cain’s particular crime was to kill his own brother. What greater act of disloyalty can there be than to kill your brother? And in this way Grendel represents a cultural malevolence that predates the arrival of Christianity. He is the warrior who turns on his own companions, the outcast who abandons his oath to his king and despises the social norms of generosity and fidelity. Even more than his demonic descent, that is what makes Grendel a monster.
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Grendel is a man-eating demon (never a good sign) that lives in the land of the Spear-Danes and attacks King Hrothgar's mead-hall, Heorot, every evening. The narrator of Beowulf claims that Grendel's motivation is hearing Hrothgar's bard sing songs about God's creation of the world, which rubs his demonic nature the wrong way.
Whatever the reason, every night Grendel slaughters more Danes and feeds on their corpses after tearing them limb from limb. Although he can't be harmed by the blade of any edged weapon, Grendel finally meets his match when the Geatish warrior Beowulf takes him on in a wrestling match.
Cannibalism, Curses, And Cain, Oh My!
The poet explains that Grendel and his mommy are the descendants of the Biblical Cain, which suggests not only that they are part of a larger religious or supernatural scheme of evil, but also that they are connected with one of the worst things possible in tribal culture— fratricide, or the killing of a brother:
Grendel was the name of this grim demon haunting the marches, marauding round the heath and the desolate fens; he had dwelt for a time in misery among the banished monsters, Cain's clan, whom the creator had outlawed and condemned as outcasts. For the killing of Abel the Eternal Lord had exacted a price: Cain got no good from committing that murder because the Almighty made him anathema and out of the curse of his exile there sprang ogres and elves and evil phantoms and the giants too who strove with God time and again until He gave them their reward. (102-114)
However, at other points in the poem, Grendel seems less like a Biblical figure and more like a ghost, a demon, or something else that belongs in a Halloween-themed horror movie:
So times were pleasant for the people there until finally one, a fiend out of hell, began to work his evil in the world. (99-101)
Critics also like to play with the idea that Grendel might represent something that isn't supernatural at all—a member of another tribe, an outcast, or a warrior who won't play by the rules. After all, the real problem with Grendel is not that he kills people. Pretty much everyone in this story kills people.
The problem with Grendel is that he seems to kill for fun and he won't pay the death-price: the treasure that he should give to the Danes to make reparations for the lives that he has taken. So, it's possible to see Grendel, not as a fantastic monster, but as a monstrous human warrior with a pathological love for violence.
Or, to spin it another way, you can read Grendel as a vilification of "the other," a demonic representation of someone outside the tribe. Of course, since he feeds on the corpses of his victims, that makes him a cannibal. But maybe that just adds to the chilling horror of it all.
Likely the poem’s most memorable creation, Grendel is one of the three monsters that Beowulf battles. His nature is ambiguous. Though he has many animal attributes and a grotesque, monstrous appearance, he seems to be guided by vaguely human emotions and impulses, and he shows more of an interior life than one might expect. Exiled to the swamplands outside the boundaries of human society, Grendel is an outcast who seems to long to be reinstated. The poet hints that behind Grendel’s aggression against the Danes lies loneliness and jealousy. By lineage, Grendel is a member of “Cain’s clan, whom the creator had outlawed / and condemned as outcasts.” (106–107). He is thus descended from a figure who epitomizes resentment and malice. While the poet somewhat sympathetically suggests that Grendel’s deep bitterness about being excluded from the revelry in the mead-hall owes, in part, to his accursed status, he also points out that Grendel is “[m]alignant by nature” and that he has “never show[n] remorse” (137).
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For other uses, see Grendel (disambiguation). Grendel is a character in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf (700–1000). He is one of the poem's three antagonists (along with his mother and the dragon), all aligned in opposition against the protagonist Beowulf. Grendel is feared by all in Heorot but Beowulf. A descendant of Cain, Grendel is described as "a creature of darkness, exiled from happiness and accursed of God, the destroyer and devourer of our human kind".[1] He is usually depicted as a monster or a giant, although his status as a monster, giant, or other form of supernatural being is not clearly described in the poem and thus remains the subject of scholarly debate. The character of Grendel and his role in the story of Beowulf have been subject to numerous reinterpretations and re-imaginings.
Beowulf's author often uses various substitute phrases for Grendel's name like this one, the mearc stapa ("mark-stepper"), an inhabitant of the borderland.
Grendel is a character in the poem Beowulf, preserved in the Nowell Codex.[2] Grendel, being cursed as the descendant of the Biblical Cain, is "harrowed" by the sounds of singing that come every night from the mead-hall of Heorot built by King Hrothgar. He is unable to bear it any more and attacks Heorot. Grendel continues to attack the Hall every night for twelve years, killing its inhabitants and making this magnificent mead-hall unusable. To add to his monstrous description the poet details how Grendel consumes the men he kills; "now that he could hope to eat his fill."[1]
Beowulf hears of these attacks and leaves his native land of the Geats to destroy Grendel. He is warmly welcomed by King Hrothgar, who gives a banquet in celebration. Afterwards Beowulf and his warriors bed down in the mead hall to await the inevitable attack of the creature. Grendel stalks outside the building for a time, spying the warriors inside. He then makes a sudden attack, bursting the door with his fists and continuing through the entry. The first warrior Grendel finds is still asleep, so he seizes the man and devours him. Grendel grabs a second warrior, but is shocked when the warrior grabs back with fearsome strength. As Grendel attempts to disengage, the reader discovers that Beowulf is that second warrior. Beowulf uses neither weapon nor armour in this fight. He also places no reliance on his companions and had no need of them. He trusts that God has given him strength to defeat Grendel, whom he believes is God's adversary.[3] Finally Beowulf tears off Grendel's arm, mortally wounding the creature. Grendel flees but dies in his marsh den. There, Beowulf later engages in a fierce battle with Grendel's mother, over whom he triumphs even if only thanks to a sword found on-site. Following her death, Beowulf finds Grendel's corpse and removes his head, which he keeps as a trophy. Beowulf then returns to the surface and to his men at the "ninth hour" (l. 1600, "nōn", about 3 pm).[4] He returns to Heorot, where a grateful Hrothgar showers him with gifts.
In 1936, J. R. R. Tolkien's Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics discussed Grendel and the dragon in Beowulf.[5] Tolkien argues that "the evil spirits took visible shape" in the characters of Grendel and the dragon; however, the author's concern is focused on Beowulf.[6] Tolkien points out that while Grendel has Christian origins as the descendant of Cain, he "cannot be dissociated from the creatures of northern myth."[7] Tolkien also argues for the importance of Grendel's role in the poem as an "eminently suitable beginning" that sets the stage for Beowulf's fight with the dragon: "Triumph over the lesser and more nearly human is cancelled by defeat before the older and more elemental."[8] Tolkien's essay was the first work of scholarship in which Anglo-Saxon literature was seriously examined on its literary merits – not just for scholarship about the origins of the English language, or what historical information could be gleaned from the text, as was common in the 19th century. Tolkien also wrote his own translation of Beowulf, entitled Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary together with Sellic Spell,[9] between 1920 and 1926.
Physical description
During the decades following Tolkien's essay, the exact description of Grendel was debated by scholars. Indeed, because his exact appearance is never directly described in Old English by the original Beowulf poet, part of the debate revolves around what is known, namely his descent from the biblical Cain (the first murderer in the Bible). Grendel is called a sceadugenga – "shadow walker", in other words "night goer" – given that the monster was repeatedly described to be in the shroud of darkness.[10][11]
A visual interpretation is the depiction of Grendel in Robert Zemeckis's 2007 film Beowulf.
Interpretations
Some scholars have linked Grendel's descent from Cain to the monsters and giants of the Cain tradition.[12]
Seamus Heaney, in his translation of Beowulf, writes in lines 1351–1355 that Grendel is vaguely human in shape, though much larger:
... the other, warped
in the shape of a man, moves beyond the pale
bigger than any man, an unnatural birth
called Grendel by the country people
in former days.[13]
Heaney's translation of lines 1637–1639 also notes that Grendel's disembodied head is so large that it takes four men to transport it. Furthermore, in lines 983–989, when Grendel's torn arm is inspected, Heaney describes it as being covered in impenetrable scales and horny growths:
Every nail, claw-scale and spur, every spike
and welt on the hand of that heathen brute
was like barbed steel. Everybody said
there was no honed iron hard enough
to pierce him through, no time proofed blade
that could cut his brutal blood caked claw[14]
Alfred Bammesgerber looks closely at line 1266 where Grendel's ancestry is said to be the "misbegotten spirits"[15] that sprang from Cain after he was cursed. He argues that the words in Old English, geosceaftgasta, should be translated "the great former creation of spirits".[16]
Peter Dickinson (1979) argued that seeing as the considered distinction between man and beast at the time the poem was written was simply man's bipedalism, the given description of Grendel being man-like does not necessarily imply that Grendel is meant to be humanoid, going as far as stating that Grendel could easily have been a bipedal dragon.[17]
Other scholars such as Sherman Kuhn (1979) have questioned Grendel's description as a monster, stating:
There are five disputed instances of āglǣca [three of which are in Beowulf, lines] 649, 1269, 1512 ... In the first ... the referent can be either Beowulf or Grendel. If the poet and his audience felt the word to have two meanings – monster and hero – the ambiguity would be troublesome; but if by āglǣca they understood a fighter, the ambiguity would be of little consequence, for battle was destined for both Beowulf and Grendel and both were fierce fighters (216–217).
Katherine O'Keefe has suggested that Grendel resembles a berserker, because of numerous associations that seem to point to this possibility.[18]
Sonya R. Jensen argues for an identification between Grendel and Agnar, son of Ingeld, and suggests that the tale of the first two monsters is actually the tale of Ingeld, as mentioned by Alcuin in the 790s. The tale of Agnar tells how he was cut in half by the warrior Bothvar Bjarki (Warlike little Bear), and how he died "with his lips separated into a smile". One major parallel between Agnar and Grendel would thus be that the monster of the poem has a name perhaps composed of a combination of the words gren and daelan. The poet may be stressing to his audience that Grendel "died laughing", or that he was gren-dael[ed] or "grin-divid[ed]", after having his arm torn off at the shoulder by Beowulf, whose name means bee-wolf or bear.[19]
Main article: List of artistic depictions of Grendel
Grendel appears in many other cultural works.
- ^ a b Jones, Gwyn (1972). Kings, Beasts and Heroes. London: Oxford University Press. p. 12. ISBN 0-19-215181-9.
- ^ Heaney, Seamus (2012). Beowulf (9th ed.). New York: Norton. pp. 41–108. ISBN 978-0-393-91249-4.
- ^ Nicholson, Lewis E. (1963). An Anthology of Beowulf Criticism. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. p. 236.
- ^ George, Jack. Beowulf: A Student Edition. p. 123.
- ^ Tolkien, J. R. R. "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics." In Daniel Donoghue (ed.), Beowulf a Verse Translation. Norton, 2002, pp. 103–130.
- ^ Tolkien, 2002, p. 119
- ^ Tolkien, 2002, p. 122
- ^ Tolkien, 2002, p. 128.
- ^ Tolkien, J. R. R.; Tolkien, Christopher (2014). Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary.
- ^ Thorpe, Anglo-Saxon Poems, p. 48
- ^ Heyne, Beowulf, pp. 129, 228, s.v. "genga"; p. 298, s.v. "scadu-genga"
- ^ Williams, David (1982). Cain and Beowulf: A Study in Secular Allegory. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0802055194.
- ^ Heaney, Seamus. Beowulf lines 1351–1355.
- ^ Heaney, Seamus. Beowulf lines 983–989.
- ^ Beowulf. Translated by Seamus Heaney. Norton Anthology of English Literature, 9th ed., vol. A, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, Norton, 2012, pp. 41–108
- ^ Bammesberger, Alfred. "Grendel's Ancestry". Notes & Queries, vol. 55, is. 3, 1 September 2008, pp. 257–260. doi:10.1093/notesj/gjn112.
- ^ Dickinson, Peter. The Flight of Dragons ch. 10 "Beowulf". New English Library, 1979.
- ^ O'Keefe, Katherine O'Brien. "Beowulf, Lines 702b–836: Transformations and the Limits of the Human," in Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 23 [1981]: pp. 484–485.
- ^ Jensen, S. R. (1998). Beowulf and the Monsters. Sydney: ARRC.
- Cawson, Frank. The Monsters in the Mind: The Face of Evil in Myth, Literature, and Contemporary Life. Sussex, England: Book Guild, 1995: 38–39.
- Gardner, John. Grendel. New York, 1971.
- Heyne, Moritz. Harrison, James A. Sharp, Robert. Beowulf: An Anglo-Saxon Poem, and The Fight at Finnsburg: a Fragment Boston, Massachusetts: Ginn & Company, 1895.
- Jack, George. Beowulf: A Student Edition. Oxford University Press: New York, 1997.
- Jensen, S. R. Beowulf and the Monsters. ARRC: Sydney, corrected edition, 1998. Extracts available online.
- Jensen, S. R. Beowulf and the Battle – beasts of Yore. ARRC: Sydney, 2004. Available online.
- Klaeber, Frederick, ed. Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg. Third ed. Boston: Heath, 1950.
- Kuhn, Sherman M. "Old English Aglaeca – Middle Irish Olach". Linguistic Method: Essays in Honor of Herbert Penzl. Eds. Irmengard Rauch and Gerald F. Carr. The Hague, New York: Mouton Publishers, 1979. 213–30.
- Thorpe, Benjamin (trans.). The Anglo-Saxon Poems of Beowulf: The Scôp or Gleeman's Tale and the Fight at Finnesburg Oxford University Press. 1885.
- Tolkien, J. R. R. (1937). Beowulf, the Monsters and the Critics. First ed. Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture, British Academy, 1936. London: Humphrey Milford.
- Media related to Grendel at Wikimedia Commons
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