The Brosings' Torque
The travels of a treasure through the world of Beowulf
The Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf is written in a highly allusive, digressing style, which makes frequent reference to other tales in the Germanic tradition. Most of the time, the poet sticks to his own tale, but at certain points – triggered by a referential object, or an analogy with a character, or a story-within-a-story – he will briefly veer off the main path and onto some side-track. For modern readers ignorant of the full tradition (for most of it did not survive in writing), these tracks are more or less overgrown and often very difficult to follow.
Perhaps the best example of this tendency (or the worst, depending on your perspective) occurs in the eighteenth fitt of the poem, in which the Danish queen hands Beowulf the Brosinga mene – the ‘torque of the Brosings’.
This is almost certainly the Brisingamen of Scandinavian tradition, a torque or necklace or neck-ring owned by the goddess Freyja. At a memorable moment in the Thrymskvitha of the Poetic Edda – the story in which Thor disguises himself as Freyja in order to feign marriage to a giant who has stolen his hammer – Freyja responds to the original request that she marry the giant with such indignation that the torque bursts from her neck (Henry Adams Bellows translation, p.177):
Wrathful was Freyja, and fiercely she snorted,
And the dwelling great of the gods was shaken,
And burst was the mighty Brising’s necklace:
“Most lustful indeed would I look to all
If I journeyed with thee to the giants’ home.”
Perhaps this torque, like the Nibelungen hoard, found its way into mortal hands at some point in the traditional chronology; or perhaps it was merely copied by mortal men. But its divine associations, however excluded from the monotheistic perspective of Beowulf, would make it by far the most significant treasure that Beowulf receives from the Danes for defeating the monsters that plague them.
The context of its giving is this. Beowulf has just defeated Grendel, the first of the three monsters in the poem, who had previously haunted the Danish king-hall after dark and devoured all who challenged him. The king – let’s call him Rothgar1 – is overwhelmed by gratitude for this deed and declares his intention to adopt Beowulf as a son. Naturally, his queen – whom we shall call Wealthew2 – is less than overjoyed at this prospect when she turns up at the celebratory feast.
But she does not allow this to overshadow the joyful atmosphere in the hall, or the courtesy and gratitude due to the kingdom’s saviour. She begins by handing a full cup to her lord, bidding him to be joyful on this occasion and to treat his guests well, and then drops in the detail that she has heard about his adoption plans. She exhorts him to rejoice in the cleansing of his hall, advises him to leave the kingdom to his biological sons, and assures him that his nephew Rothulf3 will be an honourable regent should the king expire before the boys reach maturity.
Then she approaches Beowulf, hands him a full cup as well, and gives him a set of gifts followed by the torque itself. One imagines that the Danish queen was expected in any case to give some sort of reward to Beowulf, who at this point has received several treasures from the hands of the king. But the inclusion of this fabulously valuable item suggests that she is compensating him, winning his tacit agreement to gracefully forget about the whole adoption business.
Regardless, as soon as this torque appears in the narrative, the poet takes the opportunity to digress into its worldly history (without, of course, mentioning its otherworldly history). This takes us down a knotty path indeed, landmarked by once-famous names that have since become unrecognizable. But I have appended several footnotes to my translation that explain most of these references and should enable us to keep our bearings.4
(As always, if you know more Old English than I do and want to criticize the translation, feel free to do so in the comments. And if you want to know more about the meter I am using and how I have adapted it, read this.)
The full cup was given, a friendly greeting
Offered with words, and well-wound gold
Proffered with goodwill: a pair of arm-rings,
Bracelets and mail-coat, and the best neck-torque5
That ever I have heard about, this earth upon.
Never under heaven have I known a greater
Hoard-prize of heroes, since Hammo6 bore
Off to a bright stronghold7 the Brosings’ torque –
The jewel and the gold-bezel8 – jealousies fleeing,
Away from Ermanric9, to wisdom eternal.10
He held that ring-torque, Highlock the Goth11,
Nephew of Swerting, on his mortal trip,
When he, beneath his banner, the booty guarded,
Watching the war-spoil. Wyrd12 took him
After he, out of arrogance, had asked for trouble –
A fight with the Frisians.13 He was ferrying treasures,
Pearl-precious stones14, upon the bowl of waves,
A lord in all his power – he perished undershield.15
Into Frankish clutches16 came the king’s body,
The corslet on his breast, and the collar as well.
Worse were the fighters who the fallen plundered
After war had shorn them. The sons of Gothia
Held the charnel-field. The hall resounded.17
Wealthew parleyed18, before warriors she spake…
The story of the torque is told at this point, and the queen launches into a characteristically courteous speech: lauding Beowulf to the skies, exhorting him to be gracious to her sons, and dropping in a purely incidental reference to the host of loyal and united Danes who do what she says. Just as she had hoped, the adoption business is not mentioned again – at least, not until just before the fight with Grendel’s mother, at which point Beowulf remembers it as a promise that Rothgar would stand in loco parentis to him in the event that he died in battle. (There are, as you can see, some advantages to an oral-traditional culture in which no-one is taking the minutes.)
By taking the liberty of merging the Scandinavian tradition with the Anglo-Saxon one, we can reckon up the following itinerary of owners and homes for the Brosings’ torque:
The Brosings, wherever and whoever they were (the name could be an ethnonym or a family name), who may have forged it in the first place;
The goddess Freyja (Frig, pronounced ‘free’) in the land of the gods, from whom it was periodically borrowed or stolen by others, and from whom it may have been stolen or gifted or copied before falling into mortal hands;
The tyrant-king Ermanric (Eormanric) in his East-Gothic empire, located somewhere in the vicinity of modern Ukraine;
The hero Hammo (Hama), who carried it away westward and may have donated it to a monastery;
Queen Wealthew (Wealhþeow) at the Danish court of the Scyldings (how it ended up with her, and whether this has much traditional provenance, cannot be known);
The hero Beowulf, who took it to the land of the Goths (or Geats, Geatas) and gifted it to the king, after which it was usually worn by the queen;
King Highlock (Hygelac), who chose for some reason to wear it on his raid into Frisia, which ended with his death;
Theudebert son of Theuderic I, who may or may not have gifted it to his father, at the Frankish court of the Merovingians.
And for all we know, that was not the end of its journey.
The original name in Old English is Hroþgar. My convention is to modernize where necessary by constructing a form in which the name might have come down to us had the oral tradition been preserved.
The original name is Wealhþeow. Much has been made of the fact that wealh means ‘alien’ or ‘barbarian’ – that is to say, one of the wealas or ‘welsh’, a member of a non-Germanic race – and þeow means ‘servant’ or ‘slave’. But Wealthew is not a ‘welshwoman’, as she is elsewhere called a ‘lady of the Helmings’ (ides Helminga); and the suffix -þeow is no indication of servile birth, as it also appears in the name of Beowulf’s father (Ecgþeow or Edgethew). According to some scholars, the original form of the name was Wælþeow (‘chosen servant’, i.e. of a god), and the scribe bungled the name by associating it with that of the ‘welsh’.
The original name is Hroþulf, commonly identified with the the Hrolf or Rolf of the Scandinavian Hrolfs Saga Kraka. The mention of this character is another, grimly ironic reference to tradition: in reality he will end up killing the king’s sons and usurping the throne, whereas Beowulf (to judge from his actions later on in the poem) would have played the honourable regent and yielded to them.
Although I consult many sources for these translations, in this particular case, Beowulf on Steorarume proved invaluable and pointed me in many right directions.
The word is healsbeaga or ‘neck-ring’, which could be a necklace, but is more likely (especially in the case of a mighty treasure) to refer to a collar made of precious metal. That is the sense in which I am using the word ‘torque’ (also spelled ‘torc’, but this is more likely to conjure up a specifically Celtic image that would be inappropriate here).
In Old English, Hama (I have ‘masculinized’ the name according to modern sensibilities). He is also known as Heimir (Norse) and Heime (German), and connected both with Dietrich von Bern (a.k.a. Theodoric the Great) and King Ermanric (see note 9).
This could also be a ‘bright city’ or ‘bright town’, or maybe a ‘bright fortress’ (the ambiguous word is burg). It is on account of the traditional reference to a monastery (see note 10) that I have avoided these interpretations.
The words in the original are sigle and sincfæt, which could also be translated as ‘jewel and treasure-cup’, presumably unrelated treasures that were carried off with the torque. It is much more likely that they refer to the torque itself, which may have had a large jewel and a ‘cup’ or ‘vessel’ to hold it (in modern terms, a setting or bezel), which we can fairly guess was made of gold. It could be that the preceding word mene refers specifically to the chain that goes around the neck (but can also be used generically for the whole torque, much as our word ‘necklace’ encompasses chain and pendant), in which case the poet is emphasizing that the Brosings’ torque was carried off ‘chain, jewel and bezel’.
Ermanric or Ermanaric (OE Eormanric, ‘universal ruler’) was a king who is said to have ruled over several of the Eastern Gothic realms before the invasion of the Huns. He is portrayed as a cruel tyrant in Germanic traditional sources (including the Poetic Edda, in which he appears as Jormunrek). His ‘jealousies’ are more precisely searoniðas, which could refer to hateful machinations, or (as I think more apposite) serpentine paranoias of the sort that led him to murder his wife Swanhild on suspicion of infidelity.
More precisely, he ‘chose eternal rede’ (geceas ecne ræd). In the Thidrekssaga, Heimir is shown entering a monastery and offering his possessions. Although nothing is said of his owning the torque in that narrative, this event seems to be what the poet is alluding to here.
Beowulf’s king and uncle, Hygelac Geata (I have substituted the more generic ‘Goths’ for ‘Geats’ because the latter ethnonym has become unrecognizable). The Anglo-Latin Book of Monsters mentions a King Huiglaucus of the Getae, who was so huge that his bones were preserved after his death and shown to travellers. If the character of Beowulf is (as Tolkien thought) a pure figment of fairytale, then perhaps tradition connected him with this king because they shared the traits of huge size and strength.
I trust Old English wyrd is recognizable enough to need no translation. Its closest New English equivalent would not be ‘fate’ or ‘destiny’ (that would be geosceaft) but rather ‘hap’.
This raid into Frisia by King “Chlochilaichus” (a.k.a. Hygelac, Huiglaucus, etc.) is mentioned by Gregory of Tours in his History of the Franks, and can be dated to 516 or 521.
In the original, eorclanstanas, which can refer to pearls or topazes or precious stones in general. The word eorclanstan inspired the Arkenstone in Tolkien’s Hobbit.
That is to say, he died in battle (he under rande gecranc).
Specifically, the forces of Theudebert, son of the Merovingian king Theoderic I (if their names appeared in the poem, we could modernize them as Thedebright and Thederic respectively). Perhaps he would have given the torque to his father after his return, just as Beowulf ends up giving all the Danish treasure into the hands of his own king.
This ambiguous phrase (in the original, it reads heal swege onfeng, sweg being a generic term for loud sound) seems a masterful way for the poet to return us from his digression to the scene at hand. In the future, the hall of the Goths (Geats) resounds with weeping as the torque is lost to the Franks; but in the present, the hall of the Danes resounds with cheering as it is freely given to Beowulf (who will of course give it to the man who will lose it).
This word, maþelode, is used in the poetic language as a generic term for ‘speaking’.