The Finnsburg Tale

Untangling the knottiest part of Beowulf

Reading new Beowulf translations is a bit like browsing items in the bargain bin. You may not be sure at first how the latest one is going to let you down, but you can be sure that it will.

Seamus Heaney’s rendition is terribly overrated (never believe the media consensus on anything). J.R.R. Tolkien’s is a rough prose draft that he would never have wished to see released to the public. Tom Shippey recently released a judicious scholarly translation, but missed the chance to raise it high above the rest by declining to replicate the original meter. And as for the conservative pastor who didn’t bother to read the original, and the feminist who laced her version with ressentiment and cringy modern slang, the less said about them the better.

Taking all things together, I would venture to say that no translator has yet succeeded in topping Francis Gummere’s version, which came out more than a hundred years ago. Gummere succeeded admirably in replicating the meter and echoing the poetry, and his archaism is well-suited to a work that would have sounded archaic in its own time. But there are some points on which his Beowulf is badly outdated, and one of them is the notoriously obscure ‘Finnsburg episode’.

This is a story within a story, presented as a tale told by the Danish court poet on the day after Beowulf has defeated the monster Grendel. It is narrated in a compressed, abbreviated, highly allusive manner, and assumes a wider knowledge of the legend that had long ceased to exist by the time of the poem’s rediscovery. The only corroborating source available to moderns is another much shorter fragment of Anglo-Saxon poetry (the ‘Finnsburg Fragment’), which refers to the same events.

Enter Tolkien, whose painstaking analysis of the episode was posthumously edited and published as Finn and Hengest. This slim volume throws a lot of light on the beshadowed legend; but it is very much an academic work, full of untranslated Old English, not to be tackled by the casual reader who does not know a smart karl from a snotty churl.¹ It is even lacking a brief summary of the reconstructed story; the following is from the commentary in Shippey’s Beowulf (pp.281-2):

Tension between Danes and Frisians is pacified by the marriage of the Danish princess Hildeburh to the Frisian king Finn; Hnæf, Hildeburh’s brother, visits his sister in Frisia, bringing with him a retinue of champions as well as the son that Hildeburh bore Finn, whom Hnæf had been fostering; Jutish retainers in the service of Finn notice the presence of Jutish warriors in the service of Hnæf; an old rivalry between the Jutes on both sides prompts Finn’s Jutish retainers to instigate a nocturnal ambush on Hnæf and his men; during this ambush, Hnæf and his nephew are killed, but so are many of the Jutish and Frisian men who attacked them; Hnæf’s champions, led now by Hengest, put up such a fierce resistance that a stalemate is reached; Finn promises to support and maintain Hengest’s troop if they will enter into his service and swear oaths to him; Hengest agrees, but the shame of serving the man considered responsible for the death of Hnæf proves unbearable; Hengest resolves to break his oath and kill his current lord in order to avenge his former lord; he and his men kill Finn, murder his bodyguard, loot the palace, and take Hildeburh back to Denmark.

According to Tolkien, Danish expansion had displaced some Jutes, who had then found their way into the service of the Frisian king. In his words, “it is likely enough that both Hnæf (as representing a usurping invading people) and Hengest (as following such a prince, if for no other reason) were objects of hatred to dispossessed and exiled Jutes” (Finn and Hengest, p.159). One imagines that there was more to it than this, and that Hengest was the focus of the Jutish hatred – possibly because he had switched sides, but more probably because of some blood-feud that has been lost to history. This makes most sense in logical terms (Finn, who seems to have been drawn into the fighting reluctantly, would surely have expected trouble had the focus of hatred been Hnæf and the Danes), but also in terms of traditional theme-patterning (the tale of Ingeld, alluded to elsewhere in Beowulf, contains a similar scenario in which it is the sight of someone in the visiting retinue that sparks the trouble).

It only remains to be added that this Hengest may be the very same Hengest remembered in the Arthurian tradition, who took mercenary service with the British king Vortigern before betraying his cause and carving out the beginnings of England. Exile overseas, beyond the bounds of Germanic society, would not be an illogical life path for a man to take after having incurred the moral stain of breaking his oath and killing his lord. It is also worth noting that the name of Hengest, in Beowulf as in Layamon’s Brut, is consistently associated with treachery and moral ambiguity (however much Tolkien, mindful of English national honour, might have wished to stress the mitigating circumstances).

What follows is my own poetic translation of the entire hundred-line episode, based largely on Tolkien’s commentary in Finn and Hengest. In good old Gummerian style, I have opted to replicate the original meter, albeit in a ‘loose-chyming’ mode that should make it easier for me to keep the translation faithful. Three points before we start:

1. However closely guided by Tolkien, I am still a rank amateur in Old English and would welcome any constructive criticism.

2. The names Hildeburh and Hnæf are difficult to pronounce for modern English speakers, so I have ‘updated’ them to Hildbury and Neeve. The name of the Danish king, Hroþgar son of Healfdene, appears once in the text and has likewise been changed to Rothgar son of Halfdane.

3. In order to explain my translation choices, I have had no choice but to festoon the text with footnotes. As long as you can understand what is meant, unless you are interested in scholarly nitpicking over the language of the original poem, I would advise you to ignore them and just read the verses.

Without further ado, let us now place ourselves as flies on the wall of the great Danish hall of Heorot, the Camelot of the northern Germanic world. To say that the atmosphere is merry would be an understatement – all the young fighters and veteran warriors are rejoicing like it’s 19/9/9², because the monster that had haunted the hall for twelve years and devoured all challengers has been sent limping back to the wilderness with a mortal wound. The youthful, abnormally huge and strong Gothish³ hero responsible for this is of course the guest of honour; he has just received a set of gifts from the king, including a bejewelled sword that had belonged to King Halfdane (and might have been equivalent to one of the Crown Jewels).

Once the brave companions who accompanied him in battle (one of whom did not survive) have been appropriately rewarded as well, it is time for the court poet to pick up his harp – or, as we would call it, his lyre.

No traditional poet should be without one

Then song and strings resounded together,

In front of Halfdane’s host-commander⁴;

The gleewood⁵ struck for a story often told.

Then the room-hubbub hushed⁶: Rothgar’s poet

After the mead-taking⁷ had to tell

About the in-laws⁸ of Finn, who were by violence struck;

The hero of the Half-Danes⁹ who had to fall

In the massacre at Frisia – Neeve of the Shieldings.¹⁰

No wish had Hildbury to hail, indeed,

The troth of the Jutes¹¹; guiltlessly

She was deprived of her loved ones, at the play of war,

Her sons and her brothers; they bowed to destiny,

Gored by spears. That was a gutted lady.

Not at all without cause, Hock’s daughter

Would bemoan her lot, when the morning came

And she, beneath the skies, the sight beheld

Of the murder-carnage of kin, where she’d¹² most enjoyed

The delights of the world. The war had swept away

The thanes of Finn, save a few only,

So that never he might, at that meeting-place,

Fight to a finish the affray with Hengest,

Nor drive away¹³ by force the survivors of woe¹⁴

From the prince’s thane.¹⁵ And so to terms he came:

That they another place for them would make prepared,

A hall and a throne; they would by halves control it,

And share the ownership with the sons of Jutes.

And at dispensing of gifts, the son of Folkwald¹⁶

Day after day, the Danes would honour,

And win around with treasures the troops of Hengest,

With equally as much hoarded wealth

And filigreed gold, as to his Frisians gave he

To build their hearts up in the beer-hall.

Thus did they contract, on the two sides,

A firm peace-pact. Finn to Hengest,

With courage undisputed¹⁷, declared by oaths

That the survivors of woe he would by wisemen’s counsels

Honourably rule, as long as any man

Nor by words nor by actions the oath should break,

Nor by machinating malice ever moan the fact¹⁸

That they had followed the slayer¹⁹ of their feudal lord²⁰

When they had found themselves leaderless and forced by need.

If any ranked among the Frisians should by reckless speech

Ever summon back to mind again that murderous hate,

It would be afterwards attested by the edge of the sword.

A pyre was made, and native gold²¹

Was hoisted from the treasure-hoard. The Army-Shieldings’

Best battle-knight was on the bier prepared.

Around him on the pyre could be plainly seen

The bloodstained mail-shirts; boar-signs gilded,

Iron-hard wildswines²²; highbreds²³ many

Disfigured by their wounds. Some fell in the slaughter.²⁴

Hildbury commanded that on Neeve’s pyre

Her selfsame son be consigned to the flames,

His bone-vessel burnt, and on the bier to lay him

At the shoulder of his uncle.²⁵ The sister and mother

Mourned them in sorrow-songs. The stying corpse-smoke

Coiled to the clouds, as the carnage-blaze

Howled high upon the barrow. Heads were melted;

Wound-mouths burst apart; blood hissed out

From foe-bites on bodies. Fire swallowed all –

The greediest of spirits – those whom strife had taken

From the folk-parties both²⁶; and their flower was gone.

Hengest and Finn (as imagined by John Howe)

Then the warriors departed, went to their homes –

Their friends having fallen – Frisia to look upon,

The houses and high-fort.²⁷ Hengest still

Through that slaughter-stained winter, stayed with Finn,

With courage ill-allotted.²⁸ Of his country he thought,

Though he saw that he could not upon the sea drive out

His whorl-prowed ship; for the waters, storm-tossed,

Warred against the winds; then winter waves locked

In chains of ice, until there came anew

A year to all quarters, as yet they come,

Continually observing the times of seasons,

The glory-gleaming weather. Winter passed,

Fair was earth’s bosom; fretted the wanderer²⁹

To be gone from guest-halls. But of just revenge

He thought more strongly than of sea-journeys;

If a moot of enmity³⁰ he might pull off,

So that the children of the Jutes he might recall therein.

And so the warband-fealty he refused not,³¹

When the son of Hunlave³² set on his lap

The light of battle³³, best of swords –

Whose edges were renowned amongst the Jutes.

And so wolfhearted Finn was eft by violence struck,³⁴

Sword-carnage cruel in his selfsame house,

Since of the grim attack Guthlave and Oslave,

Straight from their sea-trip, had sore bemoaned

And blamed him for their sorry lot; the seething heart

Could not be held back in the breast. The hall was reddened

With the lifeblood of foes, and Finn was slain –

The king amid his company – and the queen was taken.

Shielding bowshooters³⁵ bore to their ships

All the native ownings of the homeland-king;

Whatever they could find in Finn’s household

Of jewels and worked-gems. Journeying by sea

They bore back to the Danes the dignified lady

And led her to her people. The lay was sung,

The tale of the minstrel. Merriment began again…

---

And there you have it. The hubbub starts up again on the benches, the Danes break out the wine, the queen comes through the door bedecked in gold. We can buzz off now and leave the gathered men to their revelries and speeches (and their imminent encounter with Grendel’s angry mother).

What I like about these little digressions in Beowulf – and especially this one, the longest of them – is that there is so much to muse upon. Did Neeve turn up at Finn’s hall in a mood of celebration, exchanging joyous courtesies, until he noticed men on the back-benches staring darkly at his grim Jutish retainer? Was Hildbury living an ideal life with Finn, “enjoying the delights of the world”, until the feud erupted and shattered it all to bloodshed like a glass fairytale castle? Did Hengest deliberately take upon himself the task of killing Finn, with its stain of oathbreaking and liegeslaying, because this act alone could sever the ties of honour that bound his companions? Did they promise in return to follow him in his inevitable exile, even to the lands of the wealas – from the Germanic perspective, the ‘barbarians’?

Alas, unless there are still some undiscovered manuscripts out there, most of the specific details have been lost for good. But the poetic language remains, and through its medium, something of the spirit still speaks to us.

1. In Old English, snotor ceorl, a formula that appears more than once in Beowulf.

2. That is to say, a few days after the Battle of the Teutoberg Wald, in which another host of Germanics won a great victory over the Roman legions.

3. Technically, his people are called the Geats; but the word ‘Goth’ was applied to many tribes in the Germanic world, and would almost certainly have been the form in which the ethnonym came down to us had the oral tradition been preserved.

4. That is, Rothgar, who might have commanded his father’s host in his younger days.

5. The harp or lyre.

6. The original MS only has healgamen (hall-revelry, hall-mirth or hall-entertainment, chyming with Hroþgares); I am assuming the scribal omission of a word in the initial half-line, perhaps (ge)swac (ceased), swigode (fell silent) or swaþrode (subsided). The line does not make much sense without it, especially as we are told at the end of the Finnsburg episode that gamen eft astah (revelry started up again), which would imply that the whole story-within-a-story is ‘bracketed’ by the stopping and restarting of revelry in the hall.

7. The MS has æfter medobence (behind a mead-bench? upon a mead-bench?) but context seems to demand æfter medoþe(c)ge, a variable formula that appears elsewhere in Beowulf as æfter beorþege.

8. The word in the MS is eaferum (dative plural of eafora), meaning sons or heirs of Finn. It is puzzling because only one son of Finn is mentioned as having died in the fighting, and whether or not others were involved it is unlikely that any of them were the targets of the attack. Since the focus of the narrative is on the Danes, and a reference is made to Neeve straight afterwards, one would assume that what is meant is aþmum (‘sons-and-brothers-in-law’, ‘male in-laws’, that is to say the male relatives of the Danish princess who has married Finn). This cannot possibly be a slip of the pen, but would have to be a conscious emendation by the scribe (who elsewhere bungles a compound containing the word aþum, which inclines me to think this may not be too much of a stretch). Alternatively, the term eafora (usually translated ‘heir’) could carry the meaning of ‘follower’, in which case the line would read “Of the followers of Finn who were by violence struck”.

9. Don’t confuse this word for the name of the late King Halfdane! It is more likely a moniker for the mixed band of Danes and Jutes commanded by Neeve and later Hengest.

10. The Shielding or Scylding dynasty is that of Rothgar, Halfdane and their ancestors.

11. That is to say, the sense of honour that drove Finn’s Jutish retainers to seek revenge on Neeve and/or Hengest for whatever bad blood had passed between them.

12. The MS reads he (implying Finn), but heo (she, implying Hildbury) makes more sense.

13. The word is forþringan, ‘forthrong’, which probably means something like ‘to rush against in force and thrust aside’.

14. That is, the Danish-Jutish remnant now led by Hengest; it can also be read as ‘survivors of the slaughter’ if we emend wealaf to wællaf.

15. Presumably Hengest, who must have been Neeve’s right-hand man, because leadership devolves upon him after the latter’s death in battle.

16. I.e. Finn

17. Here we encounter a tough phrase, elne unflitme – composed of ellen or ‘courage’ in dative case, and an adverb unflitme that means something like ‘undisputedly’ (cf. geflit, argument or debate). Tolkien says it means “without disputing any of the conditions”, whereas his editor A.J. Bliss emends it to elne unhlitme (see note 28). Yet it would seem that the most obvious interpretation is ‘undisputably with courage’, emphasizing the fact that there was no cowardice involved in the decision to come to terms. Bliss mentions (on p.121 of Finn and Hengest) that unflitme could be construed as an adjective, “as in the close parallel elne unslawe ‘with active zeal’ (Guthlac 950)”, so it could also be ‘with courage undisputed’. In any case, elne un[xxx]e was presumably a traditional poetic formula, and should not be subjected to grammatical nitpicking as if it were a literary construction.

18. Alternatively, Nor by machinating malice ever mention after

19. Finn, who may not have been the actual killer of Neeve, but as the lord of the Jutish retainers would have been seen as ultimately responsible for the outbreak of violence.

20. More literally, their fee-giver

21. Alternatively, A pyre was made, and blades and gold (emending MS icge to ecge, ‘edges’, a common synecdoche for swords). My translation is based on James Rosier’s argument for emending icge to inge, ‘native’ (emphasizing the fact that Finn is showing his generosity by paying for the funeral-honours with his own gold).

22. These figures or carvings of wild boars, mentioned elsewhere in Beowulf, were located on battle-helmets and so can be read as a synecdoche for them.

23. Or highborns; the word is æþeling, originally ‘nobleman’ and later ‘princeling’, a word that combines a sense of noble personal qualities with one of blood qualification.

24. Tolkien reads this as an example of Anglo-Saxon litotes, but it could also be a veiled reference to suicides by men who could not bear the dishonour of the pact with Finn. Some subsequent lines may even have been omitted here (either by the poet or the scribe), for the obvious reason that they do not help the poem in its attempt to ‘rehabilitate’ the old heroic world for a Christian audience.

25. I.e. by the side of Neeve, who may have been his opponent in the fighting, but according to Tolkien was probably the youth’s foster-father and would have fought alongside him.

26. According to Tolkien, this does not refer to the two sides that had fought (as this is not a mixed pyre for both of them), but to the Danes and Jutes who fought on Neeve’s side.

27. Do these lines refer to Finn’s native warriors (“going to their homes”), or to the Danish-Jutish remnant lodged in a strange land (“Frisia to look upon”)? Tolkien thinks the latter more likely, but admits that there is evidence on both sides. Given the compression of the narrative, it does not seem a complete dereliction of judgement to assume that both groups are encompassed.

28. The MS is garbled; the most likely emendation is elne unhlitme, which parallels elne unflitme earlier on in the episode (see note 17). Elne, as we have seen, means ‘with courage’; unhlitme is more obscure, but seems to be related to hleotan, to cast lots or be allotted. Tolkien says that it could mean ‘unluckily’, ‘unhappily’ or ‘not by chance’; Bliss, reading the prefix un- as ‘ill-’, argues that it means ‘ill-fated’; Vickrey, reading un- as negation, argues for ‘not by necessity’ (i.e. voluntarily). None of these fit the context perfectly, so I have opted for ‘ill-[al]lotted’, which means that Hengest is a hero in a hard position: initially forced by his oath to stay with Finn, he is then further constrained by the winter weather, which prevents him from either escaping straight back to Denmark (and thus getting out of the dishonourable position he is in) or taking vengeance and then escaping back to Denmark.

29. The word must be understood in a special sense, one that evokes a figure somewhat akin to the rounin of feudal Japan. The original word wrecca runs the gamut of connotations from ‘wandering adventurer’ to ‘exiled man’ to ‘stranger in foreign lands’ to ‘homeless wretch’. One poetic convention, seen in The Wanderer and The Seafarer, was to analogize the path of monasticism to the hard wandering life of the wrecca.

30. This translation of torngemot is deliberately ambiguous. It is usually interpreted as a ‘meeting of hatred’, i.e. a hostile clash with Finn. I am inclined to interpret it rather as a ‘meeting of grievance’, that is to say, a meeting of the Danish and Jutish remnant in which vengeance would be mooted (torn means fury, grief, bitterness, violent emotion, etc. and so would fit either scenario). This would make sense of the next line, also translated ambiguously: Hengest’s aim is not to remember the Jutes (whether his fallen friends or his Jutish enemies) ‘inwardly’, for surely he already does, but to bring them up and recall them to memory within his ingroup of conspirators. This, I’m afraid, would scotch Tolkien’s theory that Hengest had to be egged to break his oath; he might have gauged the mood, proceeded cautiously, allowed hotter heads to press action upon him, but his own thought of “just revenge” (gyrnwræce, revenge for injury) was what got the ball rolling.

31. Alternatively, The way of the world forwent he not, ‘way of the world’ presumably referring to the heroic law of revenge. Tolkien thinks it too obscure, and emends woroldrædenne (‘way of the world’?) to weorodrædenne (‘warband-fealty’).

32. Perhaps the orphan of a man killed in the fighting. It may refer specifically to Guthlave or Oslave, though in other sources these are stated to be Hunlave’s younger brothers.

33. This could be the name of the sword, or a generic kenning for a mighty sword.

34. The original line is Swylce ferðfrecan Finn eft begeat; I am assuming a missing word in the second half-line, between Finn and eft begeat. It could be something like fæhþe (feud) or feoht (fight); but nothing fits so well as fær (‘sudden violent attack’, translated here as ‘violence’), which appears at the beginning of the episode in reference to the ‘sons of Finn’ paired with the same verb begeat. The word ferðfrecan is usually translated along the lines of ‘bold-hearted’, but could also mean ‘life-greedy’ (frec is usually ‘greedy’, yet freca is ‘warrior’), an ambiguity that Tolkien suggests is best summed up by the quality of wolfishness.

35. This sceotend (‘shooter’) seems to be a generic term for a warrior, like ‘swordsman’ or ‘shieldman’.