Beowulf - Institutionen för arkeologi och antik historia

Distant or stand-offish Germanic kings are nothing new. Hroðgar’s behaviour towards
Beowulf between the fights with Grendel and Grendel’s mother (vv. 1345 ff.),
or Hygelac’s attitude to the young Beowulf (vv. 2177 ff.; above p. 89) are significant
examples.
If our interpretation of the poems to Sigibert and Brunhild is correct we can say
that the way the King is depicted in relation to his most loyal men is a projection of
his divine origin. His roots give him the ability to sit in his high settle, survey the world
and know what must be done. They also invest him with the power to make others,
i.e., Gogo and Lupus, feel obliged to carry out his wishes, i.e., do what must be
done. Thus, the King not only towers high above everybody else, he is also alien—
a perfect man but marked by otherness.
Lupus is the hero of the poem and his tour a Beowulfian one inasmuch as it starts
with his being made aware of a threat to the kingdom, and thus the hall; accordingly
he sets out to solve the problem, solves it and returns a hero to the hall. This means
that he has completed a turn in the spiral (cf. Fig. 32), and his actions are like those
of Beowulf inspired by loyalty to a king and to the hall-governed society. It is true
that he benefits from his campaign, but for all we know he did not undertake it for his
own benefit. Even the way Lupus handles the emissaries on behalf of the King has its
parallel in Beowulf, namely in the negotiations conducted by Beowulf and his men
with the courtier Wulfgar, the equivalent of Lupus, who had been sent out to negotiate
on Hroðgar’s behalf.
The hall-governed society is represented by the dukes, whose task it is to approve
of Lupus’ actions, but also by the personification of the hall when we close in
on it:
65 occurrens dominis veneranda palatia comples
et tecnm ingrediens multiplicatur honor.
te veniente novo domus emicat alma sereno
et reparant genium regia tecta suum.
nempe oculos recipit cum te videt aula redire,
(Venantius Book VII, poem 7, ll. 65–69)
When you meet with your lords you fill the venerable palace, and honour, which
enters with you, is multiplied. When you arrive the house shines from a new
serenity and the royal dwelling regains its genius. The hall gets its eyes back
seeing that you return,
These lines hint at the existence of a hall society strongly dependent on information
and therefore also potentially interested in Lupus’ returning with the victory and
knowledge about what happened. The loyal and approving dukes are not a new
acquaintance; on the contrary, we saw them at the wedding when they trotted up the
hill with Sigibert, a happy rejoicing aristocracy otherwise difficult to detect among
the Merovingians.
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