Beowulf - Institutionen för arkeologi och antik historia

Wealhtheow, whose name means ‘celtic servant’, steps forward onto a stage
dominated by four men: King Hroðgar, his brother’s son Hroðulf, Beowulf and
Unfreð, the king’s most important official, his þyle or ‘speaker’, who is sitting at the
king’s feet. The Queen’s two small sons and other young men are also in the hall.
To begin with both Hroðgar and Hroðulf are called good; later, towards the end of
her speech, Wealhtheow expresses the hope that Hroðulf will honour the goodness
once showed to him by Hroðgar and Wealhtheow and be good to her children, should
her husband die first; finally, she turns to the bench where her sons are sitting and there
we also find the good Geat, Beowulf. Unfreð is not called good since that is not what
he is; on the contrary he is one of the symptoms of the crisis at the Danish court. The
crisis thus reflected in Unferð’s somewhat rotten Danish character makes us suspect
that killing Grendel is perhaps not enough to solve all problems.
So, if we remember the beginning of the poem, when princes are advised to be
generous (vv. 20 ff.) and also the fact that Hroðgar knew Beowulf when Beowulf was
a child, we can understand why Beowulf is sitting next to the princes and the point in the
Queen’s speech besides her wish to secure her children. To remember the good once
done to us is to be ready to do the good in return rather than fighting each other.
The speech concerns the behaviour of a king when there is peace in his country, but
more so peace in the family, since before Wealhtheow speaks we have been informed
that the events in Beowulf (Part I) happened when there was still peace and faith
between Hroðgar and Hroðulf, and at the same time we have been told quite bluntly
that Unfreð is a deceitful and false character. This is the author’s flashback to what he
believes are the actual historical events into which he fits his more fictional tale about
Beowulf.
There is obviously a need for reconciliation and Wealhtheow underlines her
speech by urging the men to drink in a ceremonial or ritual way. Wealhtheow tries to
secure her sons by creating a balance between the four power factors and binding
them to continue to be good. Of course we cannot hope for Unferð to be good, but
we can hope for an axis of trust between Beowulf and the King and that Beowulf,
who is symbolically seated between the sons, will save them if needed.
It is worth noting that the power constellation in Hroðgar’s hall is the same as that
which characterises two petty kingdoms in the early Landnám-phase in Iceland,
namely: the King, one of the King’s close relatives, his foremost official and the
outsider (Herschend 1994) (Fig. 31). In Iceland these cornerstones are represented
by four different farms dominating the landscape, but obviously when the owners of
these farms meet they are the prominent men in the hall. There is hope in this model
of balanced power, and Wealhtheow’s speech shows its close affinity with goodness.
The model may not always succeed in keeping the peace, but it is a constitutional
model for preventing tragedies like the slaughter at Finnsburg. The Queen can
hardly hope to convince the drunken retainers in the hall of the benefits of peace, but
she may succeed with the four leaders of the kingdom. That is why she directs her
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