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Who might have composed Beowulf, and for what audience? Because the world of the poem is one in which only men publicly recite stories, we can fairly deduce the poet was almost certainly a man. He was also learned and dazzlingly inventive: schooled in heroic lore, Church tradition, and Christian theology, and very possibly in classical literature. Not only was he a man of letters, he also possessed an ear and a sense for oral form that no surviving example of Old English poetry can rival. His composition in sound is a tour de force, a symphony of interlacing mood and voice. And he possessed a dramatic sensibility, preferring to shape his characters through speech and action, rather than narrative.
The Beowulf poet also possessed a keen historical consciousness. We know this because the subject of his poem is history. Its central story depicts the life of a character named Beowulf and the tribal histories of Ġéats and Danes. More broadly, the poem treats the problem of destiny and doom, the convergence of historical cause-and-effect in the lives of men and nations. And on a theological level, Beowulf presents history through the Biblical perspective of eternity, a vision that finds inexorable decay in every monument to human glory.
This historical sensibility may be our best clue to the poem’s origins. For all its inventiveness, Beowulf is built on one historical fact. The seed of its fictive pearl is Beowulf’s King Hyġelac, a 6th-century marauder who led the earliest recorded assault by a Nordic warlord on the Christian Franks, a man who also appears as a giant in the Anglo-Saxon collection of legendary freaks and wonders, The Book of Monsters. Hyġelac’s reputation as a giant in legend and as a marauder in history is significant in a poem that depicts giants as the enemies of God and a marauding monster as the child of Cain. Added to this is a depiction of Danes as pagan warlords, a portrait that Anglo-Saxon victims of Danish Vikings would have known all too well. In this regard, the poem is inescapably historical. Indeed, to approach Beowulf without recognizing such identities is to approach the Gospel of Matthew without knowing who Caesar was.
Although the era of Beowulf’s composition remains a mystery, the poem bears the mark of its maker and its time. The manuscript is confidently dated to the first decade of the 11th century, an era defined by large-scale devastating wrought by the Viking Danes. Similarly, the poem’s depiction of Hygelac as a monstrous proto-Viking aligns with the Liber Monstrorum (Book of Monsters), a text widely copied in the 9th and 10th centuries—yet another era marked by warfare with the Viking Danes. These anchor-points thus offer strong evidence of the poem’s origins, as they effectively align Beowulf’s depictions of Nordic marauders within eras defined by Danish incursions.
Yet more specifically, Beowulf’s distinctive political and theological concerns strongly suggest composition during the tumultuous, nation-making reign of Alfred the Great. This hypothesis is supported by historical events: Alfred suffered a devastating attack with Guthrum’s assault on Chippenham at Twelfth Night. The attack not only threatened his life and his kingdom, it very nearly extinguished Christian Anglo-Saxon culture as well. That traumatic event, more than any other, inspired Alfred’s impassioned commitment to a program of defense. But if the dread of hall attacks prompted Alfred’s decision to mobilize his nation, such dread is also writ large in Beowulf. Throughout the poem, hall attacks recur as the central act of depravity in monsters and men.
Alfred’s complex relationship with his adversaries also relates directly and uniquely to the poem’s critical, yet sympathetic, depiction of Danes. On one hand, the Viking Danes came nearer destroying Alfred’s person and kingdom than they did his predecessors or his near successors. On the other hand, Alfred claimed close kinship with the Danes through his Danish progenitors Scef and Beow, figures whose names appear in the poem’s prologue. Alfred’s kinship with his “kin-killing” kinsmen is also mirrored in Beowulf’s symbolic structure, especially in the poem’s depiction of Grendel as kinsman of Cain, the first killer of kin.
More evidence of linkage is found in the connection between the poem’s thematic concerns and the tasks Alfred faced in his treaty with Guthrum. In order to create a stable relationship with his erstwhile enemy, Alfred faced two large problems. First, the West-Saxon king had to stay the fighting men of his own nation against exacting revenge on Danish raiders. Even more difficult, Alfred had to forge an alliance with Viking marauders who had a notorious and well-documented proclivity for oath-breaking.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relates that Alfred sponsored the conversion of his Danish enemy, Guthrum, during a twelve-day christening event that included 30 ranking Danes. Was Beowulf composed in this crucible of nation-making? That question cannot be definitively answered; yet there is no doubt, the poem speaks to the imperatives Alfred faced at that time. How, indeed, to convert a Danish warlord and his marauding band? Psalms, prayers, and catechism would surely have prevailed by day. Yet what entertainment—both appealing and instructive—would befit the night? The answer, on every count, is Beowulf. The tale of a Nordic warrior endowed with superhuman strength would have possessed a visceral appeal to a band of Nordic warriors; and a shivery tale about hall-attacking monsters would be the perfect hook by which to enlighten a gang of hall-attacking Danes.
Indeed, what could be more apt in the company of Alfred and Guthrum, than an epic tale about ancestors common to both men? For here is a poem that lauds the valor of heroes gone by, while demonstrating the fatal inadequacy of their culture, either to preserve the soul from corruption, or to preserve nations from cycles of violence. Such a demonstration would be highly persuasive from the standpoint of Danes wanting to stabilize their own newly-acquired kingdoms. Here also is a narrative that pointedly outlines the high cost of revenge, not only in the grief wrought by Grendel’s mother, but most especially through the hero’s lust for vendetta, manifest in Beowulf’s final, doom-driven act of revenge against a gold-hoarding, night-burning dragon. And this argument, too, would have served as an effective caution against revenge-taking for Alfred’s own people, a nation ravaged by gold-hoarding, night-burning, dragon-toting Danes.
Aspiring to be the “King David” of his nation, Alfred synthesized the virtues of heroic culture with the peacemaking values of Biblical culture. In this sense, the final link between Alfred and the poem can be found in three theological principles expressed by the poet: 1) God acts behind the veneer of Fate and Fortune; 2) arrogance and avarice are fatal human flaws; 3) the glory of men, whether as fame or as earthly monument, must one day pass. Alfred vigorously embraced such views in his ongoing concern with the problem of right leadership, in his ambitious program of letters, and in his aspiration to be the “King David” of a God-fearing nation. Those same principles are also expressed in the translations associated with Alfred’s reign, especially Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy7 and Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care. If Beowulf might in part be viewed as a parable illustrating the insufficiency of heroic culture, Alfred’s official theory of leadership presents a very different set of values than that of the poem’s inhabitants. Alfred, who admonished his ministers to shun avarice and arrogance, who developed legal systems designed to circumvent cycles of revenge, who rebuilt his kingdom by forging protective alliances and fostering commerce, presents a highly contrastive model of leadership to that depicted in the poem.
Having offered this hypothesis, it is essential to acknowledge a trenchant objection: There can be no doubt that the language of Beowulf differs markedly from the manuscripts associated with Alfred’s era. Specifically, the poem exhibits an array of older language forms, and it bears a linguistic trace associated with Mercia, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom north of Alfred’s realm. Accordingly, an argument has been made that Beowulf is properly dated to a Mercian milieu before the Danish invasions, in the mid-700’s.
I see two problems with this argument. First, an early dating can not explain the poem’s emphatic critique of marauding Nordic warlords—a phenomenon of the Viking age, not of the 8th century. Moreover, the Mercian context cannot account for the strong connections between Alfred’s crisis and the poem’s overarching concern with heroic instability. Lastly, the argument for an early dating overlooks an alternative explanation—namely, that the Beowulf poet spoke a dialect. Dialects are well known as markers of regional differences, and many times, they preserve older language forms.
Indeed, the evidence for this argument comes from King Alfred’s biographer (Asser). Specifically, Asser reports that an especially learned priest named Aethelstan came from Mercia to join Alfred’s court. And though Asser has nothing more to say on the matter, there is reason to believe that Aethelstan played a starring role in Alfred’s life. Though the name “Aethelstan” name is not attested in Alfred’s lineage, Alfred adopted his Danish nemesis, Guthrum, under the name “Aethelstan,” and he also named his eldest grandson, “Aethelstan.” The prominence of this name may be pure coincidence. However, if this Mercian priest did indeed compose the poem that converted Alfred’s enemy and saved the realm, his very name would have been revered.
As a further point of interest, it is at least possible that Beowulf bears the signature of Aethelstan. In other Anglo-Saxon poems, signature are cleverly embedded in a riddling form. True to this tradition, Aethelstan’s (hypothetical) signature features an ingenious reversal. On line 888 (the 10-year anniversary of Guthrum’s conversion in 878), we find this sentence: He under harne stan / aethelinges bearn, ana geneode / frecne daede. The sentence is literally translated: “He, under the hoary stone, son of the prince, alone performed the daring deed.” However, the sentence might also be translated to reveal Aethelstan’s hidden name: “Stan / Aethel, son of Ing, alone performed the daring deed.” To be sure, this argument hangs on a thread. But isn’t it appealing? If Aethelstan did compose Beowulf, he would certainly have performed a most daring deed, a deed that changed the course of history. Could this learned priest, reared in a backwater region of Mercia, have composed Beowulf? This question I’ll leave to tantalize you, just as it tantalizes me.