ABSTRACT

Before this period the myth cannot have had its setting in Denmark, but only, if one wishes to take it as a local legend, in the old homeland of the Angles and Saxons. And perhaps one has to accept this in order to explain that connection to a historical fact and a particular place. Instead of Heorot one temple or another would be named, as also a hall and a hornsele [‘gabled hall’] (Grimm 1840: xxxviii), where as in Heorot people were in the habit of assembling for feasts and festive assemblies and where Grendel carried out his evil deeds, until Beowulf the champion of the god finally rid the house of him again, (Heorot, sele fælsian [‘to cleanse the hall’], Beow. 859, 1643, 2352, 4699). In this way the latter would have stood in a similar relationship to the divinity of a particular temple as did several heroes in Greek cults. But then Grendel’s whole existence would have to have its basis in a particular location, just as our folk legends always put monsters like him, who admittedly have mostly taken the shape of ghosts or poltergeists, always in particular places and in this way usually give them a quite natural explanation [a note remarks: ‘I am remembering only the widely dispersed legends of nixes and poltergeists which live in mills’]. In this way the myth of Starkad (Uhland 1836:176 ff.) is attached to the mighty Plafoss in Norway and the deeds of Herakles to particular localities in Greece and only receive from this context their sense and meaning. The place where Grendel lives is described as an arm of the sea full of troubled and marshy water and surrounded by a dark forest, like which there were many in old Germany

ascribe the most harmful effects to its air-poisoning exhalations, I believe that one will still not be able to explain Grendel’s nature fully from that alone. The limitation of the myth to a single spot, however favourable it appears to be for the hero Beowulf, must in any case be a displacement of its original and more universal content.