Does wyrd bið ful arœd mean Tate is wholly inexorable'?

Few verses of Old English poetry are known to those who do not know Old English. Some might recognise the opening lines of Beowulf; others, perhaps, might recall the beginning of Byrhtwold’s stirring speech at the end of Maldon. Line 5b of The Wanderer, wyrd bið ful arœd, belongs to this select group, and is usually understood by those who quote it out of context as an Anglo-Saxon expression of a morbid belief in the irresistibility of Fate. That they may be forgiven for thinking this is shown by Mitchell and Robinson’s translation of the verse as ‘Fate is wholly inexorable!’, and by the parallel they draw in their introduction between the poem and Johnson’s The Vanity of Human Wishes, in both of which a commentator ‘surveys the world with stoic insight and learns from his survey nothing more than that helpless man must “roll darkling down the torrent of his fate’”. ¹ Mitchell and Robinson accept that these poets were Christian, but conclude, somewhat curiously, that ‘each poet leaves us permanently fascinated by the outlook he deftly rejects … Johnson’s Roman stoicism and the pre-Christian creed of the Anglo-Saxon wanderer’. ² This ‘permanent fascination’ has imprinted itself in the general view of the Anglo-Saxon outlook, and the ‘deft rejection’ is all too often forgotten. But is wyrd bið ful arœd properly to be translated as ‘Fate is wholly inexorable!’? The purpose of this article is to investigate the meaning of this clause, and to bring into doubt its suitability as a straightforward illustration of Anglo-Saxon views of Fate. As the question of its meaning cannot be divorced from the problems of its context, I shall begin with a reconsideration of those problems, before moving on to an analysis of the meaning of the parts of the clause. Both will, I hope, in their different ways, show that its sense is far from transparent; indeed, in my opinion, it ranks amongst the most difficult Old English verses.