Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and Table
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Loot and the Economy of Honour
- 3 Unferth's Gift
- 4 The Angel in the Mead Hall
- 5 Three Queens
- 6 The Perils of Peacemaking
- 7 Beowulf's Last Triumph
- Afterword
- Works Cited
- General Index
- Index of Passages
- Index of Words
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
5 - Three Queens
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and Table
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Loot and the Economy of Honour
- 3 Unferth's Gift
- 4 The Angel in the Mead Hall
- 5 Three Queens
- 6 The Perils of Peacemaking
- 7 Beowulf's Last Triumph
- Afterword
- Works Cited
- General Index
- Index of Passages
- Index of Words
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
Summary
The preceding chapter should be understood not as seeking to replace one controlling narrative with another, but rather as offering an interpretation of several not-very-common compound nouns used of queens and angels in Old English poetry. It is no easier to generalize about the women of Beowulf and Anglo-Saxon England than it is about those of any place or time, and it is especially unwise to do so on the basis of words that occur so rarely.
In Beowulf's Wealhtheow and the Valkyrie Tradition, Helen Damico looks at Wealhtheow's epithet friðusibb in light of a statement by the early twentieth-century Danish scholar Vilhelm Grønbech:
Rather than denoting a ‘laying down of arms,’ frið, Grønbech notes, ‘indicates something armed, protection, defense—or else a power for peace which keeps men amicably inclined. Even when we find mention, in the Germanic of “making peace,” the fundamental idea is not that of removing disturbing elements and letting things settle down, but that of introducing a peace-power among the disputants.’ A character who is friðusibb, then, would exemplify a state of peace marked by vigilant activity and a security brought about by action that has been armed and may again become armed.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Honour, Exchange and Violence in Beowulf , pp. 139 - 166Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013