In the Anglo-Saxon poem, Beowulf, the eponymous hero kills two monsters that having been terrorizing a neighbouring kingdom. The first monster is called Grendel and the second, a kinswoman of Grendel, is known simply as Grendel’s mother, or Grendles modor in the Old English. Both are apparently descendants of Cain, the original murderer. Beowulf mortally wounds Grendel when the monster, not for the first time, attacks the court of King Hrothgar. Grendel limps home to die. Angry at the death of her son, Grendel’s mother sets out to seek revenge. She wreaks bloody havoc on the men and women of the king’s mead hall. Beowulf pursues her back to her lair in a cave at the bottom of a deep, dark lake.
After these words, the prince of the Weather-Geats
was impatient to be away and plunged suddenly:
without more ado, he dived into the heaving
depths of the lake. It was the best part of a day
before he could see the solid bottom.
I’ve long thought that the most interesting character in Beowulf is Grendel’s mother. The traditional view is that she is a monster; a demon fuelled by a hatred of humanity and delighting in cruelty, blood and death. Even Seamus Heaney, a notably sensitive and inspired translator, takes her Old English description ides, aglæcwif and translates it as ‘monstrous hell-bride’.
The hero observed that swamp-thing from hell,
the tarn-hag in all her terrible strength,
then heaved his war-sword and swung his arm:
the decorated blade came down ringing
and singing on her head. But he soon found
his battle-torch extinguished: the shining blade
refused to bite. It spared her and failed
the man in his need. It had gone through many
hand-to-hand fights, had hewed the armour
and helmets of the doomed, but here at last
the fabulous powers of that heirloom failed.
Other Beowulf scholars, most notably Kevin Kiernan, see Grendel’s mother in more heroic terms. A parent setting out to revenge the death of their child was an accepted response in Anglo Saxon times. Indeed, one might say it was the obligatory one; the honourable course of action. In more recent interpretations of the text, aglæcwif is thought to mean ‘warrior woman’, a worthy opponent for the fearsome Beowulf.
Beowulf’s sword fails to pierce the female warrior’s armour. She pins him to the ground and raises her dagger to dispatch him, but he grabs one of her own weapons, a heavy battle-sword, and kills her.
Then he saw a blade that boded well,
a sword in her armoury, an ancient heirloom
from the days of the giants, an ideal weapon,
one that any warrior would envy,
but so huge and heavy of itself
only Beowulf could wield it in a battle.
So the Shieldings’ hero, hard-pressed and enraged,
took a firm hold of the hilt and swung
the blade in an arc, a resolute blow
that bit deep into her neck-bone
and severed it entirely, toppling the doomed
house of her flesh; she fell to the floor.
The sword dripped blood, the swordsman was elated.
Grendel’s mother is neither a monster nor a supernatural being: the word ides, in fact, translates as ‘lady’. Kevin Kiernan sees her as a heroic figure. Another American academic, Jane Chance, goes so far as to compare her with Mary, the virgin mother of a martyred son. She is not, says Chance, an ‘avenging monster’ but a ‘grieving mother’.
Credits
Quotations from Beowulf, courtesy of the Seamus Heaney translation, 1999, Faber and Faber.
Pictures of a deep, dark lake – Kleifarvatn, Iceland by Bobby Seal, 2016
Reference Works
Kevin S. Kiernan ‘Grendel’s Heroic Mother’ In Geardagum: Essays on Old English Language and Literature 6 (1984)
Jane Chance, ‘Grendel’s Mother as Epic Anti-Type of the Virgin and Queen,’ Woman as Hero in Old English Literature (New York: Syracuse UP, 1986)
