by Doug Freyburger
Doug Freyburger was among the most prolific theological voices in alt.religion.asatru's first decade — compiler of the Hávamál commentary that became a touchstone for American Heathenry, and a practitioner who approached the Lore with both systematic rigor and practical wit. He posted this essay in October 2004 after listening to an audio recording of Beowulf.
The essay proposes that the three great fights — Grendel, Grendel's mother, the dragon — are not monster-tales but kennings for political and military realities. Grendel is an invading army; his arm is a captured detachment; his mother is the originating nation's second campaign; the lake is the sea. Beowulf's wrestlings are shield-wall engagements; his sword-draws are cavalry charges that fail against a disciplined line. The dragon, finally, is old age — a fight in which some retainers hold and some flee, and the buried treasure is the weight of the past.
The argument transforms Beowulf from adventure story into a manual of statecraft in mythological dress. It is the kind of reading that a practicing Heathen thinks to make — someone already trained to find reality behind the tale, and to hold both at once.
Kennings are usually alternate names that are used in a single sentence. Stuff like saying a wolf feast to mean a battle. They are symbolic.
I reread Beowulf the other day (actually I found it on audio tape and I listened to it like it was originally intended), and I noticed some kennings that span entire chapters of its plot. Now I'm interested in if other folks have noticed similar embedded meanings.
When Beowulf fights Grendel and Grendel's mother, it is hand to hand. Against Grendel he tosses aside his sword and he wrestles and tears off Grendel's arm. Against Grendel's mother he tries his sword but it will not cut. Then he mentions that honor is found in meeting an enemy hand to hand anyways.
I think these are metaphors for leading the parts of an army against the parts of another army, not literal references to wrestling. Heathen history has plenty of references to armies battling, and plenty of references to individual armed duels, but almost no other mention of wrestling that I can recall. I think meeting an army main force to main force was the source of the honor, and terms like arms and swords mean groups of scouts, or cavalry detachments or similar.
Hrothgar's hall was a fortress, probably in the style used by Romans with more than one layer of walls. When Grendel breaks down the door of the hall, I think it means the vanguard force of an army used a battering ram to break into the first ring of the large fortress. When Beowulf wrestled within the hall, it was Beowulf's main army meeting the invaders inside of the fortress. When Beowulf pulled off the arm of Grendel, he regained control of the gate, closed off contact with the main invading army, and reduced the arm of the invading army inside of the wall either to death or to captives. The fact that he bragged about the arm and kept it on display means captives to me.
Once Grendel's arm had been pulled off, Grendel retreated fatally wounded. An army routed and in retreat is an easy victim for a well-disciplined smaller force sallying from a fortress. Retreating armies are often cut down in droves and destroyed.
Then Grendel's mother attacked. I think that means the nation that launched the invasion in the first place sent a larger army to attack. Note that the mother's first target is the arm of Grendel, the captives from the first raid.
Beowulf's army drove off the mother to a lake. She lived across the lake, or under the lake. Call that across the sea. The land that had attacked the Danes was across the sea, perhaps Norway, Sweden or Saxony. Beowulf gave chase across the sea, staging his own amphibious campaign.
Then Beowulf was in the mother's home camp, in the nation of the original invading army. Beowulf tries his renowned sword but it fails to cut through the mother's chain mail armor; his cavalry detachment tries a lance charge but the shield wall holds and the cavalry bounces off. Beowulf tosses the sword aside and wrestles with the mother hand to hand; Beowulf orders the cavalry away and attacks the main body of the foreign army with the main body of his army, shield wall breaking shield wall and the soldiers fighting melee in the middle.
Beowulf's tale sounds like an amphibious relief army arriving from England to Danmark, his army cutting off a breach in the fortress, his army pursuing and destroying the retreating invading army, his amphibious army attacking across the sea to the point of origin of the invasion, his attempt with a cavalry charge, his meeting army to army in melee, and finally returning to Danmark in triumph.
Once I started to view his experience with Grendel and Grendel's mother as a metaphor for armies, I also started viewing his battle against the dragon as a symbol for aging, or for succumbing to an infection after an injury. When some retainers abandon him and others support him, that's learning which children will support their elders and which will not. The complex tale of buried treasure from a bygone age is about the values of past events and the perils of either dwelling on them or ignoring them.
Looking at Beowulf as a tale of clashing armies and a metaphor for old age, it became an even more fascinating and valuable tale to me than the adventure on its surface.
Hail Asgard!
Colophon
Written by Doug Freyburger and posted to alt.religion.asatru on October 1, 2004. Freyburger was a longtime practitioner, theological systematizer, and compiler of the Hávamál commentary. His approach to the Lore was characteristically practical: test it, extend it, find the reality behind the tale. Light correction applied to obvious typing errors; voice and argument preserved verbatim.
Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: <[email protected]>.
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