Beowulf 2009a: f... bifongen

by J.R. Hall, University of Mississippi

Young Beowulf sails to Denmark to aid the Danes against Grendel, who has raided Hrothgar's hall for a dozen years. Beowulf vanquishes the monster and heads home. In reporting the episode to his king, Beowulf declares in lines 2005b-09a that no kinsman of Grendel has reason to boast of the fight: a pleasing, poetic, heroic way for Beowulf to announce that he got the upper hand—and arm and shoulder. My central concern lies with line 2009a, in which a word Beowulf uses in characterizing Grendel's race is gone from the manuscript. The best restoration is a modified form of the one, now long forgotten, that Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin proposed in his pioneering edition of Beowulf (1815).