The Strength of One Man: Beowulf

Within the text of Beowulf there are many allusions made to his great strength, but although other epic poems and epic heroes give account of where their protagonists acquired their immeasurable strength, such as Samson’s hair or Heracles’s godly lineage, we are never given an account as to where Beowulf received his gift of great strength. Or are we? Historians have attempted to reclaim the lost sections of Beowulf ever since Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries and the destruction of their libraries and the fires that followed. Great leaps have been made in restoring the text through deductive reasoning and ultra-violet imagery, but still we have no ‘origin story’ for Beowulf… although I believe one to have been hinted at within the text. I believe that while Beowulf was indeed strong and mighty, his might was in fact fuelled by those who believed in him – that the source of his strength was, in fact, that other’s belief in him. I believe that this belief in him is what allowed him to slay Grendel, its mother, and eventually led to his death at the hands of the Dragon.

When Beowulf first arrives in his kingdom, Hrothgar remembers his as the “merest of striplings” (Hrothgar and Beowulf, 2), meaning that in his memory, Beowulf had not been exceptionally strong as a child – quite the opposite, in fact. Hrothgar regarded him as the weakest of children. Yet when Beowulf begins his heroic boasts, one of the first things he comments on is that he was powerful even as a child: “I am Higalac’s kinsman and vassal forsooth; many a wonder I dared as a stripling,” (Hrothgar and Beowulf, 35-37) and continues to boast on that he will not only kill the Grendel, but do it bare handed. This boast, made during a time of desperation for both the King and his kingdom, inspires the first bit of hope in Beowulf that I believe fuels his strength. After boasting of these accomplishments, Hrothgar’s belief in him transforms him into a being capable of defeating the Grendel, a beast who coincidentally cannot be killed by conventional weaponry and only by hand-to-hand combat. This weakness of the Grendel is then exploited by Beowulf, who then receives even more accolades and even more belief in him from his compatriots, earning him even more strength.

Fresh off the defeat of the Grendel, Beowulf must battle the beast’s mother. By this time, after slaying the Grendel, the faith in him shown by others allows him to accomplish such amazing feats of strength as to lift a sword meant for giants (Beowulf is Double-Conqueror, 1-6) and hoist the Grendel’s great head up from the riverbed itself, which takes four of the other men combined to do (Beowulf is Double-Conqueror, 78). It is the confidence given to him from this act that allows men to believe in him for a further fifty years, until the day of his greatest battle.

By the time the threat of the Dragon arrives, Beowulf is an old King who has protected his people for fifty years. When the Dragon destroys a great portion of his kingdom it frightens the townspeople and they, in their grief, begin to lose faith in Beowulf (Brave though Aged – Reminiscences, 1-16). It is this loss of faith that takes Beowulf’s strength, resulting in his being mortally wounded by the Dragon after being abandoned by ten of the eleven comrades that he brought with him (Beowulf’s Last Battle, 132). It is only when the one remaining member of his party who still believes in him, Wiglaf, stands up to the Dragon and proves that he still believes in Beowulf that Beowulf regains his strength and deals the death blow (Wiglaf the Trusty, 1-88). It is in this final battle tale that the truest evidence of belief as a source of Beowulf’s true power comes into play. While mutability is a strong theme within the poem and his declining strength can be seen as the mark of time, the fluctuations in his strength strangely coincide with his followers’ confidence in him and he receives his strength returned after Wiglaf returns to him. This otherwise unexplained resurgence of power within an aging hero is perhaps the truest example of the source of Beowulf’s power.

While the texts may never be completely restored and it may be impossible to tell how much of the story was lost, there will likely always be debate over what the missing sections might have entailed. Might they have disproved my theory? Would they have supported it? Or neither? Or even both, as some sections of the poem work in contrast with the other? It is impossible to say. What can be said is that while Heracles and Samson were seen as civilizing heroes much like Beowulf, only Beowulf had the clarity and strength to be a true hero of the people.