5 - Who Snatched Grendel in Beowulf 852b?

Summary

READERS OF THEOld English poem Beowulf will remember that after Beowulf kills Grendel, the Danes arrive at the dark waters of Grendel's mere. Narrative perspective shifts suddenly from the eyes of the Danes to the narrator. He describes Grendel's fate:

Ðær wæs on blode brim weallende,

atol yða geswing eal gemenged

haton heolfre, heorodreore weol.

Deaðfæge deog, siððan dreama

leas in fenfreoðo feorh alegde,

hæþene sawle; þær him hel onfeng.

[There the brine was welling with blood, terrible surging waves all mangled with hot gore, a sword-bloody surge. The death-doomed one, when hope-less, lay down his life in a fen-lair, his heathen soul; there hell took it/him]. (847a–852b)

The last phrase of line 852, a half-line referred to as 852b, is not at all clear. What precisely did hell take? The singular, masculine pronoun him of the half-line could refer back to Grendel's feorh ‘life or soul’, a singular, masculine noun. Equally likely, him could refer to Grendel himself, whom the poet earlier calls a man (wer, 105a). So, one might translate the Old English phrase intoEnglish from various combinations of ‘Hell received/snatched him/it there’. No translation clarifies which metaphor is being carried by the verb onfeng. If the verb is translated as ‘received’ then the verb onfeng characterizes Hell as a passive host who receives Grendel's soul. If the verb is translated as ‘snatched’ then the verb onfeng characterizes Hell as an active entity who reaches out and grabs Grendel's soul. If the former, then this half-line is a rare case of a location receiving anything. In Old English legal charters and wills, for example, people tend to onfōn land, not vice versa. Moreover, the verb's metaphor would lend temporary sentience to a location, which is itself unusual in OE. Places are rarely sentient. Although as a review of fōn in the poem demonstrates, the verb allows readers of poetry to imagine such sentience. Another possibility is that 852b's hel is not a place. Hel might allude to the Norse goddess Hel who rules the land of the dead. Such an allusion would be unusual. Elsewhere in the poem, Hell is figured as a place, not as a goddess. Throughout Beowulf we hear on helle ‘in Hell’ (101), in helle ‘in Hell’ (589), ofer helmað ‘over Hellmouth’ (1464) and so forth.