Chapter 22 - Chronology

Summary

THE ABSOLUTE AND internal, relative chronology of Beowulf is not something that becomes immediately clear from an initial perusal. It used to be quite common, therefore, for translators to assign approximate dates to the main figures and events of the poem, based primarily on an assumed year for the death of Hygelac in Frisia, but also with an occasional sideways glance at late Scandinavian sources. Chambers (1932), Woolf (1939), and Klaeber (1950) all did this, though usually with little in the way of supporting arguments (Klaeber 1950, xxix–xlv). In the fourth, posthumously revised edition of Klaeber's authoritative work (Fulk et al. 2009), however, all dates have been deleted. This is understandable, since, when using words, it is possible to express quite free hypotheses without them being understood as anything other than hypothetical, whereas numbers tend to be interpreted as precise, even when they are explicitly said to be approximate. It is thus almost against my better judgement that I set about my task in this chapter. I would stress, though, that I do so with no reference to late Scandinavian sources.

I have earlier found there to be good reason to posit ad 530, plus or minus a couple of years, as an approximation for the date of Hygelac's death in Frisia.

Scattered about the poem there are references to ties of kinship that may help to shed light on the chronological relationships between events and characters. To that end, I work on the basis of an average of just over thirty years per generation. Although the poem speaks mostly of men and sons, we must assume that there would have been similar numbers of sisters in each group of siblings and thus at least three to four years between any brothers mentioned—however incorrect that might turn out to be in individual cases.

It is not possible to prove that all the figures who appear in Beowulf are historical. But other historical sources make clear that a good many of them are, and scarcely anyone questions such an assertion.