Chapter 13 - Gotland

Summary

WHEN BEOWULF AND his men return home from Heorot and march up towards Hygelac's hall, the latter is said to be sǣwealle nēah,i.e., “near the sea wall.” This sǣweall has caused quite a few headaches. Sometimes it is translated literally as “sea-wall” (Clark Hall 1950; Crossley-Holland 1999) or “havvoll” (with the same meaning, Rytter 1929). Many, though, have taken the word weall to refer to cliffs along the shore, translating the expression for example as “strandklintens krön” (“the crest of the cliff,” Collinder 1954), “sea-cliff” (Walton 2007; Jack 1994; Alexander 2005), “sea-side cliff” (Ringler 2007), “a secure cliff” (Heaney 1999) or “la falaise” (Crépin 2007). Others ignore the word weall and translate the phrase freely as “the shore” (Klaeber 1950; Wrenn and Bolton 1996; Mitchell and Robinson 1998; Fulk et al. 2009) or “Meeresufer” (Heyne 1868; Lehnert 2008).

During the Migration Period, however, no chieftain's residence would have been located right by the shore. Given the Scandinavian elite's taste for coastal plundering raids in the Middle Iron Age (Herschend 2009, 329–85; Rau and Carnap-Bornheim 2012), they were careful not to be an easy prey themselves, visible from the sea. Usu-ally, the seats of princes were placed a kilometre or two from the coast, as in the case of Uppsala and Gudme, or getting on for ten kilometres inland, as at Uppåkra. So, when King Hygelac's hall is said to be sǣwealle nēah, it presumably means that it is close to the coast, but still some distance inland.

But can a “sea wall” be some way inland? Yes, but not just anywhere. In the southern and central Baltic Sea area, there are large geological formations answering this description, above all on Gotland and to some extent on Öland and in Blekinge, more specifically the Ancylus and Littorina beach ridges formed when the Ancylus Lake and Littorina Sea were at their highest levels, during the Middle and Late Mesolithic. The Littorina Ridge came into being when the saline Littorina Sea was at its highest stabilized level around eight thousand years ago (Yu 2003).

On Gotland, the Littorina Ridge is at its widest and most conspicuous in the east south- of the island, just inland from the Bandlundviken Bay. .