Wading into Kudrun; on the Trail of a Legendary Mystery Man

Wade of Kudrun sits uneasily as a migration era hero in a high medieval romance. (Photo illustration by Rachel Hellman.)

Not much is as troubling as the discovery that you’ve lost something, particularly something of value. Medieval writers suggest that we should have a story about a figure that we know just enough about to be tantalized, and troubled. The mystery of Wade is a good tale. Scandinavia recalls him as a sea giant. Mallory knew him to be a great knight. Chaucer obliquely recalls his boat and a tale that could be told. The breadcrumbs are lined up and it’s difficult not to follow.

Every known reference to the legendary Wade has been gathered neatly together for generations. The trail seems to begin sometime in the tales spread by Germanic-speaking tribes as they fanned out across Europe. All of the English literary references to Wade had faded to almost a name. Old English recalls him as a legendary ruler. Middle English celebrates him for his strength, chivalry and the defeat of a dragon. Folklore in England connects his name to sites in the north related to a giant. The Old Norse Wade was a giant, the son of a king and a sea woman (often translated to mermaid.) 

But it is the German Wade, I feel, that requires our attention, as this Wade gives us the most insight into who readers of a specific time knew him to be, and how he may have changed from the distant past. Unlike other extant literary sources, Wade is a major character in the anonymously-written mid-thirteenth-century poem called Kudrun. Kudrun presents a Wade that seems to have become a stock figure of fiction, a blustering, sometimes comic, sometimes troubling old curmudgeon who prefers to do things the old way. But the poem preserves features of Wade that would have been a perfect fit in the Beowulf era and maybe even earlier, when he could have been a mythological figure, even a deity.

Throughout Kudrun, Wade’s most obvious attributes are his age, his strength, and his terrifying violence on the battlefield. What most struck me as a reader though, were clues that this continental, thirteenth-century Wade (Wate in German) was already a known commodity to readers. He performs a function in the story that presumes that the reader is already aware of him. Wade is mentioned by name in the poem before the royal lover, whose difficult suit Wade will facilitate, against a king who murders the envoys of his daughter’s suitors. It is a job only Wade can perform, the young king is told, though the strategy, to sneak into the kingdom disguised as a merchant, does not sit well for him: “I’m not suited to selling pretty trinkets to women.” Wade’s discomfort in this role is the beginning of a series of comic moments predicated on his being a warrior of an earlier time being forced into a courtly romance. 

The character who most dislikes the need to pretend to be something he isn’t, is, of course, the character most comic to be pressed to play a role. Despite Wade’s misgivings to play the part, everyone in the foreign court wants an audience with him. Scholar R.W. Chambers suggested that it is his rich clothing that draws their attention, but the Kudrun poet maintains that all of Wade’s contingent is dressed in the finest clothing possible as a means of disarming the Irish king into allowing them close to his daughter. Yet, in the midst of younger courtiers in his throng, everyone is curious about Wade, whose only described attribute is his large gray beard.

Perhaps it is just the beard that marks Wade as different from the younger courtiers, who would seem more likely to attract the attention of young ladies, but the ladies of the court pay the most attention to “old” Wade. The queen says that Wade “is such a strange man,” that she wishes to see him and even rises from her seat when he enters. The young ladies study Wade to see his behavior, and they flirt as girls might with an aged man they find funny. They ask whether Wade is more comfortable with young ladies or in danger on the battlefield, to which he states his preference is the battlefield. It is hard to know how the ladies would be able to tell that this is a warrior, but perhaps Kudrun’s intended audience already knew that Wade was a man from from before the civilized times of this romance.

The reader discovers that Wade’s lack of control over his rage and tendency to be gruff to the point of rudeness are characteristics that become so predictable about him. Given this, I suspect that the scene with the ladies and others are predicated on dramatic irony, the reader’s knowledge that Wade is only at home slaughtering enemies, and putting him in fine clothes in a courtly setting would effectively be a condition to cause him to blow his cover as a merchant in the scheme. The Kudrun poet must have thought that this scene would be so enjoyed by readers that he wrote two more based on the same joke, one where the princess essentially asks for a second meeting to study Wade (though not to kiss him!) and a scene with her father, King Hagan, a man in the mold of Wade.

Hagan also picks Wade out from all of the courtiers, to test his fighting skills. Hagan seems up to mischief and perhaps means to pressure Wade into a sword demonstration with Hagan’s best swordsman. Wade feigns ignorance of swordplay and even a reader who has not seen Wade fight expects a situation in which all are shocked to find Wade to be the greater fighter. Hagan’s fencing master quickly fears for his life fighting Wade, which leads Hagan himself to face him. Hagan’s strength, prowess, and battle rage are all established earlier in the tale and Hagan’s danger is the entire cause of Wade’s charade in his court, to avoid facing him in battle. Testing Wade, Hagan quickly learns that Wade is as strong as Hagan is (it is said of both Wade and Hagan that they have the strength of twenty-six men) and an expert swordsman. Hagan has to steel himself not to lose his temper in their friendly match. For his part, Wade drops the act that swordplay is unknown to him and attacks Hagan “like a wild Saxon or Frank.” The scene is made more interesting supposing the dramatic irony of knowing that Wade is more than a match for Hagan or his sword-master. The humor of Wade’s protesting not knowing how to fight and of Hagan’s patronizing him by offering to teach Wade “out of affection” for him, is greater if the reader knows what happens to anyone who fights Wade. Wade’s response that Hagan must vow not to kill him further raises the comic stakes, and demonstrates a level of coyness that fits the comic scene more than the incendiary Wade.

Wade Represents an Earlier Ethos

Wade’s fighting prowess is essential in all of the military actions in Kudrun, and must have been an understood element of the character. But the developing difficulty in Kudrun, is that Wade represents a theory of war that is out of step with the rest of the characters of the story. This further places Wade as a fish out of water, and is played for humor as Wade goes far beyond what is acceptable for this time. Where Wade’s young prince and princess would prefer to take hostages in battle and enact political marriages, Wade will slaughter to the last, even women and children. He is described as terrible and terrifying, dreadful, wild and ferocious. He fights like a wild lion, bellows like a wild boar. His eyes blaze, his teeth grind and he is at times drenched in the blood of his enemies. He is repeatedly described as merciless. Wade’s friends must continually pull Wade back to save the men he is fighting. But they cannot always stop him. In this manner, he slaughters babies in cribs. He cuts off the heads of noblewomen who have begged quarter. 

Wade’s practice to become enraged in battle, and dangerous to both friend and foe, was a feature of heroes in the Beowulf mold, whom Wade could have once been. Beowulf, like his monstrous adversaries–or our own, modern, Incredible Hulk–physically swells with rage during his fights. Beowulf is once praised for never killing a kinsman, hardly a high bar in many other places and times, certainly in the era of Kudrun. Wade’s friends only approve of his violence to the moment when the enemy is ready to surrender, while Wade is unwilling to stop until he has killed everyone, even threatening to kill both friend and foe to achieve his aims. Wade, the hero, the victor, is censored for his slaughter: “What good would come of it, if you killed everyone in this land of his?” one comrade complains. This version of Wade is more at home with the figure of the berserker of the Lewis Chessmen, biting his shield, ready to storm into battle.

Like the Incredible Hulk, Wade becomes a figure in Kudrun that cannot turn off the violence, and as with the Incredible Hulk, this is sometimes played for humor. After failing to stop him from executing the evil queen and a traitorous gentlewoman in front of her terrified ladies in waiting, Kudrun recognizes that they will just have to agree to disagree: “Wate can do what he wants with his own hostages.” Kudrun’s comment is funny because it understates her lack of control over him.  Just as humorously, Wade complains that his friends are too merciful. To the man who complains about Wade killing children, Wade retorts, “You’re like a child yourself.”  When Kudrun’s kidnapper prays for his freedom, Wade responds, “I would quickly make sure that his chains never bothered him again.” Wade’s frustration with Kudrun and his younger relations is that they would take the opportunity at victory to promote a lasting peace by intermarrying with their enemy’s family, which seems a larger message of the poem. But Wade sees in orphans a future war party returning for vengeance, as has happened in the story already.

Hints of a Mythological Past

Chambers detected the hint that Wade began life as a storm deity in the manner of his death in Thidreks Saga: being buried by an avalanche. There are myths about storm gods being trapped underground or in the underworld realm of death. Chambers’s logic works on the premise that mythological tales sometimes undergo changes that make them appealing to audiences that no longer seek mythology or deities in tales. Gods then become mortal heroes, here a storm god demoted to a giant who wades across the sea and happens to be killed by a landslide. Chambers’s logic applied to Kudrun reveals details that could also suggest a mythological figure transformed into an exceptional man. One may start with Wade’s perpetual stage of agedness.   

Ever Gray

Kudrun does not imbue its characters with the sort of detail one expects of modern fiction. No character’s age is addressed with specificity. So it is not strange that Wade’s specific age is never stated. What does seem to be unusual, even within the style of the poem, is that Wade is old at the beginning of a story that spans generations and is old at the end. Wade kidnaps a princess at the beginning of the poem, and then rescues that princess’s adult daughter at the end. Wade, who was an old man when he met the mother, says he will have to wait for children to grow up to seek vengeance. Wade has no doubts of his longevity, but the mother’s response is “Ah, if only I could live that long.”  It may not be exceptional for a normal person to live through several generations, but it is strange that the queen, who viewed Wade as an aged curiosity when she was young, expects that she will not outlive him.

A Man with a Storied Past

Of the characters of Kudrun, Wade is the only one with a past that extends beyond the action of the narrative. Not only does Kudrun’s Wade have a past, but all of the details of his past are remarkable for their connections to magic. In the first bloody battle of the tale, when Wade faces off against the similarly powerful Hagan, Hagan’s kidnapped daughter begs her captors to stop Wade from killing her father. It is then revealed that Wade is a “master” healer: “They had heard a long time ago that Wate had learned healing from a forest woman.” Kudrun translator William Whobrey shares that his translation of wilden wibe has the possible sense of herbalist, healer, witch, and even creatures half woman, half animal. He shares the glosses “woman adept in magic,” and “wise woman of the woods” that two other translations have used. After all of Wade’s bloodshed in this battle, he is able to save lives and bring wounded men back to health. Wade’s sudden willingness to heal his enemies, if not his ability to heal itself, is incongruous with his behavior in the rest of the story.

Wade also tells a story when his fleet of ships is captured by a magnetic force when they pass the mountain at Givers, a geographically indeterminate location given the hazy geography of Kudrun: “Long ago as a child, I heard tell seafaring stories that in the mountain at Givers a great kingdom was founded. People live in comfort there.” Wade goes on to describe rivers of silver and gold and says that all who are pulled to the mountain are rich forever. Wade, on his dire mission of rescue and revenge, then prays they are pulled to the mountain, as if lost in reverie, while his companions remain in the moment and wish to escape the magnetic power. The overpowering strength of the seas on ships has probably led to many myths. The Odyssey has the whirlpool Scylla, the Sirens and Circe, who all overpower seafarers in various ways. By sharing his story, Wade recalls a childhood that gives him a history outside the boundaries of the story, which make him exceptional in Kudrun.

Mythological Connections to the Sea

Wade frequently travels in ships in the poem Kudrun, but I noticed details that I think have the flavor of a deity connected to the sea. The first is Wade’s horn, which he uses to rouse his troops to battle at dawn. His first horn blast can be heard thirty miles from shore. His second blast moves all of the troops into position, but the description of the third blast stuck out to me: “He signaled a third time with such great force that the shore quaked and the waves echoed the sound. The cornerstones of Ludwig’s castle could have been shaken loose.” The horn and the power of creating earthquakes are attributed respectively to the sea gods Triton and his father Poseidon, the earth shaker. This is also not the first time in the poem that Wade shook the earth. In his fight with Hagan early in the story, the text runs: “Then old Wate bore down and the shoreline shook.” 

The three major battles Wade fights in Kudrun are on the shore near ships that he has piloted, as others have noted, “strong rudder in his hand.” It seems unusual, if not implausible, that each of these battles take place on the beach, as if to accommodate a figure traditionally connected to the sea, or who may have traditionally gained power from the sea. In the first battle, Wade’s forces debark to find Hagan’s forces approaching from sea. During the second battle Kudrun’s kidnappers debark on an island that is not their destination for reasons not explained. Finally, Kudrun’s kidnappers’ castle that Wade shakes with a blast of his horn is also on the sea, above a beach that Wade’s forces have landed on.

The Man from Stormland

Finally, Kudrun’s Wade is from a place that Whobrey gives alternately as Stormarn and Stormland. No detail is ever given of this location, but Wade is summoned from there frequently and returns there between quests for his king. Though the geography of Kudrun is hard to relate to real places, locations are often named, some, like Ireland, seem to correspond to a real location, others, like Waylays and Ormanie, which bear similarities to the lands Wales or Normandy, but do not seem to correspond to them. Stormarn could refer to the district of Schleswig-Holstein of modern Germany, but, again, the inner logic of place names in Kudrun, if there is one, is not understood. Obviously, a figure associated with storms and the sea hailing from Stormland would seem significant.

There are details of Wade’s battles that can be interpreted as related to storms. In his battle with Hagan, “many brave men saw sparks flying off the helmets like flashes from a smithy’s fire…then old Wate bore down and the shoreline trembled.” Though I have suggested that the ground trembling could be the hint of a figure able to cause earthquakes, it is also possible to envision the flashes of fire and trembling earth as thunder and lightning. In a later battle, Wade’s charge in battle darkens the sun with a cloud of dust, which could hint at a gathering storm cloud.

A Retirement 

Wade ends his story in Kudrun being given a position of honor in the queen’s household, which seems a bit of a downgrade from his job of commanding one of the king’s castles, which was his role at the beginning of it. Whobrey’s translation says he is made “seneschal,” which is a court officer in charge of ceremonies and feasts (the German was truhsæze), but the etymology of seneschal indicates that it once meant “old servant,” which Wade clearly was in the history of this kingdom. I see the shift as an indication that the queen recognizes that the time of Wade as the commander of armies and warrior-in-chief have passed. I like to see it as a fond farewell to a figure whose time had really passed in the era of Kudrun, to the extent that he has fairly or unfairly lapsed into the role of a comical figure. In this manner Wade sits uneasily in Kudrun given that he is the only figure who enables the happy ending that this romance wants as its proper conclusion. 

We have lamented the loss of a “Tale of Wade,” that elaborates on his magic boat and whether that version of Wade relates to the giant of the sea. However, here we have a Wade that seems modeled on the wild Saxon or Frank (or Geat) that would have fit into migration age stories represented in the poems “Widsith,” and “Deor.” That may not bring us closer to understanding who Wade was in his lost English tale, but it fills in a gap for a character long enough lived for literature to ease him into retirement. 

Two Trolls and a Dragon Walk into a Tale; Bridging the Grettir-Fafnir Divide in Beowulf

Two devis relax over a game with pieces that look suspiciously like human bones at Musthaid Park in Tblisi, Georgia. Devs are troll-like creatures in Georgian folk tales. Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

Books I’ve read about Beowulf analogues are invariably broken into two parts: the stories that resemble events from the first half of the poem and stories that resemble the second half. It’s the Grettir-Fafnir divide. The stories about protagonists fighting trolls or other giant humanoid horrors resemble the Grendel section and stories about dragon slayers resemble the dragon section. And this has always seemed reasonable because I hadn’t ever seen a story that incorporated both. That is, until I read “Asphurtzela.” The Georgian folktale, translated by English scholar Marjory Wardrop in 1894, opens with a hero killing two trolls (and a troll’s mother) and finishes up with conflicts with two dragons. I have not seen scholarly analyses of the tale by Beowulf scholars and feel that "Asphurtzela" must be entered into the record and addressed. Not only does Asphurtzela battle trolls and dragons, but many of the details of his encounters in these conflicts also exist in Beowulf. This article lays out the concordances between the poem and the folk tale with the understanding that these moments of agreement, as striking as they are, may still be the result of coincidence. That said, “Asphurtzela” deserves a place in Beowulf scholarship to rival those of Grettis saga and European folk tales like "Strong Hans." I also analyze the nature of the similarities between the folk tale and poem and offer suggestions for how the similarities could be based on a missing tradition of tales or traditions. This is the third of a series of articles investigating the possible relationship between “Asphurtzela,” Beowulf and the Beowulf-analogues Grettis saga and “Strong Hans.” There are links to those pieces at the bottom of this article.

Missing Fathers

In keeping with Friedrich Panzer's Bear’s Son tales, Beowulf and Asphurtzela are separated from a father. In Beowulf’s case, he knows of his father Ecgtheow and speaks of him proudly, but it is not clear what became of him or if he was part of Beowulf’s life. Beowulf has a father-son relationship with his uncle Hygelac and was raised by his grandfather and uncles. Hrothgar provides what we learn about Ecgtheow, whom he rescued from a feud by paying wergild, which seems to have motivated Beowulf’s expedition to Heorot Hall: his desire to repay his father's debt. Asphurtzela is born after his brothers and sister go searching for their father and are captured by a devi, a creature that resembles and functions very much like trolls in the Scandinavian tradition. His mother had mysteriously recommended that they go searching for their “patrimony,” but the story is silent on exactly what that means. As with Bear's Son tales, Asphurtzela is born through magical means, via an apple given to his mother by a stranger. When Asphurtzela is old enough to learn of his sibling's captivity, he goes on a quest to rescue them.

Dominating Through Words

Beowulf and Asphurtzela’s first physical battles are preceded by a battle of words and wills. Beowulf’s famous flyting scene with Unferth establishes Beowulf as the alpha male in Heorot, a man able to face down a verbal attack and a challenge to his ego. This verbal competition seems to prove him worthy to face Grendel. When Asphurtzela faces the hundred-headed devi, he first establishes himself as the devi's better in ways that his brothers previously failed. Granting hospitality to his guest, the devi asks Asphurtzela if he would prefer a bed or a stables; meat or the bone; the small or large container of wine. Whereas his brothers repeatedly choose the smaller or lesser choice, Asphurtzela always chooses the better. In choosing the lesser offers, Asphurtzela's brothers mark themselves as unworthy of respect and doomed to lose. Asphurtzela marks himself as a man of courage and self-respect. He not only chooses the better lot each time, but he berates the devi for offering him less than he deserves. When offered bones or flesh, Asphurtzela says: “Why should I eat bones? Am I a dog that I should do this?” (75). When offered a bed or stable, he says: “I am a man, what should I do in the stable? Give me a bed,” (75). Aspurtzela thus forces the devi to take the lesser accommodations and food and thereby places himself above the devi in the devi's own house.

Sneak Attack at Night

The Grendel episode can be compared to the Asphurtzela's contests with two separate devis. Like Grendel, the hundred-headed devi that Asphurtzela first faces lives with its mother. Asphurtzela first outwits the mother, who had facilitated the devi's kidnapping of his siblings. When the devi sees Asphurtzela, flames shoot from his eyes much as Grendel's do when he first sees the Geats sleeping: “From his eyes shone an unlovely light, most like a flame” (726-727). (Author’s translation, based on Benjamin Slade.) The elements of a sneak attack by night, and the hero outwitting the troll are present in "Asphurtzela." When Asphurtzela lies in bed, he is awoken by the sound of the devi sharpening a giant sword. Guessing his intentions, Asphurtzela puts a log in his bed and hides elsewhere. The devi chops the log in two and leaves and Asphurtzela then shakes off the bed and sleeps peacefully. The episode, along with the eating scene, is reminiscent of stories of the Norse god Thor's conflicts with trolls -- except that Thor is usually the one being outwitted. Asphurtzela and the devi wrestle when the devi, to his surprise, discovers Asphurtzela unscathed the next morning. The fight is short and the devi is outmatched: “The devi struggled and struggled, but could not move his brother-in-law. Then Asphurtzela attacked him, and buried him in the ground up to the neck” (76). Beowulf’s fight with Grendel is more developed than this, but it is similar in a crucial way. The moment Beowulf gasps him, Grendel is unable to gain power over him: “quickly (Beowulf) grasped his evil plan and clamped down on (Grendel’s) arm. At once the shepherd of atrocities discovered he had not met on earth, in the whole world a greater hand grip in another man on earth” (748-752). Beowulf and Asphurtzela then, immediately have their enemy in their power. Asphurtzela kills the devi and its mother with his arrows, which is unlike Grendel's escape, however, the second devi that Asphurtzela kills, by cutting it in half with an arrow, continues to move. Just as Grendel leaves a trail of blood to his lair, the second devi's head rolls to a hole in the ground, kicking off another episode in the story that resembles Beowulf's descent into Grendel's mere, and the analogous episode in Grettis saga.

Betrayals

In Beowulf and “Asphurtzela” the hero is betrayed or abandoned repeatedly. Beowulf's lack of a father reframes Beowulf as an orphan and outcast when he narrates his upbringing in the second half of the poem. Hrothgar and the Danes later leave him for dead when the blood bubbles up from Grendel’s mere after he kills Grendel’s mother. Finally, Beowulf’s men abandon him in his final battle with the dragon. Asphurtzela is similarly a figure who generally cannot count on the help of others. This begins when his mother deceives him about his missing siblings and his jealous brothers tie him to a tree after he saves them. They intend to abandon him, binding him so tightly “blood poured from his fingers” (77). Asphurtzela is again left to his death when he goes into the hole in the ground. His new companions draw up the princesses he finds and then cover the hole with rocks. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote a folklore version of Beowulf intended to show what a missing link between the poem and the extant Bear’s Son Tales could have looked like. In Tolkien’s “Selic Spell,” the Unferth figure accompanies the hero to Grendel’s lair and lowers him down on a rope, only to abandon him. In a previous piece on Beowulf and “Asphurtzela” I investigate the similarities between “Asphurtzela” and the Beowulf-analogue Grettis saga, in which a companion abandons the rope Grettir expects to climb after facing a troll.

Voracious Enemies

Beowulf and Asphurtzela both face ravenous foes of fractional natures. Grendel, of course, eats thirty men in his first accounted attack on Heorot and then devours the Geat Hondscio, which the poet dramatizes in gross detail: “He quickly grasped a sleeping warrior, rended without restraint, bit into the bone-locks, from the veins drank blood, swallowed great chunks, soon he had the unliving one all devoured, feet and hands” (740-745). Grendel is also a physical being with magical protections and his cannibalism makes him beast-like while his emotions mark him as human. Protected by magic from the blades ordinary men could use to defeat him, it requires a man of superhuman strength to defeat him without weapons. Grendel is therefore invulnerable and torn apart; terrifying and, in a moment, pitiable. Asphurtzela’s second adversary is the lame devi, who demands food from him and his comrades and finally threatens to devour each of them: “'If thou wilt not give me to eat, I shall eat thee and thy food too'” (80). The lame devi's split nature makes him, like Grendel, strong and weak and as I wrote in a previous piece, this puts them in the position of an antagonist of the Bear's Son tales, as the giant dwarf from the Bear’s Son Tale “Strong Hans” is both large and small. The devi’s lameness is never described and plays no role in the plot. His family of devis leaves him behind in the house (hidden in a chimney) but they could just as easily leave a fully able devi behind to spy. And despite its lameness, the devi is more than a match for Asphurtzela's superpowered companions. The lame devi's name alone marks him as lame. This seems a significant detail because there is no obvious reason for the devi to be lame (or the dwarf to be a giant) and when details in stories are never followed up it makes me wonder if something may have been lost in their transmission. This is the logic that Beowulf scholar R.W. Chambers followed in determining that Grendel's mere was meant to be a cave behind a waterfall, and that the setting was imperfectly adjusted to address the new English audience that had no experience with Scandinavian waterfalls.

Dragons

St. George the dragon slayer, 15th Century enamel icon, Art Museum of Georgia, Tbilisi.

In an prior piece, I established "Asphurtzela" as a tale with enough motifs to categorize it as one of Friedrich Panzer's Bear's Son tales, but the Bear’s Son tales were only meant to demonstrate how the Grendel section, including the fight with Grendel’s mother, could have been based on a folklore tradition. However, in addition to the Beowulf-like conflicts with trolls, “Asphurtzela” also includes a fight with a dragon. Like his conflicts with the trolls, the fight with the dragon is described in a sentence. I will therefore focus here on the point of greatest similarity between the dragon fights in the poem and folk tale, which is their settings. Both fights occur in or near a symbolic underworld, as Beowulf stands at the boundary of the dragon’s cave and Asphurtzela faces his dragon in a fairyland-like underworld.

“Asphurtzela’s” dragon episode introduces an entire kingdom underground that seems more like a fairyland, or in modern fantasy parlance, another dimension or plane of reality. Asphurtzela, trapped in the hole his companions shut him in, disregards instructions from the maiden he saved and puts his head under a stream and is “immediately carried to the lower regions” (80). This land is later contrasted with “the land of light” (82). There is no real physical detail to allow a reader to understand it as subterranean other than our knowledge that he has journeyed far underground. Asphurtzela is able to “wander about,” suggesting the land is large. He also finds an old woman’s cottage and travels to a well and meets a princess and the king of this land. The old woman and princess tell Asphurtzela that the dragon has stopped the water until it is given a human sacrifice. In this, the dragon resembles the Vedic serpent Vritra, a symbol of drought, and several other Indo-European myths dragons or serpents that cut off the water supply and must be defeated by a storm god to return the rains. As in Beowulf, “Asphurtzela’s” dragon is also a “fiery dragon” (80). Asphurtzela makes short work of the dragon with his arrows.

Beowulf’s dragon lives in a barrow from which issues a stream that is scalding hot: “the brook’s surge, hot with deadly fire, he could not near the hoard without burning” (2546-2548). As with Beowulf’s adventure in Grendel’s mere, the description of this stream is not very easy to follow. The text suggests that there is a natural spring flowing from a cave, but that it has been super heated by the passive heat of the dragon’s breath. Beowulf is burnt by the stream before he alerts the dragon to his presence. I have spent many readings of Seamus Heaney's translation of this passage unclear as to where the heat issues from and it may be that in looking at the original text I filled in blanks. Beowulf’s dragon is not a cause of drought, but as with the dragon from “Asphurtzela,” a source of water has been affected and it doesn't take much of a leap of imagination to conceive of the water being more of a central issue in an earlier iteration of the tale. Beowulf’s dragon, in the Scandinavian tradition, is a hoarder of gold. This likens him to Fafnir of the Volsung Saga, a tale referred to in Beowulf. All evidence in Beowulf and other Old English texts clearly link good kingship with gift-giving and bad kingship with greed. Beowulf's Heremod shows that a king who stops the flow of gold stands in the way this culture operates, interrupts its economy, and Heremod's men betray him. If Anglo-Saxon kings were the central hub of the society, literally making it work, Beowulf's dragon is an inversion of a good king. The dragon in Beowulf is clearly a gold-hoarder and is also repeatedly described with the words and formulae otherwise reserved for kings. The dragon is a hordweard (2293), hoard-guardian, as opposed to kennings for king, folcesweard (2513) and a folceshyrde (2981), defenders of people. Hrothgar is also called goldwine gumena (1171), gold-friend of men, and the Old English poem "The Wanderer" twice uses goldwine as a kenning to indicate a king. Where the Anglo-Saxon culture and economy depended on the free flow of gold from the king to his thanes, perhaps the tradition of dragons hoarding gold grew out of a drought story of a dragon hoarding water. Perhaps the scalding, dragon-polluted stream in Beowulf reflects that earlier tradition.

In my study of “Asphurtzela,” Beowulf, “Strong Hans” and Grettis saga, I have found the closest correspondences between “Asphurtzela” and “Strong Hans,” and “Asphurtzela” and Beowulf. “Asphurtzela” definitely possesses the elements of the Bear’s Son Tale “Strong Hans,” but with its dragon episode, more closely resembles Beowulf than “Strong Hans.” There is more work to be done to chase this investigation to its end. A closer investigation of “Asphurtzela” in its original language and of translator Marjory Wardrop’s notes to the story are two ways to further this study that I don’t at the moment have access to. Neither have I investigated all of Friedrich Panzer’s Bear Son tales in order to see how closely they align with “Strong Hans” and “Asphurtzela.” These resources would be more easily obtainable if there were not a global pandemic affecting libraries, but I will surely continue looking for ways to answer my questions and satisfy my curiosity.

But what do you think? Is it worth while to even study Beowulf analogues? Do you think all of these similarities are evidence of a relationship, or shared history? Do you think it's all coincidence? Let me know in the comments.

This piece is the third in a series on “Asphurtzela” and a possible relationship with Beowulf. If you liked this post, read “No Stone Unturned,” and “‘Asphurtzela’ and the Bear’s Son Tale Tradition.” The first piece compares Steinn from Grettis saga with the Clod-swallower from “Asphurtzela,” and the second gives more context the theory that the Grendel-section of Beowulf could have been based on a folk tale.

No Stone Unturned; An Investigation of Steinn from Grettis Saga

Rock eaters, controllers, destroyers and shapers: Left to right and top to bottom: The Rockbiter from The Neverending Story; Ludo from Labyrinth; an Ent from The Two Towers; and an earth-delving dwarf in Erebor from The Hobbit.

The giant looked mournfully at his hands, capable of breaking down mountains, but not strong enough to save his friends.  “They look like big, good strong hands. Don't they? I always thought that's what they were.”

Michael Ende’s Rockbiter is only one beloved creature from the modern legendarium with a proclivity to stone and the strength or power to manipulate it.  Add to him Ludo, from Jim Henson’s Labyrinth who can howl and call rocks up from the earth to help him.  These are modern creatures, but nothing is truly new.  There is an image in D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths of the stones moving closer to hear Orpheus’s song--and weeping!  And of course J.R.R. Tolkien’s Ents pulverize stone at a touch and his dwarves, as the dwarves of Norse Mythology, live inside mountains and are great shapers of earth, stone and metal.  My point is that peoples who lived surrounded by stone had stories of beings who had power over it, and with the global spread of ancient tales today one needn’t even have descended from mountain folk to have encountered such beings.  But to some extent this was always true, tales breaching the boundaries of their culture’s bubble and passed on for generations, sometimes staying remarkably intact, sometimes changing, particularly when a writer sought to build them into something new.       

This brings me to the second of a series of pieces investigating the Georgian tale “Asphurtzela” in which I will discuss the possibility that a somewhat cowardly and ineffectual character with no special talent to speak of may have been based on a being with the power to control stone.  This character’s name is appropriately Steinn, which means stone, and we find him in the Icelandic Grettis saga.  In part of this multi-chapter saga, the hero Grettir must hunt down a she-troll he has grievously wounded and must descend a sheer cliff with a waterfall to an otherwise inaccessible pool of water whence this creature escaped.  Steinn’s very small role in the story is to doubt Grettir’s story about the she-troll without proof, suggest that they give up when they see the difficulties of reaching the troll’s cave, and then to fail in his duty to man a rope that will help Grettir escape from the pool once he has completed his task of finishing off the creature.  When Grettir kills a troll in the cave, Steinn sees blood in the water below and, assuming that Grettir is dead, abandons his post.  Beowulf readers may recognize Beowulf’s adventure in this, when he faces Grendel’s mother and Hrothgar and the Danes interpret her blood as Beowulf’s and leave the mere.  This is one of several correspondences to be found between Beowulf and Grettis saga, which scholars pointed out by the end of the nineteenth century.  Likewise have compelling similarities been identified between Beowulf, Grettis saga and more than two hundred folk tales which were first described as Bear’s Son Tales by the Germanist Friedrich Panzer.  These tales are also described as Aarne-Thompson type 301, “The Three Stolen Princesses,” and as AT type 650A, “Strong John”.  My purpose in this piece is to investigate the likelihood that the nebbishy Steinn character was based on the superpowered earth-eating companion of the hero Asphurtzela, and the rock-smashers of similar folk tales.

In my last “Asphurtzela” piece, I compared two characters with power over stone or earth, one who swallows earth (the Clod-swallower) and another who breaks stone with his hands (the Rock-splitter from the Grimms’ “Strong Hans”).  Beowulf scholar R.W. Chambers suggested a relationship between the Rock-Splitter and the Grettis saga character Steinn, because both Steinn and the Rock-splitter betray or let down the hero when he has descended the waterfall cliff or into the earth, and because both share the element of Stein in their names. The Rock-splitter and the Clod-swallower are figures with power over the earth and their names are grammatically compound words that follow the formula of MATERIAL + ROLE OF ACTION.  This naming convention is also true of the other characters in the respective tales (the Fir-twister and the Hare-catcher,) but the Rock-Splitter and the Clod-Swallower are related by the nature of the material each affects.  I have not yet read the entire corpus of Bear’s Son Tales, but would be interested in seeing if the other tales invariably have a figure with powers over earth or stone, and, considering that smashing rock and eating dirt are different abilities, if analogous characters in other Bear’s Son Tales tend toward the one ability or the other, or if they are even more divergent.  “Strong Hans’s” Fir-twister, for instance, is a being associated with transforming wood into a useful material (twine to bind firewood), as the Rock-splitter smashes rocks to build himself a place to sleep where animals will not disturb him. Could the Clod-swallower and Rock-splitter, for instance have descended from a being with both of their powers, or are there beings with powers over other elements?       

In searching for evidence that Steinn was based on a figure with power over rocks, I have collected details from Grettis saga, other than his name, that not only connect Steinn to rock, but also associates stone with the supernatural realm.  To begin with references to stone or rock in the episode, Steinn is one of three characters to have the word stone in their names in the she-troll episode of Grettis saga.  Thorstein the White and Thorstein’s wife Steinvor are likewise introduced in the episode.  Grettis saga annotator R.C. Boer noted in his edition of the saga that the lack of information about these characters makes it likely that they were not based on real people.  Furthermore, Thorstein and Steinvor live in a place called Sandhaugar, which means sand mounds or sand piles, a name that relates to earth.  Reference to rocks in the episode abound. Grettir’s adventure with the she-troll brings him to a cliff where he is always near stone. The she-troll drags Grettir “to the rocks;” after Grettir cuts her arm off to escape her, she springs, “among the rocks;” and he lays exhausted “by the rock” (82).  When Grettir brings Steinn to the waterfall they see “a cave under the rock” (82).  It is clear that this part of the story takes place in a setting dominated by stone, but “the rocks” are repeatedly associated with the she-troll, not the humans.  Grettir tries during his fight to avoid the rocks and Steinn wants to leave the rocks as soon as he sees the cave.  In contrast, the she-troll yearns to get back to the rock-bound protection of her cave and tries to drag Grettir with her until he cuts off her arm at the shoulder.  In all of these details, the rocks, and cave, are associated with the supernatural and are clearly inimical to the human beings.  We are familiar with monumental stone tombs like the neolithic Newgrange funeral mound of Ireland and similar stone structures, which were meant to act as or represent gateways to another world. It is entirely reasonable that Grettir and Steinn are simply concerned for their safety in light of a clear physical threat, but the monstrous threats of Grettis saga, such as Glam, as well as Grendel of Beowulf are magical threats as well. Glam, for instance, is a corpse haunting the vicinity of his death. Glam is a giant capable of breaking all of the bones in the body of a horse or snapping a man's neck, but he also curses Grettir to gain no more strength. Grendel devours men, but has also charmed the edges of blades not to harm him. The physical dangers in these stories are backed by insidious magical threats as well. (I took all quotes and page numbers from the following online version of Grettis saga.)

If these repeated references to rock and stone in names and in the physical setting are not convincing in themselves, Steinn’s extremely limited role in the tale requires him and Grettir to use stones to accomplish a task.  It is Grettir who ties a stone in the rope and drops it down the waterfall, but a more active Steinn may have done this in an earlier version of the story.  The purpose of tying the rope to the stone is not explained.  It seems reasonable to conjecture that the stone could weight the rope, making it easier to access from the pool at the bottom of the falls, but Grettir also says he does not want to be tied to the rope, which signals that anything tied to the end of the rope could be attacked. This doesn’t outright suggest that the stone tied to the rope is meant as a decoy, or a test to see if there is a troll waiting to strike anything lowered down the falls, but neither does that seem an unreasonable conclusion for the reader to draw. After lowering the stone, Steinn uses rocks to secure the rope: “He drove a stake into the ground and laid stones against it” (83).  If Steinn were based on a figure with the power to smash rock with his fists, this would be an appropriate place for a tale teller to showcase the ability.  This would be further than the Rock-splitter or the Clod-swallower go in using their abilities to solve a problem in their respective stories.  It also seems worthwhile to point out, as I conjecture possible elements no longer in the text, that this rope now has stones on both sides.  Most of the moments in Beowulf that have been identified as having traces of earlier tales are those times when there are lingering questions about why characters act as they do.  Every detail then, of the Steinn episode should be scanned, no stone left -- ahem -- unturned.      

In my attempts to offer an ancient archetype to explain the nature of the powers of a folkloric version Steinn, I again return to Tolkien, who so often rooted his creations in historical linguistic details he found mysterious and therefore compelling.  This was true for the Ents of Middle Earth, tree-like giants who can smash stone and move earth.  Old English scholars are at something of a loss to understand references to the description “the work of ents,” which is used to describe the ruins of stone structures in several Old English poems.  Anglo-Saxonists conjecture that the Angles, Saxons and Jutes had never seen Roman buildings, buildings made of stone, and that these rude tribesmen believed that they were the works of giants from a time when such beings roamed England.  Entish artifacts needn’t have been stone walls (in Beowulf, the word is used to describe at least one helmet), but generally carry the sense of being from an earlier time, from “the time of ents.”  The word looks somewhat like eoten, another word Old English uses to describe giants, but it is not clear if these words are synonyms.  Beowulf lists both eotens and gigantes as the creatures spawned by Cain, which suggests that they did not mean exactly the same thing.  But while Tolkien’s Ents are only responsible for destroying stone structures, the general understanding among students of Old English is that ents were builders, perhaps like the disguised jotun Odin and friends employ to build the wall around Asgard.  Tolkien delighted in leading his readers up to the edge of a problem without articulating it directly though, which makes me wonder (by way of a tangent)  if Tolkien was suggesting that perhaps Old English ents came upon fully built structures and their “work” was to smash them apart.  If the Anglo-Saxons were so amazed by stone buildings, I think they must have been just as concerned about what tore them down as what built them!  My argument though is that certainly the people who told the tale of Grettir believed in dwarves and giants and trolls and other creatures that dealt in earth and stone.  A creature that ate dirt and got into all sorts of trouble or adventures doesn’t seem hard to believe.                

In bringing to a close this second piece in a series I am writing to investigate similarities between “Asphurtzela” and Beowulf, I must say that I will not feel that I have a complete understanding of of the Clod-swallower or his earth-breaking brother, the Rock-splitter, until I’ve more fully investigated Panzer’s Bear’s Son Tales.  I do feel that a better understanding of Steinn’s relationship with these figures could be discovered in such an undertaking, perhaps with the conclusion that there is no meaningful relationship.  Steinn though is a curious figure made more curious by his many associations, and his episode’s many associations, with stone. I would close by saying that “Asphurtzela” is less like the Beowulf-analogue Gretiss saga than it is like its fellow Bear’s Son Tale “Strong Hans.”  In my last piece I addressed Asphurtzela’s fights with troll-like Devis, his braving a haunted house and his finding his way to a cave, which of course are similar to Grettir's adventures.  In the next installment of this series, I will analyze the correspondences I see between “Asphurtzela” and Beowulf directly.