Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • This section is mostly taken up with Hrothgar's gifts

  • to Beowulf, that he is giving to him tremendous

  • treasure, horses, and jewelry, and gold as appreciation for what Beowulf has done.

  • One of the interesting things to note here is what Hrothgar says about the

  • character of Grendel.

  • He says I never expected to be delivered from that creature.

  • And I think that this is something that shows us the heroism of Beowulf,

  • he comes in and he delivers somebody else, Hrothgar namely,

  • from the despair of ever being able to find salvation, or ever being able to be rid

  • of an evil like Grendel,

  • and consequently he is generous with his own live so that others may be

  • happy.

  • And again that's I think an image of what the hero is in the mind of the scop,

  • somebody who is generous so that other people can

  • prosper. The king then goes and gives gifts to

  • Beowulf and there's great feasting or rejoicing over the fact

  • that Grendel is dead and the symbol of Grendel's

  • defeat is the arm up in the rafters

  • and the scop, the poet, the bard,

  • is brought forth to sing a song to the people at dinner

  • that night and he sings the song of Finnsburg.

  • And that's this next section, is the section of the battle of Finnsburg. It's a

  • fragment of a much longer poem,

  • but we'll look at that in this next section.

This section is mostly taken up with Hrothgar's gifts

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it