Habiba Hussain

Beowulf That Was a Good King

Scyld Scefing was the original leader of the Scyldings, giving the clan its name, and was an ancestor of Hrothgar. He is only mentioned briefly in the beginning of Beowulf but references to him are made frequentlyin fact, many descriptions of Hrothgar such as helm of the Scylding-breed (l. 296) implicitly refer back to Scyld since any subsequent success of Scylding kings is testament to his greatness in maneuvering the clan to glory. What, however, draws most emphasis to him is the various parallels that the writer of Beowulf creates between Scyld and Beowulf as well as between Scyld and Hrothgar. As a result, the story of Beowulf and Hrothgar becomes an expansion of the qualities already hinted in the verses about Scyld that describe a goodly King! (l. 10). This evokes the idea of how, as believed in Christian aristocratic circles, greatness is seemingly an inheritancethe source of which in the poem was Scyld.

By beginning with Scyld and briefly describing his pursuits, the author hints at why the Scyldings were a people worth saving, and why they deserved the savior that Beowulf proved to be. The honorable origins of the people of Scyld and their innate noble qualities made them worthy of relief from a monster who bears a striking similarity to Christian descriptions of the devil (or Satan) himself. Again, the idea of origins is evoked which again merges with Christian belief: humans deserved a savior like Christ because of their godly origins. There is in fact, a strong similarity between Beowulfs and Scylds journeys. Scyld had ridden the waves as a child and saved the people who later became Scyldings from the curse of a bad King (Heremod). Beowulf sails willingly across the sea to save the descendents of the same people from a monster. The parallel also reveals what the author believes to be the quality good kings: it is their job to steer to a position of strength from a position of vulnerability. No clan wants a king who becomes a symbol of and a constant reminder of weakness. A clans entire perception in the

Habiba Hussain

Beowulf That Was a Good King

land and their perception of themselves depended on the character of the king. The certain differences, or rather different points of focus, in the tale of Scyld and the tale of Beowulf provide what the author portrays is a spectrum of qualities that a good king should have. Beowulfs journey is one of benevolence and generosity. He travels a large distance just to help another clan and wins their gratitude such that Hrothgar declares him his son and a future king of Scyldings. Though references to his toughness are constantly made, it is his generous efforts for and favor upon the Scyldings that overwhelms his other qualities. For Scyld, on the other hand, the author focuses on harsher aspects: like the terror (l. 5) he evoked in other tribes and how he Reft the tribes at wassail of bench and mead in hall (l. 4) Goodly kings, apparently, should be good only to their people or their allies. The appearance of the motif of the mead-hall furthers this idea. Mead-halls symbolized a tribes prosperity and an effective way to challenge another tribes prosperity was to destroy their mead hall, which is what Scyld is revealed as doing and what later Grendel does to the Scyldings. The underlying idea of the mead-hall being that the role of the king was to create a haven of revelry for his peoplewhich both Scyld and Hrothgar achieve in doing.

Another way of putting the differences between Scyld and Beowulf is that Scyld emblemizes the Germanic values of kingship while Beowulf represents the more Christian values. It is perhaps then a result of the arrival of Christianity and the faith of the author of Beowulf that Beowulfs deeds and favors for the Scyldingsas the poem moves onovershadows whatever Scyld had done for them.

So in the heroic world where origins matter and greatness (or perceptions of it) travel from king to son, Scyld represents the origin. Beginning with his praises, the course of the poem creates sympathy for his tribes-men and therefore contextualizes and gives further value to Beowulfs act of saving them.