(Link to Seamus Heaney’s translation online)
When the Geats, in their admirable gear, arrive at King Hrothgar’s hall, the coast guard leaves them to follow the path to the hall. Here, the poet includes a realistic detail, telling us that the exhausted men saw benches outside the hall and immediately collapsed. They unslung their shields and stacked them along the wall; their spears were leaned against each other, perhaps in a sort of umbrella-stand for spears.
They meet Wulgar (Wolf-spear), a prince of the neighboring Wendel tribe (probably the same as the Vandals). He is a nobleman in the court, and his job is to make sure nobody unworthy is permitted inside the hall. Tolkien borrowed this scene for the arrival of Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli at Meduseld.
Mainly, Wulfgar wants to be sure that they are not exiles. Because every king operated within a network of alliances, it was all too easy to welcome someone who had made an enemy of an allied lord — and therefore should have been treated as an enemy. Much later in the poem, Beowulf will tell an anecdote of a young king who helped an exile and got himself killed. They don’t have the look of exiles, since they don’t come in haste and fear, but openly and with swagger.
Beowulf now gives his name: “Beowulf is min nama,” and identifies that they are of Hygelac’s band. Satisfied, Wulfgar goes into the hall to ask Hrothgar if he will see them. It turns out that Hrothgar remembers who Beowulf is, because he traveled when he was young and met the father Ecgtheow. He even knows who Ecgtheow married, because keeping track of extended families and alliances was the first duty of diplomacy. Hrothgar immediately guesses why they are here: to rescue them from Grendel.
Wulfgar can now invite the party inside, but gives the same warning that Tolkien uses at Meduseld: “You are free now to move forward/To meet Hrothgar, in helmets and armor,/But shields must stay here and spears be stacked/Until the outcome of the audience is clear.” We know how that worked out in Tolkien’s story. Here, it’s simpler.
“Wæs þu, Hroðgar, hal!” Beowulf introduces himself, and right off, he needs to boast. The only explanation for why he has come to challenge an indomitable monster when others have failed is that even at his young age, he has done some amazing things. He raided a trolls’ nest, he battled and bound five fiends, and he wrestled sea monsters in the water. “Now I mean to be a match for Grendel,/Settle the outcome in a single combat.”
Beowulf’s sole request, in fact, is to be given a free hand to do the job himself. To bring greater glory to his lord Hygelac, he vows to fight the monster without weapons. He will grapple with the monster in single combat, and may the better man win! In fact, he goes into some gory detail about what might happen:
“If Grendel wins, it will be a gruesome day;
He will glut himself on the Geats in the war-hall,
Swoop without fear on that flower of manhood
As on others before. Then my face won’t be there
To be covered in death; he will carry me away
As he goes to ground, gorged and bloodied;
He will run gloating with my raw corpse
And feed on it alone, in a cruel frenzy,
Fouling his moor-nest.”
Weaponless he will fight, but not entirely undefended: he plans to wear his mail-shirt. And here we have the first of the “famous and old weapons” theme that we’ll hear more of; Hrethel his grandfather gave him his mail-shirt, but it’s even older than Hrethel. It was made by Weland (or Wayland), the mythical smith of Norse tales.
Wayland the Smith appears in some Old Norse sagas. His name means “Crafting One,” and he is the ultimate craftsman. Enslaved by a king, Wayland finds a way to escape. He make a flying cloak (parallels to Greek Daedalus and Icarus), but before leaving, he kills the kings’ sons. In Germanic stories, any great and famous weapon will be credited to Wayland. The swords in The Song of Roland are attributed to him.
Beowulf asks only that this famous shirt be recovered and sent back to Denmark. He closes his speech with the proverb: “Gæð a wyrd swa hio scel.” (Goes always Wyrd as she/it shall.”) Wyrd, the “fate” of Germanic mythology, is like the Greek Fates: a force and a goddess, both destiny and personality.