Fifty years passes by in one line: Beowulf held the kingdom for fifty winters. In line 2210, he is the “old guardian of his homeland,” no longer the young hero. With no further prologue, the monster of the last conflict is introduced. The fight against the dragon is difficult to follow, because interspersed with it are the details concerning the political affairs of the Geats. The following summary and explanation of the fight with the dragon skips over these sections, and treats the battle as a single continuous story.
The first section introduces the dragon and answers some questions about how the conflict came about. It retells the discovery and provocation of the dragon three times, each time adding more detail. The general outline of the dragon’s discovery is that a runaway slave stumbled upon the hidden entrance to the barrow (2214, 2225, 2280). The barrow had been there for over three hundred years, undisturbed, and its pathway to narrow entrances hidden from view. The door, however, was open. Why?
There is an embedded story of how the hoard of treasures came to be buried, and then discovered by the dragon, in 2231-2277. The treasures had never belonged to the Geats or Swedes, but to a forgotten people, who had occupied the same land before them. Some catastrophe, perhaps a plague, had wiped out this tribe, leaving one lingering man in charge of all of their possessions. This man set about building or completing a barrow, an underground burial chamber. He built it to be concealed, keeping its doors and passages very narrow, perhaps down crevices in the rock. Piece by piece, he carried in the wealth of his nation and then sat down to look it over.
The man’s words are reported in what is generally called “The Lay of the Last Survivor,” lines 2231-2270. The tone is sad, and it is the first chord struck of the prevailing literary tone of the last section of Beowulf. The word most commonly used to describe this Lay, and the whole section, is “elegiac.” An elegy is a poem or song composed to mourn someone who has died, or a poem that conveys the tone of pensive sorrow.
The Last Survivor knows that he is only counting off the days until he, too, dies; his story will have no happy ending. He is doomed. Recall the youthful Beowulf’s words (572-3), as he told about his contest with Breca: “Wyrd (Fate) often spares an undoomed man, when his courage endures!” Courage alone is not enough, but without it, doom is sure. Even with courage, sometimes Fate will bring about a man’s death, because it is his time to die. The Last Survivor is doomed; he cannot survive.
His elegy is mourning the deaths of his people and his own death. It takes the form of looking at the many treasures and weapons that surround him, and mourning that no one can use them. Here is a cup; no one has been polishing or using it. Here is a helm and chain-mail shirt, with none to keep them bright or wear them in battle. Here is a harp, with none to play it. Here is the gear of falcons and horses, with none to train or use the noble animals. Sitting in the underground room of the hoard, he falls weaker, and eventually dies. He has forgotten one critical task: he never shut the door.
Men may have deserted the southern coast of Sweden for now, and they may be long in finding the open door, but it does not take long for a treasure-hunting dragon to find it. Why? Because it is his nature to do so. Fish swim, birds fly, and dragons sniff out gold hoards. The dragon is only doing what dragons do.