Hildeburh needed not hold in value
her enemies’ honor![1] Innocent both
were the loved ones she lost at the linden-play,
bairn and brother; they bowed to fate,
1075stricken by spears; ’twas a sorrowful woman!
None doubted why the daughter of Hoc
bewailed her doom when dawning came,
and under the sky she saw them lying,
kinsmen murdered, where most she had kenned
- ↑ Usual litotes; she had good cause to complain. The “enemies” must be the Frisians; the original word is “eotens,” “ettins,” monsters; but it is elsewhere used in speaking of Frisian men.
support among scholars. Finn, a Frisian chieftain, who nevertheless has a “castle” outside the Frisian border, marries Hildeburh, a Danish princess; and her brother, Hnæf, with many other Danes, pays Finn a visit. Relations between the two peoples have been strained before. Something starts the old feud anew; and the visitors are attacked in their quarters. Hnæf is killed; so is a son of Hildeburh. Many fall on both sides. Peace is patched up; a stately funeral is held; and the surviving visitors become in a way vassals or liegemen of Finn, going back with him to Frisia. So matters rest a while. Hengest is now leader of the Danes; but he is set upon revenge for his former lord, Hnæf. Probably he is killed in feud; but his clansmen, Guthlaf and Oslaf, gather at their home a force of sturdy Danes, come back to Frisia, storm Finn’s stronghold, kill him, and carry back their kinswoman Hildeburh. The Finnsburg fragment, translated below, describes (so Bugge puts it, conforming, as he says, “to the common view”) the fight in which Hnæf fell, “that is to say, an event which precedes the story told in the Beowulf,” and is noted in these introductory lines (vv. 1069 f.).—In the Widsith, Hnæf is called ruler of the Hocings.—In v. 1142 it is assumed that Hengest is killed by the sword “Lafing” of a Frisian named Hun. In Widsith, v. 33, Hun ruled the Hætweras, a tribe of Franks now apparently subject to Finn the Frisian. Another reading makes Finn slay Hengest with a sword “Hunlafing.” Two other interpretations make either Finn lay this sword “Hunlafing,” or Hun lay “Lafing,” on Hengest’s lap, as a gift and a sign of allegiance on the part of the receiver. Of course, in this case, Hengest dissembles his real feelings to gain time and opportunity for the subsequent invasion.
