A balm in bed to the battle
-
scarred Swede.
The fortunes of war favored Hrothgar.
Friends and kinsmen flo
cked to his ranks,
Young followers, a force that grew
To be a mighty army.
So his mind turned
To hall
-
building: he handed down orders
For men to work on a great mead
-
hall
Meant to be a wonder of the world forever;
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It would be his t
hrone
-
room and there he would dispense
His God
-
given goods to young and old
---
But not the common land or people’s lives.
Far and wide through the world, I have heard,
Orders for work to adorn that wall stead
Were sent to many peoples.
And soon it stood
there,
Finished and ready, in full view,
The hall of halls.
Heorot was the name
He had settled on it, whose utterance was law.
Nor did he renege, but doled out rings
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And torques at the table.
The hall towered,
Its gables wide and high
and awaiting
A barbarous burning.
That doom abided,
But in time it would come: the killer instinct
Unleashed among in
-
laws, the blood
-
lust rampant.
Then a powerful demon, a prowler through the dark,
Nursed a hard grievance.
It harrowed him
To hear the d
in of the loud banquet
Every day in the hall, the harp being struck
And the clear song of a skilled poet
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Telling with mastery of man’s beginnings,
How the Almighty had made the earth
A gleaming plain gird
led with waters;
In His splendour He set the sun and moon
To be earth’s lamplight, lanterns for men,
And filled the broad lap of the world
With branches and leaves; and quickened life
In every other thing that moved.
So times were pleasant for the people
there
Until finally one, a fiend out of Hell,
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Began to work his evil in the world.
Grendel was the name of this grim demon
Haunting the marches, marauding round the heath
And the desolate fens; he had dwelt for a time
In misery among th
e banished monsters,
Cain’s clan, whom the creator had outlawed
And condemned as outcasts.
For the killing of Abel
The Eternal Lord had exacted a price:
Cain got no good from committing that murder
Because the Almighty made him anathema
1
10
And out of the curse of his exile there sprang
Ogres and elves and evil phantoms
And the giants too who strove with God
Time and again until He gave them their final reward.
So, after nightfall, Grendel set out
For the lofty house, to see how the Ring
-
Danes
Were settling into it after their drink,
And there he came upon them,
a company of the best
Asleep from their feasting, insensible to pain
And human sorrow.
Suddenly then
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The God
-
cursed brute was creating havoc:
Greedy and grim, he grabbed thirty men
From their resting places and rushed to his lair,
Flushed up and inflamed from the raid,
Blundering back with the butchered corpses.
Then as dawn brightened and the day broke
Grendel’s powers of destruction were
plain:
Their wassail was over, they wept to heaven
And mourned under morning.
Their mighty prince,
The storied leader, sat stricken and helpless,
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Humiliated by the loss of his guard,
Bewildered and stunned, staring aghast
And the demo
n’s trail, in deep distress.
He was numb with grief, but got no respite
For one night later the merciless Grendel
Struck again with more gruesome murders.
Malignant by nature, he never showed remorse.
It was easy then to meet with a man
Shifting himself to
a safer distance
To bed in the bothies, for who could be blind
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To the evidence of his eyes, the obviousness
Of that hall
-
watcher’s hate?
Whoever escaped
Kept a weather
-
eye open and moved away.
So Grendel ruled in defiance of right,
One aga
inst all, until the greatest house
In the world stood empty, a deserted wall stead.
For twelve winters, seasons of woe,
The lord of the Shieldings suffered under
His load of sorrow; and so, before long,
The news was known over the whole
world.
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Sad lays were sung about the beset king,
The vicious raids of Grendel,
His long and unrelenting feud,
Nothing but war; how he would never
Parley or make peace with any Dane
Nor stop his death
-
dealing nor pay the death
-
pri
ce.
No counsellor could ever expect
Fair reparation from those rabid hands.
All were endangered; young and old
Were hunted down by that dark death
-
shadow
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Who lurked and swooped in the long nights
On the misty moors; no
body knows
Where these reavers from Hell roam on their errands.
So Grendel waged his lonely war,
Inflicting constant cruelties on the people,
Atrocious hurt.
He took over Heorot,
Haunted the glittering hall after dark,
But the throne itself, the treasure
-
seat,
He was kept from approaching;; he was the Lord’s outcast.
These were hard times, heart
-
breaking
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For the prince of the Shieldings; powerful counselors,
The highest in the land, would lend advice,
Plotting how best the bold defen
ders
Might resist and beat off sudden attacks.
Sometimes at pagan shrines they vowed
Offering to idols, swore oaths
That the killer of souls might come to their aid
And save the people.
That was their way,
Their heathenish hope; deep in their hearts
They
remembered Hell.
The Almighty Judge
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Of good deeds and bad, the Lord God,
Head of the Heavens and High King of the World,
Was unknown to them.
Oh, cursed is he
Who in time of trouble had to thrust his soul
In the fire’s embrace, forfeiti
ng help;
He has nowhere to turn.
But blessed is he
Who after death can approach the Lord
And find friendship in the Father’s embrace.
So that troubled time continued, woe
That never stopped, steady affliction
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For Halfdane’s son, too
hard an ordeal.
There was panic after dark, people endured
Raids in the night, riven by terror.
