Finnsburh Fragment

(The Fight at Finnsburh, The Battle at Finnsburh)

(ca. 700–1000)

   The Fight at Finnsburh is the name commonly given to a fragment of 48 lines of an OLD ENGLISH poem discovered on a single parchment manuscript page in the 18th century and subsequently lost. The fragment survives only in a faulty transcription made and printed by George Hickes in 1705. The fragment has been of significant interest to BEOWULF scholars because it deals with the Danish-Frisian feud that also forms the subject of the SCOP’s song recited in lines 1063–1159 of Beowulf, after Beowulf kills the monster Grendel.

   The longer story from which both the fragment and Beowulf’s Finn episode are taken involves an attempt to settle the long-running feud between the Frisians (and their King Finn) and the Danes (under King Hnaef) through Finn’s marriage to Hnaef ’s sister Hildeburh. During the ensuing peace, Hnaef and 60 of his retainers visit Finn and Hildeburh at the Frisian stronghold, Finnsburh. For unexplained reasons, the peace is broken and the Frisians attack Hnaef and his men at night in their hall, killing Hnaef and many of his followers and losing a number of their own men in the process, including the son of Finn and Hildeburh. A truce is declared during which the Danes, now under the leadership of Hengest, are to put aside the Germanic obligation to avenge their fallen lord and to remain with the Frisians through the winter, acting as the retainers of Finn, their king’s killer. The truce breaks down in the spring as the Danes, awakened to their obligation to their fallen lord, take up arms, slaughter Finn, and return home with Hildeburh and with the Frisian treasure.

   The fragment begins in mid sentence, as one of the Danes has noticed a flash of light outside the hall, perhaps torchlight glistening on armor, that warns the Danes of the Frisians’ treachery. The Danes post warriors at both doors to the hall and fight heroically, holding out for five days without losing a single man. But several are wounded and their armor is wearing out. Here the fragment breaks off. The remainder of the story we know from the scop’s version of events in Beowulf, which begins with Hildeburh looking upon the devastation after the end of the battle in the hall.

   Critical interest in the Finnsburh Fragment has been concerned chiefly with its relationship to the Finn episode in Beowulf. Some scholars have argued that the fragment is the only surviving example of a kind of short narrative lay supposed to have been popular in Anglo-Saxon courts between the sixth and 10th centuries. Such short narratives, intended for oral delivery (like Beowulf’s scop’s song), were supposed to narrate, in a concise and unadorned style, events concerned with the Germanic heroic age, the period of Germanic migrations including the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain in the fifth century.

   More recent criticism, however, no longer considers the fragment to be an example of a genuine lay of this kind. For one thing, little can be said with certainty about an imperfect copy of a fragment whose original page has been lost. Second, it is not known how long the original poem was that contained this fragment: If, as earlier scholars thought, the fragment lacks only a few lines at the beginning and a few at the end, then it could conceivably be an early lay. But the style of the surviving fragment is not concise and terse but somewhat discursive, suggesting it may in fact be part of a much longer poem. If the fragment tells only a very small part of a much larger narrative (as seems more likely now), then earlier hypotheses are not valid. Still, the fragment remains interesting as one of the few surviving scraps of Germanic heroic legend in Old English, scraps that tantalizingly suggest a far richer tradition, perhaps irrevocably lost.

   Bibliography

   ■ Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg. 2nd ed. Edited by Friedrich Klaeber. Boston: Heath, 1950.

   ■ Fry, Donald K. Finnsburh Fragment and Episode. London: Methuen, 1974.

   ■ Tolkien, J. R. R. Finn and Hengest: The Fragment and the Episode. Edited by Alan Bliss. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983.