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ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and
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The Gepids in Beowulf
Leonard Neidorf
To cite this article: Leonard Neidorf (2019): The Gepids in Beowulf, ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of
Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, DOI: 10.1080/0895769X.2019.1584028
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/0895769X.2019.1584028
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The Gepids in Beowulf
Leonard Neidorf
While preparing for his fatal encounter with the dragon, Beowulf delivers a lengthy speech before his
retainers in which he reflects on the deaths of various members of the Geatish royal family (ll.
2426–537).
1
He highlights Hæðcyn’s accidental killing of his brother, Herebeald, as the most tragic
death in the family’s history, since vengeance could not be pursued in this exceptional case (ll. 2435–43).
In its aftermath, grief overwhelms Hreðel, their father, who dies resenting one son and feeling ashamed
that his other son died without recompense (ll. 2462–71). A more fortunate death befalls Hæðcyn, who
loses his life in the wars against the Swedes, but is avenged when his kinsman, Hygelac, brings about the
death of the Swedish king Ongenþeo (ll. 2479–89). Hygelac then dies when the Franks intercept his raid
in Frisia, but he is likewise avenged, with Beowulf personally obtaining recompense for his slain uncle by
killing Dæghrefn, the culpable Frankish warrior, with his bare hands (ll. 2497–509). In the midst of these
recollections, Beowulf boasts that his faithful service as a retainer to Hygelac spared his lord the need to
recruit mercenaries from among the Gepids, the Danes, or the Swedes:
Ic him þāmāðmas, þe hēmēsealde,
geald æt gūðe, swāme gifeðe wæs,
lēohtan sweorde; hēmēlond forgeaf,
eard ēðelwyn. Næs him ǣnig þearf
þæt hētōGifðum oððe tōGar-Denum
oððe in Swīorīce sēcean þurfe
wyrsan wīgfrecan, weorðe gecȳpan…(ll. 2490–96)
[I repaid in battle the treasures he had given me, such was my good fortune with a bright sword; he gave me
land, estate and a desirable abode. He had no need to look to the Gepids or to the Spear-Danes or in Sweden for
an inferior war-maker, hire him for a price…]
The presence of the Gepids (OE Gifðas) in this passage has attracted minimal critical discussion, but
the allusion is peculiar, given the geopolitical context in which it appears. That Hygelac might petition
the Danes for aid against the Swedes, Frisians, and Franks makes sense, in view of the Danes’
indebtedness to the Geats following Beowulf’s monster-hunting expedition; that Hygelac could recruit
Swedish mercenaries for warfare against the Swedish royal family is more remarkable, but nonetheless
consistent with norms of the heroic age, when a warrior’s loyalty was directed principally toward a lord
rather than an ethnic group.
2
Far more demanding of explanation is the protagonist’snotionthat
Hygelac could have recruited warriors from an East Germanic people to aid him in his exploits along
the North Sea littoral. Although the poet alludes elsewhere to Eormenric and Hama (ll. 1197–201), two
Gothic heroes, the Gepids are the only East Germanic group mentioned by name in Beowulf, and the
passage cited above is the one place in which their ethnonym appears. Why does the poet thrust the
Gepids, of all peoples, onto a political stage shared by Geats, Swedes, Danes, Frisians, and Franks?
The editors of the fourth edition of Klaeber’sBeowulf indirectly acknowledge the peculiarity of
the allusion to the Gepids by offering a comment that would help to explain their presence in this
context. They suggest that the Gepids are mentioned here because they are still associated with their
CONTACT Leonard Neidorf neidorf@nju.edu.cn Department of English, Nanjing University, 22 Han Kou Road, Nanjing
210093, China.
© 2019 Taylor & Francis
ANQ: A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SHORT ARTICLES, NOTES, AND REVIEWS
https://doi.org/10.1080/0895769X.2019.1584028
Scandinavian place of origin rather than with their later settlements or with the kingdom (Gepidia)
they established in Dacia. The editorial comment on the line reads as follows:
2494. The Gifðas (Lat. Gepidae), a population that migrated from southern Sweden to the southern Baltic coast
near the mouth of the Vistula, where they lived in the first century. In the second century, they migrated once
more and settled in the Hungarian plain west of the lower Danube. In concert with other Germanic groups, they
defeated the Huns in 454 but were defeated by the Lombards in the latter half of the 6th century and disappeared
shortly thereafter. According to this passage, tradition still associated them with their ancient home in Sweden.
3
The interpretation put forward by the editors is almost certainly correct, since it strains credibility to
imagine Beowulf suggesting that were it not for his exceptional service, Hygelac might have traveled
all the way from Scandinavia to Eastern Europe in order to secure allies for his raids and rivalries.
The improbability of that scenario attaches a high degree of probability to the editors’conclusion
that the Gepids must still have been considered a Scandinavian people in Beowulf. Yet while their
conclusion removes the geographical problem from the passage cited above, it does not fully explain
why the Gepids should be mentioned in this context rather than any other Scandinavian ethnic
group (such as the Wulfings or the Heathobards). Furthermore, the allusion’s dependence on
a traditional association between the Gepids and their pre-migration locale need not imply ignorance
of their post-migration exploits. Indeed, an awareness of these exploits appears to be registered in the
one other Old English reference to the Gepids, which occurs in Widsith:“I was with the Gepids and
the Wends”(Mid Gefþum ic wæs ond mid Winedum, l. 60a), claims the eponymous traveling poet.
4
In his edition of Widsith, R. W. Chambers remarks of the collocation: “The mention of [the Gepids]
here together with the Wends, which is not necessitated by the alliteration, points to their position in
the extreme east of Germania, bordering upon the Slavonic peoples.”
5
The purpose of the present
note is to suggest that an awareness of the post-migration history of the Gepids might also inform
the allusion in Beowulf and imbue it with more significance than critics have previously recognized.
Jordanes’sGetica, a Latin history of the Goths that fuses Greco-Roman written sources with
Germanic oral tradition, contains several references to the Gepids that help to explain why the
Beowulf poet names them as prospective mercenaries. The Gepids figure prominently in Jordanes’s
account of the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, where they appear as the favored allies of Attila the
Hun fighting against a coalition of Romans, Goths, Alans, and other peoples. Summarizing the
outcome of the battle, Jordanes notes that 165,000 men were slain, not including “fifteen thousand of
the Gepidae and Franks, who met each other the night before the general engagement and fell by
wounds mutually received, the Franks fighting for the Romans and the Gepidae for the Huns.”
6
Following the death of Attila, the Gepids sever ties with the Huns and lead a coalition of Germanic
peoples against Hunnic forces at the Battle of Nedao. The Huns are defeated in this spectacular
battle, “where one might see the Goths fighting with pikes, the Gepidae raging with the sword, the
Rugi breaking off the spears in their own wounds, the Suavi fighting on foot, the Huns with bows,
the Alani drawing up a battle-line of heavy-armed and the Heruli of light-armed warriors.”
7
Later in
the Getica, the Gepids appear as allies to the Suavi, who recruited them along with the Sciri in their
desperate attempt to resist the Goths under Thiudimer.
8
The overall impression of the Gepids
conveyed by Jordanes is that they were particularly inclined to form alliances and that they were
effective members of armies under the command of other leaders.
The allusion to the Gepids in Beowulf acquires greater sense and relevance in light of Jordanes’s
testimony. When the hero names the Gepids as a people from whom Hygelac might have recruited
mercenaries, he names an ethnic group associated with Scandinavia that also happens to have
a reputation for alliances with the Huns and with a wide range of Germanic peoples.
9
Turning to
the Gepids was perhaps regarded as a traditional course of action for a king in need of fighting men.
Furthermore, the fact that the Gepids disappear from history in the second half of the sixth century,
following catastrophic losses to the Lombards in 552 and then the Avars in 567, lends an additional
layer of significance to the poem’s allusion.
10
Since Hygelac died around 525, according to Gregory
of Tours, his period of kingship coincides with the period in which the Gepids were flourishing in
2L. NEIDORF
their kingdom of Gepidia. This temporal alignment renders the allusion another sign of the
chronological coherence and historical plausibility of much of the migration-era legendry in
Beowulf, comparable to what Tom Shippey has shown of its treatment of the Merovingians and
Rolf H. Bremmer, Jr. of the Frisians.
11
Finally, it is worth noting that the allusion to the Gepids lends
a minor degree of support to the hypothesis that Beowulf is a relatively early composition. The form
of the Gepid ethnonym in Beowulf (and Widsith)
12
is the etymologically correct Old English form
(Gifðas), which could not have been generated through familiarity with the form of the name in
Latin historiography (Gepidae).
13
Accordingly, the Beowulf poet must have learned this form
through acquaintance with an oral tradition in which the ethnonym had been continuously present
since the migration period.
14
It is plausible that a poet composing around the year 700, born in
the second half of the seventh century, should know oral traditions concerning a minor ethnic group
that met its demise in the second half of the sixth century.
15
The oral preservation of such arcane
knowledge becomes increasingly less likely, however, with every passing century.
Notes
1. The text of Beowulf is cited throughout by line number from the edition of Fulk et al. The translation provided
is based on that of Fulk,The Beowulf Manuscript.
2. See Chadwick (350); Farrell (253–54); Gwara (12–21); and Neidorf,“Beowulf as Pre-National Epic”(855–57).
3. Fulk et al. (248). For fuller accounts of the history of the Gepids, see Diculescu;Pohl;Goffart (199–203);
Harhoiu; and Kharalambieva.
4. The text of Widsith is cited by line number from the edition of Chambers. The translation is my own.
5. Chambers (209); cf. Malone,Widsith:“[T]he thulaman thought of them as a tribe of the Baltic coast if one may
judge from the context”(153).
6. For the text of the Getica,seeMommsen (113); the translation quoted here and throughout is that of Mierow
(112). On the extent to which Gothic oral tradition informs Jordanes’s work, see Liebeschuetz;cf.Ghosh (54–60).
7. Mommsen (125); Mierow (126).
8. Mommsen (130); Mierow (131).
9. Cf. Goffart:“The Gepids’prominence in Attila’s kingdom and in the revolt against his sons was where, if
anywhere, they made their martial reputation and acquired the capital of esteem that sustained their kingdom
for more than a century”(201).
10. On the demise of the Gepids, see Christie (58–63); Goffart (202–3); Pohl (293–301); and Harhoiu.
11. For the historical plausibility of the poet’sinformation concerning the Merovingians, see Shippey,“The
Merov(ich)ingian Again”; for the poet’s accurate characterization of Frisia as a wealthy kingdom during the
migration period, see Bremmer. For a general discussion of the potential historicity of the poem’s legends, see
Shippey,“Names in Beowulf and Anglo-Saxon England”(72–78).
12. Editors of have generally concurred that it is one of the earliest extant compositions in Old English. See
Chambers (147–51); and Malone,Widsith (116). For recent arguments in support of this contention, see
Neidorf,“The Dating of Widsið”; and Pascual.
13. On the etymological parity of the Old English and Latin forms of the ethnonym, see Schönfeld (108–10); and
Malone,“The Suffix of Appurtenance in Widsith”(315–19). Remarkably, Goffart rejects the equation of the
forms: “I do not subscribe to the identification of the Gepids with the Gifðas or Gefþas of the Old English
Beowulf (line 2495) and Widsith (line 6o)…No serious arguments substantiating the identification seem to me
to have been set out”(333). Presumably, the linguistic rationale for the identification has seemed sufficiently
convincing to all scholars (with the exception of Goffart) to obviate the need for further argumentation. If the
Gifðas were not the Gepids, then we would find here an independent (and otherwise unknown) ethnic group
that happens to bear an etymologically equivalent name. The improbability of such an extraordinary onomastic
coincidence renders the identification of the Gifðas with the Gepids virtually certain.
14. For other name forms in Beowulf that unambiguously derive from native oral tradition, see Fulk,“Dating
Beowulf to the Viking Age”(343–45); Shippey,“The Merov(ich)ingian Again”(399–400); and Neidorf,
“Germanic Legend”(46).
15. For philological arguments in support of the hypothesis of archaic composition, see Fulk,A History of Old English
Meter (381–92); Lapidge;Russom;Cronan;Hartman;andNeidorf,The Transmission of Beowulf (133–49).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
ANQ: A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SHORT ARTICLES, NOTES AND REVIEWS 3
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