Finnsburg fragment

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The Finnsburg fragment , also known as Finnsbur member , is an old English poem that has only survived in fragments and is about a heroic battle in which the Danish prince Hnæf and his sixty followers try to defend the castle of the Frisian king Finn from overpowering attackers. According to the linguistic studies of the Germanists and Medievalists Felix Genzmer and Gerhard Eis , the temporal and local origin can be set in the 8th century, which, according to Genzmer, could have been preceded by a Frisian ancient song of the 5th century. The text section obtained is very short and full of hints that are difficult to understand today. However, a comparison with other texts of Old English literature, in particular Beowulf , suggests that the poem deals with a conflict between Danes and Frisians in the Friesland of the Migration Period and that the attackers were the Frisians around leader Finn who attacked their Danish guests.

Sources

The Finnsburg history is embedded on the one hand as an early song fragment, on the other hand as an episode in the great epic Beowulf, written centuries later. According to Warwitz, a “ softening of the fighting heroism ” took place. In Beowulf, for example, the heroic defense of the hall, which is still the focus of the song, is missing. Instead, the tragic female figure Hildeburh with her clan conflict and the fragile armistice of the warring parties come to the fore. Likewise, the impressive presentation and representation of the lone fighters of the early song is missing. The text known today is a copy of a loose manuscript portfolio that was once kept in Lambeth Palace , the London residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury . The British scholar George Hickes made the copy in the late 17th century and published the fragmentary text in an anthology of Old Anglo-Saxon in 1705 . This anthology also contained the first reference to the only known manuscript of the Beowulf epic. The original manuscript was later lost or stolen.

content

The fragment is only about 50 lines long and does not allow any clear conclusions to be drawn about the tribal affiliations of those involved. Tolkien and Klaeber have identified the tribes of the parties involved as the Danes and the Frisians. The text describes a fight in which Hnæf (lines 2 and 40), known from other texts as the Danish prince, is attacked in a place called Finnsborough, ie "Finn's stronghold" or "Finn's castle" (line 36). Based on the Beowulf epic, this is apparently the seat of Hnæf's brother-in-law Finn, the ruler of the Frisians, to whom he came to spend the winter with him. The fragment begins with Hnæf's observation that the light he sees outside is "not the dawn in the east, nor is it the flight of a kite , nor are the gables that burn." What he sees are the torches of the approaching attackers . Hnæf and his sixty followers hold the gates of the building for five days without falling. Then a wounded warrior turns away from the battle to speak to his leader (it is not clear which side is on) and the fragment ends. Neither the cause nor the result of the struggle are described.

Connection to the Beowulf epic

A second version of the Finnsburg story appears in a passage from the Beowulf epic, and some of the characters, such as Hnæf , are mentioned in other texts. The episode in Beowulf (lines 1068 to 1158) is about 90 lines long and is sung at a festival to celebrate Beowulf's last heroic deed in the form of a song by King Hrothgar's bards. In this song, Hnæf's last fight is referred to as a “Fres-Wael” (“Frisian Battle”). The episode is full of innuendos and is clearly intended for an audience that already knows the story well. It describes the grief of a lady named Hildeburh after a surprise attack by the Frisians on the Danes. Hildeburh is Hnæf's sister who was married to Finn, the leader of the Frisians, in an effort to establish peace between the two tribes. This attempt was unsuccessful and is now regarded by many scholars as the source of the tragedy in the play. She mourns the loss of her brother Hnæf, whose body was burned at a stake along with that of her (and Finn's) son. After the battle, victorious Finn and a character named Hengest swear a loyalty pact. Hengest is now the leader of the surviving Danish warriors. Further circumstances are unclear, but Hnæf's men will stay in Finnsburg for the rest of the winter. The Frisians are told not to mock them for following Finn, their master's murderer. At the end Hengest but of vengeance overwhelmed and slaughters Finn and his men in their own mead down. He loots the hall and takes Hildeburh back to her people in Denmark .

According to Heusler , what is particularly impressive in the song is the extremely concise, but visually powerful gesture with which Hunhaf silently places Hnaef's sword on the lap of his successor, thus triggering the fight for revenge for the murdered follower.

There are several differences between the Finn episode in Beowulf and the Finnsburg fragment. The female figure of Hildeburh is not yet mentioned in the Finnsburg fragment. In the Beowulf episode, she is an integral character affected by all aspects of the play's plot. Hildeburh plays the role of a tragic figure. She has to mourn the loss of her brother Hnæf, that of her son and of many Danes to whom she was related because of family reasons. At the same time, however, she was committed to loyalty to the Frisians through her marriage. Their marriage is for the most part seen as a compulsory marriage, not a marriage of love, which is why their relationship with the Frisians was certainly weaker than with their Danish relatives. Hildeburh and Hengest have important roles for the course of the plot in the Beowulf episode: Hengest is a leader and controls a large part of the plot. He is the one who promised the Frisians a "solid, solid peace" and then killed Finn "in his own house". He is only mentioned once in the fragment, and here not in an important role: In line 17 it says that Hengest “entered afterwards” (“and Hengest sylf / hwearf him laste”). This reading can be interpreted in such a way that emphasis is placed on Hengest's presence in battle, but he is not clearly assigned to a position of power.

Scientific classification

JRR Tolkien studied the surviving texts and tried to reconstruct what the original story behind that of the Finnsburg fragment and the Finn episode in Beowulf could have been. This study eventually led to the book Finn and Hengest . Tolkien argued that the story is very likely to be considered historical and that it is not a mere legend . Tolkien also pointed out that the term "Finnsborough" was likely a mistake by either Hickes or his printer, as the word construction is nowhere else. The word should actually be “Finnsburg”. However, it is not clear whether this was the actual name of the site or just a description for it later invented by the poets. It is not known exactly where Finn's settlement was. Tolkien apparently assumed that the settlement should have been in the fishing area. Old legends from the area also connect the name of Bau a place near Flensburg with Beowulf.

What is unique about the Old English literature still preserved today is that the fragment contains no Christian references. The burning of the fallen Hnæf is also clearly pagan. It is a very short text that also deals with a battle, but the two fragments of the contemporary battle poem Waldere manage to incorporate explicitly Christian content in hardly any space.

Religious Aspects

Although the Finnsburg fragment itself contains hardly any religious elements, the text in Beowulf mentions a few. Confusingly, pagan and Christian symbolism mix here . Recently, several researchers have offered explanations for this conflict: Christopher M. Cain pointed out that the Christian author provided the poem with parallels to the Old Testament in order to symbolize the pre-Christian world in which the plot takes place. This approach would explain that characters like Beowulf and Hrothgar on the one hand act in a way that can by no means be called morally Christian and on the other hand are nevertheless positively stylized as heroes.

In contrast, C. Tidmarsh Major took a different approach, examining the state of religion at the time the poem was likely written. In the early Middle Ages, Christianity was not yet uniform, nor was Germanic paganism. The Beowulf is a literary example of the overlapping and amalgamation of pagan and Christian beliefs, as they also encountered each other in everyday life.

Both arguments are convincing and offer possible explanations for why the seemingly contradicting theologies mingle in the poem and the description of the heroes.

literature

Editions and translations

  • J. Hill (Ed.): Old English Minor Heroic Poems . Durham 1983.
  • DK Fry (Ed.): The Finnsburh Fragment and Episode . London 1974.
  • Dobbie (Ed.): Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records. vol 6: Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems . New York 1942, p. 3-4 .
  • Frederick Klaeber: Klaeber's Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg . 4th edition. University of Toronto Press, Toronto 2008, ISBN 978-0-8020-9567-1 ( online ).
  • George Hickes: Linguarum Veterum Septentrionalium Thesaurus grammatico-criticus et archaeologicus . tape 2 . Oxford 1705. p. 192.

Publications

  • Gerhard Eis: Small writings on old German secular poetry. Amsterdam 1979, ISBN 90-6203-418-7 .
  • Gerhard Eis: Three German poems of the 8th century. Berlin 1936.
  • Felix Genzmer: Beowulf and the Finnsburg fragment . Stuttgart 1953.
  • Felix Genzmer: Prehistoric and early historical time. In: History of German Literature. 1962, p. 23.
  • Andreas Heusler: Song and epic in Germanic poetry. Dortmund 1905 (reprint Darmstadt 1956).
  • Johannes Hoops (ed.): The Finnsbur member. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde. Volume 15, Verlag de Gruyter, Berlin / New York, 2nd edition. 2000, p. 24.
  • F. Klaeber (Ed.): Beowulf and the fight at Finnsburg. 3. Edition. 1950 (reprinted 1968)
  • W. Laur: The heroic legend of the Finnsburg fight. In: ZfdA 85 (1954), p. 107 ff.
  • G. Nickel (Ed.): Beowulf and the smaller monuments of the old English hero legend Waldere and Finnsburg. 1982.
  • Jan de Vries: Hero song and legend. Francke, Bern 1961, ISBN 3-317-00628-5 .
  • Siegbert Warwitz: The old Germanic hero poetry and its relationship to the hero saga. Munster 1963.
  • Gernot Wieland: Finnsburg fragment . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 4, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-7608-8904-2 , column 483 with further literature.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Felix Genzmer: Prehistoric and early historical time. In: History of German Literature. 1962, p. 23.
  2. ^ Gerhard Eis: Three German poems of the 8th century. Berlin 1936.
  3. ^ Siegbert Warwitz: The Finnsbur link. In: Ders .: The old Germanic hero poetry and its relationship to the hero saga . Münster 1963, pp. 14-17.
  4. ^ Hickes: Linguarum Veterum Septentrionalium Thesaurus grammatico-criticus et archaeologicus. Volume 2, Oxford 1705, p. 192 ff.
  5. ↑ JRR Tolkien: Finn and Hengest: The Fragment and the Episode. Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1983.
  6. ↑ Frederick Klaeber: Klaeber's Beowulf. 4th edition. University of Toronto Press, Toronto 2008.
  7. ^ Fulk: Six Cruces in the Finnsburg Fragment and Episode.
  8. ^ Camargo: The Finn Episode and the Tragedy of Revenge in Beowulf.
  9. ↑ Liuzza: Beowulf.
  10. ↑ Liuzza: Beowulf.
  11. ^ Andreas Heusler: Song and epic in Germanic sagas. Dortmund 1905 (Reprint: Darmstadt 1956)
  12. ^ Camargo: The Finn Episode and the Tragedy of Revenge in Beowulf.
  13. ^ Albano: The role of women in Anglo-Saxon culture. Hildeburh in Beowulf and a curious counterpart in the Volsunga Saga. Pp. 1-10.
  14. ^ Albano: The role of women in Anglo-Saxon culture: Hildeburh in Beowulf and a curious counterpart in the Volsunga Saga. Pp. 1-10.
  15. ↑ Liuzza: Beowulf.
  16. ↑ Tolkien, Bliss: Finn and Hengest - The Fragment and the Episode .
  17. ↑ Finn and Hengest. In: Michael DC Drout (Ed.): JRR Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment. 2007, p. 210.
  18. ↑ Bauer Landstrasse. In: Flensburg street names . Society for Flensburg City History, Flensburg 2005, ISBN 3-925856-50-1 .
  19. ^ Karl Müllenhoff : Legends, fairy tales and songs of the duchies of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg. Kiel 1845, introduction and the said legend
  20. ↑ Tolkien, Bliss: Finn and Hengest - The Fragment and the Episode .
  21. ^ Cain: Beowulf, the Old Testament, and the Regula Fidei.
  22. ^ Major: A Christian Wyrd: Syncretism in Beowulf.

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