SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Beowulf, Swedes and Geats
His name was Wiglaf, Weohstan's son, the kinsman of lElfhere,16
a Swedish prince; he saw his helmeted lord enduring the heat.
He called to mind the honours Beowulf had given him, the rich
Wa-gmunding estate - everyone of those land-rights his father
had had before him. He could not hold back then; he grasped his
yellow linden shield, drew his ancestral sword that was (mid
eldum?) a legacy of Eanmund, Ohthere's son; Weohstan had
become his slayer in battle by means of a sword, and had borne
the glistening brown helmet, the ringed mail shirt and the
wondrous ancient sword to his kinsmen. Onela granted his
kinsman's war-equipment, his battle-equipment to him - and
made no mention at all of hostility, though he (Weohstan) had cut
down his (Onelas) brother's son. He kept that treasure for many
years, the sword and mailcoat, until his child could accomplish
deeds of valour, as his father had done; he gave him the warequipment,
all of it,17 when, full of years, he departed from life on
the road hence. That was the first time the young man was fated
to experience the onrush of battle with his excellent lord.
The points which I find significant in the passage are these:
(r) Wiglaf is called leod Scyljinga, a Swedish man, or
prince."
(2) The only thing we know about Weohstan is that he
slew Eanmund, almost certainly in the course of the battle
between Onela and his rebellious nephews. It appears
that he was in Onela's service at the time, since Onela
16 H. B. Woolf suggested ('The name of Beowulf', Englische Studien 72,
1937-38, 7-9) that Allfhere was actually Beowulf's name. His argument was
that the vocalic alliteration would fit with his father's name, and he saw a
patterning in the sequence WtEg plus the genitive of a personal name: 'There is
another reason ... for considering LF.lfhere Beowulf's true name: the alliteration
in line 2604 does not call for a name initially vocalic, and the name of
some other kinsman of Wiglaf might just as well have been used - save that
Beowulf was, in the opinion of the poet, his greatest relative. The phrase
mtEg plus the genitive of a personal name occurs six times in the poem; in lines
737, 758, 813, 914, 1530, and 2604. In the first five of these, Beowulf is
referred to as M tEg Hygelaces, and in no one of them is the name of Hygelac
necessary for alliteration. Indeed, it seems likely that when the name of a
kinsman of Beowulf was used in this way by the poet he naturally thought of
Hygelac, who played an important role in the poem; similarly, when the name
of a relative of Wiglaf was needed, what more logical to use that of his most
famous kinsman, Beowulf, known also as lElfhere?'
17 All of it = ceghsoas unrim;
18 leod is used 13 times elsewhere in the singular in Beowulf, 10 times as part of
a title for Beowulf, once each in the same way for Heorogar, Hroogar, and once
to refer to Wulfgar, as Wendla lead. Wulfgar is a high officer at Hroogar's
court, his ar ond ombiht, It seems possible to take leod as 'prince' in all 13
instances, with the present example as the fourteenth.