SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Beowulf, Swedes and Geats
Wzegmundings was in the land of the Geats. Since Beowulf,
the king of the Geats, is a Weegmunding, as are Wiglaf and his
father Weohstan, since there is a perfectly clear implication that
the ancestral seat of the Wsegmundings lay in the land of the
Geats, and since there is nowhere in the poem any association
of the family as a family with the land or race of the Swedes,
the conclusion seems inescapable that the Wsegmundings were
not Swedes, but Geats. 28
This conclusion is far from inescapable. First of all,
Onela may well have been kinsman-lord of Weohstan, for
the reasons adduced above. Secondly, Bryan's idea of
an ancestral estate is not in keeping with methods of
land-tenure in Anglo-Saxon England. While any question
involving Anglo-Saxon land-tenure is necessarily
complex, a few certainties can be made out. 29 References
to land-tenure elsewhere in the poetry seem particularly
appropriate here. In Widsio, the wandering scop gives
up the splendid and extremely valuable gold bracelet he
had from Eormenric to his lord Eadgils, in return for the
re-granting of lands that had been his father's:
pone [hringJ ic Eadgilse on asht sealde,
minum hleodrihtne, pa ic to ham bicwom
leofum to leane, P