SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Beowulf, Swedes and Geats
passage quoted above, we do know that Ecgl'5eow was
widely travelled, or at least widely known. He had to
flee to Denmark at one point in his life, because of a feud
among the Wylfings, in which he slew Heaeolaf. Hroogar
became his lord.s" It is also apparent that Ecgbeow's
name alliterates with the Swedish house, Ongenoeow,
Ohthere, Onela, etc. But no great structure can be built
on this slight evidence alone. Kemp Malone has
presented a case for Ecogeow as a Wylfing, with two stages
in his argument. 41 His first is based on a new emendation
in the passage in which Ecgoeow's feud among the
Wylfings is discussed. The lines are as follows:
459 Gesloh pin faxler f;:ehi'ie ma-ste ;
wearf he Heapolafe to handbonan
mid Wilfingum; l'ia hine gara cyn (MS reading)
for herebrogan habban ne mihte.
panon he gesohte Suodena fole
ofer yl'ia gewealc, Arscyldinga.
465 Da ic furdum weold folee Deniga ...
470 Sil'il'ian pa f;:eMe feo pingode :
sende ic Wylfingum ofer wseteres hrycg
ealde madmas. He me al'ias swor.
The now generally accepted emendation of the nonalliterative
gara cyn in 461 is to Wedera cyn, i.e. the Geats.
Malone says of this:
Wedera makes great difficulties of interpretation. We are asked
to believe that King Hreriel of the Geats refused asylum to his
own son-in-law, for fear of the avengers of Heaoolaf! Such
conduct on the part of Hreoel would have been proper enough,
it is true, if the deed had taken place in his own kingdom.
In a case of homicide, the banishment of the slayer for a period
of years was a punishment (or a precautionary measure) not
infrequently resorted to among the ancient Germans, and this
irrespective of the merits of the case ... The slaying of
Heaoolaf took place among the Wylfings, not among the
Geats; his slayer was therefore presumably banished from the
land of the Wylfings and gara cyn is nothing more than an
alternative form of the Wylfing name, a form here used for
stylistic reasons. (Namely, to avoid repetition.) Now, the
40 Cf. 459-72.
41 'Ecgoeow', in Studies in Heroic Legend and Current Speech (I959), ro8-I5.