A man lies on a battlefield, dead. Surrounding him, the ring-giver, lie also his thanes–loyal to the end. The enemy won. Their adversaries walked living off the battlefield, but those left behind grew to become heroes.
Germanic tribes and the culture that belongs with them had a very, very different definition of a hero than people today do. Today, the idea of an “everyday hero” is perpetuated, and normal people doing their jobs are granted the once sought-after title of a hero. Indeed, there is still something romantic about the idea of a hero, but now it seems that such an achievement is in reach. The superheroes today, who are much further from our realistic future, generally win. We like it when the heroes live, but this has led the heroes to not only constantly win, but they also refuse to die. They simply refuse to lay down and die, no matter the odds against them or in favor of their death. The knights of the Round Table, also, have a nasty habit of obtaining injuries that would have killed an army of “lesser men” and living through it miraculously. The early medieval heroes, however, of both legend and reality, possessed the very human qualities of death and imperfection. The Anglo-Saxon heroic ethos focuses on the following three virtues: fame, loyalty, and a good death.
In the “Battle of Maldon,” only the fighting men who died on the field beside their lord gained the honor of going down in legend as heroes. According to Tacitus, a Roman historian, “it is an infamy and a reproach for life to have survived the chief, and returned from the field. He goes on to say that “to defend, to protect him, to ascribe one’s own brave deeds to his renown, is the height of loyalty. The chief fights for victory; his vassals fight for their chief” (Tacitus). Should a man abandon his chief, great punishments would be laid upon him and he would be cast out. Loyalty played a massive role in the heroic ethos of the Anglo-Saxons; to lay down one’s life for their lord was the highest honor and achievement, which is strikingly similar to the greatest love, according to Jesus, which is to lay one’s life down for his friend.
Rather than focus on life, the Anglo-Saxon hero focused on the glory brought only through death and death made the hero. J.R.R Tolkein himself reminds his audience “But we may remember that the poet of Beowulf saw clearly: the wages of heroism is death” (Tolkien). The men of the time worried little about the afterlife because “the prospect of dying” with a “weapon in hand in the grip of battle was glorious enough” for them, rather than the prospect of eternal life in heaven (Vasiliu). Essential to the Old English heroes, a good death ensured their fame and glory while they lay in their graves.
For the Anglo-Saxons, fame and renown lit the end of their tunnels as the reward for a hero. According to Howell D. Chickering Jr, “A man’s good name on others’ lips…was the final goal of the heroic life.” Everything that a fatalistic Anglo-Saxon did contributed to his glory and renown, for “the highest reward that one could achieve was fame on earth, so grand and legendary that it would ensure everlasting recognition and secure an undying memory,” which led to the epic poetry and legends the bards sing of (Vasiliu). In the end, all the things that these men value run back to fame and vainglory for, without Christ, that is all the world offers.
The loyalty, courage, and steadfast natures found in the Anglo-Saxons existed solely because of their love of renown. They worked tirelessly to attain this reward and they intertwined their love of these virtues from reality back into their literature, where we, too, might learn of it. This offers insight into how they lived and how to live. The Anglo-Saxons’ heroes reside at the very zenith of earthly heroism and this provides a picture of the ultimate worldly hero to the world today.
Works Cited
Chickering, Howell D. Beowulf: A Dual-Language Edition, 2006
Clare A. Lees, “Men and Beowulf” Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in Middle Ages, 1994.
O’Keeffe, Katherine O’Brien “Heroic Values and Christian Ethics,”in The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, ed. Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge, 1991.
Tacitus “Medieval Sourcebook: Tacitus: Germania” Internet History Sourcebooks https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/tacitus1.asp.
Tolkien, J.R.R. “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” Proceedings of the British Academy 22 1936.
Vasiliu, Dana. “Anglo-Saxon values and culture in Beowulf” 10.13140/RG.2.2.34738.04809, 2019.