Hygelac (; ; ;[ (Lexicon of Nordic Personal Names Before the 8th Century); from hyg "courage" and -lac.
] or Hugilaicus;
Historical identification
The raid to Frisia enabled N. F. S. Grundtvig
[Grundtvig produced the first translation of Beowulf into a modern language, Bjovulfs Drape (1820).] to approximate the date of Hygelac's death to c. 516, because a raid to France under a Danish King
Chlochilaicus is mentioned by Gregory of Tours.
[ at The Latin Library] In that source he is recorded as invading the
Frankish Empire during the reign of
Theuderic I (died 534), the son of
Clovis I, the king of the Franks in the early sixth century, and was killed in the ensuing chaos after the Scandinavian raiders were caught by the sudden appearance of a military response force led by Theodericus I’s son,
Theudebert I. After the defeat the rest of the survivors took to sea in such disordered haste that they left their dead on the field, including their king. The Franks must have taken back whatever had been taken in pillage as well as spoils of the battlefield; and it is reported by Gregory that they found the corpse of Chlochilaicus so awe-inspiring due his extraordinary height, that, as a pagan barbarian not entitled to burial, his remains were exposed for a long time in the nearest Merovingian Court as a curiosity, following the usual triumphal trophy exhibition customary after battle or pirate captures.
While Gregory calls him a king of the Danes, the much younger Liber historiae Francorum instead calls him a king of the Goths ( rege Gotorum), agreeing with Beowulf.[ All three sources in Latin and in English translation]
Transmission to England
There are two theories on how the account of the Frankish raid came to be preserved in the English epic
Beowulf, and they have a bearing upon the date assigned to the poem.
Oral transmission
One view considers the account to have been kept alive by the oral tradition of heroic poetry until it was included in the
epos.
[The Norton Anthology of English Literature (1986). W. W. Norton and Co., Ltd, 1986:19. .] That Hygelac was known in England already in the early eighth century is seen by the
Liber Monstrorum ("Book of Monsters"), where he is referred to as
Higlacus:
Leonard Neidorf argues that the authors of Beowulf and the Liber Monstrorum must have been relying on a shared oral legendary tradition ultimately stemming from Scandinavia, since they could not have reconstructed the etymologically accurate forms Higlac and Hygelac based on the garbled Frankish Chlochilaicus.
Literary transmission
Other scholars have instead suggested that the episode shows that Beowulf was composed as late as the 10th century, the date of the sole surviving manuscript.
It has been suggested that the poem is in fact dependent on the
Liber historiae Francorum, because it mentions the
Attoarii, which in
Beowulf become
Hetware. One scholar considers it to be inconceivable that independent oral tradition would have faithfully transmitted such a detail.
German historian
Walter Goffart estimated that
Beowulf could not have been written with these historical details before 923.
See also
Sources and notes
Further reading
