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The Finnesburg Fragment or Finnsburh Fragment is a fragment of an Old English heroic poem about a fight in which Hnæf and his 60 retainers are besieged at "Finn's fort" and attempt to hold off their attackers. The surviving text is tantalisingly brief and allusive, but comparison with other references in Old English poetry, notably Beowulf, suggests that it deals with a conflict between Danes and Frisians in Migration-Age Frisia.
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Transmission
The extant text is a transcript of a loose manuscript folio that was once kept at Lambeth Palace, the London residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury. This manuscript was almost certainly Lambeth Library MS 487. The British scholar George Hickes made the transcript some time in the late 17th century, and published it in an anthology of Anglo-Saxon and other antiquities in 1705.[1] This anthology also contained the first reference to the sole manuscript of Beowulf. Since then the original manuscript folio has been lost or stolen. One of the difficulties with the transcript is that other transcriptions made by Hickes, which can be compared with their original manuscripts, are often inaccurate.
Synopsis
The fragment is only about 50 lines long and does not specify the tribal identities of those involved. It describes a battle in which Hnæf (lines 2 and 40), elsewhere known as a Danish prince (see below), is attacked at a place called Finnsburuh "Finn's stronghold" (line 36). To judge by Beowulf, this is apparently the hall of his brother-in-law Finn, ruler of the Frisians, where he has come to spend the winter (see below). The fragment begins with Hnæf's observation that what he sees outside "is not the dawn in the East, nor is it the flight of a dragon, nor are the gables burning". What he sees is the torches of approaching attackers. Hnæf and his sixty retainers hold the doors for five days, without any falling. Then a wounded warrior turns away to talk to his chief (it is not clear on which side) and the fragment ends. Neither the cause nor the outcome of the fight are described.
Battle according to Beowulf
The context for the poem is obscure, but a version of the story also appears in a passage of the epic poem Beowulf, and some of the characters, such as Hnæf, are mentioned in other texts. The episode in Beowulf (lines 1068-1159) is about 90 lines long and appears in the form of a lay sung by Hrothgar's scop at a feast in celebration of Beowulf's recent exploit. The lay identifies Hnæf's last struggle as the aftermath of a battle described as Fres-wæl ("Frisian slaughter"). The episode is allusive and is clearly intended for an audience that already knows the story. It describes the mourning of Hildeburh, Hnæf's sister; Hnæf's funeral pyre, on which the body of Finn's son is also burnt; and the pact between Finn and one Hengest, who is a leader among Hnæf's surviving warriors and is mentioned also in the Fragment. The circumstances are obscure, but Hnæf's men are to stay in Finnesburgh, at least for the winter, and the Frisians are not to taunt them for following the slayer of their lord. In the end, however, Hengest (Hingest) is persuaded that vengeance is more important; Finn is killed, and Hildeburh is "carried off to her people".
Scholarly reception
The scholar J. R. R. Tolkien made a study of the surviving texts in an attempt to reconstruct what may have been the original story behind the Finnesburg Fragment and Beowulf's "Finnesburg Episode". This study was ultimately edited into the book Finn and Hengest. Tolkien ultimately argues that the story is historical, rather than legendary, in character.
Tolkien argues that Finnsburuh is most likely an error by either Hickes or his printer, since that construction appears nowhere else, and the word should be Finnesburh.[2] It is not clear whether this was the actual name of the hall or only the poet's description of it. Where exactly the hall was, or even whether it was in Frisia, is not known.
Uniquely in the surviving Old English corpus, the fragment contains no Christian references, and the burning of Hnæf is clearly pagan.[citation needed] It is short and about a battle, but the two fragments of the battle-poem Waldere manage to be explicitly Christian in hardly more space.
References
- ^ Hickes, Linguarum. Veterum Septentrionalium Thesaurus grammatico-criticus et archaeologicus, vol 2 (Oxford, 1705).
- ^ Tolkien, J. R. R.; Bliss, Alan J. (ed.): Finn and Hengest: The Fragment and the Episode, Houghton Mifflin Company, New York (1983). ISBN 0-395-33193-5
Sources
- Tolkien, J.R.R. and Alan J. Bliss (editor). Finn and Hengest: The Fragment and the Episode. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983. ISBN 0-395-33193-5
- Hickes, George. Linguarum. Veterum Septentrionalium Thesaurus grammatico-criticus et archaeologicus. Vol. 2. Oxford, 1705.
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