"Beowulf" as an Expression of Scandinavian Values and Conflicts

To be without silver is better than to be without honor. -- Old Norse Proverb
R.M. Liuzza's reflections on his translation of Beowulf treated this early work as historical text, a poem and a myth. The ambiguities surrounding Beowulf's origins, however, made an isolated historical analysis limited. As Liuzza acknowledged, Beowulf is, "a fictionalized matrix of past in present in the text"(17) and was survived in small collection of other texts, copied by two different scribes, its original purpose and audience unknown (11). Since the poem likely originated from oral traditions, a literary analysis also falls short. Beowulf "is frustratingly ambivalent"(11). But, reading it as a mythic work, however, is a strong lens for understanding the Scandinavian imagination.
<Tab/>Myth, as R.M. Liuzza observed, works to, "condense and contain the most fundamental sources of cultural tension," in a society, and also, "validate[s] current ideologies"(18). Beowulf transmitted Scandinavian ideologies about the structure of society. …