Grendel: Another View
Posted by: Loren Coleman on January 16th, 2008
Cryptozoology pitches a large enough tent to encompass many different folks who hold varied opinions, happily, side by side.
One notion of Grendel, that of a specific line of thinking has it that Grendel was a surviving hairy hominoid, a Neandertaloid, or perhaps even a relict form of Homo heildelbergensis.
Harry Trumbore’s image of Grendel (above) is from The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates and captures one version of the hominological view.
How about another opinion?
Today, the author of Shadows of Existence, cryptozoologist Matt Bille shares his insights in this commentary about Grendel:
Cryptozoologists have speculated on whether some form of human-like primate, be it a surviving Neanderthal or an unknown species, has been behind European folklore about “wildmen” and “trolls.”
Grendel pops up often in this conversation. The reason is that some translations, like a prose version I read in high school, explicitly make Grendel a wildman of some sort. The version I remember makes him about seven feet tall, “drooling with spit, stinking and hairy.” Does that accord with the actual text of the poem?
We have, of course, no definitive version of the poem, whose origins are lost in time. Indeed, since for a long time it was a tale told or sung orally, and changed constantly, there is not really an official nor an original form. But the most authoritative source we have, the one all modern translations spring from (at first, second, or third hand) is a single surviving manuscript in the British Library. When poet Seamus Heaney went back to this source and used it directly for his wonderful new translation, he shed some light on Grendel.
That Grendel was a seven-foot hairy wildman appears to be a later author’s interpretation. Heaney’s translation of Beowulf doesn’t contain anything sufficiently descriptive of Grendel to be of much use. Heaney, in an introduction, provides his view after reading the sole surviving original text: that Grendel makes us think of “some hard-boned, immensely strong android frame, half Caliban and half-hoplite.” (Caliban being the deformed ~ also not well described, but usually depicted as a bestial subhuman or wildman ~ yet eloquent slave in The Tempest, while a hoplite was a Greek heavy infantryman.)
Grendel is “a fiend out of hell, a grim demon” from “the banished monsters, Cain’s creatures.” He attacks Beowulf with his claws ready, which doesn’t sound primate-like, and the later description of the arm and hand Beowulf tears off doesn’t sound mammalian at all. On the other hand, Grendel is sufficiently human to have a soul, which is condemned to Hell.
The description of his size is not consistent: he is bested by one human hero in unarmed combat, but a few pages earlier, it says he bore off THIRTY men at a time, which would make him gigantic. Nowhere is he compared directly in size to a man or anything else that would allow us to ascribe an approximate height to him. All we know for sure is that he could fit through the doors of the mead hall.
From a cryptozoological perspective, I don’t think there is anything solid we can make of this. Grendel is a little-described fiend who, given the reference to the old idea of Cain’s clan as outcasts from humanity, might plausibly be assumed to be hairy, even if the poem makes no further reference to it. His mother seems to be something else again: she’s been seen with him stalking on the moors, but she moves better in water than on land.
They went a different direction with the recent film, Beowulf (2007; directed by Robert Zemeckiswhich) follows the poem about halfway before veering off into a different story. In this visually stunning but ultimately less than compelling version, Grendel is a huge, misshapen parody of a human, but is still a physical animal, while his mother (Angelina Jolie) is a supernatural entity who can be physical (in more ways than one) when she wants to be.
The atmospheric if equally revisionist 2005 film Beowulf and Grendel (directed by Icelander Sturla Gunnarsson with Canadian screenwriter Andrew Rai Berzins) offered a different vision of the creature, one cryptozoologists may actually find more interesting. While Grendel is called a troll and has a nonhuman monster for a mother, he is basically an oversized, somewhat bestial human who one reviewer likened to a “Scandinavian sasquatch.” He has no more hair than normal, can breed with a human woman, and is intelligent enough to have an ethical code similar to Beowulf’s own.
I’ve always thought that Grendel was useful only as evidence of humanity’s long fascination with semi-humanoid monsters, and not as evidence of any specific animal that was then living, or indeed had ever lived outside the human imagination. This doesn’t mean such things can’t exist, only that we can’t rely on an old Anglo-Saxon poem to prove it.
But what a poem it is.Matt Bille
Matthew Bille’s Shadows of Existence.
Bille’s earlier Rumors of Existence.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Very interesting, Loren, thanks for sharing it with us.
I agree with the comments on Grendel. I have read the thing multiple times–in a variety of translations.
My impression of Grendel is that he is a humanoid thing of immense strength and I think that is where cryptos find the possible link to wild men–I agree that there is no real proof to support that, but it’s also not to great a leap to come to that conclusion either.
On the other hand, Grendel’s mother is even more of a monstrosity–she I think is even more grotesque or odd—that leads me to think more of the spawn of Loki from Norse Mythology—so in that light, Grendel may represent more of an abberation and a monster.
Again, there is nothing in the texts to support directly the idea that Grendel was indeed a BF, but it has always been an interesting idea.
Personally, I liked Michael Crichton’s interpretation in the 13th Warrior–as a tribe of underground dwellers attacking Heorot (Sp?) and representing Grendel, his mother and the dragon all in one. I liked the movie better than the book (a rarety for me), but it was an interesting take on the whole Beowulf Saga.
I would dare say the story of Beowulf serves literature and not history. As Beowulf is the embodiment of the archetypal “Hero,” so too is Grendel its antithesis. We know much about Beowulf; he is described in glorious detail – almost too much so. I found him whiny and self-serving and bereft of many characteristics we associate with a selfless hero of the people. On the other hand, Grendel is likely vague and amorphous in the tale on purpose. His very vagueness elucidates terror by playing on mankind’s biggest fear: the unknown. He is the monster in the shadows. The very first “Nightmare on Elm Street” was frightening because we didn’t know Freddy. We didn’t know what he looked like very well. He stayed to and was represented by the shadows, which distorted his visage further. One memorable scene is as he chases a girl down an alley and his shadowy arms stretch out like the tentacles of some Kraken. Perhaps in this same way, Grendel is a vague expression of nightmares beyond description, leaving us, the reader or listener, to fill in the blanks with our own worst thoughts.
very interesting new article about the grendel. thanks bill green
In my opinion Grendel is a wonderful creation of literature with no actual basis as a cryptid.
An outstanding commentary, Matt, and one that absolutely makes sense to me and puts the question to rest for me as to whether Beowulf was a bigfoot creature. Thank you and thanks, Loren, for putting it on this website for us all to read.
With regards relict hominids of the “Grendal” persuasion, have we heard any news from Norway?
The Norwegian geography includes a huge section of high plateau (A large proportion of Norway in fact), which is pretty much unpopulated and underused.
Could relict hominids survive in the Highlands of Norway? Have we heard any news from Norway in this regard?
I just read Grendel by John Gardner. And Grendel himself felt that he was part human. He spoke the human language. Grendal was a very lonely beast. Poor thing, he just wanted friends. He was returning a person he found to the village trying to make friends, and the villagers attacked him. That’s when Grendel was like fine, you shall all make good meals.
Interesting perspective. I enjoyed reading it. But then I enjoy reading all sorts of re-examinations of our history with new eyes and new understanding.
The Beowulf story, like a lot of other archetypic stories from other cultures seem to be foundational stories encoded into adventure sagas that explain how it is that the community gained its identity by sticking together during adversity and its need for heroic bravery and sacrifice. That it includes fantastic monsters of all description is naturally to be expected since so many monsters exist in our instinctive minds: fear of being devoured by snakes, eagles, big cats and lumbering bears and many other fantastic constructions out of our altered consciousnesses. If one has never examined the hallucinations that are common to both shamans and modern day fellow-travellers, one would not be aware of just how rich the subconscious menagerie is…and how consistently conformational it is to our real world animals…or at least the ones that use to prowl in our midst.
The Grendel/relic hominid type of connection seems particularly salient. Maybe because I’ve read too much stuff about BF but it is striking how often the motif returns and how solidly placed in the nearly historic time of legend. In studying old landscapes I am often impressed by the mosaic nature of change in a landscape, suggesting possible refuge for animals well beyond the time of their ideal habitat’s passing, surviving glacier and climate change and human incursion.
I really loved the 2005 Sturla Gunnarsson version best of all. To each their own, but the fascination goes beyond and beneath mere style and taste.
Just went over this one, and I’d have to agree that “Beowulf” (the Heaney translation is, now, the only one I have read) isn’t a crypto Rosetta Stone.
In her book “Still Living?” which may be out of print now (but I think is available on Amazon), Myra Shackley goes over the hairy-hominoid file. Not to recount a work with which you all may be quite familiar, but she gives thumbs way up to a number of possibilities. Western European relict hominoids? Not so much.
And I found her argument pretty persuasive. For what that’s worth.