The Swimming Prowess of Beowulf

Abstract

THE fantastic swimming prowess of Beowulf may well stand out as one of the most amazing abilities of a hero endowed with seemingly supernatural powers. On his youthful swim adventure with Breca Beowulf braves for six or seven days' rough, wintry waves on the open sea. In the course of refuting Unfer6's claim that he had been bested in swimming by Breca, the Geatish hero asserts that he possessed greater 'water strength' than anybody else; still he refers but briefly to the hardships caused by 'welling waters', 'coldest weather', 'darkening night', 'the fierce north wind', and 'the rough waves', and devotes most of his account to the perilous, victorious fights with water-monsters. This emphasis is understandable; as in Beowulf's initial address to HroPgar, in which he refers to his slaying of water-monsters in the waves, the accent is here on the hero's credentials as a monster-killer. Yet this thematic emphasis should in no way cloud the magnitude of Beowulf's swimming feat and deter the modern critic from wondering whether he here views an isolated flight of exaggerating fantasy on the part of the poet or an element indebted to contemporary tradition. Equally stupendous is the hero's swim home from Friesland after the disastrous ending of Hygelac's expedition; it is indeed more amazing yet if Beowulf, as appears likely, carried with him the thirty suits of armour (11. 2361-2).2 Where, if anywhere, in