‘Aragorn and Beowulf: That was a Great King’

‘Aragorn and Beowulf: That was a Great King’

by Samantha E K Reynolds

When comparing J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and the epic Beowulf, it is almost too obvious to say, ‘Oh, look--Professor Tolkien’s gone and stolen the Anglo-Saxon culture and given it to Rohan.' While it is a valid look between the two of them, it can be both very interesting and very tedious. Instead this essay is going to have a little more character to it and do a comparison of Aragorn and Beowulf. Tolkien, while he never stated that he overtly drew from it, named Beowulf as one of his ‘most valued sources.’1 I think that allows for a comparison. What’s more, I think they are sufficiently similar enough to say this: both had similar expectations placed on them by people. Beowulf failed to meet them where as Aragorn did not. The term 'great king'2 was applied to Beowulf despite having failed to meet the terms to become a ‘great king.’ Aragorn was given a similar set of criterion and met them, beautifully. Therefore, Aragorn is worthy of that title and Beowulf is not.

First, how are they alike? I will go through their reputations, their interactions of their respective foreign kings, their Christianity, a few other miscellaneous nuggets, and their archetype.

Their reputations: Beowulf is first described as a ‘thane of Hygelac’ and ‘mightiest among mankind in that day and age, noble and powerful.'3 Aragorn is a ‘Chief of the Dúnedain’4 and as ‘worthy of honour, [...] the most hardy of living Men.’5 Both men also have deeds of courage attributed to them. Beowulf’s is more specific, involving a swimming competition,6 but it is said that he has ‘undertaken many glorious deeds.’7 Of Aragorn it is said that ‘he laboured in the cause against Sauron,’ ‘made many perilous journeys,’ and fought for other rulers.8 They are cut from much of the same cloth, meaning they hopefully they will achieve similar ends.

Their interactions with their respective foreign kings: both men came unbidden to their respective kingdoms they saved after encountering a small delay. Aragorn found out about Saruman’s wickedness when he ran into the Éomer and said that he would help when he could,9 and while we don’t know exactly how Beowulf heard about Grendel, we do know that he came after getting counsel from his people.10 Both came with other warriors11 and both were asked to leave their weapons at the door.12 Interestingly enough, both men had met their kings before they came (albeit in opposite circumstances).13 Both Aragorn and Beowulf played an integral role in saving Théoden and Hrothgar’s kingdoms between the epic battles of Helms Deep and Grendel as heroes.

Their Christianity: now, perhaps it is because I am a Christian and I know that Tolkien is as well, but Aragorn has Christian, even Christ-like elements to him. The most obvious being the title of the third part of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. He’s of an ancient line of people who fell from grace,14 like Christ,15 who comes back to fulfill prophecy,16 he has the ability to heal people and does,17 and, as pointed out by Ralph C. Wood in The Gospel According to Tolkien, one of his names ‘Estel’ means 'hope.'18 What’s more, he’s a good guy, to be very casual about it, well loved by all who meet him, something that only good people possessing of virtue find happening to them.19 Now, I will grant that this seems like a stretch, but not so great of one as to warrant ignoring. 20

Beowulf’s Christianity is as the same time more obvious and less specific. Tolkien himself spoke of a ‘blending’ of Christianity and paganism in Beowulf and I think that’s what we see.21 While you would be hard pressed to call Beowulf a Christian, as you obviously would with Aragorn, there are some threads there. Margaret E. Goldsmith notes ‘Beowulf's selfless courage’ 22 when saving Heorot, and that he speaks of a ‘Christian state of “readiness for contrition,” [when] Beowulf grieves that he has incurred God's anger unwittingly.’23 He does indeed give thanks to ‘the Lord of all, the King of Glory’ by the end.24 While he’s not a ‘Christ-figure’ in the same way that Aragorn might be construed, it is worth noting the Christian-influence on both of them.

Or perhaps, as T.M. Gang puts it, it is that Beowulf is sort of a ‘secular Saint.’25 Indeed you could probably ascribe that to both he and Aragorn which means that we can assume, them being saintly, that they are men of strong moral fiber who will rise to the occasion.

There are a few minor things to note, a few fun items such as swords and kingdoms.

Both men have important named swords with stories behind them and neither is the first owner of that sword. Beowulf has Hrunting, formerly belonging to Unferth,26 and Aragorn has Andúril, formerly belonging to Elendil.27 Both are singular swords.28 Both men do, by the end, get their own kingdom. Aragorn becomes king of both Gondor and Arnor,29 and Beowulf becomes king of the Geats30 after he had already been given his own little realm.31 This continues to show the coinciding trajectories of their lives.

Their archetype--this is where things get a bit more involved: first, we must explain that Tolkien was creating a mythology.32 ‘Myth, in its most general sense, provides a link between the eternal and the human, as manifested in the human [sic],’33 arguably as manifested in the hero. This places a heavy burden on a hero to live up to the eternal, to the divine, to be better than human, to not fail. This is all important because, myths tend to deal in archetypes.

Beowulf is an archetypal hero, ‘“embodying the dark side as well as the light” [...] [with a] desire to be supremely destructive as well as supremely creative’34 as seen in his killing of Grendel and creating of peace, if only for a time. In his defeat of Grendel, he ‘control[s] [...] chaos by the forces of order’ thus ‘repeat[ing] the act of a god.’35 That, certainly, makes him ‘better than human,’ I would say.

Aragorn does something similar. As king, he presumably brings order to some of the chaos in Middle Earth, restoring the peace that the darkness had brought in his kingdom of Arnor. (We can assume this, I would argue because no mention of a failure on his part is mentioned in the Appendices and there is certainly some cleaning up needed in places like Bree where there are ‘wolves [...] And dark shapes in the woods’ that are disturbing the peace.36) Even before he is king, he is restoring order, playing a massive part in freeing Rohan from Saruman at the Battle of Helms Deep37 and leading an Army of the Dead to rescue Minas Tirith from certain chaotic destruction.38 Keeping in mind the actual ‘better than a normal man’ qualities he already possess - healing, as discussed earlier, and his long life and delayed aging process39 - it’s safe to say that he too, like Beowulf, ‘control[s] [...] chaos by the forces of order’ to some extent. Because of all of this, I would say that we can infer that he possessed both the ability to destroy (by killing, like Beowulf) and the ability to create (peace and a kingdom, more or less like Beowulf).

Now that we have established that they are in fact akin to each other, we come to,the question ‘Is Beowulf really a “great king” as is claimed or is he just an “okay king”? Particularly when you compare him against someone like Aragorn who is, as I have shown, sufficiently similar to contrast against?’

As both men have similar backgrounds (one is a thane, the other a chief, both are men of

repute), entered into these situations under similar circumstances, with similar moral characters and trajectories, and are similar (if not the same) archetypes, one would hope that they would both live up to this title of ‘great king.’ But no!

The archetype is where the first part of this discussion begins.

Whereas Aragorn maintains this archetypal element staying ‘more than human’ not only because of his long life, but because of how it ends - in that it ends successfully, something that will be gotten to shortly - Beowulf does not maintain this mythic archetype. After his defeat of Grendel, his two other battles bump him from a mythic archetype down to ‘an historical figure,’ then to ‘an historical king,’ finally letting both ‘encounters demythologize[...] Beowulf.’40 His defeat at the hands of the dragon ‘destroys the hero’s effectiveness as an archetypal figure’41 and of his society.42 (This does not happen to Aragorn who dies peacefully leaving the kingdom to his son, Eldarion.43)

Continuing on, the standards set for them by others--standards, I would wager, that are a fair yardstick. Beginning with Beowulf:

The first standard is woven into the very fabric of the poem. His funeral and proclamation as a ‘great king’ at the end ‘symmetrically closes the poem’44 which opens with another ‘great king,’ Scyld, and his funeral.45 Scyld is a king to whom people paid tribute who had a generous and beloved son.46 The translator, Michael Swanton put forth that the poet opens with this seemingly unimportant story to ‘make it appear that Scyld’s arrival marks the very foundation of the Danish state and the springtime of its fortunes.’47 Beowulf has to live up to that.

The second standard is set for him by Hrothgar:

‘Bebeorh þe ðone bealoníð, Beowulf leofa,

secg betosta,  ond þe þæt selre geceos,

ece rædas; oferhyda ne gym

mære cempa!’48

Hrothgar is extolling Beowulf ‘do not be obsessed by arrogance!’ It’s a very straight forward standard and something Beowulf has, in comparison with how the poem ends, lived up to. Whereas at the end of the poem where he tries to take on the dragon singlehandedly as an old man,49 when dealing with Grendel he has his people with him50 and even when he deals with Grendel’s mother he doesn’t preclude, verbally, people from joining him.51 At least prior to dealing with the dragon we can see that he has not become ‘obsessed by arrogance.’

Beowulf has two standards set before him and, I would argue, missed the mark with both despite what his people say of him.52 Beowulf does not, in fact, live up to these standards.

Concerning the first: If Scyld is ‘the very foundation of the Danish state’ who is succeeded by his son, presumably as it wasn’t noted that he was not succeeded by his son, then Beowulf is the end. Not only did the dragon destroy villages under Beowulf’s protection, but Beowulf’s hall.53 The Anglo-Saxon word used is ‘gifstol’54 which literally means ‘gift-seat’ or ‘throne.’55 Very literally, and symbolically I would argue on account of his apparent lack of action to defend his home while it is being attacked, Beowulf lost his throne. To add insult to injury, he had no heirs, no son to carry on his name.56 He has failed on both things that were important to note about Scyld. That is one failed standard.

Concerning the second: I would argue that, to make matters worse, not only does he fail at Hrothgar’s standard, but it is because he fails at this standard that he fails at the first. Lines 2345-2354 speak to how Beowulf will not take a sizable troop to fight the dragon with him because he does not seem to think the fire-breathing beast of death and destruction is going to be all that much of a challenge after all the beasts he has already defeated. What’s more, after fifty years of being king,57 making him well into and his sixties if not his seventies, he feels that his own strength is enough to defeat this monster.58 If that isn’t pride, if that does not sound as if a man has become ‘obsessed by arrogance’ then I do not know what does.59

Aragorn on the other hand lives up to the standards given to him. One comes from Bilbo Baggins and two from the elf-lord Elrond. What’s more, he even surpasses his ancestors to whom he is compared with.

Bilbo and Elrond both set the standard for Aragorn to become king. Bilbo states, almost prophesies ‘The crownless again shall be king.’61 Elrond is less poetic about a standard saying that unless Aragorn becomes 'the King of both Gondor and Arnor'61 he will not be allowed to marry Arwen, Elrond’s daughter.

The other standard set is more dramatic. Elrond, again, states that Aragorn will either succumb to the fate of his ancestors and ‘fall into darkness’ or become so great a king as has not been seen since the great kings.62

The last one, also set by Elrond, is perhaps the most nebulous. He mentions a ‘hard and long’ test that Aragorn must not fail, lest his years are cut short and his stature diminished.63 It seems that this test is lifelong and culminates with death: do not give in to despair.64

Three standards, one more than Beowulf has, and as, if not more, difficult: become king of two kingdoms, become such a king as has not been seen in many years, do not give into despair.

He was crowned king of Gondor and Arnor, was a successful and righteous king as

had not been seen in many ages,65 and he passed the test, going hopefully ‘beyond [...] [the circles of the world] [into] more than memory.’66

Whereas Aragorn lived up to his standards, Beowulf did not. What’s more, Beowulf failed to live up to the most important standard: the one set by Scyld which carried the mantle, ‘That was a great king.’ Aragorn, more or less, was given that same standard in being told to surpass his ancestors and lived up to it. How then can the poet say that Beowulf was a ‘great king’? I would argue that he was a good and even heroic king, but not a great one.

As shown through the course of this essay, only Aragorn is deserving of the proclamation, ‘That was a great king.’

1. Tolkien, J.R.R. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Compiled by Humphrey Carpenter. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1981, letter 25.

2. Swanton, Michael, trans. Beowulf. Revised ed. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1978, line 2390.

3. Beowulf, lines 189-193.

4. Tolkien, J.R.R. The Fellowship of the Ring. 1965/1966 ed. Vol. 1 of The Lord of the Rings. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1954, 206.

5. Tolkien, J.R.R. The Return of the King. 1965/1966 ed. Vol. 3 of The Lord of the Rings. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1955, 341.

6. Beowulf, lines 529-606.

7.  It should be noted that he himself says this, but given all the other things that we know of him as a leader of men I don’t think he lies about it. Beowulf, lines 408-409.

8. Tolkien, The Return of the King, 340-341.

9. Tolkien, J.R.R. The Two Towers. 1965/1966 ed. Vol. 2 of The Lord of the Rings. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1954, 39.

10. Beowulf, lines 194-204.

11. Beowulf with ‘champions, the bravest he could find’ (Beowulf, lines 205-207) and Aragorn with Gandalf, Legolas, and Gimli (Tolkien, The Two Towers, chapter four).

12. Beowulf, lines 397-398, and Tolkien, The Two Towers, 114-115.

13. Beowulf, lines 373-374, and Tolkien, The Two Towers, 441.

14. Not to speak of the fall of Men from Númenor (Tolkien, J.R.R. The Silmarillion. Compiled by Christopher Tolkien. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977, 259-282), but then Isildur who allowed the Ring of Power and Sauron to exist, and then the subsequent kings who diluted the blood line (Tolkien, Return of the King, 332-333) thereby allowing the stewards to rule in their stead.

15. That is a completely different paper altogether, but suffice to say that the genealogies in both St. Matthew and St. Luke’s Gospels trace Christ’s bloodline back past David whose ‘house and [...] kingdom will endure forever’ (2 Samuel 7:16, Zondervan NIV Study Bible (Fully Revised). (2002). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan), and who is part of the race of mankind which fell from grace and into brokenness in Genesis 3 much like the race of Men in Middle Earth did.

16. Albeit the prophecy of Bilbo Baggins as given first in Gandalf’s letter (Tolkien, Fellowship of the Ring, 182) and then again at Rivendale (260-261), but a prophecy nonetheless.  

17. Tolkien, Return of the King, 141. Many of Christ’s miracles were ones of healing.

18. Wood, Ralph C. The Gospel According to Tolkien: visions of the kingdom of middle earth. Louisville, KT: Knox Press, 2003.

19. As evidenced by, if nothing else, Lady Éowyn’s declaration that those who go with him to the Path’s of the Dead go with him ‘because they would not be parted from thee--because they love thee’ (Tolkien, Return of the King, 58). This is the most obvious of many instances where Aragorn is loved.

20. Tolkien himself said that while he wrote a myth, but not a Christian myth (‘I suppose that a difference between this Myth [presumably his Legendarium] and what may perhaps be called Christian mythology’ [Letters, Letter 212]) he did say that the fact that he is a Christian can reasoned from his work (Letters, Letter 213) therefore making an inference like this fair game.

21. Tolkien, J.R.R. The Monsters and the Critics: and other essays. London, UK: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997, 21.

22. Goldsmith, Margaret E. 'The Christian Perspective in Beowulf.' Comparative Literature 14, no. 1 (Winter 1962): 71-90, 75.

23. Goldsmith, 'The Christian Perspective,' 79.

24.  Beowulf, lines 2794-2795.

25. Gang, T.M. 'Approaches to Beowulf.' The Review of English Studies, n.s., 3, no. 9 (January 1952): 1-12, 11.

26. Beowulf, lines 1488-1491.

27. Tolkien, Fellowship of the Ring, 260.

28. Hrunting is a singular sort of sword , I would say, because the word used to describe it, hæftmece is ‘otherwise unrecorded. It is interesting that in the same place in the paradigm in the Old Norse Grettis Saga, the same kind of strange weapon occurs’ with an ‘otherwise unrecorded’ word being used (Beowulf, 198). Andúril is singular as well being a reforged sword of ‘the Blade that was Broken’ and having originally been forged ‘in the deeps of time’ (Tolkien, The Two Towers, 115).

29. Tolkien, Return of the King, 246.

30. Beowulf, lines 2386-2390.

31. Beowulf, lines 2194-2196.

32. He himself called it ‘my “mythology”’ in his letters (Tolkien, Letters, 229).

33. Helterman, Jeffrey. 'Beowulf: The Archetype Enters History.' ELH 35, no. 1 (March 1968): 1-20, 2.

34. Helterman, ‘The Archetype Enters History,’ 3.

35. Helterman, ‘The Archetype Enters History,’ 9.

36. Tolkien, Return of the King, 272.

37. Tolkien, Two Towers, 131-147.

38. Tolkien, Return of the King, 123.

39. After the events of the War of the Ring, Aragorn ruled for 120 years already being 88 when he was crowned king (Tolkien, Return of the King, 343, 370, 376).

40. Helterman, ‘The Archetype Enters History,’ 17.

41. Helterman, ‘The Archetype Enters History,’ 19.

42. Helterman, ‘The Archetype Enters History,’ 20.

43. Tolkien, Return of the King, 343-344.

44. Helterman, ‘The Archetype Enters History,’ 5.

45. Beowulf, line 11.

46. Beowulf, lines 10-12, 20-24.

47. Beowulf, 15.

48. Beowulf, lines 1758-1761.

49. Beowulf, lines 2538-2541.

50. Beowulf, lines 688-690.

51. Beowulf, lines 1473-1491.

52. They’re biased anyway.

53. Beowulf, lines 2312-2327.

54. Beowulf, line 2327.

55. ‘gifstol.’ Hall, John R. Clark. A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Third ed. London, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1894.

56. Beowulf, lines 2729-2732.

57. Beowulf, lines 2732-2733.

58. Beowulf, lines 2538-2541.

59. I will grant that I come at this with 21st century eyes and that I could be completely wrong in the eyes of the culture. I am not so arrogant or stupid to assume that I am unable of being wrong about a culture from almost 1,500 years ago.

60. Tolkien, Fellowship of the Ring, 261.

61. Tolkien, Return of the King, 342. If you look at a map, that’s a sizable kingdom, split, actually by a mountain range.

62. Tolkien, Return of the King, 340.

63. Tolkien, Return of the King, 338.

64. Tolkien, Return of the King, 344. It is a very nebulous passage this, and to my, albeit limited, knowledge, the only time such a test is mentioned for Aragorn.

65. ‘In his time the City [of Minas Tirith] was made more fair than it had ever been’ (Tolkien, Return of the King, 246), he was both merciful and just particularly in the case of Beregond of Gondor (246-247), he made peace with his enemies and freed slaves (247), and even in death he was ‘an image of the splendour of the Kings of Men in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world’ (344). I would say he met Elrond’s standard. Elrond blessed his marriage to Arwen, didn’t he (251)?

66. Tolkien, Return of the King, 344.

67. As evidenced by the mourners at his funeral and the speeches made about it, the outpouring of love in the last four chapters of Beowulf (lines 2821-3182).

Works Cited

Gang, T.M. 'Approaches to Beowulf.' The Review of English Studies, n.s., 3, no. 9 (January

1952): 1-12.

Goldsmith, Margaret E. 'The Christian Perspective in Beowulf.' Comparative Literature 14, no. 1

(Winter 1962): 71-90.

Hall, John R. Clark. A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Third ed. London, UK: Cambridge

University Press, 1894.

Helterman, Jeffrey. 'Beowulf: The Archetype Enters History.' ELH 35, no. 1 (March 1968): 1-20.

Swanton, Michael, trans. Beowulf. Revised ed. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press,

1978.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Compiled by Humphrey Carpenter. Edited by

Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company,

1981.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Fellowship of the Ring. 1965/1966 ed. Vol. 1 of The Lord of the Rings. New

York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1954.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Two Towers. 1965/1966 ed. Vol. 2 of The Lord of the Rings. New York, NY:

Houghton Mifflin Company, 1954.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Return of the King. 1965/1966 ed. Vol. 3 of The Lord of the Rings. New

York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1955.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Monsters and the Critics: and other essays. London, UK: HarperCollins

Publishers, 1997.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Silmarillion. Compiled by Christopher Tolkien. New York, NY: Houghton

Mifflin Company, 1977.

Wood, Ralph C. The Gospel According to Tolkien: visions of the kingdom of middle earth.

Louisville, KT: Knox Press, 2003.

Zondervan NIV Study Bible (Fully Revised). (2002). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.