The Topography of Grendel’s Moor in a Scandinavian context

Abstract

This article considers the use of vocabulary which has been erroneously associated with highland terrain in the first two parts of Beowulf from the perspective of historical lexical semantics. It is argued that highland terms such as moor, mountain and fell have been, perhaps unconsciously, imposed upon translations of Beowulf, and are neither applicable to the location of the story in Denmark, nor reflected in the vocabulary of the original text. This is demonstrated with an etymological and comparative method, with particular reference to Scandinavian topographical terminology. Translations by Francis Barton Gummere (1909) and Seamus Heaney (1999) are analysed as representative examples of interpretations of Beowulf, and topographical terms from these texts are collated and compared with those from the original. It is argued that events in Beowulf have been associated with highland terrain because of similarity between Beowulf and some aspects of Gothic literature, which Beowulf predates by centuries, but in many ways anticipates. Wuthering Heights and The Hound of the Baskervilles are used as salient examples of prominent works in British literature which feature moorland as a key characteristic associated with Gothic literary conventions.