Finnesburg Fragment Totally Explained

Everything about the Finnesburg Fragment totally explained

The Finnesburg Fragment is a fragment of an Old English poem of the type called a leoð, or "lay." The existing text is a transcript of a loose manuscript folio that was once kept at Lambeth Palace, the London residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury; the manuscript was almost certainly Lambeth Library MS 487. The British scholar George Hickes made the transcript some time in the late 17th century, and published it in an anthology of Anglo-Saxon and other antiquities in 1705. Since then the original manuscript folio has been lost or stolen. One of the difficulties with the text is that other transcriptions Hickes made, which can be compared with their original manuscripts, are often inaccurate; so the text may well require substantial emendation.

Overview

The poem describes a probably historical battle in which the Danish prince Hnæf is attacked at a place called Finnsburuh, "Finn's stronghold"; this was the hall of his brother-in-law Finn, lord of the Frisians. Apparently, Hnæf has come to spend the winter there. The fragment begins with Hnæf's observation that what he sees outside "is not the dawn in the East, nor is it the flight of a dragon, nor are the gables burning"; what he sees is the torches of approaching attackers. Hnæf and his sixty thanes hold the doors for five days, without any falling. Then a wounded warrior turns away to talk to his chief (it isn't clear on which side) and the fragment ends.
The scholar J. R. R. Tolkien argues that Finnsburuh is most likely an error by either Hickes or his printer, since that construction appears nowhere else, and the word should be Finnesburh. It isn't clear whether this was the actual name of the hall or only the poet's description of it. Where exactly the hall was, or even whether it was in Frisia, isn't known.
Uniquely in the surviving Anglo-Saxon corpus, the fragment contains no Christian references, and the burning of Hnæf is clearly pagan; it's short and about a battle, but the two fragments of the battle-poem Waldere manage to be explicitly Christian in hardly more space.

Beowulf reference

The fragment is only about fifty lines long; it doesn't mention Finn's name, or the name of either contending tribe. Fortunately, there's a passage in the epic poem Beowulf, in which Hrothgar's bard sings a lay on the aftermath of a battle called the Freswæl, the "Frisian Slaughter", which is clearly the same story. The Beowulf episode is some ninety lines long. The episode is allusive, even for Beowulf, and is clearly intended for an audience that already knows the story.
This Finnesburg Episode (lines 1068-1159 in Beowulf) describes the mourning of Hildeburh, Hnæf's sister; Hnaef's funeral pyre, on which the body of Finn's son is also burnt; and the pact between Finn and one Hengest, who is a leader among Hnæf's surviving warriors and is mentioned also in the Fragment. The conditions of this are obscure; but Hnæf's men are to stay in Finnesburgh, at least for the winter, and the Frisians are not to taunt them for following the slayer of their lord. In the end, however, Hengest is persuaded that vengeance is more important; Finn is killed, and Hildeburh is "carried off to her people".

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