Professional Documents
Culture Documents
THE VICISSITUDES
TIME
ABSTRACT
summer
1 1,
winding
between Iiarlingen and
was seemg
more tourist traffic than usual. Harlingen is
a
on the coast
the
province of
1
Friesland/Fryslan, \Vijnaldum an insignificant hamlet not far north
have enjoyed the sight of
from Harlingen. Surely, the tourists
lush pastures leisurely grazed
Friesian cattle whose fame dates
back to Roman times. The sightseers
no doubt
admired the
stately farmsteads reflecting the wealth
generations of cattle
breeders
brought to these parts. Some may even have frowned
when spotting endless rows of modern two-winged mills reaching to
the sky to grind electricity from wind.
such scenic views \Vere not
retinue on
Fimi, king
fcetted go/des
land of the
to Denmark
monster. During
Grendel in the
a
4
son.
night in Hrothgar's
celebration of the hero's defeat of Grendel. As
merriment, Hrothgar's court entertainer sings a song about
It concerns Hnaef, a Danish prince, and his
Medieval
treasures of
upon
the truce,
due ceremonial: icge
(11
the
(1111-12)
all-golden, a boar
Finn is expected
ostentatious
slaughter] ( 1
and why did he venture
from his homeland?
underlying motive for
so far
of pride] (1206), as the poet censures Hygelac's risky
wlenco
venture?
was there more to it? Perhaps not surprisingly, because of
associative reasons, the first mention
raid is made shortly after
s scop has
his lay of Finn and Hnaef. Let us listen m
to the poet himself:
their
to find m
together; lesser
UflW UVVVVUll_
.lftt:
Y f,C-(.,),'Iff!IUCJ
VJ
.LUfLC
The poet is clearly looking back at an event in the past, and, as often
such an advantageous position, in hindsight he is the better
Hygelac's setting sail for Frisia as "looking for
a
the
"
Staging a marine expedition to fight for the sake of fighting would
early medieval kings as more bellicose than is warranted.
The trouble and the feud were the effect, not the purpose of Hygelac' s
objective must have been the treasure (sine) and spoils of
slaughter Cwcelreaf). Had Hygelac's Frisian enterprise been successful,
surely would have been as lavishly praised by the poet as Hengist
and his men after their victory at Finnsburg. As the lord of a band of
11
13
accessible from the sea, such as the one at Wijnaldum, with which I
began this paper. The excavations carried out in the 1990s on this terp
begun to be reported. The results are rich but also limited. The
terp complex measures some 11 hectares, of which only 7%
was excavated during this campaign. One of the main activities on this
seventh century,, as appeared from this excavation, was
craft production, notably that of gold jewellery and ironware.
Amongst the objects recovered were a touchstone to establish the
quality of the gold, a touch needle, drops and ingots of gold, a
considerable number of gold coins as well as a matrix for stamping
foiled gold as an underground of brooches on to which the red
almandine garnet could be laid in. The find of an exquisite gold and
cloisonne fibula suggests the place to have been a major settlement,
perhaps the base of a ruling elite-group. The fibula, according to the
Sutton Hoo expert, Rupert Bruce Mitford (1955), resembles so closely
the one found at Sutton Hoo, that it seems to him to have been made
by one and the same craftsman. 4 Such a conclusion suggests that
Wijnaldum was part of an international network of maritime powers
joined by the North Sea. This network included links with England
and Scandinavia. Other luxury crafts practised at Vlijnaldum included
weaving and the production of glass beads. Finds from neighbouring
terpen confirm the wealth that was concentrated in this part of Frisia.
Especially, in the period between 600 and 750, gold was the most
important precious metal. The total amount of gold found in the
province of Friesland up to 1998, and then from its western, coastal
part only, is no less than 1.5 kilograms (Bazelmans 1998). This figure
is in stark contrast to any other area of the coastal area of the
Netherlands and Germany. Gold was not a local product, but was
imported in the shape of coins and ingots. The amount recovered
bespeaks the enormous wealth that the Frisians amassed during the
early Middle Ages. However, in the course ofthe eighth century silver
was to take over the role of gold. This change is confirmed, for
Kol! H.
Bremmer, Jr.
Albert ten Broecke Hoekstra "who devoted his entire life to the study
Germanic languages, and who particularly concentrated on Old
and Anglo-Saxon." The author carried on by quoting from the
The question which I suppose will be raised by the reader is: why
were people in the Netherlands interested in Old English 'in those
days? What moved them to study the literary remains of the AngloSaxons even before, or at best, at the same time that scholars in
England were once more discovering the beginnings of their literary
history? In order to answer these questions, and especially to give a
proper background to the reception of Beowulf in the Netherlands in
the early nineteenth century, I will try to depict the principal motives
that lay behind this concem. 7 Two Frisians have played an important
role in this respect: Albert ten Broecke Hoekstra ( 1765-1827) and
Joost Halbertsma ( 1789-1869).
The name of Albert ten Broecke Hoekstra today enjoys a moderate
familiarity amongst Frisian literary scholars mainly for his efforts to
produce a scholarly edition of the collected works of the Frisian
Renaissance poet Gysbert Japix (Breuker 1989: II, 49-50). However,
only very few people know -and certainly Anglo-Saxonists are
unaware of this- that Hoekstra also attempted to make a new edition
of Junius's Caedmonis monachi Paraphrasis poetica Genesios,
published in Amsterdam in 1655. 8 An important part of this envisaged
new edition was an etymological glossary to the Old English text
which Hoekstra had compiled. Moreover, Hoekstra has also left to us
16
.\:PT TM YT7
19
1'-0li 11.
nre1mner, Jr.
16
/1
20
22
.C.: PT TM
YTI
.1.
C"r'TTlfl./TT
KOH tl.
bremmer, Jr.
dialects_
learns the language more for the language itself, or
for
1ts relation to other languages, and without wanting
to clmm that the Beowulf, the first heroic epic of the later or
Europe would not be expressed in a grand wav or that
Godmn's silent grief over her husband would not
the
such masterpieces nevertheless are too rare to
counterbalance the effort of learning the language.
(ibid.)
24
]f[{::.lf[,>)lUfl..)
fh)lW
.LTtC
tGI0<.)UVlUC...>.J
V,J
_l_HftG
25
26
27
;;;:
On Junius, see most recently Van Romburgh (2001) and Bremmer (1998).
On Ypeij's linguistic opinions, especially concerning Frisian, see Van Rossum
(1994).
18
Sharon Turner, The Histmy of the Anglo-Saxons from the Earliest Period to the
Norman Conquest, 4 vo1s (London: Cadell and Davies, 1979-1805); 2nd to 7th eds:
1807, 1820, 1823, 1828, 1836, 1852.
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