Lejre's Iron-Age
Village
in 'Grendel Country'
The
iron-age village at the Lejre Research Centre is set among ponds,
swamps, hills and ancient mounds of turf and boulders -- my idea of
Grendel
country. In Beowulf,
after Grendel has been defeated in King
Hrothgar's hall, Heorot,
Hrothgar describes the wild country nearby,
where the Grendelkin
live: They hold out in unknown land,
wolf-hills, windy
nesses,
dangerous
fen-paths, where a mountain
streamgoes
down under misty
cliffs,
1360waters under the
ground. It's not far awayas miles get
measured, that the mere stands;over it
hang frosted groves;woods rooted
fast overshadow the water.There each
night a fearful wonder is seen:fire on the
waters. No wise man lives,of the human
race, who knows the bottom.
Grendel's
mother makes a revenge raid on Heorot, and takes off with
Hrothgar's favourite warrior, Aeschere. The following morning Beowulf,
Hrothgar and their men track her to her lair:
Along the forest-trails
the footprints
were easily seen,
her tracks on the
ground, as she'd gone forth
over the mirky
moor, bearing the best
of all the
retainers who with
Hrothgar
had guarded the
homeland, deprived of his life.
Then the son of princes strode
over
steep rocky
trails, narrow passes,
single-file
footpaths, an unknown
way,
1410
beetling
crags, many a nicor-house;
he with a
few skilled men
went
ahead to view the ground,
until he
suddenly found, leaning
over the hoary
stone the mountain trees,
a joyless
wood; water stood under it,
bloodstained and turbid.
Historians
generally agree that the earliest Danish kings had their halls and
headquarters in the vicinity of modern-day Lejre (pronounced "Lye-ra";
used to be Hleithra),
about 45 kilometers (30 miles) west of Copenhagen.
In
the map (right) taken from a railway information board at Lejre, you
can see the shoreline of Roskilde Fjord at the top. The yellow blob on
the right side is Roskilde, and the smaller yellow blob at the bottom,
just left of centre, is Lejre, about 10 kilometers (6 miles) away.
The
inlet of Roskilde Fjord at the left is called Lejre Vig. The nearly
enlosed bay to its right is called Kattinge Vig and you can see that
watercourses beginning near Lejre flow through ponds into it.
The Lejre Forsogscenter (Lejre
Experimental Centre) is about 12 kilometers (8 miles) northwest of
Lejre train station. The 233 bus takes you there hourly when the
Centre's open.
As
could be expected in the world's happiest, most democratic,
freedom-of-press loving, and least corrupt country, there's a large
proportion of wilderness left unspoiled. Denmark is intensively farmed,
but as you can see from the areas marked in green, the Danes take good
care of their natural habitats as well.
That means
the Beowulf
pilgrim can explore some of the prettiest landscapes in the world,
hopping on and off bicycles, trains, buses, and boats of all ages,
sizes and descriptions while doing serious Beowulf
research. Based on what I saw and have been told, my own best plan
would be (a) get in shape (b)arrange a bed-and breakfast in Lejre (c)
rent or buy a used bike (d) pack lunches and ride all around the area
for a couple of weeks (e) be in even better shape when I leave.
The
place-name Hroskilde
means "Hro's Spring"; Hro
is a later version of the name Hrothgar. Springs, lakes and ponds are
plentiful in the Roskilde-Lejre area, but there was even more water
around here 1500 years ago, before much of the land was drained for
agriculture. The sea levels were also probably several feet higher,
because the land has slowly been rising since the disappearance of the
ice covering it during the last ice age, about 12,000 years ago. In
viking times, shallow-draft vessels would likely have been able to come
closer to Lejre, through Lejre or Kattinge Vig, than is currently
possible. (Maybe with global warming this will reverse.)
Mists
and burning marsh gas "fire on the waters" are commonly seen in swampy
areas,
so those details of Hrothgar's description are also plausible.
I'm
not saying that Grendel or his ma actually lurked on this particular
spot.
 But I do suggest the terrain between Lejre and
Roskilde Fjord answers fairly well to the description in Beowulf.
In
his 1936 paper, "Beowulf:
the Monsters and the Critics," J.R.R. Tolkien (who later wrote The Lord of the Rings)
pleaded for more attention to the poem as a work of art. He felt,
rightly, that this side of Beowulf
had been neglected in the pursuit of the historical information to be
quarried from the poem. Critics like A.G. Brodeur (1960) and J. Leyerle
(1967) were among many who turned their attention to the aesthetics
(why it's beautiful) of Beowulf.
I
notice that many studies
over the last twenty years or so have once again turned in a more
scientific direction, looking at its anthropological, sociological and
historical implications. There's no need to choose between these two
directions, because it's easy to appreciate Beowulf as a fine
poem and
to see that it offers important information about the past and teases
us with many questions worth asking, whether or not we can find
satisfactory answers.
The iron-age village is a living
history project in which people stay on the site, wearing
period costume and living in reed-thatched houses. The young iron-age
village women in these pictures were certainly busy as Brenda and I
hiked around their site. The bottom image is of one of the many
informative signs discretely placed around the Centre.
The Centre is very youth-friendly, and
young people can camp and learn iron-age trades and survival skills
here. One of them is making and using dugout canoes like these to the
left. According to an article by John R. Hale, the later lapstrake
designs of the Germanic seafaring peoples evolved from craft like these.
Other
activities and demonstrations include breadmaking, weaving, iron
smelting, animal husbandry and archaeology.
I'm
planning to return to this area for at least one more look round.
I didn't see any "windy nesses" or "misty cliffs" on this
visit, but was told there are cliffs between Isefjord and Roskilde
Fjord. To tell the truth though, I would want to return to
the Lejre-Roskilde area even if it had nothing to offer the Beowulf pilgrim.
If you'd like to view it
through Google Earth, the iron age village's coordinates are: 55 deg
37' 02.35'' north, and
11 deg 56' 53.58" east
Book Reference: For a summary of the evidence on Lejre as the site of Heorot, see R.W. Chambers, Beowulf: An Introduction, 3rd Edition
(Cambridge University Press, 1959), page 365
Travel Info (leave beowulf-country.org)For travel information to the Lejre Forsogcenter, go to this travelchannel page Links to Lejre To find out more about the Lejre Experimental Centre, go hereor here.
Stay in Denmark-Beowulf
resources and go to:
If
you'd rather search in England,
Sweden or Norway, click on one of these
links:
London,
Maldon and Sutton Hoo:
Goteborg, Gamla Uppsala, Vallentuna, Stockholm:Oslo, Bygdoy and Bergen:Norway-Beowulf-resources
Copyright: The
quotation from Beowulf
is from Mike Walton's The
Book of Beowulf (Cayuga, Ontario: Copyright 2007), pages
68-70. You may
use the materials on this site for an essay or for private Beowulf
study, but not commercially. Do credit
your source!
Take
me to 6 Anglo-Saxon Poems Versions of Beowulf
for recommended editions and translations, plus movie reviews Contact Mike
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