![]() ![]() The penultimate section offers further thoughts on the relationship of the monsters of the Danish mere, and their decapitation, to imagery of the moon’s waning. It progresses from analysis of lunar and solar imagery in another Old English prose text preceding Beowulf in Cotton Vitellius A.xv, and of the Anglo-Latin Liber monstrorum, to the words of Beowulf (especially the noun nið ), and then further evidence for the presence of lunar and solar myth in Old Norse texts. The present chapter advances further evidence. ![]() I have already adduced some of this evidence, the clearest being the similarities between Grendel’s mere and the Lake of the Moon in Wonders, between Grendel’s mother and the giantess Mána ‘Moon’ (about whom more below) in Sörla saga sterka, and between Grendel and the lunar thief of Riddle 29. It is chiefly further comparative evidence from Old English and Old Norse texts that now suggests this dimension to their nature. If present, this aspect lies in the background, though it may have been more apparent to an Anglo-Saxon audience than it is today. 1 That Grendel and his mother-two ellorgæstas ‘alien visitors/spirits’ or ‘visitors/spirits from elsewhere’ (1349)-may have a mythologically lunar aspect is not readily apparent from Beowulf. ![]()
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