Battle of Finnsburg

The Battle of Finnsburg ( The Fight at Finnsburg ), as well as the Finnsburg fragment ( Finnesburg Fragment ) - preserved fragment of the poem in Old English , describing the siege of the fortress of Finnsburg. It is likely that this siege, also described in Beowulf , actually took place in the 5th century. The manuscript of the Finnsburg fragment was discovered at the end of the 17th century in the library of the archbishops of Canterbury , and in 1705 it was translated and published by George Hicks . The list from which Hicks made copies was subsequently lost.

The fragment consists of forty eight lines. The Dane Khnef and sixty of his Tenes , wintering in the fortress of Finn - the lord of the Frisians , a khnest of Knef - are attacked by unnamed enemies for five days. The text breaks off at the address of the wounded warrior to the leader. The same story is fully set out in lines 1068-1159 of Beowulf, from which it is clear that Finn himself was the enemy of Khnef. In it, Knef dies, and his surviving combatants, under the command of Hengest , continue to hold on and inflict such damage on the Friezes that Finn is forced to negotiate. Winter passes peacefully, but in spring two of Khnef’s companions, Oslaf (Ordlaf in “The Battle of Finnsburg”) and Goodlough, leave home, gather troops there and return to Frisia, where they avenge the death of their leader, killing Finn and his associates. The identity of Hengest — King Kent and the Hengest of Beowulf — is probable, but not proven.

Already at the time of composing Beowulf (VIII-X centuries), the Battle of Finnsburg was considered a distant past, legends of which should have been well known to contemporaries. Interestingly, in the Canterbury fragment there is not a single reference to Christianity ; Knef’s funeral pyre described in Beowulf is a pagan rite.

The Finnsburg fragment is dedicated to the research monograph by J. R. R. Tolkien , Finn and Hengest, published posthumously in 1982. According to Tolkien, the siege of Finnsburg was an internal strife between Danish warriors - there were shelters on both sides of the conflict expelled from Denmark and finding shelter in the friezes. In the battle, the "old" yutes - the squad in Finn's service - collided with the "new" new yuts, led by Knef.