Goths, Huns, and The Dream of the Rood Leonard Neidorf ABSTRACT This article argues that two poems concerned with legends of Goths and Huns, the Old Norse Hlo R ðskviða and the Old High German Hildebrandslied, provide an illuminat- ing literary context for The Dream of the Rood. The critical utility of these poems inheres in their ability to delineate more precisely the intertextual relationship that obtains between The Dream of the Rood and the vernacular tradition of heroic poetry. When the poem is read in this context, Christ appears not to be vaguely heroic, but to be modelled on a specific type of hero: the intransigent youth who compels his unwill- ing adversary to fight him and ultimately take his life. The figures of Hlo R ð and Hadubrand are shown to constitute the most relevant extant realizations of this type, while related examples from Waltharius and the Finnsburg fragment are adduced in order to confirm that the type was both traditional and widespread. Because Beowulf is the only heroic poem of epic proportions to survive in Old English, it cannot help but shape modern conceptions of what the mainstream heroic literature of early medieval England must have been like. When non-heroic poems, such as The Dream of the Rood, are said to exhibit heroic influence or possess heroic elements, Beowulf invariably figures into such discussions as the literary work most representative of the heroic mode. Naturally, the chance survival of Beowulf alone, and the loss of all other poems of comparable length and subject matter, must create a somewhat distorted picture. One questionable impression generated by the singular prominence of Beowulf is that the heroic legends of greatest interest to the Anglo- Saxons must have been legends of the Northwest Germanic peoples: tales centred on Danes, Geats, Swedes, and their interactions with Frisians, Franks, Jutes, Heathobards, and other neighbouring peoples. 1 Certainly, there are other texts that corroborate this impression and provide further evidence of interest in Northwest Germanic legend. The Finnsburg fragment confirms that the tale of strife between Danes, Frisians, and Jutes recounted by Hrothgar’s court poet (ll. 1063–159) circu- lated outside of Beowulf. 2 Widsith alludes to the same legend in its catalogue of rulers 1 On the relationships between the peoples inhabiting the world of Beowulf, see R. T. Farrell, Beowulf, Swedes, and Geats (London, 1972); and Francis Leneghan, The Dynastic Drama of Beowulf (Cambridge, 2020). 2 Beowulf and the Finnsburg fragment are cited by line number throughout from Klaeber’s Beowulf, ed. R. D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles, 4 th edn (Toronto, 2008). All other Old English poems are cited by line number from the editions in The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, ed. George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, 6 vols (New York, NY, 1931–1953). Translations are my own when not otherwise V C The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press 2021; all rights reserved  The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 72, No. 307, Advance Access Publication Date: 28 June 2021 821–835 doi: 10.1093/res/hgab022 821 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/res/article/72/307/821/6310443 by Nanjing University user on 15 February 2022