Finnesburg Fragment

The Finnesburg — or Finnsburh — Fragment is a portion of an Old English heroic poem about a fight in which Hnæf and his 60 retainers are besieged at "Finn's fort" and attempt to hold off their attackers. The surviving text is tantalisingly brief and allusive, but comparison with other references in Old English poetry, notably Beowulf (c. 1000 AD), suggests that it deals with a conflict between Danes and Frisians in Migration-Age Frisia (400 to 800 AD).

The extant text is a transcript of a loose manuscript folio that was once kept at Lambeth Palace, the London residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury. This manuscript was almost certainly Lambeth Library MS 487. British scholar George Hickes made the transcript some time in the late 17th century, and published it in an anthology of Anglo-Saxon and other antiquities in 1705. This anthology also contained the first reference to the sole manuscript of Beowulf. Since the time when the copy was made, the original manuscript folio has been lost or stolen.

The fragment is only about 50 lines long and does not specify the tribal identities of those involved. It describes a battle in which Hnæf (lines 2 and 40), elsewhere known as a Danish prince (see below), is attacked at a place called Finnsburuh "Finn's stronghold" (line 36). To judge by Beowulf, this is apparently the hall of his brother-in-law Finn, ruler of the Frisians, where he has come to spend the winter (see below). The fragment begins with Hnæf's observation that what he sees outside "is not the dawn in the East, nor is it the flight of a dragon, nor are the gables burning". What he sees is the torches of approaching attackers. Hnæf and his sixty retainers hold the doors for five days, without any falling. Then a wounded warrior turns away to talk to his chief (it is not clear on which side) and the fragment ends. Neither the cause nor the outcome of the fight are described; Tolkien and Klaeber have the races of the vying parties as the Danes and the Frisians (the terms Frisians and Jutes are used interchangeably throughout this work).

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