Their names are lost in the ancient depths of history, their stories silenced for centuries, but the women portrayed in the Old English Epic Beowulf were central to any understanding of both the poem and the culture of that ancient time.

The pattern was this. The affairs of men were preceded by a narrator, then articulated through all sorts of poetic and narrative conventions, until the prophesied event was carried through to the end. Later, when the matter was settled and the men gathered in his mead hall to celebrate and reward, the women emerged for various reasons.

First was fulfilling a crucial role of recognizing the bravery of his men and performing the ritual passing of the cup of mead among those same battle-weary troops. This served the purpose of nurturing the bodies and souls of men, a distinctly feminine role. But the act of service did more than satisfy thirst and empty stomachs; the service was highly ritualistic, awarding recognition to specific thanes, or men who had distinguished themselves in battle, then to the next in order of distinction, and so on, until the order was observed. In addition, women served men to fulfill their fundamental role as weavers of peace. The mead cup was served to mark each man’s loyalty in turn to the king, whose mead room they occupied.

Furthermore, his appearance in every section after the battle of Beowulf, after Grendel’s murder, after Grendel’s mother was killed, and after Beowulf was killed and the dragon died, further amplifies the role of keeping and fabric of peace Of woman. In fact, after the Battle of Fittsburh, Hildeburh’s grievance was compounded because she, not only had she lost a son, husband, and father in one day, but she had also lost herself. She had failed, in other words, in her social role of peacemaker.

Keeping and preserving the peace was not just a role for women; it was her own identity. Another role for women was that of a transitional figure. Grendel’s mother is an excellent example of this: she avenges the death of her son; she, in turn, is killed in the depths of a mere, foreshadowing Beowulf’s descent into some kind of middle-earth to find and slay a dragon near the end of the story.

The women in Beowulf further fulfill their function of weaving peace by arranging marriages between potentially warring clans. Like Lady Capulet in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and like Helen of Troy, women were not only the organizers of the politically astute marriages, they were also the personal property involved in those marriages. Thus they knew better than the men the implications of a union doomed to failure.

In Beowulf, women were assigned the power to prophesy. Hrothgar alludes to this when Wealtheow, the old king’s “bedmate”, having performed his ritual distribution of mead, sits on the exalted side of his throne. It is also possible that by serving the mead, the women controlled one of the only facets of their lives in that warrior society, power over the sobriety and ingenuity of men.

They also played power politics on occasion. Queen Wealtheow rewarded Beowulf handsomely when he returned from killing Grendel. But she added an addendum to her eulogy, saying that Beowulf would do well to care for his children until one of them could attain the throne of the Danes. So, as women are often portrayed, Wealtheow was caring for her offspring, anticipating her struggle to overcome the harsh and warlike machinations of men at the time.

In Beowulf, specifically, women have a leading role in explaining the dominant Germanic code of the time. The example is Grendel’s mother. Unnamed, she is depicted as a wild woman, an evil beast, much like her son Grendel. But by avenging the death of her son, she demonstrates the code of honor better than any of the men. Where Grendel had slain countless men of Hrothgar’s Heorot cohort, Grendel’s mother killed only one, Councilor Aeschene. And her act of revenge was even more intriguing within the code, as she had no access to the commonly understood ‘weregild’, or the price of the man who was rightfully hers after Grendel was killed. Instead, Beowulf sought her out in her ‘mother of hers’ own house and killed her.

Grendel’s mother’s only failure to observe the code was to flee Heorot for her life, rather than stay and fight the men there. The Germanic code required women to display the two elements of humanity, compassion and war. Therefore, when she fled, she betrayed the militaristic side of the code that required her to stand firm.

But perhaps the most important role for women in Beowulf was that of a prophetess. Wealtheow seems to be prophetic in his warning to Beowulf about protecting his children. She warns him of dire consequences should they come to harm, thus acknowledging the dangers that lie in wait for all of her kind if her warlike attitude persists. Once again, after Beowulf’s death, “a Geat woman”, whose name is unknown, appears, once again, after the battle, to warn the Geats that since their lord Beowulf lies dead, they have much to do. fear from his former enemies.

Women play an important role in Beowulf. Despite their background presence and the paucity of lines for them in the epic, their words and actions serve the overall purpose of the poem, its concentration on variation and opposition. They are there after battles, interrupting the celebrations with sobering words; they strive to uphold the ancient warrior code, sometimes better than men; they do their duty, which is one of the salient features of that code. And they provide, in addition to offspring to the nobles, a mirror in which to check their own successes and failures.