Aside from Beowulf himself, the second most recognized name in the “Beowulf” poem is Grendel, the first of three “monsters” that our hero defeats during the span of his tale. Grendel is introduced even before Beowulf is, and in fact his terrorization of Heorot is what brings Beowulf into the action of the poem. And so, Grendel is the initial conflict that initiates the plot line, and that which first tests Beowulf’s character for us audiences.
In this blog post, I would like to focus on how the poem describes Grendel (in translation; I do not expect anyone to be fluent in Old English here), and then compare those descriptions to how he has been depicted in artistic and pop culture adaptations. How has Grendel’s public image shifted over time? Do varying adaptations take away from the character of Grendel, or do they add to his importance within the poem simply because we have been putting a face to his figure for so long? Let’s take a look…
Beowulf (lines 1 – 189): Describing Grendel
In Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf: A Verse Translation, the beast known as Grendel is first described as “a powerful demon, a prowler through the dark” (line 86). Later on, other ways in which he is characterized include “a fiend out of hell” (line 100), “this grim demon” (line 102), “the God-cursed brute” (line 121), “the hall-watcher” (line 142), “that dark death-shadow” (line 160), and one of “these reavers from hell” (line 163). Although there is not a lot of physical clues as to how tall he is, what his skin color is, or whether or not he has hair, etc. there is actually some key information we can interpret from the deeds he is able to accomplish.
He is able to hear Hrothgar’s celebration all the way from the distant moors, so perhaps he has sensitive hearing. Also, when he attacks Heorot “he grabbed thirty men… and rushed to his lair… blundering back with the butchered corpses” (lines 122 – 125). Assuming this is true, Grendel needs to have hands or claws to grab people with, large and strong enough arms to carry thirty men, legs to walk back to the marshes on, and a quiet enough mode of behaving to not wake everyone else in the community that night. More light is shed later on as people “were hunted down by that dark death-shadow/who lurked and swooped in the long nights” (lines 160 – 161). Whether he is a naturally nocturnal creature or not we do not know, but his revenge only occurs at night, which may be just the hours during which he is usually active or he is intelligent enough to realize that it is safer to attack Hrothgar’s men when they are sleeping. In order to be a “dark death-shadow” (line 160), perhaps Grendel is dark skinned, and in order to “swoop in the long nights” (line 161), perhaps he is surprisingly swift paced for a beast of his inevitable size.
Therefore, although the actual words describing Grendel’s appearance are vague, we can still deduce important information regarding his physique through how he behaves and what he is able to achieve. The Beowulf poet gives us a lot of clues as to how he should look like, but because there are no direct descriptors about his particular physique, there is a lot of room for interpretation that artists and enthusiasts alike seem to have taken to heart down through the ages.
Beowulf’s Grendel & Our Grendel: Adaptations through the Ages
FIGURES 1 - 6: Grendel in Film
Figure 1: Here is a screenshot from the movie Beowulf (1999) by Graham Baker. Vincent Hammond portrayed Grendel, who in this adaptation is a post-apocalyptic demon. We can see his claws and gaping, almost smiling, mouth. He is somewhat humanoid, but seems to be covered in scales, with a ridged forehead and bald skull. His blurred approach adds to the sci-fi spooky intentions of this film adaptation.
Figure 2: This is a screenshot of Ingvar Eggert Sigurdsson as a giant troll-like Grendel in the movie Beowulf & Grendel (2005). His hairy limbs, lolling jaw, and protruding brow suggest a primitive existence outside the normative postures of civilization, and yet his form and attire are distinctly human. The Grendel in this film seeks revenge because he has been wronged against due to his ‘outsider’ appearances; he is not an outcast because he has done bad things.
Figure 3: Here we get a completely CGI Grendel as portrayed by Crispin Glover in Robert Zemeckis’s movie, Beowulf (2007). Again, we have mostly-human formed Grendel who is larger than any human present in the story, but this time he is missing most of his flesh. This adaptation also attempts to explain why the Grendel character can hear the goings-on of Heorot from far away in the mere by giving him external and highly sensitive ear-drums, making this depiction more of a giant upset child throwing a tantrum each night simply because he wants some peace and quiet.
Figure 4: This is an animated adaptation of Grendel, from the Grendel Grendel Grendel (1981) animated film based on the John Gardner novel, Grendel (1971). Grendel is voiced by Peter Ustinov, and like the Gardner novel, this film is from Grendel’s perspective. Because Grendel is the protagonist here, and because an animated film is by genre (especially during the decade in which it was made) geared towards a younger audience, he is not scary. We sympathize with this version more readily because, although he is large and green with a long toothed snout, he has a small mouth and expressive eyes and a sad slump to his design.
Figure 5: In The13th Warrior (1999) film, the Grendel antagonist figure is a part of a fictional enemy race called “The Wendol”, and a chief of that race is pictured here. While clearly human in basic appearance, the Grendel counterparts in this film are separated from the protagonists by wearing furs, horns and teeth of other animals, warrior paint, and brandishing clubs. While the Grendel of Figure 2 engaged in a Neanderthal impression that is not offensive because the last real-life comparative died out thousands of years ago, this depiction could interpreted as racist because this “monstrous” figure from an ancient tale is portrayed as a member of a tribal culture, indeed a “race” within the very movie, that is deemed other simply because it is from an alternative culture that is seen in the film as primitive, dangerous, and deserving of elimination. There are social issues with this interpretation of what it is to be a monster, because there are similar cultures to this day that include items such as animal skins, horns, bear teeth, and body paint as vital indicators of identity. And yet, it is nonetheless important to be included as an example of how Beowulf’s Grendel has changed through our portrayals of him in popular media throughout time and via different mediums.
Figure 6: This is a screenshot of ‘the Morwen' from the film Outlander (2009). This four-legged Grendel depiction is less like the Grendel from the original poem, and more of what a hybrid between Beowulf’s dragon and Grendel, with a dash of Godzilla thrown in, may look like. With his scales, flared nostrils, drooping maw, and flames trickling his lumbering form, this creature seems more akin to the stock of Satan, or at least a Balrog of Morgoth (I am thinking of Peter Jackson’s adaptation as featured in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring film here) than to any somewhat-human Grendel being. It is important to note that Grendel adaptations appear more monstrous the more a particular adaptor seems to want to make him more monstrous. It is the man who makes the monster, and not the other way around.
FIGURES 7 & 8: Grendel in Television
Figure 7: In the television series Once Upon A Time in Wonderland, Grendel is a man who has been disfigured by the Red Queen and has been reduced to function as a henchmen figure. While taller and stronger than many other men, he is still a man, albeit with a quizzical confused expression and the exaggerated brow that stereotypically is supposed to convey primitive simpleness. While the Grendel of Figure 5 may be construed as offensive to peoples deriving from tribal civilizations, this depiction could be interpreted as offensive to persons discriminated against due to mental disabilities. The Grendel figure we find here appears more like a Fezzik from The Princess Bride (1987) or a Hodor from the Game of Thrones television series character, rather than one deserving of the fright and revenge found in Beowulf’s Heorot.
Figure 8: Beowulf interacts with the world of science fiction when a holographic version of the tale comes to life and a photonic version of Grendel holds crew members hostage in the television series Star Trek Voyager. We see that instead of embodying the deepest darkness in the middle of the night, as in the original poem, here Grendel is a dynamic globular form of light. The show attempts to explain these inconsistencies by having its Hrothgar character say that no one had seen the original battle because Beowulf insisted on facing the intruder alone. While Beowulf did fight Grendel alone in the poem, his accompanying kinsmen were in Heorot at the same time and thus acting as witnesses to the battle, but nonetheless we have an interesting adaptation here.
FIGURES 9 - 13: Grendel in Comics
Figure 9: Grendel here is a masked identity that allows the protagonist from Matt Wagner’s Grendel comics to take on New York City’s organized crime. Rather than an individual character, ‘Grendel’ is reduced to a title, a symbol of systematic revenge, ensuring the hero’s enemies that he will come after them night after night until Heorot (which is the streets of NYC here) is purged of its wrongdoers. While the figure called Grendel is the protagonist in this adaptation, this comic book series uses the dichotomy of good versus evil as found in the Beowulf poem to individualize its plot line from similar version found in a number of other superhero comics (especially those also place in the New York metropolitan area).
Figure 10: Here is Grendel and Beowulf fighting in Garith Hinds’s Beowulf comic books. Grendel is humanoid in shape, but he is the closest resemblance of what perhaps a goblin- or ogre-based depiction that we have encountered thus far. He is larger than the average man, has a protruding stomach—perhaps engorged with the Geats’ flesh—and a humped back which our hero is utilizing to his advantage in order to gain leverage. While perhaps he does not look big nor strong enough to carry off thirty thanes, when compared to some of the other adaptations, this Grendel interpretation is pretty good.
Figure 11: Here is the battle between Beowulf and Grendel as adapted in the 1984 Beowulf comic book by Jerry Bingham. I am not sure what the swirling tendrils of blackness are that curl away from his body, but this is also an improvement on some of the Grendel adaptations we have thus far encountered. This tall, strong, bipedal figure engages with the tones of ambiguous darkness as Grendel travels through the night back and forth from the mere to Heorot in the Beowulf poem.
Figure 12: This is the cover art for Issue 1: The Curse of Hrothgar from the DC comic Beowulf: Dragon Slayer (1975). The colors included here are bright, perhaps to reflect the flashy genre of the comic art form, but nonetheless it results in an unrealistic and unfounded coloring of our Grendel character. However, we can still analyze how this Grendel is portrayed by how it interacts with the other elements on the cover. The blues and greens of the humans’ outfits, their exposed skin, and their flowing hair make them more similar to one another than to Grendel, thus isolating our subject from the human social structure of this image. It is also noteworthy that Grendel’s coloring more similarly reflects the title of the story than anything else a part of the artwork found here, thus making our Grendel character inseparable from the story from hence he came.
Figure 13: Here is a frame-shot of ‘Grendell' as he appears in a few issues of Marvel Comics’ Thor series. As in the original poem, he is larger than our hero and is indeed missing an arm, but he is still very much alive, wields a giant battle-hammer, and is wearing armor. His pointy ears and square head give him a goblin-like appearance, but instead of an animalistic effect such as in Figure 9, the forward lunging of his stance, the narrowing white eyes, the barring teeth, and the dark reds and shadows of his figure all combine to lend this Grendell a demonic, malicious advance.
FIGURES 14 - 21: Grendel in Video Games
Figure 14: Adaptations of Beowulf’s Grendel character have also made their way into the video game industry. For instance, in the artificial life program Creatures, one of the breeds is called ‘Grendels’. Here, although this depiction has sharp teeth and claws and red eyes, he is not very scary, due to his unrealistic proportions, stocky body, short limbs, drooping puppy-like ears, and oversized head and facial features. In addition, the light colored hair sprouting from his head contributes to the innocent, infantile impression of this creature. It is important to keep in mind that those adaptations that are supposed to be frightening very rarely have hair or fur of any kind on them. After all, why would you be afraid of a Grendel you can cuddle, or at least groom?
Figure 15: The Monster Sprite ‘Grendels’ of the video game Dragon Quest have a more comical villain tone, as though a warthog, Bowser, and the Sultan’s guards from Aladdin got sucked up and spat out by Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life’s cheese maker machine. The brighter the colors, the less scary these adaptations seem to be. And although this depiction sports armor and weaponry of a vaguely Oriental nature, there is no fear evoked in an audience viewing this image. We should keep in mind that the less-scary versions of the Grendel character may be designed as such due to the intention to be consumed by younger audiences.
Figure 16: This is an image of the Grendel creature featured in the Vision of Zosimos: Chaos Omen video game. On the mooring.com website, this foe is described as “a fierce opponent, not to be crossed lightly”. Although this style of video game design makes this Grendel more deserving of the Word of Warcraft universe than an ancient Anglo-Saxon society, I appreciate the effort to engage in Grendel’s physical disability after one arm is ripped from his side in the original poem, by having this depiction bear an uneven limb distribution.
Figure 17 a.: This image is of a lower level Grendel character from the online Wizards 101 video game. Again, this Grendel cannot be take too seriously because it was created for a children’s online gaming community. In addition, this initial appearance clearly takes more inspiration from the Cornish Pixies or House Elves creatures found in the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) film than any of the evidence from the original Beowulf text.
Figure 17 b.: “Grendels" in Wizards 101 are unique from other adaptations, because they can change over the course of the game. Featured here is a Witch Doctor level evolution. There is a hint that this depiction may have some sort of satchel hanging at the side of his waist, a pouch that the Beowulf Grendel may or may not have had (the jury is still out on that one, as there are inconsistencies in different accounts of Grendel’s fight with Beowulf given within the poem), but other than that and its vaguely humanoid basis, I see no resemblance between this adaptation and the original.
I do find it interesting, however, that there are multiple evolutions to this Grendel. Like how Figure 6 seems to combine multiple creatures (Grendel and the dragon) from the poem into one being in order to make the adaptation more engaging, this “layering” of opponents here within the same identity could be building upon the storytelling archetypal trope of having the hero encounter three challenges of increasing difficulty. But instead, as the player character increases his own skill set of abilities, stamina, and armor, so too does his adversary grow into a more formidable opponent. It truly is evolution at play, albeit on a highly accelerated scale and through a short-living medium.
Figure 18: This video game Grendel is a four legged monster opponent from Final Fantasy VIII. In the game, this Grendel was originally a boss monster, which could reflect how in Beowulf, Grendel is a figure renown for his deeds and Beowulf must travel to and prepare for their one-on-one battle. When his function within the game shifts to an incidental opponent, however, this may reflect the Grendel character’s more animal and innocent nature, perhaps what he was like before the feud with Heorot began. Regardless of how we interpret his function as an adversary within the video game and how it could mirror his standing within the poem, the Grendel here is a four-legged lizard type of creature with a pointy powerful tail, scrapping talons, long blue tongue, narrow skull, and horns sprouting from the sides of his head.
Figure 19: In the video game Skies of Arcadia, we see here a looming, lanky, round-edged, two-legged and slime green Grendel boss opponent. This adaptation takes on the humanoid implications of the Beowulf text, while embracing his otherworldly effects in giving his hands less fingers and unrealistic proportions to his limbs. The most noticeable difference here is the lack of a defined head, as instead there are two knobs at either end of a gapping whole where a human comparative model’s neck would begin.
Figure 20: This lumbering bear-shaped type of machine Grendel figure (called “GRNDL-1” within the world of the game) from Too Human alternates between four-legged and two-legged advances as it attacks the player. While this adversary would be best suited among the rocks of Mars in the video game Destiny than associating with our Anglo-Saxon tale, it is noteworthy as an example of the many ways in which our Grendel character has been changed and re-appropriated over time.
Figure 21 a.: Gren (short for Grendel) is a character from The Wolf Among Us by Telltale Games. In this adaptation, he can magically disguise himself as a normal human, featured here. Until he turns into his alternative monstrous identity, no one knows that he can do so, and so he freely moves undetected amongst his prey during daylight hours. Reasons for why Grendel only attacks Heorot at night in Beowulf have long been disputed, and this game brings up an interesting possibility that perhaps Grendel only attacks at night because he is only a monster at night. There are accounts of men turning into beasts in old tales, such as in the Old Norse poems where Fafnir is cursed by his greed for hoarded treasure and turns into a dragon (which is then mimicked by C.S. Lewis in his Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader), but at the time of Beowulf’s construction there are no accounts of beasts transforming back into their original human forms. While this is an interesting notion to keep in mind, Grendel is mentioned to be an ancient being who has dwelled in the mere long before Heorot was built, and there are no accounts in Beowulf of a man disappearing without a trace after Grendel is killed. And so, Beowulf’s Grendel has most likely existed as a single identity throughout his lifetime.
Figure 21 b.: Gren can transform himself at will into a giant white figure known as Grendel in The Wolf Among Us. Here, we see that the monster version is a large Tim Burton’s Boogeyman meets an albino Slenderman type of being. The fact that he chooses to be in this form and to attack certain individuals emphasizes tones of premeditated intent to harm. This function ignores the implications of animalistic innocence and justifications to his systematic behavior of attack as represented in the Beowulf poem.
FIGURES 22 & 23: Grendel in (non-Beowulf) Literature
Figure 22: This is the cover design for John Gardner’s acclaimed novel adaptation of the tale, here titled Grendel and featuring its protagonist expressing his wailing woe. In what looks to be a barren field in front of a burning Heorot, the squirrel-eared and chipmunk-cheeked Grendel dwells in solitude. While he appears to have black lips, and certainly has rows of sharp teeth, his closed eyelids and round nose—those features which in our image are closest upwards towards the sky—are those which are distinctly human. Gardner’s Grendel has potential to be scary and vengeful in certain situations and at certain angles, but also in just as many situations and at just as many angles, this creature can be sympathized. Gardner truly has earned the awards his novel has received, I must say.
Figure 23: This is a photograph I took of the cover art accompanying my copy of Robert Nye’s young adult novella adaptation, Beowulf: A New Telling. Although Grendel is in the foreground, the riches-adorned hero is that which is shrouded in light as he rides his white horse into Grendel’s mere. Bats (creatures which are not mentioned anywhere in the original Anglo-Saxon poem) are Grendel’s companions here as he slumps lazily within his blood-infused aquatic abode. While the lack of horns or spikes coupled with his rounded features may allow him to appear more sympathetic, his pointed ears, scaly hide, exposed nostrils, and jagged teeth beg otherwise. The over-simplification of the original tale as told by Nye aside, the cover art for this edition as accomplished Grendel’s duality quite nicely.
FIGURES 24 & 25: Grendel in Fan Art
Figure 24: I found this example of fan art on www.kaaziel.deviantart.com, and it is titled “Grendel” by Kaaziel. This is a pointy-eared, horned and spiked, toothy, drooling, and green-scaled Grendel adaptation. Although we do not receive a full-body view of this depiction, from the large head versus its comparatively narrower shoulders, we can assume that this adaptation is most likely much slimmer than some of the others we have seen. This is a hint at the numerous fans of interpreting Beowulf’s Grendel that currently exist, and emphasizes how I have barely begun to study the numerous ways in which his ambiguous nature can be perceived.
Figure 25: And last, but hopefully not least, we include a photograph of my fan art adaptation of Beowulf’s Grendel, also titled “Grendel” and which was last modified on January 20, 2015. I included him chowing down on some danes in order to portray a concept of scale, as he must be large enough to carry off thirty members of his prey as well as nimble enough to wedge his way through the front doors of Heorot. I was going for something closer to the Cave Trolls of Moria than to the Balrogs of Morgoth on a spectrum of evil, both ends of which can be seen in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) film. I included a loincloth for modesty’s sake, as there is still debate whether or not Grendel would actually have worn any clothes at all. The spots and splashes on green scattered about his body, and especially adorning his back and shoulders, is meant to represent possibilities of swampy slime or growing moss sticking to his hide as he lives a semi-aquatic lifestyle in the mere.
Beowulf’s Grendel vs. Our Grendel: Which is Better, and Why?
How the original audiences of the Beowulf tale imagined the Grendel character and how we may imagine him today may be very different, and yet they might not. From evidence found within the poem, we know that Grendel should be dark, tall, good at hearing, with lumbering steps, claws, and swift yet stealthy. He is either a nocturnal being or one who chooses to attack sleeping thanes by night, he probably has sharp teeth with which to devour his meals, and he might carry a pouch tied around his waist. If we take this into account, and glance back through our examples above, we may notice that a majority of these adaptations adhere to the descriptions given by the Beowulf text.
It is not surprising that the closest interpretations (see Figures 2, 3, 10, 11, 22, 23, & 25) are those which profess to be either adapting the entire story, or taking inspiration from the poem itself. This does not mean that we should disregard those Grendel characters which are not derived from the original text, for all ‘Grendels’ contribute in their own way to the longevity of Beowulf’s tale and its relevance to our daily lives. It is only by recognizing and understanding how Grendel has changed in the past that we may fully embrace how he continues to change as we move into the future.
How do you imagine Beowulf’s Grendel while you are reading the poem, and does it differ from how you typically imagine him when you are alone? How similar is your adaptation to—or how much does it deviate from—the other examples we have touched upon above? Has this blog post changed the ways in which you usually perceive this dynamic and renown creature?
As always, any questions and/or comments regarding the content of this literary blog are welcome. While I look forward to watching Outlander (2009), playing The Wolf Among Us, and re-reading John Gardner’s Grendel someday, I have not experienced all of the examples that I have used above, and as such I ask forgiveness for any mistakes I may have made in describing them to you. If mistakes are pointed out to me and verified, however, I shall gladly amend them as soon as possible.
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Your descriptions for Figure 10 & 11 need to be inverted. I have the Jerry Bingham graphic novel, and it's the illustration shown in Figure 10; Grendel goblin-like with a hunchback. The illustration in Figure 11 with the swirling black tendrils, that's not Jerry Bingham's work.
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