This section is mostly taken up with Hrothgar's gifts
to Beowulf, that he is giving to him tremendous
treasure, horses, and jewelry, and gold as appreciation for what Beowulf has done.
One of the interesting things to note here is what Hrothgar says about the
character of Grendel.
He says I never expected to be delivered from that creature.
And I think that this is something that shows us the heroism of Beowulf,
he comes in and he delivers somebody else, Hrothgar namely,
from the despair of ever being able to find salvation, or ever being able to be rid
of an evil like Grendel,
and consequently he is generous with his own live so that others may be
happy.
And again that's I think an image of what the hero is in the mind of the scop,
somebody who is generous so that other people can
prosper. The king then goes and gives gifts to
Beowulf and there's great feasting or rejoicing over the fact
that Grendel is dead and the symbol of Grendel's
defeat is the arm up in the rafters
and the scop, the poet, the bard,
is brought forth to sing a song to the people at dinner
that night and he sings the song of Finnsburg.
And that's this next section, is the section of the battle of Finnsburg. It's a
fragment of a much longer poem,
but we'll look at that in this next section.