Möller's view rests upon his interpretation of the Eotens as the men of Hnæf[[446]]. Since the Eotens are the aggressors, he has consequently to invent the opening, which makes Hnæf and Hengest the invaders of Finn's country: and he has therefore to relegate the Fragment (in which Hnæf's men are clearly not the attacking party but the attacked) to a later stage in the story. But we have already seen that this interpretation of the Eotens as the men of Hnæf is not the natural one.
Further, the assumption that Hnæf and Hengest are brothers, though still frequently met with[[447]], is surely not justifiable.
There is nothing which demands any such relationship, and there is much which definitely excludes it. After Hnæf's death, Hengest is described as the thegn of Hnæf: an expression without parallel or explanation, if he was really his brother and successor. Again, we are expressly told in the Episode that the Danish retainers make terms with Finn, the slayer of their lord, being without a prince. How could this be said, if Hengest was now their lord and prince? These lines are, as we have seen, one of the few clear and indisputable things in the poem. An interpretation which contradicts them flatly, by making Hengest the lord of the Danish retainers, seems self-condemned.
Again, in Beowulf, the poet dwells upon the blameless sorrows of Hildeburh. We gather that she wakes up in the morning to find that the kinsfolk whom she loves have, during the night, come to blows. "Innocent, she lost son and brother[[448]]—a sad lady she." Are such expressions natural, if Hildeburh had eloped with Finn, and her father had in consequence been slain by him some twenty years before? If she has taken that calmly, and continued to live happily with Finn, would her equanimity be so seriously disturbed by the slaughter of a brother in addition?
But these difficulties are nothing compared to the further difficulties which Möller's adherents have to face when they proceed to find a place for the night attack as told in the Fragment, in the middle of the Episode in Beowulf, i.e. between lines 1145 and 1146. In the first place we have no right to postulate that such important events could have been passed over in silence in the summary of the story as given in Beowulf. For Möller has to assume that after the reconciliation between Hengest and Finn, Finn broke his pledges, attacked Hengest by night, slew most of the men who were with him, including perhaps Hengest himself; and that the Beowulf-poet nevertheless omitted all reference to these events, though they occur in the midst of the story, and are essential to an understanding of it.
But even apart from this initial difficulty, we find that by no process of explaining can we make the night attack narrated
in the Fragment fit in at the point where Möller places it. In the night attack the men are called to arms by a "war-young king." This "war-young king" cannot be, as Möller supposes, Hengest, for the simple reason that Hengest, as I have tried to show above, far from being the brother of Hnæf, and his successor as king, is his servant and thegn. The king can only be Hnæf. But Hnæf has already been slain before the Episode begins: and this makes it impossible to place the Fragment (in which Hnæf appears) in the middle of the Episode. Further, it is said in the Fragment that never did retainers repay a lord better than did his men repay Hnæf. Now these words would only be possible if the retainers were fighting for their lord; that is, either defending him alive or avenging him dead. But Möller's theory assumes that we are dealing with a period when the retainers have definitely left the service of their lord Hnæf, after his death, and have entered the service of his slayer, Finn. They have thus dissolved all bonds with their former lord: they have taken Finn's money and become his men. If Finn then turns upon his new retainers and treacherously tries to slay them, it might be said that the retainers defended their own lives stoutly: but it would be far-fetched to say that in doing so they repaid their lord Hnæf. Their lord, according to Möller's view, is no longer Hnæf, but Finn, who is seeking their lives.
Against such difficulties as these it is impossible to make headway, and we must therefore turn to some more possible view of the situation[[449]].
Section IV. Bugge's Theory