Let us therefore examine the second theory, which is more particularly associated with the name of Bugge, though it was the current theory before his time, and has been generally accepted since.
According to this view, the Eotenas are the men of Finn, and since upon them is placed the blame for the trouble, it
must be Finn that makes a treacherous attack upon his wife's brother Hnæf, who is his guest in Finnsburg[[450]]. This is the fight of which the Fragment gives us the beginning. Hnæf is slain, and then follow the events as narrated in the Episode: the treaty which Finn makes with Hengest, the leader of the survivors: and the ultimate vengeance taken upon Finn by these survivors.
Here I think we are getting nearer to facts, nearer to a view which can command general acceptance: at any rate, in so far as the fight narrated in the Fragment is placed before the beginning of the Episode in Beowulf. Positive evidence that this is the right place for the Fragment is scanty, yet not altogether lacking. After all, the fight in the Fragment is a night attack, and the fight which precedes the Episode in Beowulf, as I have tried to show, is a night attack[[451]]. But our reason for putting the Fragment before the commencement of the Episode is mainly negative: it lies in the insuperable difficulties which meet us when we try to place it anywhere else.
But, it will be objected, there are difficulties also in placing the Fragment before the Episode. Perhaps: but I do not think these difficulties will be found to survive examination.
The first objection to supposing that the Fragment narrates the same fight as precedes the Episode is, that the fight in the Fragment takes place at Finnsburg[[452]], whilst the fight which precedes the Episode apparently takes place away from Finn's capital: for after the fighting is over, the dead burned, and the treaty made, the warriors depart "to see Friesland, their homes, and their high-town (hēa-burh)[[453]]."
But I do not see that this involves us in any difficulty. It is surely quite reasonable that Finnsburg—Finn's castle—where the first fight takes place, is not, and was never meant to be, the same as Finn's capital, his hēaburh, his "own home." After all, when a king's name is given to a town, the presumption is rather that the town is not his capital, but some new settlement built in a newly acquired territory. Ēadwinesburh was not the capital of King Eadwine: it was the stronghold which he held against the Picts on the outskirts of his realm. Aosta was not the capital of Augustus, nor Fort William of William III, nor Harounabad of Haroun al Raschid. So here: we know that the chief town of the Frisians was not Finnsburg, but Dorestad: "Dorostates of the Frisians[[454]]." The fight may have taken place at some outlying castle built by Finn, and named after him Finnsburg: then he returned, we are told, to his hēaburh: and it is here, æt his sylfes hām, "in his own home" (the poet himself seems to emphasize a distinction) that destruction in the end comes upon him. There is surely no difficulty here.
A second discrepancy has often been indicated. In the Fragment the fight lasts five days before any one of the defenders fall: in the Episode (it is argued) Hildeburh in the morning finds her brother slain[[455]]. Even were this so, I do not know that it need trouble us much. In a detail like this, which
does not go to the heart of the story, there might easily be a discrepancy between two versions[[456]].