The evidence seems to me to support strongly the view of the majority of scholars—that the Grettir-episode is not derived from Beowulf in the form in which that poem has come down to us, but that both come from one common source.
It is certain that the story of the monster invading a dwelling of men and rendering it uninhabitable, till the adventurous deliverer arrives, did not originate with Hrothgar and Heorot. It is an ancient and widespread type of story, of which one version is localized at the Danish court. When therefore we find it existing, independently of its Danish setting, the presumption is in favour of this being a survival of the old independent story. Of course it is conceivable that the Hrothgar-Heorot setting might have been first added, and subsequently stripped off again so clean that no trace of it remains. But it seems going out of our way to assume this, unless we are forced to do so[[105]].
Again, it is certain that these stories—like all the subject matter of the Old English epic—did not originate in England, but were brought across the North Sea from the old home. And that old home was in the closest connection, so far as the passage to and fro of story went, with Scandinavian lands. Nothing could be intrinsically more probable than that a story, current in ancient Angel and carried thence to England, should also have been current in Scandinavia, and thence have been carried to Iceland.
Other stories which were current in England in the eighth century were also current in Scandinavia in the thirteenth. Yet this does not mean that the tales of Hroar and Rolf, or of Athils and Ali, were borrowed from English epic accounts of Hrothgar and Hrothulf, or Eadgils and Onela. They were part of the common inheritance—as much so as the strong verbs
or the alliterative line. Why then, contrary to all analogy, should we assume a literary borrowing in the case of the Beowulf-Grettir-story? The compiler of the Grettis saga could not possibly have drawn his material from a MS of Beowulf[[106]]: he could not have made sense of a single passage. He conceivably might have drawn from traditions derived from the Old English epic. But it is difficult to see how. Long before his time these traditions had for the most part been forgotten in England itself. One of the longest lived of all, that of Offa, is heard of for the last time in England at the beginning of the thirteenth century. That a Scandinavian sagaman at the end of the century could have been in touch, in any way, with Anglo-Saxon epic tradition seems on the whole unlikely. The Scandinavian tradition of Offa, scholars are now agreed[[107]], was not borrowed from England, and there is no reason why we should assume such borrowing in the case of Grettir.
The probability is, then, considerable, that the Beowulf-story and the Grettir-story are independently derived from one common original.
And this probability would be confirmed to a certainty if we should find that features which have been confused and half obliterated in the O.E. story become clear when we turn to the Icelandic. This argument has lately been brought forward by Dr Lawrence in his essay on "The Haunted Mere in Beowulf[[108]]." Impressive as the account of this mere is, it does not convey any very clear picture. Grendel's home seems sometimes to be in the sea: and again it seems to be amid marshes, moors and fens, and again it is "where the mountain torrent goes down under the darkness of the cliffs—the water below the ground (i.e. beneath overhanging rocks)."
This last account agrees admirably with the landscape depicted in the Grettis saga, and the gorge many fathoms deep through which the stream rushes, after it has fallen over the precipice; not so the other accounts. These descriptions are
best harmonized if we imagine an original version in which the monsters live, as in the Grettis saga, in a hole under the waterfall. This story, natural enough in a Scandinavian country, would be less intelligible as it travelled South. The Angles and Saxons, both in their old home on the Continent and their new one in England, were accustomed to a somewhat flat country, and would be more inclined to place the dwelling of outcast spirits in moor and fen than under waterfalls, of which they probably had only an elementary conception. "The giant must dwell in the fen, alone in the land[[109]]."
Now it is in the highest degree improbable that, after the landscape had been blurred as it is in Beowulf, it could have been brought out again with the distinctness it has in the Grettis saga. To preserve the features so clearly the Grettir-story can hardly be derived from Beowulf: it must have come down independently.