[{2d}] Hrothgar, who is the “Scyldings’-friend” of 170.
[{2e}] That is, in formal or prescribed phrase.
[{3a}] Ship.
[{3b}] That is, since Beowulf selected his ship and led his men to the harbor.
[{3c}] One of the auxiliary names of the Geats.
[{3d}] Or: Not thus openly ever came warriors hither; yet...
[{4a}] Hrothgar.
[{4b}] Beowulf’s helmet has several boar-images on it; he is the “man of war”; and the boar-helmet guards him as typical representative of the marching party as a whole. The boar was sacred to Freyr, who was the favorite god of the Germanic tribes about the North Sea and the Baltic. Rude representations of warriors show the boar on the helmet quite as large as the helmet itself.
[{5a}] Either merely paved, the strata via of the Romans, or else thought of as a sort of mosaic, an extravagant touch like the reckless waste of gold on the walls and roofs of a hall.
[{6a}] The nicor, says Bugge, is a hippopotamus; a walrus, says Ten Brink. But that water-goblin who covers the space from Old Nick of jest to the Neckan and Nix of poetry and tale, is all one needs, and Nicor is a good name for him.