So he is introduced in the poem, when, in the dead of night, he comes to the hall where the warriors are asleep, ravining for the human prey. The following is something like the meaning of the lines:—
"Grendel hight the grisly guest,
Dread master he of waste and moor,
The fen his fastness—fiends among,
Bliss-bereft...."
This awful being was no doubt in the mind of those who originated the name grendles mere, before quoted from Kemble. The name is applied to a locality quite in keeping with the ancient mythological character of Grendel, who held the moor and the fen. Most strikingly does the same sentiment appear in the name of that strange and wildering valley of the Bernese Oberland, in Switzerland:—I mean the valley of Grindelwald, with its two awful glaciers.
But when we come to consider the etymology of the name, we are led to an object which seems inadequate, and incapable of acting as the vehicle for these deep and natural sentiments of the inhuman and the horrible.
Grendel means, originally, no more than a bar or rod, or a palisade or lattice-work made of such bars or rods. Also a bar or bolt for fastening a door, or for closing a harbour. Middle-aged people at Zurich recollect when the old "Grindel" was still standing at the mouth of their river. This was a tremendous bar, by which the water-approach to their town could be closed against an enemy; who might otherwise pass from the Lake of Zurich down the river Limmat, into the heart of the town of Zurich.
It was in Germany that this word lived longest as a common substantive. There is no known instance of it in Anglo-Saxon, other than in proper names, and of these I know no more than are already enumerated above; whereas, in the Middle High German, it is by no means uncommon. It occurs in a mystery on the resurrection preserved in this dialect, and edited by Ettmüller, 1851 (Dat Spil fan der Upstandinge). I cannot now find the line, but it is used there for "the gates of hell." Cf. also Ziemann's Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, voc. Grindel.
Grimm, in his Mythology, establishes a connexion between Grendel and Loki, the northern half-deity half-demon, the origin of evil. He was always believed to have cunningly guided the shaft of Flöder the Blind, who, in loving sport, shot his brother Balder the Gay, the beloved of gods and men. So entered sorrow into the hitherto unclouded Asaland.