Sorry I can't be more succinct, but I'm ashamed to say I haven't gotten around to reading "Beowulf" yet. I know, I'm terrible person...
"... the exact description of Grendel would become a source of debate for scholars. Indeed, because his exact appearance is never directly described in Old English by the original Beowulf poet, part of the debate revolves around what is known, namely his descent from the biblical Cain .
Seamus Heaney, in his translation of Beowulf, writes in lines 1351-1355 that Grendel is vaguely human in shape, though much larger:
... the other, warped
in the shape of a man, moves beyond the pale
bigger than any man, an unnatural birth
called Grendel by the country people
in former days.[3]
Heaney's translation of lines 1637-1639 also notes that his disembodied head is so large that it takes four men to transport it. Furthermore, in lines 983-89, when Grendel's torn arm is inspected, Heaney describes it as being covered in impenetrable scales and horny growths:
Every nail, claw-scale and spur, every spike
and welt on the hand of that heathen brute
was like barbed steel. Everybody said
there was no honed iron hard enough
to pierce him through, no time proofed blade
that could cut his brutal blood caked claw[4]
Peter Dickinson (1979) argued that seeing as the considered distinction between man and beast at the time the poem was written was simply man's bipedalism, the given description of Grendel being man-like does not necessarily imply that Grendel is meant to be humanoid, going as far as stating that Grendel could easily have been a bipedal dragon.[5]
Non-monster theory
Other scholars such as Kuhn (1979) have questioned a monstrous description, stating:
There are five disputed instances of āglǣca [three of which are in Beowulf] 649, 1269, 1512...In the first...the referent can be either Beowulf or Grendel. If the poet and his audience felt the word to have two meanings, 'monster,' and 'hero,' the ambiguity would be troublesome; but if by āglǣca they understood a 'fighter,' the ambiguity would be of little consequence, for battle was destined for both Beowulf and Grendel and both were fierce fighters (216-7).
O'Keefe has suggested that Grendel resembles a Berserker, because of numerous associations that seem to point to this possibility. [6]
John Grigsby, in his Beowulf and Grendel :The Truth behind England's oldest legend' suggests that Grendel is a demonized version of the old Norse fertility god Freyr, and even goes as far as linking Grendel with the Green Knight of Arthurian legend."
Grendel was described in many ways: troll, man, dragon, etc. You will have some room for poetic license. Grendel has been described by scholars as both a supernatural other and an ethnic other. From the point of reference of early law codes, Grendel and his mother were outcasts, outlaws, and people who by their very existence were a blight on the ordered life of society. He's a wild man, an outlaw, whose only companion is his mother and who must survive by means of theft, destruction and breech of law. Let your imagination run wild!
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Sorry I can't be more succinct, but I'm ashamed to say I haven't gotten around to reading "Beowulf" yet. I know, I'm terrible person...
"... the exact description of Grendel would become a source of debate for scholars. Indeed, because his exact appearance is never directly described in Old English by the original Beowulf poet, part of the debate revolves around what is known, namely his descent from the biblical Cain .
Seamus Heaney, in his translation of Beowulf, writes in lines 1351-1355 that Grendel is vaguely human in shape, though much larger:
... the other, warped
in the shape of a man, moves beyond the pale
bigger than any man, an unnatural birth
called Grendel by the country people
in former days.[3]
Heaney's translation of lines 1637-1639 also notes that his disembodied head is so large that it takes four men to transport it. Furthermore, in lines 983-89, when Grendel's torn arm is inspected, Heaney describes it as being covered in impenetrable scales and horny growths:
Every nail, claw-scale and spur, every spike
and welt on the hand of that heathen brute
was like barbed steel. Everybody said
there was no honed iron hard enough
to pierce him through, no time proofed blade
that could cut his brutal blood caked claw[4]
Peter Dickinson (1979) argued that seeing as the considered distinction between man and beast at the time the poem was written was simply man's bipedalism, the given description of Grendel being man-like does not necessarily imply that Grendel is meant to be humanoid, going as far as stating that Grendel could easily have been a bipedal dragon.[5]
Non-monster theory
Other scholars such as Kuhn (1979) have questioned a monstrous description, stating:
There are five disputed instances of āglǣca [three of which are in Beowulf] 649, 1269, 1512...In the first...the referent can be either Beowulf or Grendel. If the poet and his audience felt the word to have two meanings, 'monster,' and 'hero,' the ambiguity would be troublesome; but if by āglǣca they understood a 'fighter,' the ambiguity would be of little consequence, for battle was destined for both Beowulf and Grendel and both were fierce fighters (216-7).
O'Keefe has suggested that Grendel resembles a Berserker, because of numerous associations that seem to point to this possibility. [6]
John Grigsby, in his Beowulf and Grendel :The Truth behind England's oldest legend' suggests that Grendel is a demonized version of the old Norse fertility god Freyr, and even goes as far as linking Grendel with the Green Knight of Arthurian legend."
Grendel Images
Grendel was described in many ways: troll, man, dragon, etc. You will have some room for poetic license. Grendel has been described by scholars as both a supernatural other and an ethnic other. From the point of reference of early law codes, Grendel and his mother were outcasts, outlaws, and people who by their very existence were a blight on the ordered life of society. He's a wild man, an outlaw, whose only companion is his mother and who must survive by means of theft, destruction and breech of law. Let your imagination run wild!