Hygelac (Old English:Hygelāc;Old Norse:Hugleikr;Proto-Germanic: *Hugilaikaz;[1]Latin:Ch(l)ochilaicus orHugilaicus;[2] diedc. 516 or 521) was a king of theGeats according to the poemBeowulf. It is Hygelac's presence in the poem which has allowed scholars to tentatively date the setting of the poem as well as to infer that it contains at least some points of historical fact.[3]Beowulf gives Hygelac's genealogy: according to the poem, he was the son ofHrethel and had two brothersHerebeald andHæþcyn, as well as an unnamed sister who was married toEcgtheow and was the mother of the hero Beowulf. Hygelac was married to Hygd, and they had a sonHeardred and an unnamed daughter who marriedEofor. When Hygelac's brother Hæþcyn was fighting with theSwedes, Hygelac arrived at Hrefnesholt one day too late to save his brother Hæþcyn, but he managed to rescue the surviving Geatish warriors, who were besieged by the Swedish kingOngentheow and his three sons. The Swedes found refuge at ahill fort but were assaulted by the Geats. In the battle, the Swedish king was slain by Eofor. After the death of his brother Herebeald, Hygelac ascended the Geatish throne. After he was killed during a raid onFrisia, Hygelac was succeeded byHeardred, according toBeowulf.
The raid to Frisia enabledN. F. S. Grundtvig[4] to approximate the date of Hygelac's death to c. 516, because a raid to France under a Danish KingChlochilaicus is mentioned byGregory of Tours.[5] In that source he is recorded as invading theFrankish Kingdoms during the reign ofTheodericus I (died 534), the son ofClovis ("Chlodovechus"), the king of the Franks in the early sixth century, and was killed in the ensuing chaos after the Scandinavian raiders were caught by the sudden appearance of a military response force led by Theodericus I’s son,Theodebertus. After the defeat the rest of the survivors took to sea in such disordered haste that they left their dead on the field, including their king. The Franks must have taken back whatever had been taken in pillage as well as spoils of the battlefield; and it is reported by Gregory that they found the corpse of Chlochilaicus so awe-inspiring due his extraordinary height, that, as a pagan barbarian not entitled to burial, his remains were exposed for a long time in the nearest Merovingian Court as a curiosity, following the usual triumphal trophy exhibition customary after battle or pirate captures.
While Gregory calls him a king of the Danes, the much youngerLiber historiae Francorum instead calls him a king of the Goths (rege Gotorum), agreeing withBeowulf.[6]
There are two theories on how the account of the Frankish raid came to be preserved in the English epicBeowulf, and they have a bearing upon the date assigned to the poem.
One view considers the account to have been kept alive by the oral tradition of heroic poetry until it was included in theepos.[7] That Hygelac was known in England already in the early eighth century is seen by theLiber Monstrorum ("Book of Monsters"), where he is referred to asHiglacus:
Et fiunt monstra mirae magnitudinis, ut rexHiglacus, qui imperavit Getis et a Francis occisus est, quem equus a duodecimo aetatis anno portare non potuit. Cuius ossa in Rheni fluminis insula, ubi in Oceanum prorumpit, reservata sunt, et de longinquo venientibus pro miraculo ostenduntur.
And there are monsters of an amazing size, like KingHygelac, who ruled the Geats and was killed by the Franks, whom no horse could carry from the age of twelve. His bones are preserved on an island in the river Rhine, where it breaks into the Ocean, and they are shown as a wonder to travellers from afar.[8]
Leonard Neidorf argues that the authors ofBeowulf and theLiber Monstrorum must have been relying on a sharedoral legendary tradition ultimately stemming from Scandinavia, since they could not have reconstructed the etymologically accurate formsHiglac andHygelac based on the garbled FrankishChlochilaicus.[9]
Other scholars have instead suggested that the episode shows that Beowulf was composed as late as the 10th century, the date of the sole surviving manuscript.[7] It has been suggested that the poem is in fact dependent on theLiber historiae Francorum, because it mentions theAttoarii, which inBeowulf becomeHetware. One scholar considers it to be inconceivable that independent oral tradition would have faithfully transmitted such a detail.[10] German historianWalter Goffart estimated thatBeowulf could not have been written with these historical details before 923.[11]
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