[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

EDIT: Cross-posted with half the forum

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

EDIT: ofermod is a well discussed word in OE studies, and its meaning highly contested. We should get Squatter in on this, as possibly he is the most recent student of OE on this forum.

Your wish is my command.

Some of you may recall Joy's thread about The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth [1], in which I made one or two points about Tolkien's views on the subject and related them to The Silmarillion. In that post I accepted Tolkien's opinions about what ofermod means, partly because that clarified some of the actions of his characters and partly because I'm still not qualified to argue with him about linguistic matters. However, I do know of some people who are so qualified, and I happen to have some photocopies of their opinions on the subject left over from my course. Tolkien's is neither a generally accepted one nor is it immune from criticism. He does not even identify all of the occurrences of ofermod in the Old English corpus, but semantics are on his side.

In the world of Anglo-Saxon literary studies, ofermod has been overdone. Since Tolkien's article was printed, a bewildering number of distinguished Anglo-Saxonists have published their opinions on the disputed lines 84-90 of The Battle of Maldon; yet still no definitive conclusion has been reached as to whether the word is meant to imply overweening pride, overconfidence, high-spiritedness or great courage.

Helmut Gneuss [2] identifies five distinct meaning groups for the word as given by past reviewers and editors:

1. pride, great pride, excessive pride, foolish pride, foolhardy pride; arrogance, haughtiness, disdain; overweening courage
2. overconfidence, superb self-confidence
3a. recklessness, rashness, rash courage, foolhardiness, German Übermut (= high spirits, wantonness, exuberance?)
3b. over-courage, overboldness
4. great, high courage
5.magnanimity, greatness of heart, over-generosity.

Gneuss proceeds to point out that a volume by Hans Schabram [3] lists all the translations of superbia extant in Old English, declaring that "It is to be expected that this will also include the final word on ofermod in Maldon."

Armed with Schabram, Gneuss informs us that there are four occurrences of ofermod in Old English, and that in all cases other than Maldon they translate the Latin word superbia. To take but two examples, in Genesis B, Lucifer is se engel ofermodes (the angel of pride) and in Instructions for Christians, the phrase from Maldon is even repeated:

Ac se ðe sylfne to swiðe ahefð
for his ofermode, he bið earm for Gode.

But he who exalts himself too much
because of his pride, he will be wretched before God

This passage is itself an echo of St. Luke:

Originally Posted by Luke XVI:15, Vulgate and Douai-Rheims Bible

et ait illis vos estis qui iustificatis vos coram hominibus Deus autem novit corda vestra quia quod hominibus altum est abominatio est ante Deum

And he said to them: You are they who justify yourselves before men, but God knoweth your hearts; for that which is high to men, is an abomination before God.

Short time means that I must skip Gneuss' examination of Germanic cognate words and go straight to his conclusions:

1. ofermod (noun) can only mean "pride" in Genesis B, Instructions for Christians, and a glossary, i.e. wherever it occurs;
2. the phrase for his ofermode is found in Maldon and Instructions
3. the OE adjective ofermod denotes "proud" in more than 120 instances; nowhere can it be found to have a sense like "bold, courageous, magnanimous," etc.;
4.the Old Saxon and Old High German equivalents of OE ofermod (noun and adjective) are always used with the sense "pride; proud" in extant written records; [4]
5. there is no evidence whatsoever to prove that ofermod (noun) could have a signification like "recklessness," "over-courage," "great courage," "magnanimity";
6. the context in which ofermod appears in The Battle of Maldon makes it likely that the word is a term of criticism, if not of reproach; lytegian (l.86) and alyfan landes to fela (l.90) clearly point to an error of judgment committed by Byrhtnoð.

But things are never so simple in the world of medieval studies. There is very little evidence to go on, and Professor Gneuss' opinion is based on an extremely small set of data. His conclusions were questioned in 1995 by Paul Cavill [5], who observed that Gneuss had only proved that ofermod normally translates superbia, and that both words may have more meanings than 'pernicious pride'. Responding to Gneuss' postulation that "Byrhtnoth was employing the right tactics but did not, or did not yet, have a fighting force sufficiently strong to carry through his plan," he wonders

Originally Posted by Paul Cavill

In what sense is it because of Byrhtnoð's pride that he takes on the Vikings before he has enough men? It would make sense to call such an attitude "recklessness", "over-courage", "great courage", possibly even "magnanimity" ... At the very least, pride here would have strong connotations of recklessness, over-courage and so on.

Those are but two arguments in a huge debate, which I've condensed drastically so as to avoid boring you and spending all night on this post. Essentially what remains to be seen is how wide a semantic range ofermod really has and what its sense is in The Battle of Maldon, which is the only context in which its meaning seems to be disputed. Both remain to be seen, but perhaps Tolkien can still have the last word on the poet's approval or otherwise of Byrhtnoth:

Beorhtnoth was wrong, and he died for his folly. But it was a noble error, or the error of a noble. It was not for the heorðwerod to blame him; probably many would not have felt him blameworthy, being themselves noble and chivalrous. But poets are above chivalry, or even heroism; and if they give any depth to their treatment of such themes, then, even in spite of themselves, these 'moods' and the objects to which they are directed will be questioned.

We don't know who wrote The Battle of Maldon, where it was written or exactly when; but if it was written by a monk of Ely, or a poet of the East Saxons, then it is likely that any criticism was made in spite of his reverence for Byrhtnoth as an East Saxon hero and champion of the church militant, as he appears in the Liber Eliensis (Book of Ely) and Vita Sancti Oswaldi (Life of Saint Oswald). If he was a monk, it may have been that he felt the need to explain why God had abandoned the English to the mercies of the pagan Vikings; and there is enough Biblical precedent for blaming his countrymen's own sins that perhaps he couldn't resist. Such speculation is, however, simply my own speculation this evening. I doubt very much that it would stand up to real academic analysis.
--
[1] I should note here that Tolkien has used an archaic spelling; the rest of the world refers to the Ealdorman at Maldon as 'Byrhtnoth', as in the manuscript.
[2] Helmut Gneuss, 'The Battle of Maldon 89: Byrhtnoð's ofermod once again'. Studies in Philology LXXIII.2 (April 1976), 117-37.
[3] Hans Schabram, Superbia. Studien zum altenglischen Wortschatz. Teil I: Die dialektale und zeitliche Verbreitung des Wortguts (München, 1965).
[4]Old Saxon ('v' for crossed 'b') ovarmôd, ovarmôdig: 'proud, superbus'; Old High German ubermuot, ubermuatí and derivatives: 'pride, proud'. But this may mean superbia through semantic borrowing, returning to its original meaning in Middle High German (Werner Betz, Deutsch und Lateinisch. Die Lehnbildungen der althochdeutschen Benediktinerregel (Bonn, 1949).
[5] Paul Cavill, 'Interpretation of The Battle of Maldon, Lines 84-90: A Review and Reassessment', Studia Neophilologica 67 (1995), 149-64