Weʼve read the story of Beowulf from the perspective of an omniscient narrator, and now Grendel. I think itʼs time we look at it from another perspective: the humans. In my opinion, Unferth is one of the most interesting characters in the story (and I cannot emphasize enough how much I love his characterization in Grendel), so my choice piece is dedicated to him, and of course, Grendel. I designed a scroll containing illustrations of every scene in which the humans directly interacted with Grendel. In other words, the scenes where the humans had no idea Grendel was there, such as when he attended the Shaperʼs funeral, were excluded. Itʼs supposed to be an in-universe item that is drawn/made by Unferth sometime after the events of the novel (i.e., after Grendelʼs death).

My original idea was to pick a scene from each chapter and illustrate it medieval-style, incorporating some sort of abstract representation/element of each zodiac sign. I began by recalling and creating a list of significant scenes from each chapter (DOK Level 1). However, I was soon faced with the difficult task of narrowing each chapter down to just one scene (theyʼre equally significant in my opinion). So, I decided to shift focus a bit and limit the scenes to the times when the humans interacted with Grendel. Sometime during the brainstorming sessions, I had the brilliant idea of “What if this scroll was made by Unferth?” I hoped to convey through the drawings the relationship between Grendel and humans, about how from the humansʼ perspective Grendel is nothing more than a mindless monster (DOK Level 1). After I finished picking out the scene, I went online looking for inspiration for the illustrations. Because the story of Beowulf was said to have been set in the 6th century and was written somewhere between the 7th and 10th, I wanted to replicate the art style of that time. I synthesized information from multiple sources of the different Scandinavian drawings from that period and analyzed their art style (DOK Level 4). Some of the key elements are anatomically correct human figures, perspective drawings that came out looking flat, and lots of details. Pictured below are some of the pictures I referenced. To get an old-paper feel, replicating the look of the actual Beowulf text, I tore the edges of the paper and stained it with tea. To make the rods I cut up a wooden dowel, used some hot glue to make the caps, and painted it a darker brown to contrast the light-colored paper.

The in-universe story I have for this piece is that Unferth, after his embarrassing encounters with Grendel, becomes obsessed with finding out everything about Grendel—what he is, where he came from, that sort of thing. Unferth has called poetry “trash,” and yet at the same time wants his own heroic doing to be “sung year on year and age on age.” He recognizes that history, as conveyed by the Shaper through his poetry, is at best exaggeration, at worst fiction; a romanticized account of what happened, an illusion. In my interpretation of his character, I think he would want to document reality for his own sake, and yet his version of the truth is still tainted because itʼs based on how othersʼ perceptions of events. As Grendel says, “They [the humans have their own versions, but this is the truth.” This scroll is Unferthʼs truth.

In Grendel, the humans saw Grendel as “the terrible race God cursed.” From their perspective, every encounter with Grendel follows the same pattern: evil moster shows up out of nowhere, terrorizes people, and eventually leaves. Since my story for the scroll is that it was drawn by Unferth, I would imagine this is the only depiction of Grendel heʼd heard from other people. Therefore, for the most part, Grendel only has one expression in the illustration: scary monster (DOK Level 3). After all, no one besides him and Beowulf knew Grendel was an intelligent being capable of complex thinking and speech. (Side note, my design of Grendel doesnʼt exactly match the illustrations in the novel. I gave him horns because I wanted to and I thought he looked cute with them. However, the way I drew him was inspired by the art style.) There are a total of ten scenes where humans directly interact with Grendel. In order, they are:

1. Humans try to kill Grendel when he is stuck between the oak trees.
2. Grendelʼs mother saves Grendel.
3. Grendel attempts to join the humans in the mead hall (but from their perspective heʼs just an evil monster).
4. Grendelʼs first direct attack on humans.,
5. Grendelʼs official first raid of Heorot.
6. Unferth attempts to fight Grendel.
7. The apple fight.
8. Unferth in Grendelʼs cave.
9. Grendel tortures Wealtheow.
10. Beowulf fights Grendel.

The illustration for scene 7 (the apple fight) was left incomplete intentionally. Considering how Unferth was extremely “bitter” about his entire interaction with Grendel and would “feebly challenge [Grendelʼs] midnight raids from time to time,” I think it would be pretty in-character for him to get upset halfway through drawing the scene and spill ink to ruin it. It ended up looking really depressing, but that just adds to the theme since Unferth, according to Grendelʼs casual remarks, was “suicidal” and “furiously jealous of the dead.” All in all, I constructed an original interpretation of Unferthʼs character and the relationship between the humans and Grendel (DOK Level 4).

Doing this choice piece made me realize how much of Grendel is just Grendel stalking humans. The novel made me sympathetic towards Grendel but this choice piece allowed me to reexamine the story from the perspective of a regular human. And my conclusion? No wonder humans hated Grendel, he mustʼve been extremely terrifying. It makes sense why Beowulf is such a god-like figure in the original story. I do wonder if Unferth or Beowulf ever told anyone about how Grendel can talk; I bet nobody will believe them. The ELSO levels that this project connected with are Skilled Problem Solver and Technologically Literate Researcher. As part of this artist statement, I used textual evidence to support the artistic choices I made in the choice piece, and connected them to the novel. I also used personal technology to search for art references on the internet. The theme that I most connected with is the mechanical nature of life and how everything follows a pattern. From the humansʼ perspective, all of Grendel was just Grendel the evil, scary monster, repeatedly attacking them. Iʼd imagine most stories, like Grendel, would be pretty boring if the protagonist/narrator is just your average Joe. (Beowulf but form Æschereʼs perspective maybe?)