page_title: Grendel's mother
section_title: Ides/dis (lady)
hierarchical_section_title: Grendel's mother / Debates on Grendel's mother / Ides/dis (lady)
context_page_description: Grendel's mother is one of three antagonists in the anonymous Old English poem Beowulf. The other antagonists are Grendel and the dragon, all aligned in opposition to the hero Beowulf. She is introduced in lines 1258b to 1259a as: "Grendles modor/ides, aglæcwif".
  Grendel's mother, who is never given a name in the text, is the subject of ongoing controversy among medieval scholars. This is due to the ambiguity of a few words in Old English which appear in the original Beowulf manuscript. While there is consensus over the word "modor", the phrase "ides, aglæcwif" is the subject of scholarly debate.
context_section_description: The Old English ides, Old High German itis and Old Norse dís are cognates that all mean "lady", and idisi appears as the name of the Valkyries in the only surviving pagan source in Old High German, the Merseburg Incantations. More generally, in Norse mythology, the Dísir ('ladies') are fate goddesses who can be both benevolent and antagonistic towards mortal people.
  Consequently, many have pointed out that dís is probably the original term for the valkyries (lit. "choosers of the slain"), which in turn would be a kenning for dís.
  A few scholars have drawn from the work of Eric Stanley by exploring the term ides as "lady" when discussing Grendel's mother, such as Temple ("Grendel's Lady-Mother", 1986) and Taylor (who argues in his 1994 essay that the term Ides indicates that "Grendel's mother is a woman of inherently noble status.") In addition, others have suggested that Grendel's mother may be associated with the Norse figures of the valkyries and of the goddess Gefion who may be an extension of Frigg and Freyja. Freyja, the daughter of the sea god Njörðr, was both a fertility goddess and a goddess of war, battle, death, seiðr, prophecy and was also sometimes associated with the valkyries and disir.
  Nora Kershaw Chadwick (1959) and later Helen Damico in two works (Beowulf's Wealhtheow and the Valkyrie Tradition and "The Valkyrie Reflex in Old English Literature") argue that Grendel's mother may refer to the myth of the valkyries. Damico states:
  in both their benevolent and malevolent aspects, the valkyries are related to a generic group of half-mortal, half-supernatural beings called idisi in Old High German, ides in Old English, and dis in Old Norse, plural, disir. Both groups are closely allied in aspect and function: they are armed, powerful, priestly [...] The Beowulf poet follows the tradition of depicting the valkyrie-figure as a deadly battle demon in his characterization of Grendel's Mother. As Chadwick has argued, Grendel's Mother, that wælgæst wæfre 'roaming slaughter-spirit' epitomizes the earlier concept of the valkyrie.
  Damico later argues in Beowulf's Wealhtheow and the Valkyrie Tradition that Wealtheow and Grendel's mother represent different aspects of the valkyries.
  Frank Battaglia also draws on the term "ides" by pairing it with "dis". He notes that the "dis" were "female guardian spirit[s]" with "power over the dead and choosing who would die. In this capacity [they] might be feared." Battaglia thus suggests that Grendel's mother is the Early Germanic goddess Gefion (whom he states was also a form of Nerthus and Freyja). He also argues that: "in scaldic poetry the word dis means goddess ... Freyia herself is called Vanadis, that is, dis of the Vanir, the Scandinavian chthonic, fertility deities." Battaglia then notes that Gefion is referenced five times in the poem: l.49 (géafon on gársecg – "Gefion on the waves"), l.362 (ofer geofenes begang –  "over Gefion's realm"), l.515 (geofon ýþum – "Gefion welled up in waves"), l.1394 (né on gyfenes grund – "Ground of Gefion"), and l.1690 (gifen géotende – "Gefion gushing"). In addition, he indicates that "in Old English poetry, geofon is a word for ocean which has been seen since Jakob Grimm (1968, 198) as related to the name Gefion of the Danish Earth Goddess ... power to divide land and sea is shown by representations of Gefion in Norse literature."
caption: Freyja, depicted in a painting by J. Penrose.
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