Fr. Klaeber, Commentary on Beowulf
Fr. Klaeber, Ed.

[3005] æfter hæleða hryre, hwate Scildingas. See Varr. The line as it stands in the MS. has the air of an intruder. Müllenhoff (xiv 239) denounced it as a thoughtless repetition of 2052. It has been defended as a stray allusion to an ancient story of the Danish king Bēowulf, the hero of a dragon fight (cf. Intr. xxii), or to a possible tradition assigning to Bēowulf the overlordship over the Danes after the fall of Hrōðgār's race (Thorpe's note; cf. Sarrazin, ESt. xxiii 245; Chambers, with reference to Saxo iii 75; Brett, MLR. xiv 1 f). But these suppositions are far from being substantiated. Besides, an unprejudiced reader would expect hwate Scildingas to be merely a variation of hord ond rīce. Again, the emendation Scilfingas offers no appreciable improvement in sense, unless, by a violent transposition, we insert the line between 3001 and 3002. (A reference to a temporary authority possibly exercised over the Swedes, as a result of the alliance with Ēadgils, would be strange.) In the text the knot has been cut by introducing the alteration sǣ-Gēatas. Cf. JEGPh. viii 259. [If still another conjecture may be offered, a reading: hwate (adv.) Scildinga/folcrēd fremede could be considered to contain a passing hint at the Grendel exploit. Similarly, Moore (JEGPh. xviii 22 ) suggests hwate[s] Scildingas, i.e. Hrōðgār' s.]