Mern Þonke

Last week I suggested that terrorist acts derive from blood feud-like impulses, which Richard Kaepur says are characteristic of mostly stateless societies. Here are a few more thoughts:

In Beowulf we are told the story of Finn, King of Frisia, who marries the Danish princess Hildeburh, presumably to keep the peace between the two peoples. When her brother Hnæf comes to visit, he and is men are attacked at night, and the resulting battle brings about the death of both Hnæf and the son of Finn and Hildeburh. Both armies are so depleted that a truce is called. The Danes, under the leadership of Hengest, will remain with Finn, receiving honourable treatment, on the condition that no one should speak of the events that led to the conflict. The agreement does not last the winter, as the Danes cannot forget how they have been wronged. They attack the Frisians, kill Finn, burn his home, and carry Hildeburh back to Denmark.

The entire episode is narrated by a minstrel of King Hrothgar of the Danes and is used ironically in the poem as a harbinger of the fall of Hrothgar’s son and successor Hrethric in similar circumstances. There are family sagas in these accounts of historical feuds which creates dynamics unlike those that I am suggesting parallel modern-day terrorist impulses. But the basic idea that a consciousness of past wrongs cannot be let go (that you cannot “heng vp þyn ax, þat hatz innogh hewen,” as King Arthur says in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) out of ideological notions such as honour is relevant. The feud, like the curse, is a form of self-help, when there is no state-backed remedy for the consciousness of being wronged. To me, this suggests that US policy regarding terrorism is highly misguided. The US needs to throw its considerable weight behind the United Nations, boosting its authority to offer alternatives to the self-help feud as a remedy for perceived wrongs.