Okay buckle up I'm taking a break from weird anglo-saxon sewing to ramble about Old English terminology for a bit
@tansyuduri this is the term I had mentioned I wanted to tell you about re: nature spirits acting as intermediaries between realms
Lets talk about the word "Mearcstapa".
Its used once in Beowulf, in line 103, to describe the creature Grendel.
Grendel is, in brief, some kind of ambiguous creature and/or cursed human, descended from Cain, cursed by that descent to wander and "hold" (as in, treat as a stronghold) the wilderness forever. He has very little physical description except that he is very large and swordproof, and may have claws? Anyway, he isn't what I want to talk abt right now. For Once.
I'm going to take a stab at translating the OE text myself, VERY roughly, and provide some context for where the word appears.
"This grim ghost was called Grendel, famous mearc-stapa, he who holds the marshes, fen-as-fortress; the lands of monsters un-blessed he guarded for a while, since the Shaper* had him written in the race of Cain- whose torment was the Lord's vengeance, for he slew Abel."
(Beowulf lines 102-108, translation My Weird Gay Ass)
*a common OE term for God, meaning something between "shaper/maker" and "poet/singer"
(that is MESSY towards the end but I've never tried to translate Beowulf myself ok)
anyway it goes on about Cain for a bit after that, the usual stuff you can find in the bible, but what is a "Mearc-stapa"?
well, "-stapa" is really easy, its one of the words in Old English that changed relatively little into the modern day.
"-stapa" is "stepper". one who steps across, walks upon and generally treads over something.
ok cool. what's a "mearc"
WELL THIS IS WHERE THINGS GET REALLY REALLY WEIRD AND HARD TO TRANSLATE.
"Mearc" as a word and as a concept has not survived intact in modern English, at least not on its own. Its latest surviving incarnations are in the extremely-early-middle-english "March" or "Mark", so lets start there. I'm just gonna hit Wiki for this one:
In medieval Europe, a march or mark was, in broad terms, any kind of borderland,[1] as opposed to a state's "heartland". More specifically, a march was a border between realms or a neutral buffer zone under joint control of two states in which different laws might apply. In both of these senses, marches served a political purpose, such as providing warning of military incursions or regulating cross-border trade.
Marches gave rise to titles such as marquess (masculine) or marchioness (feminine) in England; marqués (masculine) and marquesa (feminine) in Spanish-speaking countries and the Catalan and Galician regions; marquês (masculine) and marquesa (feminine) in Portuguese-speaking countries; markesa (both masculine and feminine) in Basque; marquis (masculine) or marquise (feminine) in France and Scotland, margrave (German: Markgraf, lit. 'march count'; masculine) or margravine (German: Markgräfin, lit. 'march countess', feminine) in Germany, and corresponding titles in other European states.
Etymology[edit]
The word "march" derives ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European root *mereg-, meaning "edge, boundary". The root *mereg- produced Latin margo ("margin"), Old Irish mruig ("borderland"), Welsh bro ("region, border, valley") and Persian and Armenian marz ("borderland"). The Proto-Germanic *marko gave rise to the Old English word mearc and Frankish marka, as well as Old Norse mǫrk meaning "borderland, forest",[2] and derived from merki "boundary, sign",[2] denoting a borderland between two centres of power.
In Old English "mark" meant "boundary" or "sign of a boundary", and the meaning only later evolved to encompass "sign" in general, "impression" and "trace".
The Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia took its name from West Saxon mearc "marches", which in this instance referred explicitly to the territory's position on the Anglo-Saxon frontier with the Romano-British to the west.
...cool. that was a lot. anyway, that's what a "Mearc" is, in the most basic sense (Beowulf being in the West-Saxon dialect mentioned above, specifically having been recorded mainly in the Late-West-Saxon written dialect known academically as Winchester Standard for reasons to do with some bishop whose name I'm not going to bother trying to spell)
however, in the context its used in Beowulf, "Mearcstapa", or "Mark-walker", becomes a REALLY weird term. See, Grendel isnt wandering around the boundaries between two towns, or kingdoms, or countries. He's just kind of out in the woods, some of which happen to border one singular, somewhat sizeable town that Grendel then regularly attacks. So what is he walking the border between?
Well, academics love to talk abt that lmao. Some people say it refers to land- or politically-based borders much LARGER than a country, and that it denotes Grendel as a foreigner, from another land or part of the world entirely. Some people see "Mark" as conjuring an image of a swampy, be-fogged "no mans' land" where settling and agriculture would be impossible. A wasteland, for human habitation at least, and thus an "in-between-place" in relation to the boundaries of human civilization- somewhere you travel through or around in between human-settled areas, where no laws of God or man apply. Its "The Dark Forest", the "Past The Threshold" in the Hero's Journey.
However, there's another widely discussed thematic meaning here, and it relies on a bit of context. Beowulf was recorded by monks in a time when Christianity was still relatively new to Northern Europe, the last remnants of various pagan religions only having been definitively wiped out a few centuries prior (FUCK YOU CHARLEMAGNE), and that's the time of RECORDING- Beowulf, as a story, had almost definitely been composed and passed down orally within those same preceding few centuries, likely in the 800s a.d. but possibly as far back as the 600s a.d. . So, what this means is that Beowulf is a record (imperfect as it is, being written down later and by monks) of a culture mid-transition between paganism and Christianity, and this isn't clearer anywhere than in another passage rambling on about Cain:
(in which I attempt to sloppily translate Beowulf again)
(picking up where we left off) "...no joy did he get from that feud, but was driven far away, ill-fated for his evil, far away from mankind. From thence all monstrous births awoke, jotun and elves and orcs*, those same giants who fought with God over long seasons; this was the recompense given"
(Beowulf, lines 109-144, trans. Me and 24/7 my spn brianrot)
*lit: "evil spirits" but the word is "Orcneas", Tolkein stole it and so will I.
(again, is this right? eh. mostly. the end got rough again)
so okay, lots of the usual Cain stuff, and some mentions of giants that some scholars have interpreted as relating to the Nephelim (more context there but its not relevant to this post). However, what may seem GLARINGLY out of place to anyone reading this passage about the BIBLICAL CAIN is the mention of JOTUN, ELVES AND ORCS.
and you'd be right! that is weird! and Grendel is a part of that!
so, with this context, it can be understood that the "Mearc" of Grendel's "Mearcstapa" has multiple meanings, to us anyway. For the Anglo-Saxon people who composed and passed down the story of Beowulf, the lawless and dangerous wilderness just outside their villages would have been one and the same to the lawless, dangerous world of heathen gods and monstrous creatures that their culture had so recently left behind. Uncontrolled forces and places that didn't respect the rule of man or God, untamed, just barely dispelled and always lurking at the edges. That is the "Mearc", as it is used here.
Oh, on that note- some scholars/translators HAVE tried to argue for "Mearcstapa" as "Marked Wanderer", re: the Mark of Cain. However, they are more or less soundly overruled by the prevailing academic understanding of the term...
which is that the "Mark" is a liminal space that, in addition to being the actual areas between towns/cities and the place where monsters live, is also the barrier keeping remaining scraps of paganism (ie, perhaps other gods?) out of Christianity. And the descendants of Cain were set to patrol it. And that's something someone said in, AT THE LATEST, 1000 a.d.
