Beowulf

The clans of Beowulf might seem, to a modern reader, overly obsessed with treasure. The most fundamental power structures of this world are built on treasure: Kingship is maintained through lavish gifts, to the extent that kings are known as “ring-givers.” However, one need only replace “treasure” with “money” to see a certain resemblance to contemporary society here.

The treasures of Beowulf play a more complex role, representing the power of wealth and the goods of the material world more generally—in both their value and their fragility. This becomes plain in the lament of the lonely barrow-hoarder, whose grief over his dead people is symbolized by their treasures rotting underground: 

I am left with nobody

to bear a sword or burnish plated goblets,

put a sheen on the cup. The companies have departed.

The hard helmet, hasped with gold,

will be stripped of its hoops; and the helmet-shiner

who should polish the metal of the war-mask sleeps;

the coat of mail that came through all fights,

through shield-collapse and cut of sword,

decays with the warrior (153). 

Treasure, like humans, only goes back into the earth in the end. Beowulf’s images of treasure wrap up the good of social bonding, the beauty of culture, and the ultimate mortality of all these earthly things.