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Grendel; what was it anyway?
Topic Started: Jan 25 2010, 12:58 PM (1,452 Views)
sam999
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Beowulf. It's a nice story with some strange creatures. The idea here is to find out just how possable the creatures are. Grendel, his mother and that dragon... ...but mostly the grendel.
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Well, Grendel is based on a tradition that Cain's descendents were monsters and abominations, like the Giants of Genesis (though, a lot of the mixed Christian-pagan culture's monsters were also dscended from him). Mutant humanoid maybe? Grendel does have a lot in common with Greek Mythology's giants too (the combined prescence of scales and hair, for instance).

Also, I can't help but remember that it lived in the marsh, and couldn't stand the sounds coming from the celebrations in the Meed Hall. So, my guess is a nocurnal creature that relies on echolocation, so it has sensitive hearing.
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Are you plausible?

Let's be careful to delineate the original Grendel from Hollywood's version. Now, the Grendel squence in the movie was one of the only things that stayed true to the original story, but there is no talk in the original of why Grendel attacked Heorot. It was never specified why he continued attacking, but Hollywood gave him a reason.

Depictions of Grendel vary, from big green and scaly, to a corpse-like monster. Are we going to lock one down and go from that depiction, or consider all in our speculations?
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It did give a reason in the one read in my English Class. It was that he couldn't stand 'the sound of human happiness' or something to that affect. It was on the test.

Hollywood didn't give him that motivation, it was later written forms, not the movie.
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Are you plausible?

My bad, then. I must not have read that translation.
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Don't worry, it wasn't the original translation either, the earliest version didn't have it (so technically you are right) but it did predate the movie and was in the poem at one point or another.
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sam999
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In the oldest veshion I was able to find with google he was the scaly, hunchbacked beast sort of thing. Let's lock with that one.
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sam999
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Jan 25 2010, 05:05 PM
Hollywood didn't give him that motivation,
As far as I can tell hollywood only gave him to motivation to eat people.
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Are you plausible?

They also added the whole "Grendel, I am your father" part, as I recall.
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He was immune to human-made weapons, which certainly sounds 'magical'. However, the point of these exercises is to come up with a way it makes sense; I would suggest that his skin was simply too tough and hard to be cut by the blades that Dark Ages swordsmiths could make. (The giant-forged sword used successfully against Grendel's mother is presumably of a much better quality and possibly a better kind of steel; Beowulf breaks the human-made sword Hrunting against her hide, but the giant-forged sword cuts through. Also it is a much bigger, heavier sword -- made for giants, and Beowulf can wield it only because he is vastly stronger than a normal man -- which would put much more force behind the blow.) Beowulf could rip the arm off; but doing this he didn't really need to pierce the skin, and it seems that this was somewhat a matter of using Grendel's own strength against it.

It's hard to come up with a feasible biological explanation though, since they are supposed to be human-descended, although distantly, from Cain. Any explanation for Grendel needs to account for his mother as well, as they are obviously the same species.

Possibly they are descended from human/something else (Neanderthal? Homo erectus paleojavanicus [a "giant" subspecies, about 6'6"/2m tall, that used to be called Meganthropus]?) hybrids that turned out to be fertile (not all hybrids are sterile). This could explain superhuman strength (Neanderthals etc. were much stronger than modern man) but not the megatough skin. This is a stretch, but possibly a "controlled" form of elephantiasis (symbiotic rather than parasitic) which created ridged, hard, heavy, "scaly" skin?

Or possibly the human-descent thing is erroneous, just a belief of the people fighting them (my favored explanation) and they're simply very weird primates, possibly from the Gigantopithecus line. In their swamp environment they've developed hairlessness (to avoid providing a living space for various parasites, and possibly so it doesn't get in the way in thickets - something like the maneless lions of Tsavo) and very thick protective hide to compensate. (The "scales" are not actual reptile scales - just very ridged, leathery hide, like an elephant's, as described by someone who's never seen a rhinoceros, elephant, or other mammal with "pachyderm" hide.) They've become more predatory than their relatives due to living in the temperate zone, thus less plant food in winter -- so they turn to a mostly meat diet. A creature with the size and strength of a Gigantopithecus would find humans pitifully weak, easy prey, much easier to catch than swift deer or similar - especially if it had protective, thick, sword-proof hide.

The thick hairless hide, more meat-heavy diet, and temperate-zone adaptations would likely be sufficient to make them a different species (Gigantopithecus pachydermis?)
Edited by Vultur-10, Jan 25 2010, 10:32 PM.
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Carlos
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In my book Grendel was a monstrous dragon like creature, even if the original tale meant perhaps it to be an humanoid. Maybe a bipedal lizard that developed a human like gait instead of a theropod one?
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Carlos
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Better still: a humanoid pangolin, with carnivorous tendencies
Lemuria:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/5724950/

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http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/forum/460637/

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sam999
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I alawys thought of it as an evolved gorgonopsid as it seemed to have both scales and exturnel ears.
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Carlos
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Gorgonopsids had neither of those
Lemuria:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/5724950/

Terra Alternativa:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/forum/460637/

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sam999
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Jan 25 2010, 10:28 PM
Or possibly the human-descent thing is erroneous, just a belief of the people fighting them (my favored explanation) and they're simply very weird primates, possibly from the Gigantopithecus line. In their swamp environment they've developed hairlessness (to avoid providing a living space for various parasites, and possibly so it doesn't get in the way in thickets - something like the maneless lions of Tsavo) and very thick protective hide to compensate. (The "scales" are not actual reptile scales - just very ridged, leathery hide, like an elephant's, as described by someone who's never seen a rhinoceros, elephant, or other mammal with "pachyderm" hide.) They've become more predatory than their relatives due to living in the temperate zone, thus less plant food in winter -- so they turn to a mostly meat diet. A creature with the size and strength of a Gigantopithecus would find humans pitifully weak, easy prey, much easier to catch than swift deer or similar - especially if it had protective, thick, sword-proof hide.

The thick hairless hide, more meat-heavy diet, and temperate-zone adaptations would likely be sufficient to make them a different species (Gigantopithecus pachydermis?)
That doesn't explane how in some vershions of the myth when Beowulf dives down into the cave he finds "the spawn of the beast" I.E. eggs.
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