The messenger sent to report the results of the battle warns the people that the king’s death probably will encourage old enemies to renew their feuds with the Geats. This is another example of the Beowulf poet interrupting the flow of the action to allude to other stories in a way that may seem odd to a modern audience. We can only conclude that his audience must have welcomed the allusions; these are details with which most of them were familiar. For the modern reader, however, the point could been made more simply: The king is dead. The Geats are in trouble. But that is a story for another time.
The curse on the treasure-trove seems to come from a mixture of sources. While the concept seems pagan, the poet insists on saying that “the Lord” (3054) controlled the spell and that only He could decide who might disturb the hoard. The poet makes a reference to the treasure’s being “in the deeps of the earth for a thousand years” (3050), which sounds biblical (Chickering suggests Revelations 20: 7–8) but certainly doesn’t match the 300 years that, we’ve been told, have passed since the hoard was buried. It is unclear whether Beowulf was killed because of the curse.
Always capable of surprising us, the poet turns from these digressions to one of the most beautiful extended passages in the poem, the description of the funeral pyre and the final resting place of the ashes of the great man. At Beowulf's request, the pyre is hung with battle gear. The king himself is placed respectfully at the top in the center. The flame itself is spoken of as if it is perhaps a warrior called to a ceremonial death dance: “[T]he great fire was wakened. The wood-smoke climbed up, / black above flames; the roaring one danced, / encircled by wailing … ” (3144–46).
