[9 minutes reading time]

[Fu Metsu Jin Ni: Indestructible Kindness]

 

The longship had been tacking, it heeled toward the shore.

The square sail filled, the hemp ropes straining on the blocks. The clinkered hull cut across the shallow sea.

On the skyline were two towers, the Domkirke cathedral on the hill. The ship raced south. The sun shone and the sea glittered, the clinkered planks creaked. Gulls cried, and there were other sail-steeds on the sound.

For two million tides, ships such as these had sliced through seas, propelling once the ways of the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings. The whispered breeze was settling deep, and in days gone by a coastguard would have been watching, wondering what this ship was bringing.

Once, too, this kind of hull would have been stacked with war gear, axe and sword, a dragon painted on each linden shield. Ahead was a low land, no part of Denmark higher than three hundred ells. The supreme invention had been vessels with overlapping planks, made watertight with moss and wax of bees, ships that strode so fast. These did not rise and plunge, so in the hull were rounded stones of ballast granite. On the longest ships, the bow and stern flexed a yard sideways, the ship shifting energy from the sea to forward movement. There was no keel, the crew moved from side to side.

Long ago at Roskilde there once had been a chief’s hall, a longhouse placed just so, its two tall chimneys when aligned pointing to the safe lane into harbour. At that time, too, protective barriers had been built across the fjord, wooden piles and chains, a single place where inward ships would have to dock and pass across their goods. It was a healthy country, there would have been smoke from many hearths, clinging to the hills.

These days the fjord banks of Sjælland were thirsty fields and stands of ancient oak. This was no isle of sheep and shieling. It was patched with golden corn and dappled grove, with heath and airy birch of satin bark. On a mound was a copse of pine, the kind of place where longships were entombed and dead kings laid on fur, a sword in hand, a shield laid by their side. There could have been gold interred, and from the fjord below sailors would have looked up and steered a little nearer, their sails stiffened by the breeze. The wanderers would point, for the outcrop shrine would have been named after the famous buried man.

All around the circled northern sea are many such mounds, some marked with stone in oval shapes of ships. West across the brine and up one estuary, not as wide as this, was found the longship of Sutton Hoo, half a league uphill and laid in one of twenty mounds. The king’s hinged helm of tinned bronze, a dragon stitched across each brow, was such a find, such a golden Saxon burial, that many felt he must have been as famed as Beowulf, the Geat warrior-king himself.

The epic poem begins (in Seamus Heaney’s wonder words):

“So. The Spear Danes, in days gone by,

And the kings who ruled them, had courage and greatness.”

 

But the backdrop was horror about to be visited upon them, and Beowulf and his crew sailed their longship from afar to help.

“Over the waves, with the wind behind them,

And foam at her neck, she flew like a bird,

Until these seafarers sighted land,

Sunlit cliffs, steep crags and looming headlands.

They vaulted over the side, out on the sand and moored their ship.”

 

“They marched in step, hurrying on till the timbered hall,

Rose before them, radiant as gold,

Nobody on earth knew of another,

Building like it, its light shone over many lands.”

 

This day the skipper smiled, oars up she said. Painters out, and rattle of pine in oarlock ropes. A girl and small boy sat on the harbour wall, watching from the shore. Silence, then dip and splash, and creak and splash again, and the ship glided into port. The breeze dropped and the air on land was hot.

Some leagues south and west of here, this an isle of white sand and beach hut, myth-tale castle and seaside resort, a short march away was Heorot, once Hrotgar’s court at modern Gammel Lejre.

And in these low-lying lands of Sjælland was many a mere and marsh, perfect lair for troll and ogre, the underwater rocks of wildness, a home for every kind of harrower. At olden Lejre, dynastic home of the Scefings and the Sjoldungs, the people of the sheaf and shield, were folk-halls fifty paces long, outbuildings for craft and prayer, the rich burial mound of Grydehøj.

In the Heorot hall stood a huge tree with branches and blossom growing through the roof. Clouds could form in the rafters. The hall had tiered side-benches where people sat and slept, facing across the fire-stones. There were huge treasure chests. The roof was shingled, and there were covered walkways beneath the eaves. In the soil has been found a silver Oðinn coin, the god on a throne with his ravens either side, gold rings and bars, and a single-feather of an eagle wing.

At this very place ruled both Hrothgar and Hrolf Kraki, the most magnificent of kings of ancient times, and here too came the bear-men, the bee-wolfs, named Beowulf and Baldar Bjarki.

The epic poem seems a famed tale of terror, yet it is more about togetherness and kindness. After Beowulf battles lonely Grendel, the order was given for all hands to refurbish Heorot.

“Men and women thronged the wine-hall,

Gold thread shone in the wall hangings,

The benches filled with famous people,

There was nothing but friendship.”

 

“There haven’t been many moments, I am sure [wrote the original poet],

When people exchanged such treasure at so friendly a sitting,

They sang then and played to please,

Words and music, harp tunes and tales of adventure.

Applause soon filled the hall.”

At the Roskilde shipyard were men and women with such magic in their fingers, fitting perfect mortice joints, smelting iron for nails. They were constructing longships, as did the Danes in ages past. In the modernist museum of shuttered concrete, the sea slapping at the base of windowed hall, were the five Skuldelev ships, propped above a floor of stones. The wood was bog-black. There were sweeping lines from stern to prow, on one of which was placed a golden dragon’s head. These were found twenty leagues north, raised from mud fifty years ago. They had been sunk as a defensive barrier to prevent attacks from sea.

That may have been an act of desperation, or perhaps of love, for such a longship could take a year or more to build.

A thousand years of silence was wrapped around each ship.

Of all the ghosts of admirals and kings, the most famed was Hrothgar. He was a wise king, but nothing he could do kept the monsters in the mere. Hrothgar did not blame his people for their misfortune. He could not protect his hall from Grendel and his mother, yet he did not lose their support. Hrothgar spoke of the dangers of all power, especially as there would come the time when the old powers seemed only paltry:

“A man in his unthinkingness forgets,

That it will ever end for him.”

Hrothgar the King believed gold did no one much good, and the warrior bear-man Beowulf later ruled the Geats for fifty winters. It was said, “He grew old and wise as warden of the land.”

The brothers of Svipdag once asked their Swedish father Svip what was King Hrolf Kraki like, the wise king of Sjælland isle who followed Hrothgar?

 

“I have heard he is open-handed and generous,

He withholds neither gold nor treasure,

He is fierce with the greedy, yet gentle with the modest,

He is the most humble of men, so great,

His name will not be forgotten, as long as the world remains inhabited.”

[Snorri Sturluson, The Prose Edda, 1179-1241]

 

Jules Pretty

[Fu Metsu Jin Ni]

 

Commentary

The koan Fu Metsu Jin Ni translates as Indestructible Kindness. Beowulf comes to help Hrothgar and his people. His currency is reputation not treasure. He returns with a great story, and is famed for it. He rules for half a century.

The great threats of Grendel and his ogre mother, from the shadows and the far beyond, they cannot in the end destroy the kindness.

Oliver Scott Curry at the Oxford Kindlab studied behaviours in sixty countries, and found cooperation centred on shared resources, coordination of mutual advantage, social exchange, conflict resolution, fairness and loyalty. Of 962 observed rituals and behaviours, 961 had positive moral outcomes, leading Curry to suggest these looked like laws or human universals.

Rutger Bregman in his book Human Kind said, “People, deep down, are pretty decent.”

Bregman also detailed the work of the Delaware Disaster Research Centre, which studied 700 examples of disasters worldwide since the early 1960s.

In the overwhelming majority, people were actively prosocial. They did not go into shock, they stayed calm, and sprung into action to help others. Each year for the past decade, the Charities Aid Foundation has produced a World Giving Index. It ranks countries by asking three questions: in the past month, have you i) helped a stranger, or someone you didn’t know who needed help; ii) donated money to a charity; iii) volunteered your time to an organisation? More than three in ten adults around the world donated money to charity in 2020. The top ten countries in 2020 were Australia, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Kosovo Myanmar, New Zealand, Nigeria, Thailand and Uganda,

It seems kindness is both our common state and response to threat. It is selfishness that is the outlier.

Towards the end of the epic poem, Beowulf has to fight a fire-breathing dragon. A thief had found the dragon’s mound, and stole away a golden cup.

Yet dragons weren’t hoarding, they were protecting people from themselves, keeping the riches hidden and preventing conflict. This dragon marks the end of Beowulf’s reign and life. At his funeral, people tear their hair and clothes, for they realise forces are now gathered at their borders.

It looks like things are about to get worse. What we wonder will prevail in the face of disaster? This is the topic of the koan.

Gary Snyder translated chapter 33 of the Tao Te Ching in this way:

“The best things in life,

Are not things.”