Editing Beorn (section)

=== Norse and English ===

[[File:Gawain and the Green Knight.jpg|thumb|upright|Beorn has been likened to [[Bertilak]], the Green Knight encountered by Sir Gawain on his journey north.<ref name="Burns 1990"/> Painting from [[Pearl Manuscript|the manuscript]] of ''[[Sir Gawain and the Green Knight]]''.]]

Burns writes that Beorn's character, too, contains a complex tension between Norse and English. As a skin-changer he is evidently [[Paganism|pagan]] and Norse; but his vegetarianism, reluctance to use metal, home-loving nature and flower garden all look more compatible with Christianity and Englishness, without being those things specifically. Burns comments that he is thus<ref name="Burns 1990"/>

{{quote|in the best Tolkienian tradition, a being of two extremes: both ruthless and kind, a bear and man, a
homebody and wanderer, a berserker and pacifist in one.<ref name="Burns 1990"/>}}

Burns states that this blending of wild Norse with civilised English can be seen in [[Middle English literature]] such as ''[[Sir Gawain and the Green Knight]]''. Gawain meets a big rugged Beorn-like shape-changer, [[Bertilak]] (the Green Knight), who lives in a castle in an oak forest, and speaks with Christian courtesy. She calls ''Sir Gawain''{{'}}s oaks "entirely [[druid]]ic", suggesting [[Celtic mythology]] or [[Arthurian legend]]. But she notes that "the oak was sacred to [the Norse god] [[Thor]]", allowing Tolkien to assemble Celtic and Norse elements in his composite Middle-earth. Further, she writes, Beorn's home has an almost diagrammatic set of circles of "mixed English and Nordic characteristics": at the centre the Nordic hall; the "[[The Shire|Shire]]-like flower garden" and courtyard; a wider yard (Norse ''gaard'') with its outbuildings; a "high thorn-hedge" in English style; a "belt of tall and very ancient oaks" (English or Norse) and fields of flowers; little English-like hills and valleys with oaks and elms; "wide grass-lands, and a river running through it all", which remind Burns of Iceland; and finally "the mountains", evidently Norse.<ref name="Burns 1990"/>

<gallery mode=packed heights=350px>
File:Beorn Circles.svg|Diagram of [[Marjorie Burns]]'s analysis of mixed Norse and English influence on Beorn's dwelling-place<ref name="Burns 1990"/>
</gallery>