Uncer giedd geador: the shadows of history in Wulf and Eadwacer

160 years of scholarship generated by the poem now widely known as Wulf and Eadwacer has produced a corpus of work that is marked by a divergence of individual interpretations and an emphasis on exegesis through translation. Many times the question has been raised as to how the ambiguities inherent in the poem might best be resolved so that a definitive translation can be constructed. What must be understood, however, is that the poem cannot be translated because the ambiguities so apparently frustrating to modern scholars are not products of incomplete philology nor lack of context; they are deliberate creations of a subtle poet (or poets) who meant their work to be understood on a number of levels simultaneously and who, through the use of these multi-faceted ambiguities, created a range of corollary interpretations that both modify and enhance our understanding of the mental state of the poem's characters.