(43-46) “They decked his body no less bountifully with offerings than those first ones did who cast him away when he was a child and launched him alone out over the waves.”
This selection of Beowulf is suggesting that when Shield Sheafson was exiled, it wasn’t because of ignominy or because he deserved it. There is a suggestion in the text that he was most likely sacrificed for the invaders who came by the sea. (why he was launched out over the waves.) or it is even possible that this sacrifice was an offer to one of the gods, more specifically, Neptune: god of water and sea. Neptune is one of only three Roman gods to whom it was appropriate to offer the sacrifices. The wrong offering would require a piaculum, a sacrificial ritual by which communion is reestablished between a god and worshiper; an expiatory offering, if due to inadvertency or necessity. The type of the offering implies a stricter connection between the deity and the worldly realm. So it is possible that they had wrongly sacrificed another so they made up for it by sacrificing Shield Sheafson.
It wouldn't have been Neptune. The Norsemen had there own gods, and did not use/adopt the names of the Greeks or Romans.
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