Journal lines 1905-2210

Lines 1925-1954 "The building was magnificent...her high devotion to the hero king..."
This digression shows the contrast between Queen Hygd and Queen Modthryth. Queen Hygd was a good queen from the beginning, while Modthryth had to be married for her to become tame. This is obviously there to show the place of women in this time period, but I'm not sure exactly what point it is trying to illustrate. Maybe to show parallelism between Modthryth and Grendel's mother. Both were considered evil, but only for acting like men, taking on masculine traits, or doing things that only men were allowed to do. I find it interesting that as soon as Modthryth was married she was tamed and became a better person, stopped being cruel. As though women left unbidden and unmarried will, by default, become cruel, evil, and manly.

Lines 2047-2050 "Now, my friend...Danes on that final day?"
Trophies of pride seem to be a popular theme in this society as shown by the Danes hanging Grendel's arm from the rafters, Grendel's mother's crude display of Aeschere's head, and the prediction that the Danes will wear the armor won in battle to the very wedding of the peace pledge they are trying to make. It is interesting (and perhaps the point) that it never seems to go well for those displaying these trophies. The Danes get attacked by Grendel's mother, who in turn gets attacked by Beowulf, and the prediction is that the Danes will again get attacked by the Heatho-Bards. Maybe the suggestion is that while pride and victory were so openly treasured as wonderful characteristics in this society and culture, it was the ultimate downfall of this world view.

Lines 2183-2189 "He had been poorly regarded...to his deserving was reversed."
Suggests that Beowulf was not very highly thought of in his youth, that it did not seem as though he had a promising future. This is inconsistent with his boasts about his past, including the swimming contest with Breca, and is perhaps one of the driving forces behind Beowulf's all-out quest for glory.

Lines 2067-2069 "I therefore suspect...alliance with the Danes."
Blatant verbal irony. Beowulf does not suspect any such thing. He doesn't trust that the Heatho-Bards will let the Danes commit this transgression without consequences. If he did, he wouldn't have bothered verbalizing his prediction at all.

Lines 2200-2210 "A lot was to happen...as a warden of the land."
A crap ton of stuff happens in just ten lines, over fifty years of history crammed in. Hygelac is killed by the Swedes, at which point his son becomes kind of the Geats, but then he is shortly killed and there are Swedish/Geat wars for a little while during Beowulf's first few years as king and then everything went well for the fifty years of Beowulf's rule because he was such a good king. This passage not only lets us know what has happened, but enlightens us to Beowulf's current physical and mental state in setting us up for the dragon battle. This supports the view that the three monsters are the centerpiece of the story because it basically glosses over all this history to quicker get to the final battle with the dragon. If the dragon battle is as fast as the others and as poorly described, I will be very angry and disappointed.