The prominence of the
avunculate reflects not a current political reality but a trace of one, preserved in the frequency of the MoBr-SiSo pairs (mother's brother-sister's son), the affectionate nature of such bonds, and the presence of language to describe these familial relationships.
Aside from these reflexes of the avunculate in Beowulf, other "symptoms" of totemism need further study.
In a totemic frame, these scattered elements combine into an integral whole--ancestor veneration, zoomorphic names and symbols, suggestions of kin-solidarity, converging terms for paternal kinsmen, flecks of matrilineal patterning plus faint reflexes of the avunculate from Beowulf and the wills.
Unaccustomed to this prehistoric pattern, he may have invented Hygd's offer in order to account for Beowulf's oblique ascent to the Geatish throne--transversely, along the lost line of the avunculate. But the avuncular line of inheritance, weakly reflected in the wills too, may have been the folkright rule in early Germanic Europe.
(18) My main source on the avunculate is Claude Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, trans.
The avunculate coexists with primogeniture before being fully displaced by it.
These compounds suggest a formulaic avunculate. Klaeber speculates (251) that in Finnsburgh Fragment 18-21 "the Frisian Gu??here tries to restrain the impetuous vouth, Garulf--perhaps his nephew, cp.