St Edward's Academic Review 2025

2

Is Beowulf a Christian or a Pagan Poem? By Merlin K

Introduction

Beowulf is one of the most important poems in the English language, written in Old English and preserved in a manuscript which is dated to c. AD 1000. It is generally agreed that the unknown poet composed it earlier, most probably in the 8th century – though there is some difference of opinion among scholars about the exact time of composition. The action of the poem is set in Scandinavia, sometime in the 4th to 6th centuries – but again there is some scholarly debate about this. The poem tells the story of the eponymous hero Beowulf who hears of the terrible suffering of the Danes after their King Hrothgar finds his mead hall is under violent attack by a dreadful monster, Grendel. Beowulf sails off with his men to give assistance to King Hrothgar and manages to defeat Grendel, not knowing that Grendel’s mother will come for her revenge following the death of her son. After Grendel’s mother attacks Hrothgar’s hall, Beowulf traces her to an underwater lair, and – seizing a vast sword from a corner of the cave (a sword so heavy that no mortal man can wield it) – he slays Grendel’s mother with the sword. It is a fascinating story, beautifully told in the Anglo-Saxon style, with the use of kennings, metaphorical compound terms, created to fit the alliterative mode, such as seġl-rād (sail-road) or hron-rād (whale-road) both meaning ‘ocean’. The poem is 3,182 lines long and has been much interpreted, discussed, and translated over the centuries since its composition.