100 Fun Facts About Beowulf

Roughly how many lines long is Beowulf?

About 3,000: two scribes copied them, and the second took over in the middle of a sentence.

Beowulf is a hero of which people?

The Geats lived in Götaland, and Beowulf, who first sails out as a young warrior among them, ends the poem as their king.

What drives Grendel to raid Hrothgar's hall?

The sound of song pains him, and his raids go on for twelve years, leaving the great hall unusable.

What is the name of the great mead hall King Hrothgar built for himself and his warriors?

Heorot means 'hart', a stag, and Tolkien later modelled Meduseld, King Théoden's golden hall in Rohan, on it.

Grendel is described in Beowulf as a descendant of which biblical figure?

Cain killed his brother Abel, and the poet says God avenged that murder on Cain's kin, the line Grendel comes from.

How does Beowulf kill Grendel?

He tears off his arm with his bare hands, having refused any weapon because he counted himself Grendel's equal.

Which of Hrothgar's men, his most loyal advisor, is killed by Grendel's mother on her revenge raid?

Æschere, whose name joins 'ash', meaning spear, with 'army', is carried off, and Beowulf's men later come upon his severed head near the mere.

Which sword, lent to Beowulf before he dives into the mere, proves useless against Grendel's mother?

Hrunting was said never to have failed anyone who carried it, yet its blade would not bite into Grendel's mother.

Which Danish courtier taunts Beowulf about a youthful swimming contest and later lends him a sword?

Unferth mocks Beowulf over the contest, and Beowulf hits back that Unferth killed his own brothers.

Which rival supposedly beat the young Beowulf in a famous swimming match?

Breca is the rival, and Beowulf answers that a storm parted them and he killed nine sea monsters along the way.

What happens to the giant's sword Beowulf uses to kill Grendel's mother?

Its blade melts away, burned by the monster's hot blood, leaving only the hilt, which Beowulf carries back to Hrothgar.

Which sword breaks when Beowulf strikes the dragon's head in his last fight?

Nægling fails not because the dragon is too strong but, the poet says, because Beowulf's hand is too strong for any blade.

After his king dies raiding Frisia, what does Beowulf refuse when the queen offers it?

The throne: Beowulf backed the queen's young son as king instead, and took the crown only after the boy was killed.

Which king, Beowulf's lord, led a raid on Frisia that Gregory of Tours also recorded?

Hygelac appears in Gregory's history as Chlochilaicus, and that raid is what lets scholars date when the poem is set.

Roughly how long does Beowulf rule as king before the dragon attacks?

Fifty years, so Beowulf is an old king by the time he faces the dragon, and he dies of the wounds it gives him.

What wakes the dragon's fury in the last part of Beowulf?

A slave steals a cup from its hoard, and the enraged dragon burns homes across the land, even the king's own hall.

Which young kinsman is the only companion to stand by Beowulf against the dragon?

Wiglaf rebukes the men who ran, reminding them of the war-gear Beowulf had given them for exactly this kind of fight.

What do Beowulf's people do with his body?

Cremate it and raise a barrow on a headland, as Beowulf had asked, so that seafarers far off would see Beowulf's Barrow.

Beowulf opens with the funeral of which legendary king, once a boat-borne foundling?

Scyld Scefing's body is laid in a ship heaped with treasure and pushed out to sea, returned to the waves that first brought him.

What is the name of Hrothgar's queen, the 'Lady of the Helmings' who passes the mead cup?

Wealhtheow uses her speech as she passes the cup to press Hrothgar to leave the kingdom to their own sons, trusting his nephew Hrothulf to protect them.

Instead of rhyme, what sound device ties together the two halves of each line in Beowulf?

Alliteration meant each half-line needed words with the right opening sound, so poets drew on stock phrases and kennings built to fit.

Weohstan, father of the loyal young warrior at the dragon fight, belonged to which people?

The Swedes: Weohstan fought for the Swedish king Onela and killed the rebel prince Eanmund, winning the sword and armour his son later carries.

The name Beowulf may be a kenning, 'bee-wolf', a poetic word for which animal?

A bear, because a 'wolf to bees' is a raider of hives, the reading that makes Beowulf's name a kenning.

In Beowulf, what does the poetic phrase 'world-candle' stand for?

The sun, and the poem reaches for the same image when Grendel's mother dies and light shines out like the sky's own lamp.

Beowulf survives in a single manuscript. What is it called?

It takes its name from the 16th-century antiquarian Laurence Nowell, whose name is written on its first page. It sits in the British Library.

In 1731, fire in which London house scorched the only manuscript of Beowulf?

Ashburnham House was storing Sir Robert Cotton's library, and the book survived, but its scorched edges kept crumbling until repairs in the 1800s.

The Beowulf manuscript is 'A.XV' in which emperor's press of Sir Robert Cotton's library?

Vitellius: Sir Robert Cotton topped each bookcase with a bust of a famous figure, and his manuscripts are still catalogued under those names.

How does Grendel enter Hrothgar's hall the night Beowulf waits for him?

He bursts the door open, forged fastenings and all, the moment he reaches it, then seizes and kills a sleeping warrior.

Which Old English poem, by the scribe who finished Beowulf, follows it in the manuscript?

Judith tells how the Israelite heroine Judith beheads the Assyrian general Holofernes to save her besieged city.

Which Icelandic scholar first transcribed the Beowulf manuscript, in the 1780s?

Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin's copies now preserve words that later crumbled away from the manuscript's fire-damaged edges.

The first complete printed Beowulf, published in 1815, was translated into which language?

Latin came first, and that edition's own sponsor, Johan Bülow, then paid for Grundtvig's new translation into Danish.

To which body did Tolkien deliver his 1936 lecture 'Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics'?

The British Academy heard Tolkien argue that the monsters, which critics had brushed aside, are key to the poem.

Who edited Tolkien's Beowulf translation for publication in 2014?

His son Christopher edited it, adding Sellic Spell, Tolkien's attempt to rebuild the folk tale he thought lay behind the poem.

Which Nobel-winning poet's 1999 verse translation of Beowulf won the Whitbread Book of the Year?

Seamus Heaney took on the poem at the invitation of the Norton Anthology's editors, and his version then went into that anthology.

The 1999 Whitbread-winning translation controversially rendered the poem's first word 'Hwæt!' as which English word?

He linked it to the speech of his Ulster relatives. Maria Dahvana Headley went further in 2020 with 'Bro!', and her version won a Hugo Award.

Which American author's 1971 novel Grendel retells the story from the monster's point of view?

John Gardner's novel became the 1981 Australian animated film Grendel Grendel Grendel, with Peter Ustinov voicing the monster.

Who directed the 2007 motion-capture film Beowulf, written by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary?

Robert Zemeckis used the motion-capture technique of his film The Polar Express again, filming Ray Winstone as the hero.

In the 2007 motion-capture film Beowulf, who played Grendel's mother?

Angelina Jolie joined a film whose director had first meant only to produce it, with writer Roger Avary set to direct.

Who played the title role in the 2005 film Beowulf & Grendel, shot in Iceland?

Gerard Butler went on to co-produce Wrath of Gods, a documentary about the film's troubled shoot in Iceland.

The 13th Warrior (1999) is based on which Michael Crichton novel that reworks Beowulf?

Eaters of the Dead began as a bet: Michael Crichton set out to show a friend who called Beowulf boring that it could make an entertaining story.

Which actor played Beowulf in the 1999 film set in a post-apocalyptic, techno-feudal future?

Christopher Lambert's hero turns out to be only half-human, a twist this version adds to the old story.

Which famous ship burial leads some scholars to place Beowulf's composition at Rendlesham in East Anglia?

Sutton Hoo's ship burial shows close ties to Scandinavia, and East Anglia's royal Wuffingas may have descended from the Wulfings named in the poem.

Digs at Lejre, seat of Hrothgar's dynasty, found halls from which century, matching Beowulf's setting?

6th: halls about fifty metres long stood there, and one of them may be the real hall behind Hrothgar's in the poem.

What was the Old English word for a poet who sang in a lord's mead hall?

A scop entertains Hrothgar's hall after Grendel's death, singing the tale of the fight at Finnsburg.

Which Old English poem also names Hrothgar, his nephew Hrothulf and their enemy Ingeld?

Widsith fills a gap Beowulf leaves open: it tells how Hrothgar and his nephew defeated Ingeld, a feud Beowulf never finishes.

Which Maria Dahvana Headley novel reimagines Beowulf in suburban America, focused on the monster's mother?

The Mere Wife starts from a translation double standard: the same Old English word gets rendered 'hero' for Beowulf but 'monster' for Grendel's mother.

Beowulf is written mostly in which dialect of Old English?

Late West Saxon was the standard literary English that scribes copied into, so the poem was probably composed in another dialect and converted later.

The Norse tale of Hrolf Kraki, often compared with Beowulf, features which shapeshifter?

Bodvar Bjarki kills a monster that has been slaughtering King Hrolf's warriors at Lejre, much as Beowulf ends Grendel's raids.

The ancient hilt that Hrothgar studies in Beowulf tells of which Old Testament disaster destroying the giants?

The Flood is on the hilt, with raging waters ending the ancient race of giants who had warred against God.

Besides Beowulf, the same manuscript holds a letter credited to which ancient conqueror?

Alexander the Great is only its claimed author: the letter merely purports to be his, and scholars now regard it as apocryphal.

Which London institution holds the only manuscript of Beowulf, along with Magna Carta and the Lindisfarne Gospels?

The British Library has kept the manuscript since 1973, when the British Museum's library departments were split off to form a new national library.

In the opening lines of Beowulf, the kenning 'whale-road' is a poetic name for which part of nature?

The sea is the 'whale-road' in line 10 of the poem, and the poet has other names for it too, including the 'swan-road' and the 'sail-road'.

Maria Dahvana Headley's 2020 translation of Beowulf swaps the opening word 'Hwæt' for which slang greeting?

Her opening 'Bro!' sets the tone for a version that won a Hugo Award in 2021 and tells the old epic like a story swapped over beers in a bar.

Which Oscar-winning actor played the ageing King Hrothgar in the 2007 motion-capture film Beowulf?

Anthony Hopkins gave the Danish king his own Welsh accent, telling the film's American director that Welsh would be his closest because that's where he comes from.

For his last fight against the fire-breathing dragon, King Beowulf orders a shield made entirely of what?

Iron was his answer to the dragon's flames, because he knew that an ordinary shield of linden wood would be worthless against fire.

The Old English word 'wyrd', ancestor of 'weird', names which force that Beowulf says goes as it must?

Fate is what wyrd meant, and the word only turned into 'weird' by way of the Weird Sisters, the destiny-controlling witches of Shakespeare's Macbeth.

Which rank, later held by Shakespeare's Macbeth, belongs to the warriors who serve the kings in Beowulf?

Thane, or thegn, began as a word for someone in a king's service and hardened into a rank of landed nobles, third in Anglo-Saxon society below the king and his ealdormen.

Beowulf was written in Old English, yet its whole story unfolds in which region of Europe?

Scandinavia is the setting from first line to last, in a pagan age long before the poem's one surviving copy was written out in Christian England.

Where do Beowulf's hand-picked companions run when they see their old king losing to the dragon?

Into the woods they run to save their own lives, leaving one young kinsman to stand beside Beowulf. He tells them afterwards that death is better than a life of shame.

After Beowulf's death, how do his people get rid of the carcass of the dragon he killed?

They push it off a cliff and let the waves take it, with none of the honours paid to their dead king. The dragon's gold, meanwhile, is loaded onto a wagon.

Which exiled warrior, whose feud King Hrothgar once paid to settle, was the father of Beowulf?

Ecgtheow had killed a man of the Wulfings and fled abroad, where Hrothgar settled the feud for him; in return he swore oaths of friendship to the Danish king.

The great mead hall that Hrothgar builds in Beowulf is named with the Old English word for which animal?

A stag gave the hall its name, a choice that may reflect an old Germanic link between the animal and royalty.

Where on King Beowulf's body does the dragon sink its teeth to deliver the fatal, poisoned wound?

His neck takes the bite on the dragon's third rush, and the wound soon swells and burns with poison, though Beowulf lives long enough to see the beast dead.

Which American translator, who also put Don Quixote into English, made a 1963 Beowulf long used in schools?

Burton Raffel kept his version deliberately free, arguing that a poet-translator needs to master the original in order to leave it.

Which Arts and Crafts designer printed his own archaic verse translation of Beowulf at the Kelmscott Press in 1895?

William Morris could not fully read Old English, so he reworked a prose version by the scholar A. J. Wyatt. His biographer E. P. Thompson called it perhaps the worst thing he ever wrote.

Which Hollywood star played the Arab traveller Ahmad ibn Fadlan in The 13th Warrior, a film reworking Beowulf?

Antonio Banderas played a real 10th-century traveller from Baghdad, whose eyewitness account of Viking traders on the Volga inspired the story's narrator.

What is the term for the pause that splits each four-stress line of Beowulf into two halves?

A caesura sits in the middle of every line, and in the oldest Germanic verse it is a necessary part of the form itself, not an occasional effect.

In the Beowulf episode of the fight with Grendel's mother, the kenning 'battle-sweat' is a poetic name for what?

Blood is the 'battle-sweat' of Old English verse, one of the compact riddling phrases that its poets liked to use in place of a plain noun.

In the speech scholars call Hrothgar's sermon, the old king warns the victorious Beowulf against which failing?

Pride is the danger he names, reminding the young hero that his strength will not last and that sickness, the sword or old age comes for every warrior.

Which grisly trophy, so heavy that four men must carry it, does Beowulf bring up from the monsters' lair?

Grendel's head is dragged into the hall by its hair and shown to the king and queen, a sight the poem calls an awe to everyone drinking there.

In Beowulf, which daughter of Hrothgar is promised to Ingeld in a doomed bid to end a feud?

Freawaru is cast as a peace-weaver, a bride given to heal a feud, but Beowulf himself predicts that old grudges will flare up and the match will fail.

If Grendel kills him, Beowulf asks that his heirloom war-shirt go home, the work of which legendary smith?

Weland, later known as Wayland the Smith, was so famous that English tradition placed his forge in Wayland's Smithy, a Stone Age burial mound near the Uffington White Horse.

Which Germanic payment, owed to a dead man's kin, does Grendel refuse to make for his killings in Beowulf?

Wergild put a price on every life so that a killing could be settled without a feud, and Hrothgar once paid it himself on behalf of Beowulf's father.

Which golden hall of the kings of Rohan did Tolkien model on Hrothgar's mead hall in Beowulf?

Meduseld even borrows a line from the poem: when Legolas says the light of it shines far over the land, he is translating the Old English directly.

Which animal's image crowns the helmets of Beowulf's warriors, standing guard over the men who wear them?

A boar appears on helmets five times in the poem, and real ones survive: the Benty Grange helmet, found in Derbyshire, still carries its boar crest.

The dying King Beowulf regrets that he has no heir of which kind to inherit his war-gear?

A son is what he lacks, so he hands his gold collar, helmet and rings to the young kinsman who fought beside him, calling him the last of their family line.

After a disastrous raid on Frisia, Beowulf is said to swim home carrying thirty sets of what?

Armour by the armful is the poem's way of showing his superhuman strength; he is also said to have the grip of thirty men in one hand.

What finally becomes of the dragon's treasure that Beowulf gives his life to win for his people?

It is buried with him, and the poet remarks that the gold lies in the earth as useless to men as it ever was.

How do Beowulf and his fourteen chosen companions travel from their homeland to King Hrothgar's kingdom?

By ship they cross in about a day, and a mounted coastguard who sees their shields coming down the gangway rides up to demand who they are.

What is Beowulf doing in the darkened hall at the moment Grendel first reaches out to seize him?

Pretending to sleep lets him watch how the monster attacks before he makes a move of his own.

The mead that flows in Hrothgar's hall in Beowulf is an alcoholic drink fermented from which ingredient?

Honey mixed with water and fermented makes mead, which may be the most ancient alcoholic drink of all.

Before Grendel reaches Beowulf in the hall, what does the monster do to a sleeping warrior nearby?

He eats him on the spot, feet and hands included, in some of the most gruesome lines of the whole poem.

What does the dragon's fire destroy that brings the aged King Beowulf out to fight it himself?

His royal home, the best of buildings, melts in the flames, and the old king's first thought is that he must somehow have angered God.

The letter þ, written throughout the Beowulf manuscript, stands for which modern English sound?

The 'th' sound was written with thorn until early printers, lacking the letter, swapped in a y, which is where the mock-antique 'Ye Olde' comes from.

Which term, also found in Chaucer's 'Sir Thopas', do scholars use for the numbered sections of Beowulf?

Fitts is the old name for the sections of a long narrative poem, though in its own day the word more often simply meant a poem or a song.

The Beowulf poet calls a deadly sword 'not useless', an example of which figure of speech?

Litotes makes a point by denying its opposite, and this dry understatement is a hallmark of Old English verse and the Icelandic sagas alike.

Which term, borrowed from the Roman historian Tacitus, names the bond between lord and warriors in Beowulf?

Comitatus described a war-band whose chief held his followers by being a great fighter and a generous giver of feasts and treasure.

The closing words of Beowulf remember the dead king as the man keenest for what?

Praise comes last in a list of tributes: his mourners call him the mildest of kings, the most beloved, the kindest to his people and the keenest for praise.

In their despair over Grendel, what do Hrothgar's Danes do that the Christian poet of Beowulf condemns?

They pray at pagan shrines, promising offerings and begging the 'slayer of souls' for help, and the poet stops to pity them for not knowing God.

Among Hrothgar's rewards to Beowulf for killing Grendel are eight of which animals, led into the hall itself?

Horses with ornamented headgear are led right onto the hall floor, and one carries the jewelled war-saddle that Hrothgar himself used to ride into battle.

Which Icelandic tale, whose outlaw hero destroys the undead Glámr, is often compared with Beowulf's monster fights?

Grettis saga gives its hero a curse along with his victory: with his last breath Glámr dooms Grettir to fear the dark, live as an outlaw and die young.

Which German-born scholar spent three decades on the 1922 edition that became the standard text of Beowulf?

Frederick Klaeber kept revising it for decades more, even after his Berlin home, books and notes were destroyed in the Second World War.

Which legendary king of the continental Angles, claimed as an ancestor by Mercia's rulers, is praised in Beowulf?

Offa appears in the poem as the husband of a princess who had men put to death for daring to look at her, until marriage to him changed her ways.

A court poet in Beowulf sings of Queen Hildeburh, bereaved of brother and child in a fight at which stronghold?

Finnsburg is also the subject of a separate Old English fragment about 50 lines long, whose only manuscript leaf vanished after a scholar copied it out.

Which young queen in Beowulf, praised as wise and courteous, is contrasted with the murderous Modthryth?

Hygd later receives the poem's most famous jewel, the gold collar that Hrothgar's queen had given Beowulf as a reward.

King Hrethel in Beowulf dies of grief after one young prince accidentally kills his brother with what?

An arrow that missed its mark did it, and because a family cannot take vengeance on one of its own, the old king had no remedy for the death and wasted away.

The gold collar Hrothgar's queen gives Beowulf is compared to a jewel usually identified with which Norse treasure?

Brísingamen, the goddess Freyja's necklace, is generally taken to be the poem's 'necklace of the Brosings', which a hero named Hama is said to have carried off.

Which earlier king does Hrothgar hold up to Beowulf as a warning, a tyrant who killed his own table companions?

Heremod's story ends badly: he seems to have been driven out by the people he had terrorised and, in most readings, was betrayed to his death among the Jutes.

Which Danish pastor and hymn-writer turned Beowulf into Danish verse in 1820, soon after its first printing?

N. F. S. Grundtvig, whose ideas later inspired Denmark's folk high schools, called his version Bjovulfs Drape and kept returning to the poem for inspiration.

Which English actor, cast after playing Henry VIII on television, performed the hero in the 2007 film Beowulf?

Ray Winstone said he had the beauty of not reading the poem beforehand, so he came to the part without any baggage about how the hero should be played.