Beowulf Trivia
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This Beowulf trivia quiz has 100 free questions with answers, covering the whole of the Old English epic and everything that grew up around it. The first rounds follow the poem itself: the twelve-year terror at Hrothgar's mead hall, the bare-handed fight with Grendel, the dive into the mere after his mother, the melting sword, the stolen cup that wakes the dragon fifty years later, and the one young warrior who does not run. After that the questions turn to the manuscript and its afterlife: the single surviving copy and the 1731 fire that scorched it, the two scribes, the Icelander whose transcription burned in Copenhagen, Tolkien's 1936 lecture that changed how the poem was read, Seamus Heaney's prize-winning translation, John Gardner's novel from the monster's side, and the films with Gerard Butler, Christopher Lambert and a motion-captured Angelina Jolie. It is written for English students revising the poem, teachers building a quiz for class, and book-club or pub-quiz players who want harder-than-usual literature questions. Difficulty runs from easy plot points to expert manuscript details, and every answer was checked against Wikipedia and the poem itself before it went in.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Roughly how many lines long is Beowulf?
About 3,000
About 3,000: two scribes copied them, and the second took over in the middle of a sentence.
Q 02Beowulf is a hero of which people?
The Geats
The Geats lived in Götaland, and Beowulf, who first sails out as a young warrior among them, ends the poem as their king.
Q 03What drives Grendel to raid Hrothgar's hall?
The sound of song
The sound of song pains him, and his raids go on for twelve years, leaving the great hall unusable.
Q 04What is the name of the great mead hall King Hrothgar built for himself and his warriors?
Heorot
Heorot means 'hart', a stag, and Tolkien later modelled Meduseld, King Théoden's golden hall in Rohan, on it.
Q 05Grendel is described in Beowulf as a descendant of which biblical figure?
Cain
Cain killed his brother Abel, and the poet says God avenged that murder on Cain's kin, the line Grendel comes from.
Q 06How does Beowulf kill Grendel?
He tears off his arm with his bare hands
He tears off his arm with his bare hands, having refused any weapon because he counted himself Grendel's equal.
Q 07Which of Hrothgar's men, his most loyal advisor, is killed by Grendel's mother on her revenge raid?
Æschere
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.
Q 08Which sword, lent to Beowulf before he dives into the mere, proves useless against Grendel's mother?
Hrunting
Hrunting was said never to have failed anyone who carried it, yet its blade would not bite into Grendel's mother.
Q 09Which Danish courtier taunts Beowulf about a youthful swimming contest and later lends him a sword?
Unferth
Unferth mocks Beowulf over the contest, and Beowulf hits back that Unferth killed his own brothers.
Q 10Which rival supposedly beat the young Beowulf in a famous swimming match?
Breca
Breca is the rival, and Beowulf answers that a storm parted them and he killed nine sea monsters along the way.
Q 11What happens to the giant's sword Beowulf uses to kill Grendel's mother?
Its blade melts away
Its blade melts away, burned by the monster's hot blood, leaving only the hilt, which Beowulf carries back to Hrothgar.
Q 12Which sword breaks when Beowulf strikes the dragon's head in his last fight?
Nægling
Nægling fails not because the dragon is too strong but, the poet says, because Beowulf's hand is too strong for any blade.
Q 13After his king dies raiding Frisia, what does Beowulf refuse when the queen offers it?
The throne
The throne: Beowulf backed the queen's young son as king instead, and took the crown only after the boy was killed.
Q 21Instead of rhyme, what sound device ties together the two halves of each line in Beowulf?
Alliteration
Alliteration meant each half-line needed words with the right opening sound, so poets drew on stock phrases and kennings built to fit.
Q 22Weohstan, father of the loyal young warrior at the dragon fight, belonged to which people?
The Swedes
The Swedes: Weohstan fought for the Swedish king Onela and killed the rebel prince Eanmund, winning the sword and armour his son later carries.
Q 23The name Beowulf may be a kenning, 'bee-wolf', a poetic word for which animal?
A bear
A bear, because a 'wolf to bees' is a raider of hives, the reading that makes Beowulf's name a kenning.
Q 14Which king, Beowulf's lord, led a raid on Frisia that Gregory of Tours also recorded?
Hygelac
Hygelac appears in Gregory's history as Chlochilaicus, and that raid is what lets scholars date when the poem is set.
Q 15Roughly how long does Beowulf rule as king before the dragon attacks?
Fifty years
Fifty years, so Beowulf is an old king by the time he faces the dragon, and he dies of the wounds it gives him.
Q 16What wakes the dragon's fury in the last part of Beowulf?
A slave steals a cup from its hoard
A slave steals a cup from its hoard, and the enraged dragon burns homes across the land, even the king's own hall.
Q 17Which young kinsman is the only companion to stand by Beowulf against the dragon?
Wiglaf
Wiglaf rebukes the men who ran, reminding them of the war-gear Beowulf had given them for exactly this kind of fight.
Q 18What do Beowulf's people do with his body?
Cremate it and raise a barrow on a headland
Cremate it and raise a barrow on a headland, as Beowulf had asked, so that seafarers far off would see Beowulf's Barrow.
Q 19Beowulf opens with the funeral of which legendary king, once a boat-borne foundling?
Scyld Scefing
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.
Q 20What is the name of Hrothgar's queen, the 'Lady of the Helmings' who passes the mead cup?
Wealhtheow
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.
Q 24In Beowulf, what does the poetic phrase 'world-candle' stand for?
The sun
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.
Q 25Beowulf survives in a single manuscript. What is it called?
The Nowell Codex
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.
Q 26In 1731, fire in which London house scorched the only manuscript of Beowulf?
Ashburnham House
Ashburnham House was storing Sir Robert Cotton's library, and the book survived, but its scorched edges kept crumbling until repairs in the 1800s.
Q 27The Beowulf manuscript is 'A.XV' in which emperor's press of Sir Robert Cotton's library?
Vitellius
Vitellius: Sir Robert Cotton topped each bookcase with a bust of a famous figure, and his manuscripts are still catalogued under those names.
Q 28How does Grendel enter Hrothgar's hall the night Beowulf waits for him?
Bursts the door open
He bursts the door open, forged fastenings and all, the moment he reaches it, then seizes and kills a sleeping warrior.
Q 29Which Old English poem, by the scribe who finished Beowulf, follows it in the manuscript?
Judith
Judith tells how the Israelite heroine Judith beheads the Assyrian general Holofernes to save her besieged city.
Q 30Which Icelandic scholar first transcribed the Beowulf manuscript, in the 1780s?
Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin
Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin's copies now preserve words that later crumbled away from the manuscript's fire-damaged edges.