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Other scholars disagree as to whether Beowulf is a Christian work set in a Germanic pagan context. The question suggests that the conversion from the Germanic pagan beliefs to Christian ones was a prolonged and gradual process over several centuries, and the poem's message in respect to religious belief at the time it was written remains unclear.
Beowulf is an epic poem in Old English, telling the story of its eponymous pagan hero.He becomes King of the Geats after ridding Heorot, the hall of the Danish king Hrothgar, of the monster Grendel, [a] who was ravaging the land; he dies saving his people from a dragon.
The right half of the front panel of the 7th-century Franks Casket, depicting the Anglo-Saxon (and wider Germanic) legend of Wayland the Smith. Anglo-Saxon paganism, sometimes termed Anglo-Saxon heathenism, Anglo-Saxon pre-Christian religion, Anglo-Saxon traditional religion, or Anglo-Saxon polytheism refers to the religious beliefs and practices followed by the Anglo-Saxons between the 5th ...
Tolkien's Beowulf poet was a version of himself, and his authorial persona in creating [The Lord of the Rings] was a version of that Beowulf poet. [ 37 ] The historian Ronald Hutton writes that in depicting a pagan Middle-earth, the Christian Tolkien was setting up an interesting relationship between his own religion and his invented world.
Germanic paganism or Germanic religion refers to the traditional, culturally significant religion of the Germanic peoples. With a chronological range of at least one thousand years in an area covering Scandinavia , the British Isles , modern Germany, the Netherlands, and at times other parts of Europe, the beliefs and practices of Germanic ...
Hrunting was a sword given to Beowulf by Unferth in the ancient Old English epic poem Beowulf. Beowulf used it in battle against Grendel's mother. Beowulf is described receiving the sword in lines 1455–1458:
The next day, Beowulf was lauded and a skald sang and compared Beowulf with the hero Sigmund. However, during the following night Grendel's mother arrived to avenge her son's death and collect weregild. As Beowulf slept in a different building he could not stop her. He resolved to descend into the bog in order to kill her.
The former, subtitled "Beowulf and Grendel", is a poem or song [5] of seven eight-line stanzas about Beowulf's victory over Grendel. The latter is a poem of fifteen eight-line stanzas on the same theme; several of the stanzas, including the first and the last, are almost identical with the first version.