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As for defensive equipment, most Anglo-Saxon warriors only had access to shields. [97] Pollington theorized that the shield was "perhaps the most culturally significant piece of defensive equipment" in Anglo-Saxon England, for the shield-wall would have symbolically represented the separation between the two sides on the battlefield. [87]
The history of modern Beowulf criticism is often said to begin with Tolkien, [154] author and Merton Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford, who in his 1936 lecture to the British Academy criticised his contemporaries' excessive interest in its historical implications. [155]
A modern recreation of a 7th-century Anglo-Saxon warrior. The period of Anglo-Saxon warfare spans the 5th century AD to the 11th in Anglo-Saxon England.Its technology and tactics resemble those of other European cultural areas of the Early Medieval Period, although the Anglo-Saxons, unlike the Continental Germanic tribes such as the Franks and the Goths, do not appear to have regularly fought ...
Beowulf – son of Ecgtheow, and the eponymous hero of the Anglo-Saxon poem. Breca – Beowulf's childhood friend who competed with him in a swimming match. Cain – biblical character described as an ancestor of Grendel who is infamous for killing his brother Abel, the first murder. Killing one's kin was the greatest sin in Anglo-Saxon culture.
Beowulf scholar Alexander writes that the dragon fight likely signifies Beowulf's (and by extension, society's) battle against evil. [21] The people's fate depend on the outcome of the fight between the hero and the dragon, and, as a hero, Beowulf must knowingly face death. [22] Wiglaf is the single warrior to return and witness the death of ...
Brady's 1979 and 1983 articles on the words used to describe weapons and warriors in the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf suggested that, unlike the interchangeability of words used for other subjects such as strong drink, [81] the words used to describe weapons [82] and warriors [83] were precisely tailored to fit their specific contexts. [81]
Grendel is a character in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf (700–1000 CE). He is one of the poem's three antagonists (along with his mother and the dragon ), all aligned in opposition against the protagonist Beowulf .
As told in the surviving epic poem, Beowulf was the son of Ecgþeow, a warrior of the Swedish Wægmundings. Ecgþeow had slain Heaðolaf , a man from another clan (named the Wulfings) (according to Scandinavian sources, they were the ruling dynasty of the Geatish petty kingdom of Östergötland ).