Beowulf Unit Study

It's Coming. It's Under Way. And It's Going to be Great!

Meaning of Beowulf's Name

Beowulf, The Bear Man

It sounds like a wolf, but it's a bear!

Beowulf comes from the two old Saxon words "beo" or "bee" and "wulf" which is "hunter." The word literally means "bee hunter."

And one can readily see how a bear is a bee-hunter. A child need only think of their toddler friend, Pooh Bear, to recognize the literary connection. Of course the hero in this story, the Beowulf of old, is much stronger and tougher than the cuddly character of 100 Acre Woods.

Challenges of Reading Beowulf

Imagine standing at a window and watching a dramatic scene outside. That’s what happens when you read a story. The window is the book; the action of the characters is seen in your mind and not with your eyes.

Step back from the window a few feet. The vision blurs. That’s what happens when we read Beowulf. We want to see the story like the men, women, and kids that first heard it - the people it was written for.

But what’s this? Another window appears between us and the legend. It’s the window of history. All those Hrth and Ecg and Whth names were actually real people from a real period in time. Our original audience knew something we don’t.

The Danes, the Geats (Goths), and the Swedes were in a conflict. And tragedy born of traitors was about to strike the royal families.

We can compare that to a modern American reading a narrative about Abraham Lincoln’s activities the day before he was assassinated. The reader knows what is about to happen, but the characters in the tale do not.

The author of Beowulf doesn’t explain about the tragedy about to unfold. He assumes his readers already know it. How much of the story are we missing?

It turns out that the original audience had a third window from which they were watching. The distance between the second and third window is 500 miles and probably several hundred years. The main action, you see, took place about 515 A.D. in Denmark. But the only known version of the story was written in Old English by Anglo-Saxons. There is only one manuscript, written by hand about 1000 A.D. Somewhere and sometime between Denmark in 515 and Anglo-Saxon England in 1000 A.D. the story of Beowulf was written.

Of course we would love to know who wrote it. And where. And when. And why. That is our fourth window.

In this unit, we will call the author Poe X, for sadly his identity is unknown. We know the names of Homer and Aesop who were far older, but not the minstrel who preserved Beowulf for the ages. But those who study ancient literature have described some of the unique aspects to this version of the tale woven by our poet-writing minstrel. They have come up with different dates when they believe it was written.

If our author is hard to read, the error of scribes makes it even more difficult. For it seems as if the poem may have been copied and copied again. By hand. With a feather pen dipped in ink by tired scribes writing foreign names and Old English words when they spoke Middle English. (Of course, they didn’t call their language Middle English. It was modern English to them.) They dropped some words, and mispelled some words, and got some of those Hrth and Ecth names mixed up. Squinting by candlelight, no spell checkers on their computers, no reading glasses as they aged, these scribes certainly deserve our forgiveness. But their mistakes give our scholars who translate the text plenty of extra work to do. And more issues to debate.

The effect of time on language can readily be seen by anyone who attempts to read the original. That’s our sixth window and it shows that one thousand years can wreck havoc on a language. One merely has to glance at the manuscript to realize it might as well be a foreign language.

Of course there are people who study and can ready Old English. But even those fluent in the antiquities of our mother tongue occasionally find words in this poem that have never been seen anywhere else.

And then, sadly, we and the translators must stand behind a seventh window: the ruination of time. The manuscript itself has been damaged. Some parts are lost for good. Even learned professors with magical wardrobes in their backrooms cannot tell us what once was written.

But it is a story of mysteries and surprises, unique in a category of its own. Fortunately for us, translators continue to work to put the story within our grasp.

Beowulf: 3 Parts of the Tale from 3 Different Eras

Maps of Beowulf

A map and it's people are inseparable. Our maps of Beowulf include countries, regions, and people groups mentioned in the story.

Beowulf Character List

We know! It's hard to keep all those Hrethels and Hrothgars and Hrothulfs straight. And let's not even get started on Wealhtheow!

While I don't necessarily recommend Beowulf for a list of modern baby names, you will find our Genealogy and Dynasty Chart helpful for reading the book.

Especially when they start marrying and then attacking each other. Thankfully, the modern royal families don't act like that. (Well....anyway...)