Introduction

Hrothgar, king of the Danes, builds the great hall of Heorot, where there is feasting every night, but the revelry disturbs the monster Grendel in the fens. Night after night it bursts into the hall and devours warriors, and for twelve years no one can withstand it. Beowulf, a young hero of the Geats, comes over the sea, wrestles the monster bare-handed and tears off its arm; then he dives to the bottom of a mere and kills Grendel's mother, come for vengeance. Fifty years later, now king of the Geats, the old Beowulf fights a fire-breathing dragon to save his people, and he and the dragon die together. This poem of more than three thousand one hundred lines is the oldest epic of English literature; Tolkien was among its most celebrated scholars.