Many years after his return to his homeland, Beowulf is made king and takes on a fire-breathing dragon in a battle to protect his people that is his last. The monster’s mother wants vengeance and Beowulf follows her into a deep, dark lake where he kills her. Beowulf kills Grendel by tearing his arm off. Grendel is a blood-thirsty monster who terrorises the hall at night. The manuscript is long, about 3000 lines in Old English, and is kept in the British Library and tells the story of the hero Beowulf and his battles with Grendel, Grendel’s mother and a dragon.īeowulf, from the kingdom of the Geats, in present-day Sweden, brings his warriors to help the Danish king defend his beautiful great hall from Grendel. Beowulf’s story has survived for about 1500 years, composed around the 6 th or 7 th centuries and written down in the 10 th or 11 th centuries. We have some great archaeological Anglo-Saxon finds including several hoards containing jewellery, such as the Staffordshire and Lenborough Hoards – hidden and never reclaimed – and the magnificent Sutton Hoo ship burial in Suffolk. The Anglo-Saxons have never left us: swear words, place names and the foundation of our language. It shrithed towards the timbered hall, huge and hairy and slightly stooping. A sinister figure shrithed down from the moors, over high shoulders, sopping tussocks, over sheep runs, over gurgling streams. Through the dark night a darker shape slid. When we see them, the people’s faces are gnarly and often scarred. But the lines are also used to create the surroundings of the figures, often in fog, or at night, or with simple stalks growing from the ground.
The pictures are drawn with fine lines, which pick out individual features, for example of sleeping warriors. She has supernatural powers and Beowulf must wrestle with her underwater. If anything, Grendel’s nameless mother is an even more formidable enemy than Grendel. Not just one but two monsters are taken on by Beowulf. The story tells how Beowulf defeated Grendel, causing his death by ripping off his arm. The illustrations do not shy away from the horror, violence, and pain. This king had built a huge feasting hall, Heorat, that was being terrorised by a monster called Grendel. Beowulf was a Geat (from present day Sweden) who travelled to assist Hrothgar, the king of Denmark. They are in black and white which makes for stark images and reflects the Nordic location of the poem. In the present version the illustrations are powerful and provide the dark atmosphere for the story.
I referred to another version of his in the first post I wrote on this ancient poem as well as the version by Rosemary Sutcliff published in 1961, also with illustrations by Charles Keeping. This is not a translation, but a retelling by Kevin Crossley-Holland.
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