They feasted and sang in the king’s great hall. Then at dusk the Danes all went to their hiding places and the Geats, newly arrived from Sweden, slept in the hall—all except Beowulf. He lay awake watching. We know the story today because a poet of the times wrote it down in a powerful epic. He told in detail how Grendel broke the door and ate a man. Then he reached for Beowulf. Beowulf with his great strength grasped Grendel’s forearm. He knew that was the most vulnerable part. The creature had powerful hind legs, but his forearms were thin and weak. The hall rang with the noise of their fight that bounded from wall to wall. Other warriors tried to help but their swords were useless. Beowulf tore the creature’s arm from its shoulder. The sinews sprang apart and the bone joints broke. Grendel bellowed with pain and knew he would die. He fled home and bled to death in his joyless lair.

Later in the story Beowulf killed Grendel’s mother also. He returned to Sweden and was king for fifty mostly peaceful years. He died while once again conquering a monster.

Who Wrote Beowulf?
Only one manuscript of the original poem exists. People found it, partly burned, in England about five hundred years after Beowulf lived. No one knows who originally wrote it. Many literature books say that it is fiction, one of the earliest examples we have of an English novel. But if someone were writing fiction, he would not name so many real people; he would invent characters as novelists do. And if someone wrote it long after the events, he would not know all those real people who lived in Beowulf’s time. It must have been first written at or near the time that Beowulf lived. All parts of the story hold together as though one person wrote it. It does not show evidence that bards sang it and added and changed as the years moved along.

Details are embellished to make the battles more intense, the animals more scary, and the heroes more heroic. But the basic story is historically true, and the animals are zoologically real. They are not called trolls or other fantasy names. They are described by their big jaws, their sea-cave dwellings and other scientifically accurate depictions.

Why, then, do so many literature critics say that Beowulf is fiction? It is because they do not believe that dinosaur creatures lived at the same time men lived. Their evolutionary worldview says that dinosaurs lived long ages before men evolved on the earth. Therefore, in their minds, this all must be fiction. But with a Biblical worldview, we can see that dinosaurs entered the ark with Noah—land species at least—and they lived on the earth again after the Flood. But the post-Flood earth was not so hospitable to large creatures and they eventually became almost extinct.

The unknown poet was a remarkable writer. He wrote with power and vivid descriptions. He wrote in pagan times, before missionaries reached the people. God and the devil are mentioned, and Adam and Cain. These pagans knew some of that ancient history, but they knew nothing of Christ or of New Testament teachings. Pagans valued human strength, vengeance, boasting, and treasure gained by plunder. The poem extols all of these and not Christian virtues.