Beowulf

Sources, Related Texts/Contexts, Possible Historical Links:

• Angle king Offa (350-400 AD); Gothic king Eormenric (late 4th century)
• 5th century Jute leaders Hengest and Horsa (cf. Finn episode)
• Hygelac (475-521), Healfdene (445-498), Hrothgar (473-525) ??
• Northumbrian political dominance in England (603-641)
• Rise of Mercia (Mercians were West Angles) (641-731)
• Reference to giant Hygelac in Liber Monstrorum (7th-8th c.)
• Venerable Bede (673-735), Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (731); origins of Beowulf around this time?
• Mercian king Aethelbald, Rex Britanniae (bretwalda) (r. 716-757); Offa's reign in Mercia (r. 757-796)
• School of York, Alcuin (735-804)
• First Viking attacks (787); sack of Lindisfarne Priory (793)
• Egbert king of Wessex (grandfather of Alfred the Great) (802)
• Decline of Mercia, rise of Wessex (808-829)
• Egbert defeats Mercian king Beornwulf (825), east Angles kill Beornwulf ; Egbert takes over Mercia (829); Wiglaf recovers Mercian throne (830-31)
• Danish Viking raids (835)
• Mercia-Wessex alliance against the Danes (839)
• poetic work of Cynewulf (c. first half of 9th c.)
• Large Danish offensive (865)
• King Alfred (849-899), victories over Vikings at Ashdown 871, Edington 878, Treaty of Wedmore 878, Danish king Guthrum forced to accept Christianity and retreat to Danelaw; appointment of Mercian scholars (Plegmund, Waerferth, Aethelstan, and Werwulf) (885), revival of learning, beginnings of Anglo Saxon Chronicle
• Alfred captures London (886) and becomes king of England
• Edward succeeds his father Alfred, victories over the Danes (899-924)
• Athelstan succeeds his father Edward and becomes king of all Britain (924-939); victory at Brunanburh (937)
• Olaf Guthfrithson, king of Dublin, seizes Northumbria (939)
• Edmund (Athelstan's brother) regains control but his successor Eadred once again loses Northumbria to Norse king Erik Bloodax (944)
• Northumbria regained by West Saxons (954)
• monastic revival (940), Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 988)
• Aelfric and Wulfstan (d. 1023), reform, revival of vernacular and Latin literature (955-1012)
• West Saxon king Edgar (959-975)
• West Saxon king Aethelred II Unraed (978-1016) (son of Edgar), married Emma (sister of Duke of Normandy)
• renewed Viking raids (980); Battle of Maldon (991); Aethelred begins paying tribute (Danegeld) (991); Danes return and plunder his realm (997-1000);
• Beowulf Manuscript: Cotton Vitellius A xv, folios 129a-198b, late 10th or early 11th century, British Museum, originally from library of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (1571-1631) at Ashburnham House, Little Dean's Yard, Westminster; damaged by fire 1731; Thorkelin transcripts 1786-87; also contains Judith, The Wonders of the East, Life of St. Christopher, Letter of Alexander the Great to Aristotle
• Danish Sweyn, conquers England (1013), Aethelred flees to Normandy; Canute/Cnut (son of Sweyn), king of England (1016-1035), married Aethelred's widow Emma
• Peak of monastic and literary revival: Aelfric (955-1020), Catholic Homilies, Lives of the Saints; Wulfstan d. 1023, Sermo Lupi ad Anglos
• Edward the Confessor (Aethelred's son), king of England (1042-1066)
• Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum (13th c.), genealogies of Danish kings

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