Anglo-Saxon and Greek epic each provide on two occasions a seemingly authentic account of the narration of verse in the heroic age.

Limited to a few thousand lines of heroic verse in Anglo-Saxon as in the other Germanic dialects, we cannot say how frequently the kennings in Beowulf recurred in contemporary epic on the same soil.

Beowulf (; in Old English or ) is the conventional title of an Old English heroic epic poem consisting of 3182 alliterative long lines, set in Scandinavia, commonly cited as one of the most important works of Anglo-Saxon literature.

Brísingamen is referred to in the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf as Brosinga mene.

Some of the most important surviving works of Old English literature are Beowulf, an epic poem ; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a record of early English history ; the Franks Casket, an early whalebone artefact ; and Caedmon's Hymn, a Christian religious poem.

Beowulf was felt to provide people self-identified as " Anglo-Saxon " with their missing " national epic ", just when the need for it was first being felt: the fact that Beowulf himself was a Geat was easily overlooked.

Grendel is one of three antagonists, along with Grendel's mother and the dragon, in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf ( AD 700 – 1000 ).

Around the turn of the 13th century, Layamon wrote his Brut, based on Wace's 12th century Anglo-Norman epic of the same name ; Layamon's language is recognisably Middle English, though his prosody shows a strong Anglo-Saxon influence remaining.

Heorot ( ), also Herot, is a mead hall described in the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf as " the foremost of halls under heaven.

* The Wessex dialect was the standard literary language of later Anglo-Saxon England, and consequently the majority of Anglo-Saxon literature, including the epic poem Beowulf and the poetic Biblical paraphrase Judith, is preserved in West Saxon dialect, though not all of it was originally written in West Saxon.

In England: A Nation, ( London: R. Brimley Johnson, 1904 ), edited by Lucian Oldershaw, and in a chapter entitled " The Patriotic Idea " written by G. K. Chesterton, the beauty of Box Hill violated by an invading army is used to express a healthy patriot's love for his nation is opposed to the jingoistic nationalism of tabloid newspapers: " But just as a man who has been in love will find it difficult to write a whole frantic epic about a flirtation, so all that kind of rhetoric about the Union Jack and the Anglo-Saxon blood, which has made amusing the journalism of this country for the last six years, will be merely impossible to the man who has for one moment called up before himself what would be the real sensation of hearing that a foreign army was encamped on Box Hill.

** East Danes, an Anglo-Saxon ethnonym used in the epic Beowulf

The Nowell Codex, perhaps more commonly known as the manuscript containing the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, also contains references to Cynocephali.

Finn and Hengest are two Anglo-Saxon heroes appearing in the Old English epic poem Beowulf and in the fragment of " The Fight at Finnsburg ".

In the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, Halga is hardly mentioned.

Ecgþeow ( pronounced ) or Edgetho ( Proto-Norse * Agiþewaz ) or Ecgtheow is a character in the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf.

Weohstan, Wēohstān or Wīhstān ( Proto-Norse * Wīhastainaz, meaning " sacred stone ", Old Norse Vésteinn and Wǣstēn ) is a legendary character who appears in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf and scholars have pointed out that he also appears to be present in the Norse Kálfsvísa.

Wiglaf is a character in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf.

Bromborough is a contender for the site of an epic battle in the year 937, the Battle of Brunanburh, which confirmed England as an Anglo-Saxon kingdom.

East Dane is an Anglo-Saxon ethnonym which was used in the epic Beowulf as a kenning for the Geats, the people of Götaland without Scania in southern Sweden.

He has translated many poems, including the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, poems by Horace, and Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais.

Grendel is one of three antagonists in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf.

Keeping created four books in this format: The Highwayman ( 1981 ), illustrating the 1906 poem by Alfred Noyes in gruesome detail, for which he won his second Greenaway Medal ; Beowulf ( 1982 ), adapted from the Anglo-Saxon epic by Kevin Crossley-Holland, in which the illustrations subverted the text with a certain sympathy for the monster ; The Wedding Ghost ( 1985 ), an original story by Leon Garfield ; and The Lady of Shalott ( 1986 ), illustrating the 1833 / 1842 Arthurian poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Gale Owen-Crocker ( Professor of Anglo-Saxon, University of Manchester ) in The Four Funerals in Beowulf ( 2000 ) argues that a passage in the poem, commonly known as “ The Lay of the Last Survivor ” ( lines 2247 – 66 ), is an additional funeral.

The events described in the poem take place in the late 5th century, after the Anglo-Saxons had begun their migration to England, and before the beginning of the 7th century, a time when the Anglo-Saxon people were either newly arrived or still in close contact with their Germanic kinsmen in Scandinavia and Northern Germany.

The view of J. R. R. Tolkien is that the poem retains a much too genuine memory of Anglo-Saxon paganism to have been composed more than a few generations after the completion of the Christianisation of England around AD 700.

The celebration of deeds of ancient Danish and Swedish heroes, the poem beginning with a tribute to the royal line of Danish kings, but written in the dominant literary dialect of Anglo-Saxon England, for a number of scholars points to the 11th century reign of Canute, the Danish king whose empire included all of these areas, and whose primary place of residence was in England, as the most likely time of the poem's creation, the poem being written as a celebration of the king's heroic royal ancestors, perhaps intended as a form of artistic flattery by one of his English courtiers.

When reporting the battle, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle abandons its usual terse style in favour of a heroic poem vaunting the great victory.

Those dialects came to be known as Englisc ( literally " Anglish "), the language today referred to as Anglo-Saxon or Old English ( the language of the poem Beowulf ).

That poem in turn appears to have been the principal source for the famous Anglo-Saxon poem to which the modern title The Phoenix is given.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle otherwise proves significant to study of the era, preserving a chronology of early English history, while the poem Cædmon's Hymn from the 7th century survives as the oldest extant work of literature in English.

In many ways the Smaug episode reflects and references the dragon of Beowulf, and Tolkien uses the episode to put into practice some of the ground-breaking literary theories he had developed about the Anglo-Saxon poem and its early medieval portrayal of the dragon as having bestial intelligence.

In Old English, the word wicing appears first in the Anglo-Saxon poem, " Widsith ", which probably dates from the 9th century.

This service, devised by Dunstan himself and celebrated with a poem in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, forms the basis of the present-day British coronation ceremony.

When reporting the battle, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle abandons its usual terse style in favour of a heroic poem vaunting the great victory.

Elizabeth Solopova suggests that the character of Fëanor was inspired by Byrhtnoth from the Anglo-Saxon poem " The Battle of Maldon " who gets slain in battle.

The poem Beowulf describes a draca (= dragon ) also as wyrm (= worm, or serpent ) and its movements by the Anglo-Saxon verb bugan = " to bend ", and says that it has a venomous bite ; all of these indicate a snake-like form and movement rather than with a lizard-like or dinosaur-like body as in later belief ( though the dragon of Beowulf does show several features that would later become popularized with dragons ; namely, it breathes fire, lives underground, and collects treasure ).

This cross is remarkable for its sculpture and inscriptions in Latin and Old English, some in Anglo-Saxon runes, which include excerpts from The Dream of the Rood, an Old English poem.

A contemporary record of the battle is found in the Old English poem Battle of Brunanburh, preserved in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

The famous poem about the battle in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the deaths of five kings and seven earls among Athelstan's enemies, along with ( or among them ) Constantine's son:

* Text of the poem " Battle of Brunanburh ", including Anglo-Saxon version, modern English translation, and Tennyson's version

In his book Beowulf and Grendel, he argues that the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf is based on a memory of the quelling of this fertility cult by followers of Odin.