Beowulf Group

Question:

kassie12
kassie12
Student

In the story Beowulf, was Beowulf a Dane, Geat or a Saxon?

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Posted by kassie12 on Friday February 9, 2007 at 5:46 PM and tagged with beowulf, what was beowulf.

Answers:


  1. blazedale

    eNotes Editor

    Beowulf is the leader of the Geats.

    Sources:
    http://www.enotes.com/beowulf-text/80249
    http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~soper/beowulf/epic.html

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    Posted by blazedale on Friday February 9, 2007 at 7:49 PM


  2. cnorth Teacher
    High School - 12th Grade

    eNotes Editor

    Beowulf is a Geat, also known as a Thane. The Geats are from what is now modern day Finland/Sweeden.
    He fights Grendel for the Danes.

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    Posted by cnorth on Monday March 19, 2007 at 11:48 AM

  3. sapphire
    sapphire

    Beowulf was a Geat who traveled to aid the Danes.

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    Posted by sapphire on Tuesday May 22, 2007 at 6:24 AM


  4. arma Student
    High School - 12th Grade

    Beowulf is a Gate , he fight Grendel becuase he got a help request from Hrothgar , king of Danes.

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    Posted by arma on Friday September 21, 2007 at 5:52 PM

  5. underink
    underink Student
    High School - 12th Grade

    It seems to me that somebody tried to imply that a Geat was a Thane. This is not so, to clarify. Beowulf was a Geat (or Ostrogoth, as it were), who had a natural rivalry with the Danes. However, Beowulf was in the mind to pay the king back for a deed he did long ago (as well as to further his fame). Beowulf's Thanedom is a matter of his place in his own culture. A Thane is a man who pledges allegiance to his king and in that would share the spoils of war with the king. The reputation of a king always depended on the loyalty of warriors and Thanes and a reputation preceeding them, so a king would attract attention to himself by sharing the spoils of war, so a Thane was much like the feudal lords who ruled serfs later on in the medieval ages, or warlords. Beowulf followed the Germanic Heroic Ethos, or the code of the warrior, and so he disregarded this natural rivalry to help out his fellow man.

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    Posted by underink on Friday August 22, 2008 at 1:51 AM