It was a tremendous read - I read it out loud (mostly to myself) - a wonderfully powerful account of the hero Beowulf and his three battles against monsters. I loved the idea that Grendal's mum was more dangerous than Grendal himself.
I also enjoyed the glimpses into an other world: of formal boasts, of status based in the capacity to give, of the culture of the mead hall.
I was also intrigued by the Christianity of the writer. It seems a fatalist faith: that God is all-encompassing and nothing happens without God's permission or action. Therefore victory is to those whom God favours. Yet God may equally withdraw his favour - he weaves his war-loom and, as the threads are placed, so goes the outcome of the conflict.
Underneath the story is a background of insecurity and violence which presumably accords well with a fatalist faith. Such security as there is is less in gold than in land - but tenure is not secure. Nor can the hero expect old age and a pension. In a passage Heaney quotes in his introduction:
He was sad at heart,
unsettled yet ready, sensing his death.
His fate hovered near, unknowable but certain:
it would soon claim his coffered soul,
part life from limb. Before long
the prince's spirit would spin free from his body.
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