The dragon (Beowulf) His Lair in "Beowulf"" that the fight between Beowulf and the dragon tends to receive less critical attention than other portions of the poem, commenting that "Grendel and his dam have, as it were, become more beloved of the commentators". Conversely, Kemp Malone writes in "The Kenning in "Beowulf"" that Beowulf's fight with the dragon receives much critical attention, but that commentators fail to note that "the dragon was no fighter. Not that it refused to fight when challenged, but that it did not seek out Beowulf or anyone else. It left Beowulf to do the seeking out". In his
Beowulf was made early on by Guðbrandur Vigfússon (1878). "Grettis saga" is a family saga, and a story about , a great-grandson of an Icelandic settler, cannot be comparably as old as "Beowulf". Axel Olrik (1903) claimed that on the contrary, this saga was a reworking of "Beowulf", and others had followed suit. However, (1910) wrote a thesis in which both "Beowulf" and "Grettis saga" drew from a common folkloric source, and this encouraged even a detractor such W. W. Lawrence to reposition his view, and entertain the possibility that certain elements in the saga (such as the waterfall in place