The dragon (Beowulf) The dragon (Beowulf) The final act of the Anglo-Saxon poem "Beowulf" is about the hero Beowulf's fight with a dragon, the third monster he encounters in the epic. On his return from Heorot, where he killed Grendel and Grendel's mother, Beowulf becomes king of the Geats and rules peacefully for fifty winters until a slave awakens and angers a dragon by stealing a jewelled cup from its lair. When the angry dragon mercilessly burns the Geats' homes and lands, Beowulf decides to fight and kill the monster personally. He and his thanes climb to the dragon's lair where, upon seeing
Beowulf its "popularity" took it). There are Scandinavian sources, international folkloric sources, and Celtic sources. 19th century studies proposed that "Beowulf" was translated from a lost original Scandinavian work, but this idea was quickly abandoned. But Scandinavian works have continued to be studied as a possible source. Proponents included writing in 1886 that an Old Norse original version of "Beowulf" must have existed, but that view was later debunked by (1914) who pointed out that "Beowulf" is fundamentally Christian and written at a time when any Norse tale would have most likely been pagan. The epic's possible connection to "Grettis saga"