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
The dragon (Beowulf) Germanic literature and the literature of Christian hagiography featured dragons and dragon fights. Although the dragons of hagiography were less fierce than the dragon in "Beowulf", similarities exist in the stories such as presenting the journey to the dragon's lair, cowering spectators, and the sending of messages relaying the outcome of the fight. The dragon with his hoard is a common motif in early Germanic literature with the story existing to varying extents in the Norse sagas, but it is most notable in the "Völsunga saga" and in "Beowulf". "Beowulf" preserves existing medieval dragon-lore, most notably in the extended digression