Beowulf Hrothgar, king of the Danes, whose great hall, Heorot, is plagued by the monster Grendel. Beowulf kills Grendel with his bare hands and Grendel's mother with a giant's sword that he found in her lair. Later in his life, Beowulf becomes king of the Geats, and finds his realm terrorized by a dragon, some of whose treasure had been stolen from his hoard in a burial mound. He attacks the dragon with the help of his "thegns" or servants, but they do not succeed. Beowulf decides to follow the dragon to its lair at Earnanæs, but only his young Swedish
Beowulf (hero) attested to a monk from Durham and literally means "bee wolf" in Northumbrian. The 11th century English "Domesday Book" contains a recorded instance of the name "Beulf". A scholar named Sarrazin also suggested that the name "Beowulf" was derived from a mistranslation of "Böðvarr" where -"varr" was interpreted as "vargr" meaning "wolf". However, this etymology was questioned by Sophus Bugge, who instead suggested that the personage Böðvarr Bjarki was derived from Beowulf. In 2005, Andy Orchard theorized an etymology on the basis of the common Old Norse name "Þórólfr" (which literally translates to "Thor Wolf"), stating in parallel that a