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 (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