Grendel is a character in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf. He is one of the poem's three antagonists, all aligned in opposition against the protagonist Beowulf. He is referred to as both an eoten an
An illustration of Grendel by J. R. Skelton from the 1908 Stories of Beowulf. Grendel is described as "very terrible to look upon."
Beowulf Cotton MS Vitellius A XV f. 132r
Beowulf is an Old English poem, an epic in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines, contained in the Nowell Codex. It is one of the most important and most often
Grendel
…Grendel is a character in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf (700–1000 AD). He is one of the poem's three antagonists (along with his mother and the dragon), all aligned in opposition against the protagonist…
Remounted page, British Library Cotton Vitellius A.XV
The traditional view is that Beowulf was composed for performance, chanted by a scop (left) to string accompaniment, but modern scholars have suggested its origin as a piece of written literature borrowed from oral traditions. Illustration by J. R. Skelton, c. 1910