Hygelac
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Hygelac was a king of the Geats according to the poem Beowulf. It is Hygelac's presence in the poem which has allowed scholars to tentatively date the setting of the poem as well as to infer that it c
Anachronistic portrait depicting a battle between Franks and Danes in 515, from Jean Fouquet's illumination in the Grandes Chroniques de France, Tours, c 1455-60
Hettergouw at the lower Rhine, inhabited by the Attoarii or Hetware, who killed Hygelac, according to Beowulf, line 2916
Beowulf Cotton MS Vitellius A XV f. 132r
Beowulf
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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
Hygelac
…Norse: Hugleikr; Proto-Germanic: *Hugilaikaz; Latin: Ch(l)ochilaicus or Hugilaicus; died c. 516 or 521) was a king of the Geats according to the poem Beowulf. It is Hygelac's presence in the poem which has allowed scholars to tentatively date the setting of the poem as well as to infer that it contains at…
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