The final act of the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf includes 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 moth
Beowulf battles his nemesis, the dragon, shown in a 1908 illustration by J. R. Skelton
Sigurd and Fafnir by Arthur Rackham, from his 1911 illustrations for Richard Wagner's Siegfried and The Twilight of the Gods
Beowulf Cotton MS Vitellius A XV f. 132r
Grendel's mother is one of three antagonists in the anonymous Old English poem Beowulf, the other two being Grendel himself and the dragon. Each antagonist reflects different negative aspects of both
The dragon (Beowulf)
…Beowulf includes 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 wisely for fifty years until a slave awakens and angers a dragon by stealing a jeweled cup from its lair…
An illustration of Grendel's mother by J. R. Skelton from Stories of Beowulf (1908) described as a "water-witch" trying to stab Beowulf
A sculpture of a valkyrie on a horse by Stephan Sinding, 1908
The Gefion Fountain in Copenhagen, Denmark, by Anders Bundgård, 1908