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This Beowulf trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers, covering the whole of the Old English epic and everything that grew up around it. The first rounds follow the poem itself: the twelve-year terror at Hrothgar's mead hall, the bare-handed fight with Grendel, the dive into the mere after his mother, the melting sword, the stolen cup that wakes the dragon fifty years later, and the one young warrior who does not run. After that the questions turn to the manuscript and its afterlife: the single surviving copy and the 1731 fire that scorched it, the two scribes, the Icelander whose transcription burned in Copenhagen, Tolkien's 1936 lecture that changed how the poem was read, Seamus Heaney's prize-winning translation, John Gardner's novel from the monster's side, and the films with Gerard Butler, Christopher Lambert and a motion-captured Angelina Jolie. It is written for English students revising the poem, teachers building a quiz for class, and book-club or pub-quiz players who want harder-than-usual literature questions. Difficulty runs from easy plot points to expert manuscript details, and every answer was checked against Wikipedia and the poem itself before it went in.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many alliterative lines does the poem Beowulf contain?
3,182
Nobody knows the poet's name and the manuscript carries no title; the poem is simply called after its hero.
Q 02Beowulf is a hero of which people?
The Geats
Their homeland is usually placed in what is now Götaland in southern Sweden. He sails from there to help the Danish king.
Q 03For how many years had Grendel been attacking Hrothgar's mead hall before Beowulf arrived?
Twelve
The Danes had abandoned the hall at night. Grendel is said to be tormented by the sound of singing and joy coming from it.
Q 04What is the name of the great mead hall King Hrothgar built for himself and his warriors?
Heorot
The Old English name means 'hart' or 'stag'. Excavations at Lejre, where tradition placed the hall, turned up a real mid-6th-century hall about 50 metres long.
Q 05Grendel is described in the poem as a descendant of which biblical figure?
Cain
That lineage puts him among the exiled monsters and giants of the Cain tradition. Whether he is a giant, a troll or something else is never spelled out.
Q 06How does Beowulf kill Grendel?
He tears off his arm with his bare hands
Beowulf uses neither weapon nor armour in the fight. He hangs the whole shoulder and arm up in the hall for all to see, which is what enrages Grendel's mother.
Q 07Which of Hrothgar's men, his most loyal advisor, is killed by Grendel's mother on her revenge raid?
Æschere
She carries him off and later leaves his head outside her lair, which is under a lake.
Q 08Which sword, lent to Beowulf before he dives into the mere, proves useless against Grendel's mother?
Hrunting
She throws him down and tries to kill him with a short sword; his armour saves him. He finishes her with an ancient giant's sword he finds in the cave.
Q 09Which Danish courtier taunts Beowulf about a youthful swimming contest and later lends him a sword?
Unferth
He sits at the feet of the king as a 'thyle', or spokesman. Beowulf retorts that everyone knows this man killed his own brothers.
Q 10To which rival did the young Beowulf lose a famous swimming match?
Breca
The rival is described as ruler of the Brondings and turns up in another Old English catalogue poem of kings and peoples.
Q 11What happens to the giant's sword Beowulf uses to kill Grendel's mother?
Its blade melts in her hot blood
Only the hilt survives, and Beowulf carries it back to Hrothgar along with Grendel's severed head.
Q 12Which sword, an heirloom of Hrothgar's family, is among the gifts he gives Beowulf?
Nægling
It later fails Beowulf against the dragon: it snaps when he strikes, according to the poem, because his arm is too strong for any blade.
Q 13Beowulf swims home from Frisia carrying how many sets of armour, a feat showing his strength?
Thirty
Scholars from Adrien Bonjour onwards read digressions like this one as deliberate comparisons with the main plot rather than random detours.
Q 21In the poem, Beowulf's fight with Grendel takes place in which country?
Denmark
The whole story is set in pagan Scandinavia in the 5th and 6th centuries and features almost no English characters, despite being written in Old English.
Q 22Weohstan, father of the loyal young warrior at the dragon fight, belonged to which people?
The Swedes
The son is even called a Scylfing, a metonym for Swede, because the Scylfings were Sweden's ruling clan. Weohstan won his sword by killing the rebel prince Eanmund.
Q 23The name Beowulf may be a kenning, 'bee-wolf', a poetic word for which animal?
A bear
The philologist Henry Sweet proposed the reading. A bear raids hives for honey, and Beowulf famously fights with a bear-hug grip rather than a sword.
Q 14Which king, Beowulf's lord, led a raid on Frisia around 521 also recorded by Gregory of Tours?
Hygelac
Gregory calls him Chlochilaicus, and says the Franks displayed his enormous corpse as a curiosity. It is one of the few points where the poem touches datable history.
Q 15Roughly how many years does Beowulf reign as king before the dragon appears?
Fifty
The poem's structure has often been read as a contrast between the young hero and the old king, a division Tolkien thought was its heart.
Q 16What wakes the dragon's fury in the final part of the poem?
A slave steals a cup from its hoard
Tolkien borrowed the theft-of-a-cup episode for Bilbo in The Hobbit, and rated this dragon and Fáfnir the only two 'real dragons' in northern literature.
Q 17Which young kinsman is the only companion who does not flee, helping Beowulf kill the dragon?
Wiglaf
His name means 'remnant of valour', and he is Beowulf's only living relative at the end. He bitterly rebukes the men who ran.
Q 18What do Beowulf's people do with his body after his death?
Cremate it and raise a barrow on a headland
The mound is built to be visible from the sea. The poem opens with a funeral too, so it begins and ends with one.
Q 19The poem opens with the funeral of which legendary Danish king, once a boat-borne foundling?
Scyld Scefing
His body is laid in a ship surrounded by treasure and pushed out to sea, echoing the way he arrived. The name means 'Shield, son of Sheaf'.
Q 20What is the name of Hrothgar's queen, who passes the cup around the hall and is 'Lady of the Helmings'?
Wealhtheow
She is of the Wulfing clan and mother of Hrethric, Hrothmund and Freawaru. Some scholars link the Wulfings to East Anglia's Wuffing dynasty.
Q 24'Whale-road' (hronrad), a famous compound from the opening lines of Beowulf, is a kenning for what?
The sea
Old English poets also called it swan-road and sail-road. Kennings are a signature device of the poem's heavily formulaic style.
Q 25Beowulf survives in a single manuscript. What is it called?
The Nowell Codex
It takes its name from the 16th-century antiquarian Laurence Nowell, whose name is written on its first page. It sits in the British Library.
Q 26In which year was the Beowulf manuscript damaged by a fire at Ashburnham House in London?
1731
The house was storing Sir Robert Cotton's collection of medieval manuscripts. Charred edges have kept crumbling ever since, taking letters with them.
Q 27The Beowulf manuscript is 'A.XV' in which emperor's press of Sir Robert Cotton's library?
Vitellius
Cotton labelled his shelves by the busts on top of each press: 'A.XV' means the fifteenth book on the top shelf of that case.
Q 28How many scribes copied the Beowulf manuscript?
Two
The handwriting changes after line 1939. The second scribe copied more conservatively, preserving archaic spellings that help scholars date the poem.
Q 29Which Old English poem, by the scribe who finished Beowulf, follows it in the manuscript?
Judith
Wormholes in the last leaves of Beowulf that do not continue into the next text suggest Beowulf once ended the volume.
Q 30Which Icelandic scholar made the first transcriptions of the Beowulf manuscript in 1786?
Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin
His edition, ready by 1807, was destroyed when the British bombarded Copenhagen and burned his house. He finally published it in 1815, and one modern scholar has called him 'essentially a fraud' for its errors.