I thought I would give Beowulf a read because I heard someone talking so enthusiastically about it. It is an Anglo Saxon epic poem from around 800AD or earlier. I can’t read Old English from that era ( very sadly)so I read the gorgeous Seamus Heaney translation. It is about a glorious past of heroic men and kings (Beowulf in this case)who fight monsters and dragons in Denmark and surrounding lands. Heaneys language is gorgeous.. the monster, Grendel, is battled until he is:
‘Hasped and hooped and hirpling with pain, limping and looped in it’.
There is a YouTube audio of Heaney reading this but sadly it is heavily and strangely abridged. But lovely anyway! It makes for lovely listening.
I suppose I liked it less than the Ancient Greek epics but enjoyed it for Heaney and the setting of it.