- Introduction to Beowulf, Bullfinch's Mythology: The Age of Fable.
The earliest surviving epic poem written in English, Beowulf was most likely "composed in the seventh au eighth century, but being zaidi precise depends on where one believes the poem was composed. ...[A] contender, which has come seriously into the reckoning as a result of the Sutton Hoo discovery, is seventh century East Anglia. Not only was the ship burial (which dates to 625AD) uncannily like the burials of Scyld and Beowulf, but the grave goods revealed the East Anglian court of the Wuffingas to be unexpectedly sophisticated and closely linked to the Swedish royal house at Uppsala. It is now thought possible that both these royal lines shared a common ancestry. As the scholar Howell Chickering asked: 'Was it through the early East Anglian court that detailed knowledge of Scandinavian tribal history in Beowulf became available in England?' And one might add, was the poem composed as a way of telling East Anglians something of their semi-historical, semi-legendary Scandinavian ancestors? There is, perhaps, a good case for believing that Beowulf was composed in Suffolk, at the palace of Rendlesham, within living memory of the great ship-burial in 625AD."
