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Hello, in Dark Age Scandinavia, a great hero traveled across the sea in order to fight

a monstrous creature which had been terrorising the people of Denmark.

Having defeated it, he then fought a great battle with its mother in her underwater

lair.

And later, fifty years later, engaged in a duel with a fire-breathing dragon.

He came agvatorious but suffered fatal wounds.

Such is the story of Baywolf, the earliest and one of the greatest works of English literature.

Written down in Anglo-Saxon by an anonymous scribe around a thousand years ago, though

probably composed much earlier, it was virtually unknown until the 19th century when the first

modern edition was made in 1815.

It's a thrilling tale and a fascinating insight into the heroic culture of the warrior peoples

of the early Christian Europe.

And he's inspired writers from William Morris to Tolkien and most recently, Shamis Heaney.

With me to discuss Baywolf, Laura Ash asserts her professor in English at the University

of Oxford and fellow of Worcester College, Claire Lee's professor of medieval English

literature and history of the language at King's College London, and Andy Orchard, Rawlinson

and Bosworth's professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford.

Laura Ash, can you tell us something of the historical setting of the poem, When and

Where does the action take place?

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