312 Beozvitlf and IVidsith 



twenty years' reign of such a king likely to have had, the country 

 ruled being that Northumbria which was still the foremost among 

 English realms, ripened and tempered by a hegemony of more 

 than half a century, by conflict with heathen tribes, and by the 

 mild and lovable Christianity inculcated by the Irish missionaries? 

 What sort of literature would result from such an influence as that 

 which King Aldfrith may be presumed to have exerted upon his 

 English subjects? As the Scandinavian Vikings were Ger- 

 manic, like the Anglo-Saxons, an answer to these questions may 

 be suggested by an extract from a recent and authoritative history 

 of the Norsemen^ : 



That the rehgious and Hterary life so highly developed among the 

 Irish, their love of nature, their lyric sentimentality and sympathetic 

 and emotional character, made a deep impression on the stern Norsemen 

 is certain. They, who came to conquer, were in turn conquered by 

 this new and gentle influence. Long before they were converted to 

 Christianity, their lives and views were deeply affected by ideas acquired 

 in the Christian countries which they visited, and especially through their 

 sojourn in Ireland. It was largely due to this new stimulus that Norse 

 scaldic poetry and the saga literature began to flourish in the Viking 

 period, and that Norse mythology assumes at this time a distincth' 

 new form, in which we find embedded in the strata of pagan thought 

 many unmistakable fragments of Christian ideas, as the conceptions of 

 creation, of righteousness, of good and evil, as well as views of the 

 life hereafter, which can have their origin only in the realm of Christian 

 faith and morality. 



IV. THE COMPOSITION OF BEOWULF 



The problem of the final recension of Beozviilf, its place and 

 time, has much exercised the wits of those who have addressed 

 themselves to it, but no one seems yet to have reached a definitive 

 solution. As to the place, the choice has practically lain between 

 Northumbria and Mercia, those who have favored Mercia having 

 been moved primarily, thotigh not exclusively, by a single consid- 

 eration. The argtiments for and against each of these kingdoms 

 have been conveniently set forth by a scholar distinguished both 

 by technical equipment and literary culture, and may, as a basis 

 for discussion, l)c stimmarized here. 



Ten Brink, in disctissing the place of composition of the 



^ Gjerset, History of the Norwegian People i. 94-5. 



