ABSTRACT
The poem has been given the following title by its editor: De Danorum rebus gestis Saec. III & IV: Poema danicum dialecto Anglo-saxonica [etc.]. As this important work could hardly be known to many of us as yet, it would have been welcome, I would say, if the learned local historian and discerning scholar, the Reverend Mr Outzen, had introduced his studies with a brief presentation of the contents of it. Not having his copy immediately at hand the undersigned is prevented from making good this deficiency by giving a brief report about the fates and fights of the main hero Beowulf from the early upbringing to his fall in the confrontation with the monstrous dragon. Apart from that, that he who expects the res gestas Danorum will be disappointed, is probably no less certain than the fact that a poem, which contains allusions to Old Testament stories and not a few Christian ideas, and even has the same evil one (Grendel) who seduced Cain into fratricide be overcome by the brave Beowulf and driven away into his nebulous morasses,—that such a work could not possibly, as Thorkelin has it, have emerged in the pagan third and fourth centuries, either among the Danes, or among the Anglo-Saxons, but would belong to much later times. In a generally very readable review [gives reference to Penzel, item 10
State, Mr Thorkelin, when the wish is here expressed that Northern antiquity may soon find a scholar who is just as perspicacious and painstaking in the study of the history of Denmark, as it has already found collectors of material there [i.e. Langebek etc.], now awaiting extensive evaluation and classification. It is highly desirable that a people should develop a freer outlook on history from its own midst. Knowledge offered from abroad will nearly always provoke objection and is, admittedly, rarely imparted in such a way as to avoid missing some of the feeling of the native to whom his own past is valuable.
