Beowulf: New Light on the Dark Ages

It has long been believed that the Beowulf poem, the earliest surviving substantial work of literature in English, is a story from north-western Europe brought over to Dark-Age Britain by the Germanic invaders. New research by the archaeologist Paul Wilkinson, however, raises the intriguing possibility that parts of the poem can be related to specific locations on the North Kent coast. The poem may yet prove to be one of the most important sources we have on sixth-century Germanic settlement in Britain.