BEFORE ATTEMPTING TO explain how the Beowulf tradition found its way to England, I would like to sum up some of my findings from the preceding chapters: The geographical setting of Beowulf is purely Scandinavian.

– The historical context of the story is purely Scandinavian.

– None of the historical tradition of the poem appears in other Old English writings.

– Such traditions can, on the other hand, be found in Scandinavian written sources.

– No Anglo-Saxon tradition is to be found in the poem.

– The historical events of the poem end abruptly in the middle of the sixth century.

– Central material and ideological elements of the poem disappear in Scandinavia in the middle of the sixth century and either did not exist at all, or not until several hundred years later, in England.

– The indirect geographical information in the poem must have been incomprehen sible to Anglo-Saxon audiences.

– There is a clear link between the poem and the eastern Swedish tradition recorded in Ynglingatal.

– A link probably also exists between the poem and Gutnish tradition as recorded in Guta saga.

– Beowulf is of Swedish royal descent on his father's side.

– A rich array of pagan ideas and ways of thinking shine through a thin veneer of Christianity.

– The poem's realistic accounts of Scandinavian cremations can hardly have been composed by an Old English Christian poet, especially as there is no trace of such traditions in the rich corpus of other Old English writings.

– The “Christian poet” does not understand the pagan rituals he himself is assumed to be describing.

– The poem contains a good many linguistic Nordicisms.

– The uniquely tangible descriptions of settings and situations found in the poem suggest that the period of oral transmission was relatively short in both Scandinavia and England, and that the poem was memorized quite mechanically in England.

– Archaic linguistic features show that, in England, the story was first transmitted in Anglian areas, and that it was circulating in England no later than ad 685–725.

– Orthographic and palaeographic features suggest that the poem already existed in writing at that time.