Beowulf. Without the thousand-year-old epic poem, fantasy as we know it in the West doesn’t exist.
Lord of the Rings?
Game of Thrones? Those battered paperback novels with people waving swords on the covers that you find in the corners of op shops? They’re all inspired by the saga contained in the oldest known poem in Old English. Which is a little surprising, as historians largely agree that
Beowulf is as much an accurate record of its time as it is a story with a dragon in it.
Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands seems to make it very clear on what side of the line between fact and fantasy it lies with its opening scene, when a young Beowulf and his father flee on horseback from a pair of obviously not-human trolls. Other retellings of