The background of the epic Old English poem Beowulf is full of interesting historical context. The version we have belongs to Wessex, but it clearly originated outside of there. It tells of the ancestors of Offa of Angeln, the great ancestor of Icel ancestor of the Mercian kings of England. As the poet of Beowulf says, “forþam Offa wæs geofum and guðum gar-cene man”. (‘Offa liked fighting and was good at it.’)
Beowulf is a poem about the Mercian homeland. But why did the Wessex kings adopt the poem?
By Beowulf’s time, the Vikings had came and saw and conquered and Mercia was a shadow of what it was back in the glory days of Penda and Wulfhere and Offa ‘the Dyke’. It was Northumbria and Mercia that the northmen had reduced. Wessex survived.
But as a part and parcel of its survival, Wessex effectively took over the stewardship of Mercia. It seems to me that one message of the Beowulf we have, the Wessex version, lies in co-opting the great ancestor Offa. Wessex and Mercia, Beowulf is suggesting, are both English, and so the traditions of both kingdoms share a common basis of ‘Englishness’ that can be set against the foreign sælida (sailor, Viking) invaders. The ancestors are not only those of the Icelingas of Mercia but also of England as a whole.
England was born in Denmark, Beowulf says, and that world is part of the English heritage. But Beowulf also has a message for men like Svein Forkbeard and Cnut and for all the Danes who had invaded England. For Beowulf saves the Danes. The English are the ancient saviours of the Danes.
So, Beowulf. The common ancestor of the united English and the saviour of the ancient Danes.
Where could a propaganda message be in all of that?