Scyld Shef'sson and the epic poem, Beowulf

The epic Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf illustrates the heroic ideal of the Anglo-Saxons through a telling of the heroic life of a strong iron-age warrior of the tribe of the Weather Geat folk. While Beowulf instructs that the god of fortune, "Weird, has lured each of my family to his fated end" (line 2797), it is apparently the primary purpose of this poem to be teaching us the three articles of the Anglo-Saxon social contract:
Firstly, (in lines 2889-90).

"Death is better for any man than an existence of disgrace."  
This is repeatedly emphasized.  
Secondly, giving some direction to the first rubric is another (from lines 2602-3)
 
"The bonds of kinship nothing may remove for a man who thinks rightly."

Thirdly, the price laid down in the ancient contract (in lines 2634-39).
 
"I remember the time as we were taking mead
in the banqueting hall, when we bound ourselves
to the gracious lord who granted us arms,
that we would make return for these trappings of war,
these helms and hard swords, if an hour such as this
should ever chance for him."  
(Continuing with lines 2646-52...)
"That day has now come
when he stands in need of the strength of good fighters,
our lord and liege.  Let us go to him,
help our leader for as long as it requires,
the fearsome fire-blast.  I had far rather
that the flame should enfold my flesh-frame there
alongside my gold-giver..."
 
If the society portrayed in the poem is related to that of the ancestral Anglo-Saxons in Denmark, then the poem may well describe elements of that society as remembered by the poem's author.  
When was Beowulf composed?  It is supposed to have been before the Danish raids of 793 A.D., after which, things Danish became anathema to the English.  The translator of our edition of Beowulf, Michael Alexander, suggests that the poem is "set in the southern Scandinavia of the fifth and sixth centuries."    There is in Beowulf some remnant of the Danish homeland stories from the late iron-age in Jutland, perhaps as far back as the golden age of Odense on the Isle of Fyn during the third century, from which the richest iron-age treasures are recovered, in excavations from settlements and associated bog sacrifices.  However, it may be that Beowulf originates from an even earlier time.  
The geneology of the kings of Wessex, found in both the Parker Chronicle, as well as in Aethelweard, uses the same names which we find in Beowulf.  These are the heroic names from the sacred geneology of the English Royal family and would not have been trifled with by mere clerics.  The English Royal family, to the present day, traces its ancestry from Geat, son of Taetwa, son of Beow, son of Scyld  ("Sceldwea" in the Parker Chronicle), son of Sceaf (pronounced "Shef").  The patriarch, Scyld, by simple reckoning, would have been a contemporary of Julius Gaius.  In our poem, the hero Beowulf is a descendant of the tribe of Geat, while Hrothgar the Dane's father was the late-born half-Dane son of Beow(ulf), son of Scyld Shefing.  
This raises the question of where Beowulf's Geat folk lived. Alexander's map.   shows them living in what is now southeast Sweden, across the Baltic Sea from Poland.  This construction is based on two assumptions.  Firstly, that the Geats were the Goths (of Tacitus) and secondly, that the Goths came from the southern shores of Sweden.  Neither of these theories can be proven.  The name Geats is actually zeats, and the yogh, "z", is pronounce "y" before fronting vowels, so the correct transcription would be Yeats, which is close enough to Jeats (Jutes) to be argued that they are one and the same.  I would not argue this point strongly, but perhaps it was Jutland, home of the Jutes, which was Beowulf's proper home, which matches better some of the internal geography of the poem.  Beowulf's voyage scene may well describe a two day sail south to the Isle of Fyn, the middle iron-age fortress settlement of the Danish overlord, Woden.
The material evidence of their seagoing warrior culture is evidenced, not only from excavations of the later Viking period (880-1066 A.D.) but from the near contemporary seventh century Anglo-Saxon burial at Sutton Hoo, which held ship and armaments.  In fact, the Sutton Hoo ship contained no body, and is therefore supposed to have been a traditional pagan ritual mound for the dead king, who had been baptized and already given Christian burial elsewhere.  Since it was excavated in the East Anglian Royal burial grounds of the Wuffing dynasty, it may have contained the armaments of King Anna, who died a Christian in 656 A.D. or else Raedwald, who died in 624 A.D.  
The scholar, Martin Carver, in his wonderful book on the Sutton Hoo burial, eulogizes the dead king, sent away well equipped by his people, who evidently loved him:

"...the man is a warrior, equipped for war with helmet, mailcoat, sword, shield and spears.  He is a host, ready to put on a feast, with cauldrons, tub, bowls of bronze and silver, drinking horns, wooden bottles, a great silver dish -and entertainment from the lyre player...He is also a mariner, and has an axe-hammer to mend the boat and some spare pieced of tar in case it leaks...It puts us in mind of the old English poem Beowulf..."


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