Beowulf

Lo there do I see the line of my people back to the beginning. The next day the village is attacked by the fire serpent, which is the Wendol on horseback armed with fire. That event had been embellished over centuries of oral retelling, producing the fantastic narrative we read today. Both the movie and poem had their own themes that made them different. Although some characters had their roles changed the names were closely related or often the same. The night the warriors arrive the are attacked by Wendol, savage beasts that eat the flesh of men. In the poem fifteen warriors went on the hunt for Grendel, but the movie portrayed thirteen warriors that went on the hunt for the wendols. I started from the scholarly tradition that examined epic poetry and mythology as if it might have some underlying basis in fact… it seemed reasonable, within this tradition, to imagine that Beowulf, too, had originally been based on an actual event. Before the fight Buliwyf recites the Norse prayer of the dying:

Lo there do I see my father.

The 13th Warrior is the story of Ibn Fahdlan, a Muslim emissary who is banished from his homeland. The Wendol cower into the woods, leaderless, and never attack after that.

The film portrays visual imagery and uses Ibn to observe the heroism of the Beowulf type. The Dragon is replaced by the Wendols carrying fire. In the movie, Buliwyf dies after killing the Wendol leader, who would be the Grendel in the poem, before ever becoming king. Whether it was Beowulf or Buliwyf, the story of the great warrior lives on through mythology, even if he was without an heir and the last of his bloodline” ( The 13th Warrior).