After Julius Caesar lay claim to English soil, the Britons were subject to numerous invasions, mostly from Scandinavian tribes to the north of England. Many , many Scandinavian folktales from the Baltic region became a part of the Anglo-Saxon body of folklore and legend. It was not long until various warrior-kings had a "singer", or scop attached to their courts who could recite and sing a body or oral literature- particularly this, though, the scop was a tribal historian; he was expected to remember stories from past and be able to sing them at any time. His job was to mentally and musically recall and perform these stories because the pride of the tribe depended upon a long genealogy of heroes. Additionally, the scop defined the moral values of his society by singing about heroes and about those who acted in non-heroic ways. His songs endorsed models of behavior. By example, he taught that certain actions were profitable to the group, and wrong actions dealt serious blows to!
             the unity of the tribe. His many stories of gift-giving kings indicated that the good king appreciated his thanes and rewarded loyalty with gifts. In contrast, the wicked or greedy king would to the expectations of the group.
             Grendel's mother is described as "she-monster of the deep", a "water-woman" and a "she-wolf". The reference to her as a "troll-wife" (a term used often in Nordic-Germanic fairy tales) renders her in-human and even more primitive than Grendel. Clearly, she is less of an adversary of God than Grendel is, and she attacks only because of provocation and a desire for revenge. Remember that her desire for revenge is in keeping with the theme of revenge in this poem; the perpetuation of a feud between tribes and nations accounts for the enmity inherent in this epic. Violence begets violence and continues until a man can accept wergild without a loss of face. T
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