Beowulf as a literary work was created some time between 700 and 1000 AD. That’s like knowing that Moby Dick was written some time between 1700 and 2000. True enough, but to us, there’s really a huge difference between 1750 and 1999. There is a lot of scholarly disagreement about when it should be placed, disagreement that I find fascinating but you may not, so I’ll pass it by for now.
Beowulf as a story is easier to place. While the hero seems to be a fictional character, others are either historical or semi-historical. They correspond to characters in Norse and Germanic legends that are set in the late Migration/early Vendel times. This is the period between Roman rule, when the Germanic tribes first came out of the north into central Europe, and the Viking period. It’s roughly between 300 and 600. Obviously, the earlier the king, the more legendary. King Hrothgar, an actual character in the story? Probably roughly 500. His ancestor Scyld Sceafing? If he lived, maybe he goes back to Roman times.
In this period, the Germanic people used both copper alloys and iron. They were writing with the Elder Futhark, a runic alphabet we mostly see on jewelry. By the Viking Age, that runic system was out of use. They were pre-Christian, of course. We vaguely know their gods names as preserved in our English weekday names, but we’ve lost most knowledge of their beliefs. Tacitus hinted at an earth religion that was probably nothing like our Marvel Superhero ideas of Thor and Odin. In Danish bogs, they find mummified bodies that were strangled, and these could have been sacrificed to these older gods we’ve forgotten. Marvel and DC are both staying far away from those gods.
There’s something quite important about these Germanic tribes, though. Tacitus tell us:
They choose their kings by birth, their generals for merit. These kings have not unlimited or arbitrary power, and the generals do more by example than by authority. If they are energetic, if they are conspicuous, if they fight in the front, they lead because they are admired. But to reprimand, to imprison, even to flog, is permitted to the priests alone, and that not as a punishment, or at the general’s bidding, but, as it were, by the mandate of the god whom they believe to inspire the warrior.
Instead, Tacitus says, the king’s power lay mainly in being able to persuade others. There was a council of chiefs, and sometimes there too an assembly of the whole tribe.
Tacitus is describing what the Romans saw around 70 AD, when the migration into Europe had just begun. But about 1000 years later, on the eve of the Norman Conquest, the English were still relying on a chiefs’ council called the Witan to choose their king and make the decisions. Perhaps we can view English political history as the story of how Norman autocracy was suddenly imposed 1066 and the Witan went into hiding, but slowly it re-emerged in the Magna Carta. When the Parliament chose the king in 1688, the counter-revolution was complete. We have had the English notion of government limited by the people ever since.
But the king did matter as a leader. Tacitus tells us that,
It is no shame to be seen among a chief’s followers. Even in his escort there are gradations of rank, dependent on the choice of the man to whom they are attached. These followers vie keenly with each others as to who shall rank first with his chiefs, the chiefs as to who shall have the most numerous and the bravest followers. It is an honor as well as a source of strength to be thus always surrounded by a large body of picked youths; it is an ornament in peace and a defense in war.
Tacitus explains that the Germans he saw disdained farming as much as possible and built their halls out of timber. Instead of forming towns and cities, they created settlements with the Great Hall at the center of a large clearing. Young men of fighting age lived at the Great Hall, but settled men in families lived a few miles away in their own settlements. Tacitus was most of all impressed with the German women, who were virtuous beyond Roman standards. They married late by Roman standards and cared for their own babies.
The world of Beowulf isn’t much different from what Tacitus depicts, although at least 400 years had passed.