The genealogy presented in the opening passages of Beowulf presents us with five generations of the Scylding dynasty. It’s a simplified family tree that leaves out some names found in other Germanic sources. It even leaves out a name that will later come up in the Beowulf story. But to start off with confusion, Scyld Sceafing’s son is presented as “Beowulf.” It’s no wonder that early readers thought this was introducing Our Hero.
Scholars have suggested that Scyld’s son may have been called simply Beow, which meant “barley,” but was misspelled. It doesn’t really matter for casual readers. The next son is called Half-Dane, and his sons are Heorogar, Hrothgar, and Halga the Good. There’s a suggestion that a sister married Onela, the King of Swedes.
We aren’t familiar with these people, but it seems that the contemporary audience was. Scholars have pointed to parallels with other stories, such that Hrothgar is the same as Norse Hroarr and Old Danish Ro. His nephew Hrothulf, who has no active role in our story, is the main character Hrolfr Kraki in an Icelandic saga. Half-Dane is Haldan in some sagas, and his daughter’s name is Signy in some stories, and Yrsa in others.
It’s too difficult to keep track of all of these interlocked story variations if you aren’t a scholar of Germanic literature. But it’s good to keep in mind that Beowulf’s author used this shared background to build out the world of the story. There are figures standing in the shadows, mentioned here and there. In way, we can think of Beowulf as fan fiction that’s set in the world of the sagas.