This child lay on a sheaf of ripe wheat, surrounded by priceless weapons, jewels, and a wonderful suit of armor, which proved he must be the scion of some princely race.

The childless King and Queen of Denmark therefore gladly adopted him, and in due time he succeeded them and ruled over the whole country.

When he died, his subjects, placing his body in the vessel in which he had come, set him adrift.
Men are not able Soothly to tell us, they in halls who reside, Heroes under heaven, to what haven he hied.[22] Hrothgar, his descendant, constructed a magnificent hall, called Heorot, wherein to feast his retainers and entertain them with the songs of the northern skalds.
It burned in his spirit To urge his folk to found a great building, A mead-hall grander than men of the era Ever had heard of, and in it to share With young and old all of the blessings The Lord had allowed him, save life and retainers.
The night of the inauguration of this building, the royal body-guard lay down in the hall to sleep; and, when the servants entered the place on the morrow, they were horrified to find floor and walls spattered with blood, but no other trace of the thirty knights who had rested there the night before.

Their cry of horror aroused Hrothgar, who, on investigating, discovered gigantic footsteps leading straight from the hall to the sluggish waters of a mountain tarn, above which a phosphorescent light always hovered.

These footsteps were those of Grendel, a descendant of Cain, who dwelt in the marsh, and who had evidently slain and devoured all the king's men.
Too old to wield a sword in person, Hrothgar offered a princely reward to whoever would rid his country of this terrible scourge.