Wulf and Eadwacer

Author

Unknown

Language

Anglo-Saxon

Year

c. 970-990

Country

England

Genre

Short Poem (Collection, Anthology, or Periodical)

…

📷3 photos

"Wulf and Eadwacer" is an Old English poem in alliterative verse of famously difficult interpretation. It has been variously characterised, (modernly) as an elegy, (historically) as a riddle, and as a song or ballad with refrain. The poem is narrated in the first person, most likely with a woman's voice. Because the audience is given so little information about her situation, some scholars argue the story was well-known, and that the unnamed speaker corresponds to named figures from other stories, for example, to Signý or that the characters Wulf and Eadwacer correspond to Theoderic the Great and his rival Odoacer. The poem's only extant text is found at folios 100v–101r in the tenth-century Exeter Book, alongside other texts to which it possesses qualitative similarities.