The memory of the sword survived the victory of Christianity, and was handed down through the centuries in many variations. That Surt at the end of the world was to possess the sword of course fell away, and instead now one and then another was selected as the hero who was to find and take it; that it was watched by a woman and by a man (in the mythology Angerboda and Eggther); and that the woman was an even more disgusting being than the man, were features that the saga retained both on the Continent and in England.
The Beowulf poem makes a monster, by name Grendel ("the destroyer"), dwell with his mother under a marsh in a forest, which, though referred to Denmark and to the vicinity of the splendid castle of a Danish king, is described in a manner which makes it highly probable that the prototype used by the Christian poet was a heathen skald's description of the Ironwood. There is, says he, the mysterious land in which the wolf conceals himself, full of narrow valleys, precipices, and abysses, full of dark and deep forests, marshes shrouded in gloom, lakes shaded with trees, nesses lashed by the sea, mountain torrents and bogs, which in the night shine as of fire, and shelter demoniac beings and dragons in their turbid waves. The hunted game prefers being torn into pieces by dogs to seeking its refuge on this unholy ground, from which raging storms chase black clouds until the heavens are darkened and the rain pours down in torrents. The English poet may honestly have located the mythological Ironwood in Denmark. The same old border-land, which to this very day is called "Dänische wold," was still in the thirteenth century called by the Danes Jarnwith, the Ironwood. From his abode in this wilderness Grendel makes nightly excursions to the Danish royal castle, breaks in there, kills sleeping champions with his iron hands, sucks out their blood, and carries their corpses to the enchanted marsh in order to eat them there. The hero, Beowulf, who has heard of this, proceeds to Denmark, penetrates into the awful forest, dives, armed with Denmark's best sword, down into the magic marsh to Grendel's and his mother's hall, and kills them after a conflict in which the above-mentioned sword was found useless. But down there he finds another which Grendel and his mother kept concealed, gets possession of it, and conquers with its aid.
