Week 12 Storytelling - The Young Beowulf

The young Beowulf arrived at the camp to train his battle skills and survival skills. There was a lot of skills he could learn. Masters of the camp trained him to be more strong. Beowulf learned a lot from them.

One day, he realized that he was not learning anything from masters. He tried his best to learn, but he just could not see anything new from the lessons. Beowulf started to get bored. It was no longer fun when he could not learn a new thing.

Beowulf started to skip his lessons. He thought there were nothing more he could learn from others. Instead he decided to test our his strength. Beowulf bought some foods and went in the forest nearby.


"I will fight against the beast of the forest"


The forest was known for the beast. Nobody knew what kind of creature this beast was because nobody survived after seeing this beast. Beowulf entered the forest. He walked slowly and carefully as he approached the center of the forest.


"Is that it?"


After few days of walking, Beowulf finally reached his destination. He saw a huge cave. Inside this huge cave, there was a bear. A bear with white fur and red eyes. It was three time bigger than a normal bear.

Beowulf grabbed a stone from the ground. As he prepared his weapon, he slowly approached the cave and threw a stone inside.


"I got him!"


Soon Beowulf could hear the angry roar of the white bear. The bear was swift. With less than a second, the white bear was already in front of the young boy.


Beowulf swung his sword. However, his sword was easily destroyed by the claws of the bear. Beowulf decided to run away since his weapon was broken. However, he was not a fast runner. He was clumsy and the bear was much faster.

Soon the white bear caught Beowulf. Without an option, Beowulf charged. He decided to fight against the giant bear with his bear hands.


"He is not that strong!"


Beowulf grabbed the white bear's hands. They were surprisingly weak. Beowulf was surprised. The white bear was trying to get its hands out of Beowulf's hands but it was not working. The bear got frustrated and tried to bite Beowulf's head.


"He is really weak."


Beowulf slowly added his strength to his hands. The white bear started to cry because Beowulf's hands were slowly crushing the white bear's hands.

Before even giving the full strength, the white bear's hands were crushed completely. It could not use its hands no longer. The white bear realized it could not harm Beowulf, so he started to run away from him.


Although Beowulf was strong, he was slow. He could not chase the white bear. In fact, he did not think about chasing the bear. He was just surprised and speechless how strong himself was. Even the might beast of the forest which killed many strong men, could not fight against Beowulf.


"This is boring."


He was expecting more excitement. He was expecting to use his full strength against this beast. However, Beowulf was not able to use his full strength at all. The young Beowulf was bored of his own strength.

(The white bear by Tambako The Jaguar)

Author's note: The story is based on The young Beowulf part from the tale of Beowulf. In the original story Beowulf grew up within few sentences. The original story was based on how the young Beowulf competed with other people. However, I thought it was interesting how Beowulf later was able to fight against the creature like Gremlin. So I was thinking about the story. A story that would be similar to the battle between Gremlin and Beowulf, but instead I wanted to write about the fight that happened in the childhood of Beowulf since it was not mentioned in the original story. In the original story, Beowulf was sullen in his strength. He was never able to use his full strength. I wanted to write a story about how the young Beowulf finds out he is a strong and became very disappointed about how he could not use his full strength.


Bibliography: The Young Beowulf from The Story of Beowulf by Strafford Riggs with illustrations by Henry Pitz (1933)