Oral-Formulaic Theory: Annotated Bibliography

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "Danes, North, South, East, and West, in Beowulf." In Philologica: The Malone Anniversary Studies. Ed. Thomas A. Kirby and Henry B. Woolf. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 20-24.

Argues that although there is historical reason to believe that the Danes identified themselves with respect to compass points, the Beowulf poet seems to have chosen the various compounds at random in accord with the alliterative constraint on poetic composition.
Area: OE