Hunting for Heorot

On an adventure with my colleague Dr. Margaret Procter to track Beowulf, the hunt for Heorot was our starting point. Heorot, the hall of the Danish king Hrothgar, is where Beowulf killed the monster Grendel.

Near Gammel Lejre in Denmark, archaeologist Tom Christensen found the remains of three king halls. The oldest dates back to the 6th century, the time of Beowulf.

On a rainy Thursday, our first day in Sweden, we set out from Göteborg’s Nice Hotel (not nice at all but it did fit our budget). Margaret drove our rental car heroically and I was the tragically flawed navigator. Nonetheless, I managed to point us south on the highway to the ferry that took us to Denmark, past the castle of Elsinore.

We drove down the E47 to Gammel Lejre—our only choice of route and therefore safe from me—and quickly found the Lejre Museum. When we asked the curator where the reconstructed Iron Age hall was, she insisted there was no reconstructed anything anywhere in the area.

This advice was directly contradicted by the curator at a nearby research station, who insisted the site was just down the road, we couldn’t miss it...

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Painting: Yoann Lossel ("Heorot")

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