Three apparently prose readings, Judith, The Wanderer, and The Dream of the Rood, and Cædman's Hymn started out as stories--poems handed down by harper-scops who sang them in the great halls of Anglo-Saxon chieftains. They were oral and celebrated both the pagan past and its heroic ideals and the Christian values of the priestly scribes who eventually wrote them down.
   What unites the 4 readings is the concept of the hero in Anglo-Saxon society. The hero is the warrior. In two of the readings the hero is God: the Creator defined in terms originally used for Odin-Wodin; the Savior defined in terms of the Viking Warrior. In the other two readings the society that defines the warrior, the comitatus or thanes of the chieftain-king, are shown failing. The wanderer has lost his leader or gift-giver, and he is desolate; Judith is a leader, but she is a woman and cannot embody the noble ideals of the male fellowship.

 Some of the marks of the hero-leader shown in these readings include the following:
generosity: the booty had to be shared with the thanes if they were to continue to follow the lord (Eorl). In Cædman's Hymn God the Creator is the Measurer, the architect of the Universe, yet he inspires the common lay brother to sing his praises. In his greatest act of generosity, mankind's Guardian makes heaven as a roof and the earth as a home for humankind. How is generosity shown in "The Dream of the Rood"? (the death and resurrection of God; the gilding of the cross by the Christians who found it). In the Wanderer, how is it drawn to our attention? How in "Judith"?
Courage Judith in the camp of the enemy and the tent of the savage Holofernes; Christ stripping himself and running to the cross; the wanderer's going on despite his desolation.
loyalty The tree is loyal to Christ, the wanderer seeks another lord to serve, Judith and her people remain pledged to the Hebrew God.

 Despite their Christianity, ultimately a comic view of history, the Anglo Saxon's reveal some of the darkness of their pagan past in the poignancy of their poetry. In the Northern mythology, the end of the world is not the victory but the destruction of the gods--Ragnarok. The best the pagan warrior can hope for is to die with honor and to be remembered--even as the lord of the Wanderer and Beowulf are.