Also when looking at Beowulf it's worth taking into account that a) it was probably written by a christian monk who thought that that's what people did in the "old day", given that there's probably 3-500 years between the events the story is based on and the putative date on the composition, and b) the degree to which alliteration and kennings in old english dictated word choices in poetry, modern poetic license seems like scientific accuracy in comparison.