Beowulf
First off, I should probably tell how I pictured Beowulf----I pictured him as a really tall (6' 4"), really muscular man (not quite body-builder, but getting there), at first with short, curly blonde hair. As the story went on, his hair got steadily longer and straighter, so that when he fights the dragon, he has a shoulder length mane of straight, silvery hair. Throughout the poem I gave him a sort of "half-way" beard (more than a goatee but not a full on beard.) In my mind, he was usually dressed in black and brown clothes, with dirty, unpolished silver armor. The only piece of armor he ever wore that was shiny was his gold helmet before he fought Grendel's mother.
http://cdn.screenrant.com/wp-content/uploads/Ray-Winstone-in-Beowulf.jpg |
Grendel
For Grendel, I imagined a really large, rather slimy, possibly green/gray, sharp tooted, clever, but clumsy person. This description didn't work well throughout the poem, especially the bits where Grendel was eating the stolen Danes (cannibalism?), but I stayed away from imagining those parts, so it worked out.
In the 2007 movie previously mentioned, Grendel is depicted as shown below:
http://www.hdtvsolutions.com/images/articles/BeowulfGrendel.jpg |
http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/11/113509/3922448-4094809249-Guard.jpg |
Hrothgar
Hrothgar was fat in my mind....a great king, who feasted whenever given the chance, with a full head of hair and a full beard. He also wore a lot of brown leather, for whatever reason. As he wasn't a hugely important character in my mind, I never fully developed his character's image....Below is the 2007 movie rendering, which is not at all what I imagined:
http://filmykino.pl/uploaded/photos/8894/1366371530_10_full.jpg |
Wiglaf
I imagined Wiglaf as a skinny little blonde kid with hair cut dangerously close to a bowl-cut, who's arms can barely hold the sword entrusted to them. When he fights the dragon, he shakily stands up to defend his king, and calls out in a squeaking voice for the other thanes to help him. He attacks the dragon with his eyes shut, and cries not only out of sorrow when Beowulf dies, but also because he's afraid--he did something everyone thought he couldn't do and is now coming to terms with it.
From the 2007 movie:
http://superiorpics.com/movie_pictures/mp/2007_Beowulf/2007_beowulf_019.jpg |
Unferth
In my mind, Unferth was fairly skinny, had long, straight brown hair, but a fierce personality that was really his saving grace when it came to fighting in battle. Oddly enough, the 2007 Beowulf directors had a similar idea:
http://1.fwcdn.pl/ph/34/60/193460/108054.1.jpg |
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