Harald asked:

How many other similar heroic poems do you think were written in Beowulf's time? Beowulf is our greatest surviving epic from early English history, but certainly there had to be more. An interesting thought.

How many were written is very hard to estimate. Since most Old English poetry was purely oral - composed on the spot by the scop - there is also the fact that most of the poetry of the time existed only for as long as it took to compose and proclaim. Of course, these oral poems always took well-known stories and themes, the skill of the scop lay in how he composed them in that particular retelling.

In 1952 R.M. Wilson wrote The Lost Literature of Medieval England (Methuen: London, 1952), which sought to get some idea of what medieval English literature had once existed and is now gone. His first chapter covers heroic verse, especially that of the Old English period, and is well worth reading if you can find a copy of Wilson's book.

There are, for example, several references in the surviving Old English material to the heroes and kings of the heroic age of the Goths - Eormenric, Theodric etc. Clearly these stories were well-known to the readers of Widsith and Beowulf judging from the casual way they are mentioned in passing.

It's likely that this material was extensive. Widsith. for example, doesn't just mention Eormenric - the historical Gothic king Ermanaric/*Airmanareiks - but also lists the heroes who made up his warrior retinue and household: Hethca, Beadca, the Herelings, Emerca, Fridla, Eastgota, Secca, Becca, Seafola, Heathoric, Sifeca, Hlithe and Incgentheow. From this list alone it's clear that there was a whole cycle of tales about the Goths and their various heroes known to the Anglo-Saxons, though most of these warriors are just names to us now.

Not all of them are though. Widsith mentions 'the Herelings' and 'Sifeca', for example. We know from other sources that Eormenric/Ermanaric's nephews were the 'Harlungs' and that he had them killed on the advice of 'Sibka', so it's likely we have here a sketch of a story of how Eormenric killed the Herelings on Sifeca's advice. By comparing the names in Widsith with sources in Old Norse and Middle High German we can just make out the ghost of a lost Old English heroic poem.

There is more on this subject, but I'll save that for some later posts.
Cheers,
Thiu