The Beowulf manuscript (London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius A.xv) is composed of two unrelated codices, the Southwick Codex (fols 4–93v), which contains Old English translations of the Soliloquies of St Augustine, The Gospel of Nicodemus, the Debate between Solomon and Saturn, and a fragmentary homily on St Quintin written in the second half of the twelfth century; and the Nowell Codex (fols 94–209v) consisting of a fragmentary Life of St Christopher (fols 94–8), The Wonders of the East (fols 98v–106v), The Letter of Alexander the Great to Aristotle (fols 107–131v), Beowulf (fols 132–201v), and the fragmentary poem Judith (fols 202–209v), written in the early eleventh century. The two portions of the manuscript are believed to have been bound together in the seventeenth century. While it is the Nowell Codex that is the subject of this chapter, it is important to remember that the Beowulf manuscript had a life between the composition of its most famous texts and the fire that nearly destroyed it. The addition of the Southwick Codex with its unrelated texts continues the process of compilation through which both codices were originally created and, when read as a whole, its devotional texts change profoundly the way the Nowell texts are encountered. Read together, Southwick and Nowell create an overwhelmingly religious manuscript conveying a message of solace, redemption, and an implied teleological narrative of Christian triumph that the Nowell Codex on its own does not explicitly convey. Christian belief is present in but far from central to the Nowell texts, the texts with which this chapter deals, although it is certainly possible to see the dwarf of Christian theology manipulating the puppet of English exceptionalism at work in its production.

Like the Franks Casket the Nowell Codex contains a combination of prose and verse and a collection of stories that take place in the past and elsewhere. England is never mentioned, but the texts circle around it, leading many to attempt to find unity, or a reason why they were written or translated and preserved at this time and in this form. Its stories are set variously in Africa, India, Assyria, Babylon, Denmark, and Sweden, and the narrative action ranges in date from the Old Testament world of Judith to the sixth-century Scandinavian setting of Beowulf.