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see features of orality in the poem or not? The point here is that there are some elements of the poem that can be more readily explained if we see them as part of, or at least derived from, oral tradition.
    Consider the references to various traditions that are evoked as parts of the cultural memory of both poet and audience. We have already looked at some of these, including references to the near-mythical Sigemund and the references to Christian religion. Let us now consider the numerous references to the Swedish-Geatish wars that occupy much space in the latter part of the poem. These references should not be considered historical in the modern sense of the term. Rather, they are presented in the epic as recollections of historical events. In other words, it appears to have been important for the culture that produced Beowulf to maintain these legends in its cultural memory. For out of these legends, as well as others in the poem, this culture constructed its identity—its imagined origins, with the representation of a Heroic Age in which great warriors and their lords fought extraordinary battles against one another, and against monstrous foes and the forces of darkness, only to fall themselves after their moment of glory. Seen in this light, the legends of the Swedish-Geatish wars are by no means the “facts” of history, but they do present facts about the cultural memory and imagination of the poet and audience of Beowulf.
    In order to see the relevance of oral theory for the ways these legends are used in the epic, we must now turn to the question of their constructions as narratives. The first thing we may note about them is their seeming lack of coherent development, and that may be accounted for by assuming that they derive from some larger traditional narrative in which they do have coherence. Orally developed plots may follow a main narrative line, while constantly interrupting that line with allusions to, or fragments from, other narratives that seem, to the teller and audience alike, related to the main line and to one another. In other words, these allusions to, and fragments of, “other” narratives outside the main plot are, by tradition, taken to be related to the main narrative line. Even so, they are also parts of independent narratives that could be told independently of the “main” plot in which they are currently embedded or to which they are currently attached.
    For example, the “singer of tales” could relate the story of Sigemund by itself and, presumably, in its entirety. Yet since such narratives in Beowulf generally appear in allusive, fragmentary, elliptical, recursive, nonsequential forms characteristic of scattered recollections, they presuppose a narrative already known, more or less, by the teller and audience. And while that larger narrative may never be fully related in a given context, it remains a necessary condition enabling the teller and audience to see coherence where there would otherwise seem to be only bewildering bits and pieces. We may appreciate the necessity of that condition when we consider how difficult it is for us to comprehend these allusive and fragmentary narrative bits, even with scholarly apparatus and time for reflection, and then consider how much more a listening audience would require at least some prior knowledge of the larger narratives of which these bits are parts.
    But enough of theoretical abstraction. Let us now turn to Beowulf and analyze a typical set of such narrative bits, which are set in the main plot of the poem, yet presuppose a coherent narrative of their own for full comprehension. The narrative of Geatish-Swedish relations appears in eight allusions or fragments spread throughout the last third (or so) of the poem. In order to demonstrate the problem for interpretation, we may first consider these eight in the narrative order of the poem and then reconstruct them in a chronological sequence.
    1. When Beowulf went to report to Hygelac