This article is about the book. For the character, see Hengest and Horsa. Additionally for the poem, see Hengest.
Finn and Hengest: The Fragment and the Episode is a book edited by Alan Bliss featuring a study by J.R.R Tolkien of a Medieval story. The book was published in 1983, by George Allen & Unwin. It was published again by Houghton Mifflin in 1998 and 2006.
Finn and Hengest are two Anglo-Saxon heroes appearing in the Old English epic poem Beowulf and in a fragment of "The Fight at Finnsburg". Hengest has sometimes been identified with the Jutish king of Kent. He and his brother Horsa (the names meaning "stallion" and "horse") were legendary leaders of the first Anglo-Saxon immigrants to Britain as mercenaries in the 5th century.
Finn and Hengest is based on an edited series of lectures Tolkien made before and after World War II. In his lectures, Tolkien argued that the Hengest of "The Fight at Finnsburg" and of Beowulf was an historical rather than a legendary figure and that these works record episodes from an orally composed and transmitted history of the Hengest named in the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle." This view has gained acceptance from a number of medieval historian and Anglo-Saxon scholars both since Tolkien's initial lectures and since the publication of this posthumous collection.
Tolkien's lectures describe what he called the "Jutes-on-both-sides theory", which was his explanation for the puzzling occurrence of the word ēotenas found in Beowulf. Tolkien read the word as Jutes, and theorized that the fight was a purely Jutish feud, and Finn and Hnæf were simply caught up by circumstance. Tolkien explained both their presence and their ambiguous loyalty with his following interpretation of the story.
