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Beowulf is the Old English text most cited regarding aspects of Anglo-Saxon heathenry/paganism. However, Beowulf itself is actually a distinctly Christian epic poem. This is most plainly visible in the deployment of Christian morality in the story, categorizing Beowulf himself as "good" and the antagonist Grendel as "evil." But this good-evil dichotomy is actually generally alien to Aryan forms of paganism.

This being the case, it is possible to apply Nietzsche to Beowulf in order to deconstruct the text and uncover lost aspects of Anglo-Saxon heathenry. Specifically, Nietzsche's distinction between good and evil and good and bad as expounded upon in the Genealogy of Morals:

>This, then, is quite the contrary of what the noble man does, who conceives the basic concept “good” in advance and spontaneously out of himself and only then creates for himself an idea of “bad”! This “bad” of noble origin and that “evil” out of the cauldron of unsatisfied hatred — the former an after-production, a side issue, a contrasting shade, the latter on the contrary the original thing, the beginning, the distinctive deed in the conception of a slave morality — how different these words “bad” and “evil” are, although they are both apparently the opposite of the same concept “good.” But it is not the same concept “good”: one should ask rather precisely who is “evil” in the sense of the morality of ressentiment. The answer, in all strictness, is: precisely the “good man” of the other morality, precisely the noble, powerful man, the ruler, but dyed in another color, interpreted in another fashion, seen in another way by the venomous eye of ressentiment.

With this in mind, it can be understood that the characterization of Grendel as "evil" is actually Christian smearing of what is good. Consider two descriptions of Grendel from Beowulf itself:

>… the other, miscreated thing, in man's form trod the ways of exile, albeit he was greater than any other human thing. Him in days of old the dwellers on earth named Grendel

>Every nail, claw-scale and spur, every spike and welt on the hand of that heathen brute was like barbed steel. Everybody said there was no honed iron hard enough: to pierce him through, no time proofed blade that could cut his brutal blood caked claw

This is, in fact, almost identical to the way Oyashiro-sama is mischaracterized in the anime Higurashi When They Cry. Oyashiro-sama or Hanyuu is also associated with bodies of water like the Grendel family, with the former living at the Onigafuchi Swamp and the latter in their mere. But most importantly, just like Grendel being smeared as monstrous by Christians, Takano Miyo describes Oyashiro-sama as wanting torturing and sacrifices which greatly upsets Hanyuu.

Far from how Grendel is often depicted both in Beowulf and other media, when we consider the available evidence it is likely that Grendel was actually a succubus (like the rest of the Grendel family) and also small and kawaii (Japanese for "cute")