Short answers, pulled from the story.
Widsith is an Old English poem of 143 lines, also known as The Traveller's Song. It surveys the peoples, kings, and heroes of the Germanic world through a narrator who claims to have visited figures ranging from Attila the Hun to the Israelites and Egyptians.
Widsith survives only in the Exeter Book, a manuscript held at Exeter Cathedral in southwestern England. The Exeter Book was donated to the cathedral in 1076 and remains there, containing roughly one-sixth of all surviving Old English poetry.
The poem is divided into three catalogue sections called thulas. The first lists kings of renown in the pattern of king-ruled-tribe, including the entry "Caesar ruled the Greeks." The second names the peoples the narrator visited, and the third catalogs the heroes of myth and legend he pursued by name.
The poem contains the phrase Wicinga cynn at lines 47, 59, and 80. Scholars have proposed this as the earliest surviving written form of the word that became "Viking."
The date remains disputed. Kemp Malone's 1962 edition argued for an Anglian dialect form in place by the early 8th century. Lotte Hedeager argued in 2011 that part may have been composed as early as the 6th century, pointing to the poet's familiarity with Denmark and the Baltic coast. Ian Shiels accepted Malone's dating in 2025.
Leonard Neidorf has argued that Widsith's narrator resembles the Germanic deity Woden, sharing his impossible lifespan, geographical wanderings, presence at legendary battles, and attachment to the transgressive figure Eormanric. Neidorf also notes that the byname "Widsith," meaning "far-travelled one," resembles the Óðinsheiti, the bynames given to Óðinn, the Norse cognate of Woden.