Comment by antonvs
8 hours ago
> It does however help drive home the point that such interjections were unlikely to be used by speakers of Nordic languages in order to begin a tale.
Beowulf was written in Old English, which is not a Nordic language.
> ... any of the speech patterns found in languages which developed from Old Norse.
Similarly, Old English didn't develop from Old Norse.
Beowulf has a Scandinavian background to the story. Shortly after "hwæt", it mentions "gar-Denas" or spear Danes. (Old English had become heavily influenced by Norse by the time of the Norman invasions, especially in ita northern dialects.)
There may be a Celtic influence upon it as well, as with some of the Icelandic sagas, but you would have to dig much deeper for that.