This riddle translated from Old English comes from the Exeter Book, a miscellany containing some ninety-odd riddles total, as well as thirty-five poems of varied lengths on Christian and other themes, and a selection of maxims. Likely produced around 965-75 CE, the Exeter Book is perhaps the oldest surviving manuscript collection of vernacular poetry from Anglo-Saxon England; it is difficult to establish how much older the poems copied therein may be. As was usual for Old English poetry, the poems are all anonymous, and scholars can do little more than conjecture as to the editorial intentions of the scribe who compiled the book.