Monsters or evil creatures abound in early Nothern European literatures; in the Anglo-Sasson Period in the pagan epic poem Beowulf, the homonymus hero fights the dragon Grendel, and Grendel's mother, while in the German epic cycle of the Nibelungenliend, Siegfred likewise mist and snow in the Northern hemisphere might have given rise tureal or imaginary monsters in the minds of these writers. Instead Christianity has interpetred such struggles as man's fight against the devil. In fourth century A.D., a young Cristian soldier named George killed a dragon in order to save a girl from being sacrificed.