proposals regarding its heritage prior to inscription in the exeter codex are consequently many and various. the inclusion of a refrain in the text of the poem may support an originally non-english origin, as the refrain is not conventional to the old english elegy or to any other known old english poetical form. among proposed explanations for this anomaly, a scandinavian inspiration for the anglo-saxon text offers one possible solution to this problem, and has similarly been considered as an explanation for its difficult language, but this theory, as with most others on the poem's prehistory, can only be regarded as hypothetical given lack of substantive corroborating evidence. the suggestion is that the poem derives from some interpretation of the wayland story; that the woman is beadohilde, wulf is wayland, and eadwacer her angry father. this episode is also discussed in the poem "deor".