The dark language of the poem comes from its vocabulary, its use of special, and old forms of words. Of about 3000 words of the poem, 518 words are only known from this poem, 117 occur in this poem for the first time. The main problems with this poem are that the persons are usually not named. Rather they are described with what they did. Geographical places are similarly unnamed, and only described using places in them. Many scholars have tried to identify places and people, in some cases this is no longer possible though. 