<human>: Can you condense the text into a few key points?

My senior english teacher in high school had a great way for us to "learn" about the cultures of the characters of Beowulf. One day we walked into class to see a diagram of the desks in the class room drawn on the board. The teacher had divided them up into "countries" separated by boarders, forests, one country (mine unfortunately) was an island. Each country had 2-3 desks in it, and thus 2-3 students. 

Now, when we were seated the teacher explained the rules to us, you can cross a border during one move, but not attack. If you are attacked and you do not have enough troops to defend, you are conquered and now belong to your conquerors. You can sail across an ocean for 2 moves, etc.... and thus the scheming started. 

For the next few weeks we would conquer or classmates countries, defend our borders, sail oceans, and wage vast wars across the face of the world of Beowulf.
<bot>: My high school english teacher taught us Anglo-Saxon culture by turning the classroom into a giant 4 week game of Risk.