Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry (here mostly Beowulf, The Fight at Finnsburh and The Battle of Maldon) provides many portraits of warriors and war leaders. What is striking in these works is how fighting is described as both a solitary and a solidary adventure. On the one hand, heroic battles are essentially successions of individual exploits, and a heroic warrior is a primarily a lone fighter. Yet on the other hand, all of them are members of ‘heroic communities’, of exceptionally brave warbands within which their prowess is fully accomplished and recognized. Indeed, the fact that human warlike heroism has to be both individual and collective is one of the features that distinguishes heroes from their antagonists, lonely monsters or undefined swarms of enemies. Heroic leaders like Beowulf are particularly committed to this double identity: they are seen as individually fearless, but also as the leaders and protectors of their teams. In many ways, the wild boar – the ‘solitary beast’ par excellence – may be considered as both an illustration and a counter-example of what a heroic warrior should be and do, and the boar hunt as a metaphor of a hero’s confrontation with his enemies. A brief look at Asser’s Deeds of King Alfred and Felix’s Life of St Guthlac will finally suggest that these poetic representations of heroism may have had some echoes in the actual behaviour of Anglo-Saxon warriors and war leaders.