The extant text is a transcript of a loose manuscript folio that was once kept at Lambeth Palace, the London residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury.
A British scholar, George Hickes, made the transcript some time in the late 17th century, and published it in an anthology of Anglo-Saxon and other antiquities in 1705.
To judge by Beowulf, this is apparently the hall of his brother-in-law Finn, ruler of the Frisians, where he has come to spend the winter (see below).
The fragment begins with Hnæf's observation that what he sees outside "is not the dawn in the East, nor is it the flight of a dragon, nor are the gables burning".
The lay identifies Hnæf's last struggle as the aftermath of a battle described as Fres-wæl ("Frisian slaughter").
Hildeburh, Hnæf's sister, was married to Finn, leader of the Frisians, in an effort to make peace between the two tribes though this attempt was unsuccessful and today is seen by many scholars as the source for tragedy in the piece.
[6] The circumstances are obscure, but Hnæf's men are to stay in Finnesburgh, at least for the winter, and the Frisians are not to taunt them for following the slayer of their lord.
[6] As with Hildeburh, his importance to the action in the Finn Episode makes his lack of mention in the Finnesburg Fragment all the more obvious.
Uniquely in the surviving Old English corpus, the fragment contains no Christian references and the burning of Hnæf is clearly pagan.
Christopher M. Cain specifically suggests that the author was Christian and wrote the poem with parallels to the Old Testament to show the pre-Christian world in which the epic takes place.
In contrast C. Tidmarsh Major took a different approach and examined the state of religion at the time the poem was likely written.