Dear friends,
Beowulf (c.700-1000 AD) is a traditional heroic epic poem of 3,182 lines -- longer than any other Old English poem. You may ask "Why was a poem about Danish and Swedish kings and heroes preserved in England?" The English people are descendants of Germanic tribes called the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. Jutes and northern Saxon tribes came from what is now southern Denmark and northern Germany. Thus, Beowulf tells a story about the old days in their homeland.
There is a place called Vendel in the Swedish province of Uppland. It is the site of an ancient royal estate (part of a network of royal estates that have beenthe property of Swedish kings since the Iron Age.
The site has many graves from the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries. It also shows a
large mound which local tradition calls the mound of Ohthere of the epic Beowulf
.
An excavation in 1917 revealed the remains of a powerful man who was buried inthe beginning of the 6th century, the time of Ohthere. It has often been suggested that the Germanic peoples known as Vandals, or at least their kings, were connected to the site. Archaeology often turns up what we thought only to have been myth. The city of Troy is a prime example.
For my brother David and I this is interesting history, because our surname is old Anglo-Saxon and proves that we are descended from Angles and Saxons who lived
in the British Isles before the Norman conquest.
This iw what the original opening lines of Beowulf look like. They are in the Old English, the ancient form of modern English. An original written on parchment exists and looks very strange. I am not able to show you the way all the letters were written because my computer doesn't have the required letter
forms, but this is pretty close:
"Hwaet! We Gardena in geardagum peodcyninga prym gefrunon hu da aepelingas
ellen fremedon."
It means:
"What! We have heard of the glory of the spear-Danes in the old days, of the
people's kings, how the princes did deeds of valor."
This poem is very different from modern poetry. Probably it was recited, because few people were able to read at that time. It used alliteration -- a techniquein which the first sound of each word in a line is the same. Here is a strong
example of alliteration that my father enjoyed saying fast to see if he could get it right: "She sells sea-shells down by the sea-shore. And the
sea-shells that she sells are sea-shore shells." Try saying that clearly and fast. It will strengthen your ability to enunciate the s and sh sounds.
One line of old English poetry usually has three words that alliterate. The stress in a line falls on the first syllables of those three words. "Stress" means
that those sounds are said more strongly.
Old English poets also used "kennings," which are poetic ways of saying simple things. For example, a poet might call the sea the swan-road or the whale-road.
A king might be called a ring-giver. Some scholars think the name Beowulf
itself may be a kenning. It may mean "bee-wolf," a term for a bear which attacks beehives, the way a wolf attacks other animals.
This ancient tale is going to become a film for release in 2007, using the
newest film techniques of motion capture and facial expression capture. Actions
of live actors are input to digital image generators to create naturalistic animation. The same director, Robert Zemeckis who pioneered and first used performance capture techniques in The Polar Express," starring. Tom Hanks will direct Beowulf.
Anthony Hopkins is playing Hrothgar, John Malkovich Unferth. Ray Winstone will
be Beowulf. Grendel will be Crispin Glover and Angelina Jolie will be Grendel's
Mother. The movie is going to look like a living Frank Frazetta painting.
Frazetta is one of the world's most influential fantasy and science fiction artists. The script was originally to have been played by live actors. I would have
preferred that, myself! :-)
Books and new translations are still being made of this classic. Many have been
made before. It has influence upon many contemporary works and pop culture.
Films were made in 1981, 1998, 2/1999, 2005 and 2007. It has influenced other films, television and music, and also eight games, as well as at least three comics. There were three old English glossaries written in the 1990's and the most recent is a Penguin edition, in 2000. There are at least five books of modern English translations. If you look on the internet you will find many links.
Beowulf has been called the English language's most enduring poem. Isn't it astonishing that a poem from more than a thousand years ago still has so muchinfluence in the present?
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