There’s a music and magic to Beowulf in the original Anglo-Saxon that I had forgotten.  The look of the strange words on the page evoke images of chill winds off stormy grey seas, shields and swords clanging in violent conflict, the merriment of the Viking Hall, warm and jovial in a dark world.

Hwæt! We Gardena     in geardagum, 
þeodcyninga,     þrym gefrunon, 
hu ða æþelingas     ellen fremedon. 
Oft Scyld Scefing     sceaþenaþreatum, 

You may notice that even some of the letters were startlingly unfamiliar. Given that I had spent many hours of the second year of my degree studying them, perhaps I should have remembered more. The two I struggled most to recall were ð (eth) and þ (thorn) which, as it turns out, both make the ‘th’ sound. What have we lost when these two disappeared from our pages?

There is a beauty and majesty to the rhythm of the poem, which captures the heart of many of its readers. I believe J.R.R. Tolkein was one of them.  The heroic quest led by the brave warrior to rid the land of an evil monster is a story which continues to enthral even now. The number of films made based only on this idea is myriad. Even the story of Beowulf itself has relatively recently been made into a film, although I don’t think the latter will become a classic. However, Tolkein’s books are undeniably classics, and the films which have been made of them are on their way to becoming so. Some of his ideas seem to come in a direct blood-line from Beowulf. The importance of courage, of loyalty, of honour, these are taken up by Tolkein, and woven with even more magic and mystery to create another world.

Recently reading Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf, I came across this passage:

…until the day arrived

when he had to come face to face with the dragon.

The lord of the Geats took eleven comrades

and went in a rage to reconnoitre.

By then he had discovered the cause of the affliction

being visited on the people.  The precious cup

had come to him from the hand of the finder,

the one who had started all this strife

and was now added as a thirteenth to their number.

They press-ganged and compelled this poor creature

to be their guide.  Against his will

he led them to the earth-vault he alone knew,

an underground barrow near the billowing sea

and the heave of the waves, heaped inside

with exquisite metalwork.  The one who stood guard

was dangerous and watchful, warden of that trove

buried under the earth: no easy bargain

would be made in that place by any man.

Does it remind you of anything?  I read it out to my Tolkein obsessed 17 year old son, who recognised it straight away.  The lord of the Geats (Thorin) with eleven companions (the dwarves) add a ‘press-ganged’ thirteenth to their number (Bilbo Baggins) to go and plunder the barrow filled with ‘exquisite metalwork’ (treasure hoard) owned by the ‘one who stood guard’ who was ‘dangerous and watchful’ (Smaug).  This passage definitely has echoes of The Hobbit.

As haunting and rich as the language is in Heaney’s translation, I have to confess to finding the poem itself embodying too much of the masculine boastfulness and preoccupation with physical prowess which is toxic in our modern world. Perhaps you think that I impose modern ideas onto an ancient poem in a way that is anachronistic and unwarranted.  You may be right.  Though I might argue that there is no other way to read the classics of the past except through the prism of our own time.  Any attempt to circumvent our own ideologies and concerns would only ever be partially successful. Since our new perspective is all we can truly bring to the interpretation of well-known classic literature, it may be wise to resist the impulse to immerse ourselves too completely in the ideas of the past. I might argue that if reading Beowulf can help us explain and understand the origins of how we define manhood, not only can we enjoy the work for itself, but we can perhaps shed light on our own times.  You may, however, prefer to plunge deeply into the society of these long dead Vikings, reading the thoughts of ghosts who walked an earth we would barely recognise.  There is magic in that too.

What the poem leaves me with, after all these conflicting thoughts, are the pictures and the sounds of an alien world, brought to us both by the original poet from between the 8^th and the 11^th centuries and by a twentieth century one. The images created by lines like ‘the billowing sea and the heave of the waves’, the musicality in their assonance and alliteration, make the poem worth reading in themselves. For those of you educated enough to have read the poem in the original or to understand more of Heaney’s craft in translating it than I do, I hope you forgive my untutored, personal thoughts on the subject.  I hope all reading this will be inspired to look at the poem itself and judge for themselves.