Beowulf, a Scandinavian story whose tribes and heroes are all from contemporary Denmark and
Sweden, is curiously the foundation of British literature.
The time period of this story and manuscript (700-1010 c.e.) coincide with the Viking invasion of
England – during this period, Danish and other Scandinavian tribes nearly defeated the Saxons and
nearly conquered the whole island.
Imagine the United States is invaded by some other country speaking another language and, a
thousand years from now, “American Literature” is considered to begin with a story that came from
the invading country. Crazy!
While the story may have been told by “visitors” from these lands, ultimately the ones who wrote it
down were court scribes and monks. The implication is that they would have “translated” the events
and themes not only into their own language, but also modified the story to reflect their own
Christian morality as well (perhaps one of the most obvious examples of this is describing Grendel
as a member of “Cain’s clan”).
Epic songs like this preserve legends, but not the collective sense of purpose that initially brought
those legends into being in the first place. Put another way, epics tend to shift from entertainment,
explaining natural phenomenon, and moral instruction to preserving cultural memory (particularly
when filtered through another culture’s scribes).
There are many similarities here compared to other epics we’ve read so far (The Odyssey, The
Bhagavad-Gītā, Shahnameh):
Arrogant yet physically gifted heroes who find themselves irrelevant for one reason or another,
monsters, surrogate fathers, and a conscious exploration of the relationship between masculinity
and kingship.
This text can in some ways be considered the OG source for all contemporary fantasy writing,
thanks to J.R.R. Tolkien – before him, no one paid any attention to the literary merits of Beowulf at
all. This story greatly influenced much of scholarship while a professor at Oxford and much of his
personal writing as well. And, since he pretty much defined the genre, that means all contemporary
fantasy owes an enormous debt to Beowulf as well.
In fact, his personal translation of this text was finally published a few years ago – very much worth
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