Hear Seamus Heaney read his translation of Beowulf

Seamus Heaney’s popular and accessible translation of Beowulf was published years ago and was a best-seller. Now you can hear Heaney read his translation. He has a very pleasant, expressive voice that makes his translation come to life. Whether you count Beowulf among your favorites or are having a hard time getting into it, the readings will pull you in. They’re most excellent!

Here’s a link to the prologue and first chapter, which is one of seven videos available on YouTube:

Prologue

Chapter I

BBC Radio 4 Extra also has several online programs of Beowulf Readings by Seamus Heaney. Sound quality is excellent.

These readings are not to be missed and are highly recommended for students of Beowulf.

New Oxford lecture on Beowulf

There’s a new Oxford podcast on Beowulf in the University’s Great Writers Inspire series. By Prof. Francis Leneghan of the English Faculty.

This talk is a little over twelve minutes long and focuses on the transition from oral literature retold by the scops, tellers and shapers of tales, to the manuscript that remains. It’s informative and a treat to hear Prof. Leneghan recite Old English fluidly, as though he speaks it at the dinner table every day.

If you’re an instructor, the video and audio files are available via Creative Commons Attribution license. I didn’t post them here because I think you should go to the Great Writers Inspire site and explore the whole collection. It’s a rare opportunity to learn from the best.

Kennings add layers of meaning

Kennings are found in Old Norse and Old English poetry. The more you look at them, the more elusive their definition becomes. Kennings aren’t just simple metaphors for this and that. They add layers of meaning to words for things that are well-known to people sharing a way of life or culture.

The word ken can mean the extent of your knowledge, or to know. If something is “beyond my ken,” I don’t understand it. The word kenning [cʰɛnːiŋg] in Old Norse means to know or make known. Kenna in Old English is to teach or make known.

The word kenning was adopted into 19th century English from The Prose Edda of Snorri Sturlson (1179-1241), a medieval historian who wrote about the Icelandic sagas and the use of kennings in skaldic poetry. Downloads are available in English translation or Old Icelandic:

The Prose Edda, translated by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur, 1916 (PDF).
From www.runatyrkindred.com.

Brodeur’s translation of Snorri Sturlson’s Prose Edda.
From Google Books.

Northvegr Center also provides The Prose Edda (Old Icelandic).
From The New Northvegr Center.

Most kennings are highly evocative two-word compounds. For example, whale-road (hron-ráde, whale-road) or heath-stepper (hæð-stapa, hart or deer). You know one when you see or hear one. So, there’s more to kennings than their meaning – they usually have a recognizable structure. Linguists have studied the structure, or morphology, of kennings, even if they haven’t agreed on a definition yet.

The illustration is a drawing of the ash tree, Yggdrasil, by Oluf Olufsen Bagge for the 1847 edition of the Prose Edda. Yggdrasil is mentioned in the books, Gylfaginning and Skáldskaparmál. In Gylfaginning, Chapter 15, Yggdrasil is described as the biggest and best of all trees, with branches that extend over all the world and reach out over the sky. Three of the roots of the tree support it, and these roots also extend very, very far.

Learn more

The Use of Kennings in Anglo-Saxon Literature. David G. Simpson, South Charleston High School, 1979. A good paper, accessible and well-documented.

Kenning Index from the Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages site by The Skaldic Project, an international academic endeavor funded by “UK Arts & Humanities Research Council; Australian Research Council; Joint Committee of the Nordic Research Councils for Humanities; the National Endowment for the Humanities; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and other bodies.”

Kenning [definition]. The Poetry Archive. Links to a couple of modern poems that incorporate kennings.

Kennings and Other Elements. Pace University. Short, but interesting.

List of Kennings. Examples from Old Norse, Old English, and other sources.

Extra elements in kennings, or "Different ways to feed the wolf single-wordedly." Ilya Sverdlov. Scholarly paper on a “particular class of ‘extra’ elements in skaldic kennings for man which feature either a heiti for wolf/raven or a subordinated kenning for the same.”

If you are a student of Beowulf, kennings deserve more than cursory attention and simplistic descriptions.

Beowulf meets Chewbacca

This creative Beowulf (Claymation) video on YouTube will make you laugh. It’s an AP English project that deserves to be seen beyond the classroom. An FandSproduction, the author, director, producer, and writer is Kenny Tyner.

A legendary warrior from Geatland rises up to defeat a seemingly unbeatable adversary. This claymation version is based [...]

Harvard Launches Medieval Library with Beowulf!

Harvard University officially inaugurated the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library on March 3, 2011, with the Beowulf manuscript, a volume containing two manuscripts of secular Latin poetry, and St. Jerome’s Latin translation of the Pentateuch paired with the 17th century Douay-Reims translation.

The Medieval Library is meant to fill the gap between the Loeb Classical Library [...]

Irish Fairy Tales

There’s a new section in the Beowulf-related page, Pre-Christian Epics of Northern Europe on Fiannaidheacht: The Fenian Cycle, which chronologically falls between the Ulster Cycle and the Historical Cycle of Irish Literature. While the Cattle Raid of Cooley from the Ulster Cycle is most similar to Beowulf, if you yearn for a little romance and [...]

What Dark Ages? The Staffordshire Hoard

In July 2009, an Englishman with a metal detector, named Terry Herbert, found the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ever discovered. Treasures of the Staffordshire Hoard are as important as those of the history-making 1939 Sutton Hoo burial mound excavations. A recent reassessment of the find, according to Stoke-on-Trent Musuems, has shown that it contains [...]

The well-dressed Beowulf?

I found this great Celtic warrior outfit on Fotolia while looking at images of Celtic ruins. It’s very well constructed and would be perfect for skewering dragons, charging into battle and yelling “Gaaaahh!” Perhaps it will inspire you to new heights for October’s Halloween revelries and any future Celtic re-enactments you may attend.

Yes, there [...]

Sir Robert Cotton's Library

Sir Robert Cotton (1571-1631), collected manuscripts and antiquities. His private library included the Lindisfarne Gospels, two copies of the Magna Carta, the Beowulf manuscript, and other treasures. Cotton and his former teacher, William Camden, founded the Society of Antiquaries around 1586. He was influential in the antiquarian movement of early Stuart England, which sought to [...]

A very funny parody of Beowulf

The Illustrated Beowulf by Jake has been restored to this site. The parody provides a student’s perspective on the poem and the project assignment from hell. The result is way too funny to leave out, even though half the students who view it will be too young to remember the "stars" of the retold story. [...]

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