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[herkyjerkydance]

Dear anonymous author of Beowulf,

Look, I know it was the 9th century and you were probably doing this under pain of death from your church fathers, but dude, your ancient Scandinavian characters definitely would not be invoking the Christian God. You and I both know they worshiped the Aesir, and after a while all the "Thank the Almighty for

Comments

[idioticpoet]

*raises hand*

[amaz0n]

There's a Beowulf movie?

Excellent.

[richardfan]

helen, you're really talking to whatever translator of Beowulf you're reading. the Old English is way more ambiguous as to what variety of god is being invoked. p.s. Beowulf wasn't exactly written for historical accuracy. and it was written for a mostly Christian audience at a time & place when/where pretty much the only literate people were monks. & monks, alas, don't really feel comfortable just writing a ripping good yarn without sticking a little bit of god in there.

[herkyjerkydance]

Oh, I know it's not meant to be historically accurate, it's just that the Jesus insertion is really obvious and irritating. It's not just that they inserted some god-talk, it's that the Geats and the Spear-danes will talk in one breath about the good lord blessing them blah blah blah, and in the next voice sentiments about exacting vengeance and spilling the blood of their enemies, which are far closer to old Scandinavian beliefs (where you had to die in battle to go to heaven, or at least to the VIP section of heaven) than to Christian ones.

[richardfan]

p.p.s. the beowulf movie is in 3-D!!!!!!!

[richardfan]

also, the poem makes no sense whatsoever if you replace "cain" with "loki." although the poem's characters aren't christian, the poem presupposes a christian world wherein the events of the hebrew bible are true. it wouldn't make any sense for grendel to be descended from loki.

[herkyjerkydance]

I don't think they mention the events of the Bible except in passing, though. I don't know anything about the history of the poem, but I thought (or at least it read to me like this) the author of the Beowulf manuscript didn't write the entire thing himself, but threw together a pile of stories about the Germanic tribes that had been kicking around for a few centuries.

[richardfan]

there are lots of different theories about the authorship of beowulf. also, the only biblical event that is mentioned in beowulf is how cain was expelled and produced a race of monsters (obviously this isn't real biblical mythology); this is why grendel's mom, and presumably grendel, are both such adept swimmers. some scholars think that there was one real Beowulf Author who author-authored the poem, others think that the beowulf author just decided to write down some oral stories that had been passed around. especially if you follow the latter theory, the christian god at least allusively probably inserted himself into the text well before it was written down. but beowulf isn't really so much scandinavian stories - it's more historical anglo-saxon fiction about scandinavians.