Bringing Beowulf's culture to life

Who were the Geats?

That's what they were called in our (old) tongue: Geatas. Pronounced (Gheah-tas), as only one syllable. In the other tongue (Old Norse), they were probably also called Gauts. Not much is really known about them. Perhaps they were conquered before a less vague historical period?

What we do know is that they were of the old Germanic culture and are akin to Anglo-Saxons, so they probably had their mead-halls, their scops (skalds in the other tongue), and they probably lived on the southern coast of Sweden close to Denmark. They were probably in close kinship with the Danes (or Spear-Danes, at least).

Our knowledge ends there.

Our knowledge ends there, but that's where I begins my theorization. I mean, we do believe in the theory of gravity, right? So let's start with the general time and location:

Based on more dateable events occurring in the story, Beowulf seems to take place in the early 6th century-- early 500's. The place? Southern Sweden. Judging by this map of the spreading infection influence of Christianity in the 6th century,, both Denmark and Southern Sweden were far from being Christianized, and supposedly the Christianization of those cultures did not begin until the 8th.

So Beowulf's Geats? Undoubtedly pagan. No monasteries, no church, no wimples, no nuns, no modest dress codes, no high social standards, no crusades, no bibles, nothing. Just Odin and Freya and friends, and a more freestyle standard of living.

Some people like to argue that Beowulf is at its heart a Christian poem. I disagree and attest that if it was a christian poem, it would have begun in the monastery, and not have as many of the Scandinavian/Norse/whatsit elements of sagas and other Germanic stories as it does, or the pagan funeral and worship practices which were forbidden by the church, and certainly not have the Hwaet at the beginning, which simply shows that Beowulf was originally an oral poem and did not start in the monastery, a possible translation of a similar oral poem that may have circulated in Geatland and Daneland, before finally being written down in the form it is now.

The whole thing with Grendel being Son of Cain or whatever? Christian addition. The part with Grendel being weak to the power of God? Christian. That part where they demonize the native religion and call it devil-worship? Undoubtedly a Christian addition. Granted, the poem's not overly christianized, it's just that if you look at it closely, all of the Christian bits can easily be replaced, so it must have begun pagan. So something else was there, and it's up to us to fill it in.

So anyway, back to Beowulf's Geats. We know their religion, it's just that we don't know what music they danced to, what kind of art they enjoyed, what stories they told, how they dressed, what their rights were as people under a king, whether they had slaves, or how the royalty lived. We don't even know exactly what people they were.

The solution? Mix & match. Cultures in that region and time period tended to be very similar: Anglo-Saxons, Jutes (possibly also Geats?), Danes, Swedes, even the later Vikings, and since we know almost nothing of the Geats anyway, we can use artistic liberties (within reason).

Which is exactly what I decided to do. Most of the research was put into Anglo-Saxons, but Vikings (despite the fact that they came later and were quite different) were also put in the mix, as well as a bit of the Swedish folk culture, as shown by Beowulf playing säckpipa in the drawing above. I also threw in a pinch of my personal taste because of "What little documentation on socks no you gotta wear socks" and also "Noooo I don't care if I can't find a lot of information on it he looks cute with thigh-length hair in a braid".

The result is something that I'm a little worried about shoving under the noses of seasoned historians and gurus on the subject, but wouldn't look out of place at a Pre-Roman Scandinavia Renaissance Faire if there was one.

Beowulf on Steorarume (Beowulf in Cyberspace)

Yes, you can translate "cyberspace" into Old English. After all, the word itself is a kenning of two words, though the part 'cyber' actually comes from a greek word 'kubernan' that means to steer. The translator took the direct analogue of this in Old English 'steor', the direct ancestor of our 'steer', so now it's literally "steer-room". Whatever works, I guess.

Also, on the subject of 'steer', the word 'starboard' does not come from "board on ship that faces the stars" as I originally thought. Rather, it was 'steorbord' as in 'steer-board', "board on which you steer". Funny how what it took me to realize this etymology was not a dictionary but actually learning how to steer in a canoe. (The paddler and I kept getting our lefts and rights confused so I had the paddler call 'starboard' and 'port' instead.)

Anyway, what I wanted to talk about was this website, which is called "Beowulf on Steorarume". It's the home to what is probably the best translation of the Beowulf text I have ever seen, with the Old English alongside, just the way I like it. (And it's the only place where it's officially published, too!)

What makes this translation so good? The fact that it's both literal and understandable. Slade tries his best to preserve the syntax of the original text while trying to make it readable. Take a look, for example, at the first few lines, which are in old english:

Hwaet! We gardena || in gear dagum
Theodcyninga || thrym gefrunon
hu tha aethelingas || ellen fremedon.

Which literally means something like:

What! We of the spear-danes || in elder days
of people kings || power have heard
how the athelings || noble deeds have done

Due to the unusual, flexible syntax of the Anglo-Saxon tongue (heavily played with in this poem, the first line being a tricky example) as opposed to the more linear syntax of the modern English tongue, the meaning of the text is not fully retained. "We" (We and the scop) are not Spear-Danes (sadly enough) despite what literal translation of the first line may suggest (the noun case system that determined the context in which 'gardena' was used here is lost in modern English), we have merely heard of them.

Most translators approach this problem by rearranging the elements of the line into the modern syntax, which works fairly well and does not alter the meaning of the line (at least not by much), but sacrifices some of the rhythm and presentation.

Listen! We --of the Spear-Danes || in the days of yore,
of those clan-kings-- || heard of their glory.
how those nobles || performed courageous deeds.

Here in Benjamin Slade's translation, all of the elements retain their original order, with the out-of-place elements being separated from "we" by em-dashes. It's not completely perfect as the sentence sounds broken in Modern English while fluid in the Old English, but it's the closest step towards retaining the Anglo-Saxon poetic structure I have ever seen taken. Many rounds of applause!

The other thing that makes this publication so awesome is the annotations by the editor, which explain the kennings, etymological origins of names, cultural significance of various elements in the story, and pictures of the Sutton Hoo helm, of course (which by this point I'm kind of getting sick of seeing everywhere). I love seeing things like this instead of a (usually unsuccessful attempt) to translate or rework what was said into something the reader could hopefully understand, as it shows me that the translator is realistic about their own limitations, and that they truly care about the work, both translation and original.

The one downside, of course, is how poorly-formatted the page is. I would like to print out a complete text of Beowulf for my own purposes, but this would require endless hours of redoing Slade's terrible tables. The frame-based website is also astonishingly difficult to navigate (it's best to isolate the frame you're reading as the other frames can be distracting)

But none of that can beat the content of the page, of course. Just as with the original poorly-preserved, sparsely decorated, cheap manuscript that brought us Beowulf, the presentation of this translation does nothing to hinder its value.