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Joi Weaver at the Evangelical Outpost has recently “discovered” Beowulf, through experiencing it in the way it was originally intended–as a performance. She’s pretty excited about it, and the performance she recommends–that of actor Benjamin Bagby–sounds delightful.
What followed was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Benjamin Bagby, founder of the medieval music group Sequentia, sat on a bare stage, and sang the first part of the Beowulf story in Anglo-Saxon, accompanying himself on a reconstructed Anglo-Saxon harp. Over the next hour and a half, the story of Grendel’s attacks unfolded, culminating with the coming of Beowulf and the defeat of the monster. I hadn’t gotten any work done–instead, I was perched on the edge of my seat, hanging on every word of the performance. Reading Beowulf had stirred nothing in me: hearing it set my mind and heart on fire.
A DVD is available.
(By the way, my friend Sam the Viking has built a Viking hall at his farm in Missouri. Recently he hosted a Beowulf night for a college professor and her class, during which they recited Beowulf in that historically authentic setting. Wish I could have been there.)
Dale Nelson sent a link to a blog post by Inklings aficionado Jason Fisher. He believes he’s discovered a previously unrecognized influence on Tolkien’s concept of “the Circles of the World.”
I’ll attempt to show how Tolkien’s figurative “Circles of the World” may have emerged from three such disparate sources: the Ynglinga Saga of Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla; the Latin Vulgate Bible, with particular emphasis on the Book of Wisdom; and perhaps even the Hereford Mappa Mundi, a medieval map of the world on display in the West Midlands of Tolkien’s youth. In the end, at this late stage in Tolkien source-hunting, it can be difficult to uncover substantially new (and sufficiently verifiable) source-traces; however, in this case, I believe I have something new to offer to Tolkien Studies.
Check out the blog as a whole. Looks good.
That is pretty awesome. I have been looking for something like this for quite a while. I remember once I saw on PBS’s “The Story of English” they had someone on there who played the harp and sang Beowulf. He was actually even better than this guy. Wish I could remember who that was, but I saw that show too long ago to remember at all.
Lars: thanks so much for linking to my post! I can’t get enough of Beowulf in the original–it just has so much more…well, guts, for lack of a better word.
Kelsey: Yes! I saw that when I was a kid, and for YEARS I looked for a version of Beowulf by him, but never found anything, and eventually forgot his name. Excellent documentary.
It’s just tremendously satisfactory to see people’s eyes opened to this great material.
For more excitement, read my books. Although I probably won’t come over to recite them for you. But I am available for lectures. 🙂
LOL! I actually did read Wolf Time a few weeks ago, and liked it a lot. It helped that I’d already begun reading the Eddas. (My introduction to that particular thread of Western culture actually came through Sequentia’s album, Edda–have you heard it?)
No, your post was the first I’d heard of them.
Sadly, they’re not as well known as they should be–they specialize in attempting to recreate medieval music. I stumbled across the Edda cd when I was working at Biola University library: it looked interesting, so I decided to listen to it while I worked. Didn’t end up getting any work done, the CD was too interesting!
I think the whole cd is available for listening here: http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/album/Edda+Myths+from+Medieval+Iceland/4451042