       
Versions of Beowulf
You Have to Read the PoemIf
you already know Beowulf,
you probably got your ideas about what it is from one or more of the
items listed and described in this section. The pilgrimage
starts
here; you read a translation, or you come to grips with the Old English
text (in which case you'll probably be looking at several translations,
studying the grammar, using a dictionary, etc.) Or someone
tells you
the story; or you read a comic book, or see a movie, or ... you're
studying it at school and have to come up with an essay or project by
next Wednesday.
If you have the time, it's good
therapy for the Beowulf
pilgrim to look at the earliest attempts to come to grips with the poem
by Humfrey Wanley (1705) and Sharon Turner (1807). We can even learn
something from a rumbustious translation like that of A.D. Wackerbarth.
It's sobering and humbling to realize that if you or I can add
something new to the appreciation of Beowulf, it's
because so many different kinds of people in many different professions
have become involved in the poem. Turner's translation/summary goes off
the rails time after time, but his work made the going easier
for the more accurate translations that followed.
With
the Electronic Beowulf
we can study images that yield more information than the manuscript
itself. With X-ray scanning archaeologists can find out what's under
the ground before digging into it. Anthropology is throwing light on
why tribal people come up with their rules and customs. Farther afield,
21st-century shipwrights and sailors make it possible for you or me to
hop on a viking ship and experience what it was like to sail in one.
Perhaps DNA profiling can help determine what actually happened to the
Geats, or whether Bede was correct in his account of what tribes
settled England.
Once you start on the Beowulf trail, if
you follow many of the leads the poem throws out, you'll get a liberal
education. Anyone willing to put in the time has a good chance of
moving Beowulf
appreciation forward. The constraints are the tools available, our
knowledge of them and our creativity in bringing them to our
field of study.
I'll be building this section over
the next six months (January-June 2008). So far I've completed the top
2 items in the list below. Thank you for your patience as I build the
site, learning the dark arts of website construction as I go. In this
section you can go to:
Other sections planned for 2008
Norway-Beowulf-resources (expect
to be done for Valentine's Day, 2008)
Best Beowulf Study
Resources: Books, Web sites, Other
Beowulf
Background resources: Vikings, Iceland, Other islands, Other countries
Beowulf-country
Maps and Charts
Take
me back to 6 Anglo-Saxon Poems Take me to
England-Beowulf-resources
for Sutton Hoo treasures and the
Maldon Battlefield show me your
pictures of Maldon, Essex Take me to Denmark-Beowulf-resources
for
viking ship building, rune
stones and Grendel country Take me to Norway-Beowulf
resources
for Viking Burial Ships, Stave Churches, weapons,
treasures and clothing
to The-Book-of-Beowulf-Sample
page
Home!
to
beowulf-country.org/index 
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