Tolkien's sources: Icelandic Sagas and Beowulf 332
The Complete Sagas of Icelanders | |
author | Vi |
pages | 2200+ (5 volumes) |
publisher | Leifur Eiriksson |
rating | 9 |
reviewer | Danny Yee |
ISBN | 9979-9293-0-8 |
summary | stories of Viking Age feuds, battles, legal conflicts, love affairs ... |
Beginning in the 9th century, settlers from Norway created in Iceland a society of fiercely independent farmers, fishermen, and traders; in the 13th and 14th centuries their descendants wrote a whole series of stories about them. These family sagas tell of feuds, duels and battles, legal conflicts, love affairs, travels and raids to Norway and the British Isles and further afield, and the attempted settlement of Vinland. The Complete Sagas of Icelanders is the first complete coordinated translation of these into English, containing all forty family sagas and fifty shorter tales.
The focus of the sagas is always on individuals and their relationships. They offer us strong men and outlaws, legal experts and tricksters, poets and warriors serving Norwegian kings, respected leaders and arbitrators -- and powerful matriarchs, faithful wives, and trouble-stirring women. The saga writers never venture directly into the minds of their protagonists, but they produce vivid, distinctive portraits of individuals caught up in memorable events: Egil, imprisoned in York by King Eirik Bloodaxe, with one night to compose a poem to save his life; the final ridge-top stand of the outlawed Gisli; Askel working for peace, to the point of trying to arrange in advance the settlement for his own death; Kormak's life-long obsession with Steingerd; Gunnar turning back from going into exile, moved by the beauty of the landscape; the imperious Gudrun, revealing at the end of her life which of her men she had loved the most; the burning of Njal and his family and the protracted legal and armed struggle to revenge them; and many others.
The sagas draw on local family stories, older myths and legends, and the broader body of medieval literature, along with a good deal of invention and original creation. While some are awkwardly structured, others rework their sources in sophisticated ways and some are literary masterpieces. In some, unity is provided by a biographical focus, sometimes ending with a peaceful death at the end of a long life, sometimes building with tragic inevitability to a climactic killing and the resulting resolution. Others are almost political studies, tracing the shifting balance of power between leading figures in a particular region. And while this genre of sagas is defined by a realistic treatment of early Iceland, many are (or incorporate) comic stories, fantastic tales, and romances.
In their attention to the actions of individuals within social networks, and the working through of their consequences, the Icelandic sagas are important precursors of the modern novel. They directly influenced many writers, among them Walter Scott and J.R.R. Tolkien. The sagas are also a valuable source of information about medieval Iceland, a subject of interest to more than medievalists. One of its notable features is that it had a sophisticated legal system but no executive government, which makes it a magnet for political theorists -- if you search the web for information on medieval Iceland, you'll find a running fight between the libertarians and anarchists over who can best claim it as an exemplum.
Some aspects of the sagas do take a little getting used to. They are episodic, sometimes covering events over several generations and jumping across decades to continue the story of a feud or the history of a region, and they alternate between periods of tension and relaxation. Characters are often introduced with a paragraph or two of genealogical information unrelated to the main story; and the sheer density of names, often shared by several characters, can be confusing. Though they never replace human actions and decisions as explanations of events, elements of foretelling and prophecy are nearly ubiquitous in the sagas. And obviously much of the cultural context is foreign to the modern reader. One soon becomes accustomed to these things, however, and overall the sagas are among the most accessible of medieval genres.
Unless your library has a copy or will obtain one for you, The Complete Sagas of Icelanders is probably not practical for a newcomer to the sagas; cheap paperback editions of any of the better known ones should be easy to come by. But if you become seriously interested in the sagas - and I should warn you that they are addictive -- then it's hard to go past The Complete Sagas.
Firstly, the translations are good. My academic friends assure me they are mostly of high quality, accurate enough to be usable for scholarly purposes. More importantly for the lay reader, they are lively and readable, avoiding inappropriate archaism or colloquialism. The sagas are each preceded by a brief note on when they were written and their manuscript sources, but otherwise they are clean, mostly unburdened by unnecessary commentary or annotation. The only regular exceptions to this are marginal glosses for the "kennings", highly figurative stock phrases in the poetry embedded in some of the sagas, and some explanatory notes where texts are partial or put together from different sources.
For readers who do want some background information, The Complete Sagas has a really good general introduction, a glossary of terms which are likely to be unfamiliar, some maps, and an index of characters. A minor complaint here is that the maps could show more detail and that they are all at the end of volume five, instead of in the appropriate volumes - and the index of characters is useful enough that it could almost have been repeated in each volume.
Perhaps most importantly, this is the only uniform, coordinated translation of the family sagas available. Collecting alternative translations of them all would be a lot of work, if it is even possible, and the result would not offer as coherent a presentation of the genre. Places, characters, and events often feature in several sagas, and motifs, stock phrases, and thematic elements often recur; a uniform translation scheme makes these connections easier to follow. On the other hand, the sagas do vary in style, mood, and structure, and this too is easier to appreciate when not obscured by variations in translation approach.
Finally, The Complete Sagas of Icelanders is beautifully produced. The leatherbound volumes find an elegant balance between attractiveness and austerity, and are of a size, shape and heft that makes reading them a pleasure (unlike some "great books" editions which are obviously designed to look impressive on shelves rather than to be read).
One minor caveat is that the title The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, while technically accurate, may mislead some: all the sagas about early Iceland (the "family sagas") are indeed included, but not any of the "fantasy" sagas such as the Saga of the Volsungs (based on older legends) or "romances" (based on continental models) from the same period. We will just have to hope that Leifur Eiriksson Publishing takes on the translation of those as a future project. A paperback edition would obviously make The Complete Sagas much more accessible; barring that, it would be nice if the volumes were available separately, so people could collect the set over a period of time.
Purchase The Complete Sagas of Icelanders at FatBrain or Leifur Eiriksson Publishing.
Beowulf | |
author | Seamus Heaney, translator |
pages | 106 |
publisher | Faber & Faber |
rating | 9 |
ISBN | 0-571-20376-0 |
summary | An effective verse translation of the Anglo-Saxon epic. |
For those unfamiliar with Beowulf, it is a late first millennium Anglo-Saxon epic about the hero Beowulf's fights with three monsters: Grendel, Grendel's mother, and, fifty years later at the end of his life, a dragon. Since its rediscovery in the early nineteenth century, it has become a recognised classic, translated scores if not hundreds of times. Not being able to read Old English, all I can say here is that Heaney's translation gave me a better understanding of why people rave about the poem than any of the others I have read.
Perhaps the most notable aspect of Heaney's Beowulf is that it can be read almost as if it were prose - and then mined more deeply for the poetry. Heaney writes in his introduction:
So he captures something of the Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse form, but not at the expense of "the sound of sense;" he doesn't inflict awkward archaisms on the reader and is never difficult to read. Here is a brief sample, from the wait after Beowulf dives to attack Grendel's mother."I came to the task of translating Beowulf with a prejudice in favour of forthright delivery. I remembered the voice of the poem as being attractively direct, even though the diction was ornate and the narrative method at times oblique."
An immense body of critical work on Beowulf exists. In his introduction Heaney very briefly touches on this, offering a few hints to understanding and interpreting the work. He also discusses some translation issues, feeling obliged to justify his use of one or two obscure Irish words."Immediately the counsellors keeping a lookout
with Hrothgar, watching the lake water,
saw a heave-up and surge of waves
and blood in the backwash. They bowed grey heads,
spoke in their sage, experienced way
about the good warrior, how they never again
expected to see that prince returning
in triumph to their king. It was clear to many
that the wolf of the deep had destroyed him forever."
Scholars may cavil at Heaney's liberties ("an interpretation and not a translation") and there are certainly better translations for scholarly purposes. Translation is always a balance between competing concerns, however, and a verse translation that attempts to convey something of the power of the original as a poem must inevitably deviate from the literal. Tolkien's seminal essay "The Monsters and the Critics" urged scholars to approach Beowulf not just as a philological curiosity or a source document for Anglo-Saxon language and history but as a poem and a story -- and Heaney offers lay readers a chance to appreciate something of that too.
Purchase the U.S. edition of the Heaney's Beowulf from FatBrain
Re:Christianity... (Score:2, Insightful)
> They even suggest that Gandalf was an "Angel" more than a "wizard"
Or they could just read Silmarillion and find out.
But alas, even Silmarillion doesn't tell how many Gandalfs can dance on the head of a pin.
And for more info (Score:2, Insightful)
You should also check out the fairy tales by Chrétien de Troyes (which include a ring that makes the wearer invisible) and Marie de France.
There are stories that are a part of who we are as humans. Several societies have legends/myths/religious texts that mention a great flood or deluge. And every society seems to have their heroic epics. Over time, these stories are retold and rehashed, divided and distrubited into digestible parts for frequent/easy consumption.
In the western world, be it Frankish, Saxon, Norse, Gothic, etc., these primordial stories were kept alive in fairy tales and folk tales. Tolkein knew these (especially Celtic and the like) and was able to take pieces of them and weave them into a coherant story.
So, when a teenager in Nebraska, or a 30-something in New York, reads the trilogy, there is something with which they identify - something rings true.
It's stories we've been telling for ages, retold and preserved by a master of the trade.
Re:Christianity... (Score:1, Insightful)
If you were actually serious about not wanting to start a flame war, you wouldn't start off your post with a ridiculous boilerplate troll phrase like, "I know this won't be a popular post to most slashdotters".
literature, Tolkien vs. "xxx," Grendle (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, I have had an ongoing discussion with my circle of friends. The quick summary is: How do the Tolkien books compare with Lewis' Narnia books and more recently, Rowling's Potter books. Now, before you jump and defend/attack, the question is in reference to the way the stories are constructed. I have learned a great deal talking this out with my friends. It would be interesting to see what you all have to think.
That said, Beowulf is a very interesting book to add into the mix. Beowulf, being one of the older stories known to exist from Europe, has proven its worth by sheer existance today. I also think that it is interesting to note that several other pieces of literature have based directly from it. Grendle, by John Gardner, is a great retelling of the Beowulf story. A great read for those of you familiar with Beowulf.
So, another question to ask in light of all of the views posted already, what literature has been created directly based on the LoTR books. (Or, do modern copyright laws just make this a moot point...)
(Also, see "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead" by Tom Stoppard if you like re-tellings...)
Re:Christianity... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Christianity... (Score:3, Insightful)
> Certainly large parts of the Silmarillion [amazon.com] owed a lot to Christian mythology. The fall of Melkor certainly parallels the Satan thing - and yes, the Wizards to have cetain characteristics of angels.
The problem for people who want to really push the idea is that the Tolkien mythos doesn't have any Redeemer, which is the central concept of the Christian mythos.
Conversely, the Numenor meme plays a fairly large role in the Tolkien mythos, but it's derived from the Atlantis myth rather than from Christian myth.
The problem here is that people see a few points of contact between Tolkien and Christianity, know that he was a Christian, and take that as license to hammer everything else into the mold. But it simply doesn't stand up if you look at it objectively.
The interpretation of LoTR as an allegory for WWII seems to work better, though Tolkien himself disavowed it. I'm with those who say that Tolkien was immersed in Western culture (with a deeper than common familiarity with the languages, literature, and folklore of northwestern Europe), and not unexpectedly his writings reveal some of the notions deeply embedded in his culture.
The Matrix (Score:3, Insightful)
The point is that there are probably several things that influenced Tolkien both directly (or consciously) and indirectly (or unconsciously). This holds true for everything and anything ever written. Really one of the best places to look at this is religion. We are all fairly familiar with the similarities between Greek and Roman Gods (because the Roman's were greatly influence by the Ancient Greeks) but the correlations occur with many other distant religions. Virgin (or miraculous) births, sibling rivalry, great floods etc. appear in many different religions.
In summary, we are all the product of thousands of years of collective ideas and experiences. While the names in Tolkien's works may be from Norse or Germanic mythology, the ideas are from all of World History.
Mod Parent Up! (Score:2, Insightful)
Also to all the people saying:"No LOTR does not reflect christian thought but ancient European pagan mythology" - well of course it does. But it is interesting to look at how Tolkien treated the ancient pagan mythology he loved in light of the influence that Lewis and Tolkien had on each other and Lewis's belief in the mythopeoic nature of God. Basically Lewis believed that the actual nature and actions of a real God (which he, and Tolkien, belived was the christian God of the bible) was echoed in God's creation and resonated with the human imagination. Thus there are "corn king" gods that die and are resurected for the salvation of their people in the mythology of every people. This mythology comes from the natural cycle of "death" and "resurection" in nature and has a powerful hold on human imagination. But Lewis belived that God created nature in that way and that it resonated with man's imagination because God was communicating a truth about himself to man - and that truth was forshadowing what Lewis called the "true myth" of an actual historic incarnation of God who died and was resurected for the salvation of his people.
I don't know if Tolkien had similar beliefs but I suspect that even if he did not hold those beliefs precisely as Lewis expressed them he was certainly influenced by them. It is even possible that he was the one influencing Lewis By Lewis's own testimony this understanding of the mythopoeic nature of God was instrumental to his becoming a christian - and Lewis also said that his conversations with Tolkien were instrumental to his becoming a christian. It is not too much to imagine that the idea that was pivotal to Lewis's conversion came from the conversations with Tolkien that were pivotal to Lewis's conversion.
Re:Christianity... (Score:3, Insightful)
Lewis is quite up-front about the moral and theological bases of his imaginary universe, and his protagonists often mull over (for the reader's benefit) the moral dimensions of newly-discovered worlds and creatures.
As has been mentioned, Tolkein quite consciously removed any overt religious elements from LOTR, but be did so only to highlight the underlying relgious/moral message, and to make it more accessible. In this he succeeded magnificently.