Beowulf & the Anglo-Saxons (Part 2)

Miraculously preserved over the centuries, its artistic importance was unrecognized until an essay by J. R. R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings) revealed its unity and multi-dimensional structure. Beowulf is now regarded as the most important manuscript the Anglo-Saxons have handed down to us, of immense linguistic as well as poetic value.

This program sets out to trace the origins of the tribes that brought this epic into being, the war-like Northmen from Sweden, Denmark and Germany who were to conquer and settle regions of a more clement and fertile island that would become known as England, named after the tribe of the Angles. Using 3-D animation, location footage, archive materials and interviews, the Beowulf epic is examined in the light of the civilization that created it. It investigates their religious beliefs as well as their everyday life, and suggests that, old as the poem is, it may have roots in an even more ancient fertility cult.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Beowulf
• Old
• English
• Poem
• Angles
• Saxons
• Jutes
• Frisians
• Documentary
• England
• JRR
• Tolkien
• Myths
• Legends
• Folklore
• Archaeology

[mastercheff1216]

Scandinavian are Germanic.

[AussieAngloSaxon]

im auusie proud but proud of my saxon roots

[JoachimderZweite]

@AussieAngloSaxon I suspect you are of Irish criminal ancestry and hence they were deported - mate.

[crewmannumber7]

I just finished Beowulf. It was epic, and reminded me of reading Tolkien's books.

The Anglo-Saxons and other Germanic tribes are awesome, and I'm proud to trace my lineage back to them.

[Bjowolf2]

@salfordsredarmy

Nope, the other way around. Normans were Vikings who settled in Normandy, France and later started to speak "Frænch" for some strange reason YUCK! ;-)

Funny to think that had they had lost in 1066,we might still be able to speak directly to each others to some degree. But their sending E "underground" for 300 years along with the great vowel shift ( "French" folk trying to speak E? :o) ) "ruined" a lot. But still the links between E and D (+S+N) are very deep & many.

[Bjowolf2]

@comfortwitness

Yes, we even have "Onsdag" [-day(gh)] for Wednesday, or "WoDEnsdag" originally.

( compare with how you pronounce "Wednesday" - not how you spell it, is it? :-) )

Act. you can still hear people from rural Jutland in the West of DK say "Wonsdag".

[Bjowolf2]

@ArjunaTulasi

Ah, yes - the one with Brussels - aka Mordor ;-) - as its capital? LOL

[Bjowolf2]

And the clash and later fusion between OE & OD (Norse) that became Middle E seems to have

almost made E jump branch from WG to "NG" - at least partially ( much simpler grammar

with far fewer inflections & cases and prepositions instead of cases, word order giving meaning (analytical) etc. Maybe that also rubbed off on us over here? Icelandic (closely rel. to Norse & OE is still far more complex grammatically - as is German btw. ).

[Bjowolf2]

@Bjowolf2

The language that the Angles spoke was prob. a more Northerly or even North Germanic variant

of the Germanic language, which had started to split up in its 3 main branches only a few centuries

earlier. At least there seems to be lacking some sort of intermediary betweeen G & D.

Also G underwent certain shifts that neither E nor D did, so many features are still more alike, even

if Saxon ( and later Low German) and E are W. Germanic lang.s orig.

[Bjowolf2]

@STOPTHEEU

Yes, but we are also Germanic - NB. Not German! Our languages here are so full of links with E that you would be amazed. So E is still a very easy language for us to learn,as we more or less get "half" of the basics for free. Angeln from where the Angles came ( and are named after) is a peninsula on the East coast of Southern Jutland, just South of the present day Danish- German border, but orig. part of "Denmark". Maybe the term "South Danes" in Beowulf refers to these people?

[2manynegativewaves]

@ArjunaTulasi er,no we aint, Henry number 8 saw to that fella :)