Frithcast Episode 07 - Beowulf Commentary

Episode 7 – Beowulf Commentary

Things we talk about in this episode:

Opening Music:

'Ancient Whispers I' by P C III, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence.

[http://freemusicarchive.org/music/P_C_III/Ad_Astra_Vol_1/03_Ancient_Whispers_I]

Closing Music:

'Round II - The Ancients' by Learning Music, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence

[http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Learning_Music/An_End_Like_This/32_Round_II_-_The_Ancients]

Background fire ambience by inchadney from freesound.org

 

 

Kate mentions every detail

What makes a good story?

When the Romans leave

Linguists and sat navs

A trip around the word Caesar

A word about translations

Layers of meaning

Seamus Heaney’s version and why Suzanne prefers it

Kate loves Christmas Pudding

Kate is Barred…

A little dragon aside

Moby Dick gets mistaken for Star Trek and Shakespeare

Kate watches too much Star Trek

The 13^th Warrior (film, 1999)

The Eaters of the Dead (book, 1976)

Kate misplaces Siberia

Ibn Fadlan’s account

Suzanne attempts to pronounce his full name…

We’re never flushing Star Trek out the airlock...

The pro’s and con’s of Ibn Fadlan’s account

Palm tree Vikings and personal bias

‘Elephants’ – Eddie Izzard

The difficulties of language and translation – the slave girl and paradise

The differences between the original accounts and the book/film

Ibn Rustah’s account and his tricky translator

How to find us online

 

More Beowulf pls…

Beowulf a new translation by Seamus Heaney- available as a single or multi-lingual edition. Also available as an illustrated edition.

Available as an audiobook read by Seamus Heaney

Also available in two parts on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaB0trCztM0 (part 1)

 

You can listen it in the original Anglo Saxon, performed by Benjamin Bagby: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzmmPRG4smU (opening)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iqnuinjk088 (lines 553b – 607)

Or the entire live performance: https://vimeo.com/40671018 (with slightly shaky camerawork)

 

The 13^th Warrior (1999)

The Eaters of the Dead – Michael Crichton (1976)

What the slave girl does at the funeral according to Ibn Fadlan:

“Friday afternoon they led the slave girl to a thing that they had made which resembled a door frame. She placed her feet on the palms of the men and they raised her up to overlook this frame. She spoke some words and they lowered her again. A second time they rasied her up and she did again what she had done; then they lowered her. They raised her a third time and she did as she had done the two times before. Then they brought her a hen; she cut off the head, which she threw away, and then they took the hen and put it in the ship. I asked the interpreter what she had done. He answered, "The first time they raised her she said, 'Behold, I see my father and mother.' The second time she said, 'I see all my dead relatives seated.' The third time she said, 'I see my master seated in Paradise and Paradise is beautiful and green; with him are men and boy servants. He calls me. Take me to him.' " Now they took her to the ship. She took off the two bracelets she was wearing and gave them both to the old woman called the Angel of Death, who was to kill her; then she took off the two finger rings which she was wearing and gave them to the two girls who had served her and were the daughters of the woman called the Angel of Death.”

 

For more info on the connection between the Muslim Arab world and the Rus: http://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/199906/among.the.norse.tribes-the.remarkable.account.of.ibn.fadlan.htm