Grand unified books thread

[Jacob]

Skre's mostly accepted, yet in its time, controversial hypothesis was that the kingship of Norway was in the west at Avaldsnes. A slow building of strength.

Yeah, I imagine that's formed part of the thesis of the book - describing how Scandinavia changed from tribal to lordly to ultimately kingly social organization during that period. Though I'm still early in my reading - around p. 100 out of 550  ).

[Sheilbh]

Well I can't speak to it in depth, relying as I am on Skre's summary which is primarily a "here's where I stand in this controversy, and why" as a building block towards his larger argument.

Interesting.

On single author v multiple I think I am more single author but working from multiple sources/traditions if that makes sense. But I can definitely see there'd be a debate around that - as there is with Homer and any other work from an oral society being pinned to text. One other reason for this is that while Beowulf (and all Anglo-Saxon poems) have some formulas and rote phrases, my understanding is that there are a lot fewer for a poem of its length than in, say Homer. My understanding is that those formulas are often understood as useful tools in an oral tradition - and is why I think there is more than just recording oral traditions going on but a very creative mixing and structuring but I think there are signs that the version we have is possibly written for text (from oral sources). I think what we have is very much a literary text and creation and not just a recording of a story overheard.

And yeah it is interesting that's a debate because I definitely remember the text book intro to Old English with the map of Denmark of where they thought the different places where but again I wonder if there's a difference I know nothing about between Old English readers and introductions v philology and archaeology. That would not suprise me

I'm not so sure on it being quite so unadulteratedly pagan. But I think it's right there is a fair bit of debate on that - my read was that it's a Christian poem but that is remembering set in the world of a pre-Christian world. But also fully aware the version that I remember is the very unfaithful translation by Seamus Heaney

[Jacob]

I think the "English author" and "single author" arguments are along the lines of what you're saying - if I understand you correctly.

Namely that there was some body of Scandinavian poetry around which the author drew on when they composed Beowulf, setting it in the real world locations in Scandinavia that they'd heard about. But that the writing down itself was the creative act, taking elements from different oral versions and arranging them to taste, adding bits where appropriate and excluding others, expressing a specific sets of themes and so on where they are of interest to the author and their time. That is, it's an English, Christian poem drawing on an older tradition - much like the play Hamlet while clearly set in Denmark and drawing on some older stories (Amled), but is nonetheless clearly an English play engaging with Elizabethan English concerns.

Perhaps your understanding is a softer version of this, but it sounds to me that it's in that direction?

Skre's contention takes issue with that - and I quote here - is that "... although it was likely first penned in Old English around AD 700, the epic poem Beowulf was composed in Scandinavia in the 6th century and reached Britain in the early 600s in a form close to the extant."

I'll quote the part of the section introducing the discussion, because it's very much the type of academic argument I enjoy following from the sidelines 

The Scandinavian-origin hypothesis was considered in the early period of Beowulf research (e.g. Stjerna 1912; Lindqvist 1948) but has not been seriously addressed in more recent scholarship, in which it "provokes only a consensus of mirth", according to Theodore M. Andersson (1997:129). However, the hypothesis has lingered among Scandinavian scholars, and recently, Bo Gräslund (2022) has forcefully argued for a Scandinavian origin of the poem. Would such an idea, as stated by Robert E. Bjork (2020:249) in his review of the 2018 Swedish edition of Gräslund's book, be "like claiming that Shakespeare's Roman plays should be attributed to Plutarch"? To be frank, considering the quite profound problems that the British-origin hypothesis answers only vaguely and unsatisfactorily (pp. 87-93), the glee reported by Andersson and Bjork's downright dismissal strikes some scholars versed in Scandinavian history and culture as amusingly audacious.

[Jacob]

For reference, here's a link to Gräslund's book: https://www.arc-humanities.org/9781802700084/the-nordic-beowulf/

In such a wide-ranging, long-standing, and international field of scholarship as Beowulf, one might imagine that everything would long since have been thoroughly investigated. And yet as far as the absolutely crucial question of the poem's origins is concerned, that is not the case.

This cross-disciplinary study by Bo Gräslund argues that the material, geographical, historical, social, and ideological framework of Beowulf cannot be the independent literary product of an Old English Christian poet, but was in all essentials created orally in Scandinavia, which was a fertile seedbed for epic poetry.

Through meticulous argument interwoven with an impressive assemblage of data, archaeological and otherwise, Gräslund offers possible answers to the questions of the provenance of the Geats, the location of Heorot, and many more, such as the significance of Sutton Hoo and the signification of the Grendel kin and dragon in the sixth century when the events of the poem, coinciding with cataclysmic events in northern Europe, took place.

... it's a bit rich for my book-buying budget, alas.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah - interesting. Framed like that I think I am maybe on the "English" side. Although I wouldn't frame it in that way - I don't think there's anything particularly English about it. But I do think it's a Christian poem depicting a pagan society, rather than a pagan poem that is lightly Christianised. I don't think there's an extant pagan poem there and I think the's a coherence to it that is more single author creating a text.

Although I wonder if there is an inter-disciplinary argument going on there because looking up those scholars Bo Graslund is an archaeologist (and I think Skre is too), while Andersson and Bjork are respectively a Germanist specialising in the Sagas and a Medieval literary scholar. At a very high level I can't help but wonder if that's a divide between basing their opinion on the material indicators within the content v the style of the text. Inevitably because I studied literature I'd probably emphasise a stylistic/literary critical analysis of a text  

I think the Plutarch comparisons a bit strong But I would note that Shakespeare lifts entire speeches from North's translation of Plutarch (I think several of Cleopatra's most ripe speeches are basically totally lifted from North's Plutarch) and there are in fact some who've suggested North might have produced entire plays based on his own translations (those speeches are very dramatic) that Shakespeare is basically reworking/adapting/developing. But I think it's up there with Golding's Ovid as the biggest source/influence.

[Sheilbh]

Should say again - it does sound very interesting and hope there'll be another update. I'll even avoid being disputatious about it

Close to finishing City of Quartz by Mike Davis which is incredible. Mike Davis was an American Marxist writer who I think is mainly known as a theorist and historian of urban spaces - particularly LA/Southern California. City of Quartz is a history/exploration of LA written in 1990. Elements of the book are inevitably a little dated (such as Japan representing globalisation and the shift to Pacific Rim capitalism) but overall it's extraordinary how much is recognisable and now generalisable. He's writing about LA as a "post-liberal" city and I think we'd now probably position a lot of what he's exploring as "neo-liberal". The opening chapter is a broad overview of different generations of competing elite groups within LA's power structure - boosters to mercernaries. Then a high level political history, a study of the emergence of the NIMBY movement, then a look at the anti-human/surveillance architecture before a chapter on the LAPD and the war on drugs. Each of which draws points and ideas that seem incredibly and more generally relevant now.

Also perhaps a little more relevant than one would hope. I found a blogpost setting out a suggested order to read it and providing some orientation and I have started getting into Balzac's Comedie Humaine

[Jacob]

Should say again - it does sound very interesting and hope there'll be another update. I'll even avoid being disputatious about it

I was mid-writing a response when I got distracted by some bullshit, and it's taken a bit to get back to it.

Don't worry about being disputatious - it makes for good conversation. It's been one of my favourite languish exchanges in quite a while

Right now reading through a section that goes into the distribution, composition, and dating of silver denarii hoards in Scandinavia in great detail, as a prelude to discussing the implications (I assume). There's some inter-academic drama there too, but it's less juicy than the Beowulf stuff IMO

[Jacob]

But to get back to the conversation... yes, there's definitely a interdisciplinary disagreement going on 

The archaeologists do seem to build their arguments on an interdisciplinary foundation (including some literary and philological arguments). I'm not sure to what degree the stylistic/ literary criticism side of things considers evidence outside their specific fields. However, IMO - and this is Skre's argument earlier in the book - a conclusion supported by evidence in multiple different fields is more persuasive than one supported by evidence from only one field and failing to address questions raised by evidence in other areas of inquiry.

So from a bit of a re-skim of the argument, here's my rendering of the "Scandinavian origin" arguments:

Beowulf discusses gold rings frequently and they appear in significant numbers in the Scandinavian archaeological record from the 3rd to mid 6th centuries, after which they disappear until the 9th century. Meanwhile, gold rings are completely absent from the Anglo-Saxon record until the 9th century (which is after the composition of Beowulf by most reckonings).

Similarly, there are many references to byrnies - in language the suggests practical and personal experience - which are completely absent from the Anglo-Saxon archeological record from the 5th - 10th centuries, with the one exception of Sutton Hoo (which is unique in England, but has many features commonly found in Scandinavia in that period).

Both of those elements are described in great and realistic detail, in a way that suggests personal experience by the author(s), which is odd in the case of England where they basically hadn't appeared yet.

As well, the subjects of the poem are existing ethnic groups accurately placed along the Baltic and in Scandinavia, none of whom according to DNA analysis contributed to Anglo-Saxon settlements in England; yet there are no mention of Angles or Jutes or Saxons who did. It seems odd that ancestors of the local magnates weren't mentioned even peripherally if the song was composed locally.

There are other arguments (about the timing of the development of Hall culture so vividly described in the poem) and plausible answers given to questions raised (about the form of names, about the meter used, and about how the song could've appeared) as well.

Obviously it's subject to discussion, but I think Skre's basic contention that a theory should be able to address the evidence from multiple disciplines to be convincing is sound. The "local author" argument seems to be that an English author could reflect social and material culture from Scandinavia that did not exist locally without error and without making flourishes reflecting local conditions (unlike, say, Shakespeare) to create something very distinct from the other output of the era because "they drew on a local tradition of performing Scandinavian derived songs to provide the form, the themes, and the material and social culture, but the tradition wasn't relevant enough to make the writing down of a Scandinavian song credible".

That is potentially possible, of course, but it seems less credible than "they wrote down a Scandinavian song that had elements particularly offensive to the locals removed" to Skre (and therefore, to me as his reader    )

[Norgy]

For most of Scandinavian or Nordic history, we only know it from secondary sources in a written form.

The Norse tradition was oral and probably changed a lot.

The great break from what you may call an idyllic, relatively peaceful collection of societies (yes, plural) seems to have happened after the 530s after the long winters that lasted for years. The marginal agricultural yield in places like what is now Norway and northern Sweden must have hit hard.

This led to an age of conquest between tribes to get new pastures, new land and obviously, new workers for the fields.
It is, for us, I think, hard to understand what an agricultural economy required. If you were grazing some sheep, there was no room for crops.

The hall culture most likely began before these changes, but was reinforced by religion and the gift-giving and feast tradition that began. Praise the gods etc and make sure your neighbour remembers that golden nail you gave.

The Norse seem to have been rather, what shall I say, obsessed with looking good. Jewelry from far away, cloth, and the hair.

They also seem to have had a very strong obsession with herring. I mean, I like it, but please.

[Syt]

The Norse tradition was oral

[Oexmelin]

Also perhaps a little more relevant than one would hope. I found a blogpost setting out a suggested order to read it and providing some orientation and I have started getting into Balzac's Comedie Humaine

Tall order. Le père Goriot was mandatory school reading here, and I liked it a lot - ended up reading about a dozen more of Balzac, but nowhere near the 90ish that make up the whole...

[mongers]

Also perhaps a little more relevant than one would hope. I found a blogpost setting out a suggested order to read it and providing some orientation and I have started getting into Balzac's Comedie Humaine

Tall order. Le père Goriot was mandatory school reading here, and I liked it a lot - ended up reading about a dozen more of Balzac, but nowhere near the 90ish that make up the whole...

IRRC the bbc had a drama series about his life, quite entertaining viewing for a young teenager.

I wonder if they'd make a similar literary drama now?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus:_The_Life_of_Balzac

[Sheilbh]

Tall order. Le père Goriot was mandatory school reading here, and I liked it a lot - ended up reading about a dozen more of Balzac, but nowhere near the 90ish that make up the whole...

Yeah - and there's not been a complete English translation since 1900 (from what I can tell). So I'll be working through the list cross-referenced with what's accessible/available in English

But to get back to the conversation... yes, there's definitely a interdisciplinary disagreement going on 

The archaeologists do seem to build their arguments on an interdisciplinary foundation (including some literary and philological arguments). I'm not sure to what degree the stylistic/ literary criticism side of things considers evidence outside their specific fields. However, IMO - and this is Skre's argument earlier in the book - a conclusion supported by evidence in multiple different fields is more persuasive than one supported by evidence from only one field and failing to address questions raised by evidence in other areas of inquiry.

So from a bit of a re-skim of the argument, here's my rendering of the "Scandinavian origin" arguments:

Beowulf discusses gold rings frequently and they appear in significant numbers in the Scandinavian archaeological record from the 3rd to mid 6th centuries, after which they disappear until the 9th century. Meanwhile, gold rings are completely absent from the Anglo-Saxon record until the 9th century (which is after the composition of Beowulf by most reckonings).

Similarly, there are many references to byrnies - in language the suggests practical and personal experience - which are completely absent from the Anglo-Saxon archeological record from the 5th - 10th centuries, with the one exception of Sutton Hoo (which is unique in England, but has many features commonly found in Scandinavia in that period).

Both of those elements are described in great and realistic detail, in a way that suggests personal experience by the author(s), which is odd in the case of England where they basically hadn't appeared yet.

As well, the subjects of the poem are existing ethnic groups accurately placed along the Baltic and in Scandinavia, none of whom according to DNA analysis contributed to Anglo-Saxon settlements in England; yet there are no mention of Angles or Jutes or Saxons who did. It seems odd that ancestors of the local magnates weren't mentioned even peripherally if the song was composed locally.

There are other arguments (about the timing of the development of Hall culture so vividly described in the poem) and plausible answers given to questions raised (about the form of names, about the meter used, and about how the song could've appeared) as well.

Obviously it's subject to discussion, but I think Skre's basic contention that a theory should be able to address the evidence from multiple disciplines to be convincing is sound. The "local author" argument seems to be that an English author could reflect social and material culture from Scandinavia that did not exist locally without error and without making flourishes reflecting local conditions (unlike, say, Shakespeare) to create something very distinct from the other output of the era because "they drew on a local tradition of performing Scandinavian derived songs to provide the form, the themes, and the material and social culture, but the tradition wasn't relevant enough to make the writing down of a Scandinavian song credible".

That is potentially possible, of course, but it seems less credible than "they wrote down a Scandinavian song that had elements particularly offensive to the locals removed" to Skre (and therefore, to me as his reader    )

Apologies this got so much longer than I expected - and I've not even got to Norge

I think it is fairly interdisciplinary - my textbooks for example had sections on society and culture as well as texts. I could be wrong on this but from what I saw at university basically the further back you went the more interdisciplinary and it seemed less office political areas seemed to be - but I might have just gone to a university with a lot of chill Medievalists. It also seemed to get more international and I think that's possibly because it's a more fluid period and you're reading multiple antique languages.

I take the point on that different disciplines being persuasive - although I would note that from what I understand this argument is the revisionist one and strongly argued revisionist takes by an expert outside their field can often involve an abundance of evidence, but that is wrong (not saying that's the case here but it can be a thing)

On the rings it's interesting because I'd think of that critically in a different. Rings are a huge feature in Anglo-Saxon literature - "ring-giver" is one of their kennings for a lord basicaly and in particular a righteous lord. The ring represents social order and reciprocity from a people to their lord. So there's an elegy, the Seafarer, which is not about someone who is died but someone who does not have a lord or a hall because he's on the open waves - and they are lamenting the hall festivities they're missing but also that they're not receiving rings:

He hath not heart for harping, nor in ring-having
Nor winsomeness to wife, nor world's delight

That lordship element is even picked up in devotional poems. So Christ is often written about as a ring-giver - worth noting the Anglo-Saxons broadly are not into suffering, bloody Christ on a cross but slightly terrifying, almost Byzantine Christ returning as a triumphant king to judge the quick and the dead. Towards the end of the Anglo-Saxon period they start to get more into suffering Christ which I think is becoming more of a theme in Western Christian art at that time (but not totally sure).

But to go back to Beowulf the reason I think the archaeological point is interesting from a critical perspective is that I think I'd almost think of it in the opposite way. Anglo-Saxon poetry is incredibly elegiac in tone generally and that is particularly true in Beowulf. It is suffuse with a sense of ending on its way, but also it reflects the general sense the Anglo-Saxons seemed to have had that basically there was a previous heroic age which they are no longer in. My basic read of Beowulf is that it is from pagan traditions adapted for a Christian audience and I think that is the source of its sense of loss and elegy. I think in part it reflects a slight discomfort with their social and cultural understanding of a heroic past v a fallen present, with their subsequent Christian belief that basically they'd had revelation and their ancestors hadn't. And I'd that there's not much religious "jingoism" in Anglo-Saxon poems about "heathens" - I know nothing about this but I think there is a similar ambiguity in the Christianisation of Viking societies - so there are poems about contemporary-ish fights with Vikings and they're not talking about them as demons or evil or any of that stuff. They are also heroic and recognisable as sort of cousins, if heathen.

While they don't lose the rings because they've become Christian - I think Beowulf is incredibly detailed on exactly the things that are no longer common and are from their remembered past precisely because it's a poem about coming to terms with that loss. I think the reason that poem has such an elegiac tone is because it's an elegy for a society (and I think it's probably "composed" within a generation or two of Christianisation). For example there is an incredibly detailed section describing a ship burial which was no longer done in Christian Anglo-Saxon society but I think part of the reason for that is precisely because that's what would be interesting to a Christian society. And coincidentally the most famous Anglo-Saxon ship burial is Sutton Hoo.

I think there's maybe an oversimplification going on and I think it's a bit like debates about Homer (abour which I know nothing). My view would not be that it is "written" or "created" by an individual in, say, 8th century England from nothing. I think it absolutely draws on traditional stories and oral traditions, but that is not just a compilation of multiple songs - rather there is an act of "creation" or "composition". It is a unified poem as those traditions and songs have been re-forged into a coherent, unified poem (this is why I think it's a single author - drawing from a tradition - because I think it is stylistically a coherent, unified poem not a compilation).

I'm also not totally sure on the missing the references to local people or lords because I think that might be reading a Norse saga tradition into Anglo-Saxon poetry when I think they are slightly different. We don't have any other whole epics so its difficult to say but there are fragments of what seem to be epics and my understanding is that they all refer to mythic Norse figures who are also present in Norse mythology and are basically all in Denmark/North Germany. I could be wrong in this analogy but my sense is that the North German past, the Spear-Danes etc was for the Anglo-Saxons a but like the Trojans and the ancient Greeks for later Greeks or Romans. Theres nothing quite like the saga tradition but there are reference to local contemporaries but they are in shorter less narrative battle poems (like the Fight at Finnburh) and also the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles which basically record their history from the point they arrive in England. I think those texts serve similar sorts of purposes of sagas in Norse society while there is an epic mythological tradition from the "pre-historical" or pre-Chronicle times.

And I slightly disagree on the material and social stuff more generally. But I think this goes to a wider point on orality - I know nothing here - but from reading histories of oral societies it seems more common now for contemporary historians to actually use oral traditions and sources. They're not exact records or anything like that, they tell us important things about the societies that produce - but they also tell us valuable things about the people and the events they are recording. Again I know nothing about this - and am very much over my skis here - but I think there's similar with Homer, especially the Iliad. From my understanding there are details that seem to accurately depict bronze age archaeological and physical evidence, even though we think it was "composed" 4-500 years later. I think it's a similar process (no idea on a single author of the Iliad) of oral traditions preserving quite a lot of knowledge from the societies it originates even if it is transformed by a later author in composing a unified poem.

I'd also flag that I think the opposite on what's credible there. I mean it's a broad example but it seems to me the material details and social order and so on of, say Jane Austen and Brdigerton are fundamentally recognisable and pretty similar - what has changed is the morals, ethos and how we receive or read them. And my view is that the morals in particular and ethos of the poem are Christian. So I can believe there being continuity in material culture but transformation of signification more than the Christianity in the poem is just a case of a few tinkering references or censorhip (I think that's a bit of an anachonistic Black Legend/Spanish inquisition read of Christianisation in Anglo-Saxon England).