The first two translations on this list were briefly considered already, Thorkelin’s in chapter 5 and Grundtvig’s in chapter 2. Thorkelin’s Latin translation was roundly condemned at the time and has rarely been referred to by translators since. Grundtvig’s “Danishing” of the poem, however, his “dynamic equivalence”
1 Gutt, Translation and Relevance, p. 67. rendition in which he tried to recreate in his contemporary audience the same response to the poem that the original audience had, has been subsequently referred to despite its being initially met with astonishment or indifference. The next translator of
Beowulf, Frederik Schaldemose (1783–1853), expresses sympathy for one of his predecessors and disdain for the other. A prolific author and an even more prolific translator, Schaldemose began his publishing career with two collections of poetry in 1815 and 1819 followed by a steady stream of books, including translations of Sir Walter Scott, Alexandre Dumas, Cervantes, Henrik Steffens, Reinecke Vos, Apuleius, and
Beowulf. Mainly because of his translations, he became one of the most widely read Danish authors of his generation.
2 Rubow, “Fr. Schaldemose.” Of Thorkelin’s error-ridden edition, he compassionately observes that it was only Thorkelin’s “burning zeal for our Nordic antiquity”
3 “hans brændende Iver for vort Nordens Oldtid.” Schaldemose, Beo-Wulf, p. ii. that had moved him to take on a task for which he was not fit. He soon suffered the consequences of his actions. A young student (Grundtvig), who has distinguished himself even into his own old age by his pedestrian coarseness in numerous literary feuds, “heaped dirt on the old man without taking into consideration the many sacrifices he had made in bringing the old book to light.”
4 “overøste den gamle Mand med Snavs, uden at tage Hensyn til de mange Opoffrelser, som han havde gjort for at bringe den gamle Bog for Lyset.” Ibid. Schaldemose has no doubt that “that now old literary gamecock”
5 “denne nu gamle literaire Kamphane.” Ibid. would want to dip his hand into the gutter and besmirch him, too. “Let him!” he says, abruptly ending his short foreword to his translation. Grundtvig ignored the challenge completely.
6 Pedersen, “Indledning til ‘Bjovulfs Drape’,” 7.2. The translation itself is printed in columns parallel with John Mitchell Kemble’s 1835 edition of
Beowulf, which Schaldemose leaves virtually unchanged except for expanding abbreviations such as a crossed thorn for
þæt. He does not reprint Kemble’s glossary or list of names, replacing those with remarks on the geographical, historical, and mythic dimensions of the poem that come essentially from the introduction to Ettmüller’s 1840 German translation of the poem and Leo’s 1839 edition of it.
7 Munch, Review of Schaldemose, p. 133. He agrees, therefore, that Heorot lay somewhere near Lejre and that the Geats came from Jutland;
8 Schaldemose, Beo-Wulf, p. 152. and he credits Leo with the identification of Clochilaichus with Hygelac instead of Grundtvig, whom he does not mention.
9 Ibid., p. 157. He does mention Thorkelin just one more time when he points out Thorkelin’s error in misconstruing the accusative plural
Hugas (Franks) in line 2914a of the poem for the accusative singular name of a Frankish prince, Hugo.
10 Ibid., p. 158.Schaldemose does not talk about his translation method, but his rendering of Beowulf is basically an alliterative one in iambic trimeter. It is lyrical and enjoyable to read, as one would expect from such an accomplished poet as he. Here is his description of Grendel’s first approach to Heorot, lines 115–25. Note the six-syllable lines:
Saa gik han at speide | So he went scouting |
I Huset det hoie | in the high building |
hvorledes Hring-Daner, | how the Ring-Danes |
naar Laget var endt, sig | when the company had finished |
leire’’ i Hallen; | had encamped themselves in the hall; |
der inde da fandt han | in there he found |
Ædlingers Skare | a crowd of nobles |
sove efter Sviren | sleeping after the carousing |
med Sorger ukjendt, | with unknown sorrows, |
de Menneskets Plager | the plagues of man |
og med Ulykker. | and with misfortunes. |
Grim og glubende | Hideous and ravenous |
den Grumme var rede, | the ferocious one was ready, |
med graadig Gridskhed | with gluttonous greed |
greb han de Sovende, | he seized the sleepers, |
tredive Thegner, | thirty thanes, |
saa tog han Veien, | so he took the road, |
glad ved sit Bytte, | glad with his booty, |
tilbage til Hjemmet | back to his home |
med de Slagnes Kroppe | with the bodies of the slain |
at soge sin Bolig. 11 Ibid., p. 6, lines 229–50. | to seek his dwelling. |
Schaldemose’s translation was first published in 1847 and was welcomed in a review in 1848 as a great improvement for Scandinavians over Kemble’s edition.
12 Munch, review of Schaldemose. The second edition of Schaldemose’s book, very little changed from the first except for the addition of
Anden Udgave (second edition) on the title page, appeared in 1851. The book was considered of such cultural value that it was reprinted in 2022. It also appeared in a Chinese edition in 2010.
Fifty-nine years later, the next translation of
Beowulf appeared in Denmark. Schaldemose’s Danish had aged by then, and the mistakes in the text that he inherited from Kemble as well as his own misreadings of the OE remained, so Adolf Hansen (1850–1908), whom we met in chapter 5, was determined to produce a new translation.
13 Hansen, Bjovulf (2019), p. 11. Hansen was a literary historian, tutor, schoolteacher, and, beginning in 1894, lecturer at the University of Copenhagen. He published books on Addison, Pope, Swift, Gay, and Arbuthnot and translated a large amount of English poetry into Danish, from Shakespeare’s sonnets to poems by Shelley, Tennyson, Arnold, and Swinburne. He was known for his knowledge and intelligence and for his faithfulness to the original texts he translated.
14 Haislund, “Adolf Hansen.” He had nearly finished his translation of
Beowulf when he fell gravely ill. Shortly before his death, he asked his brother Oskar to fill in the remaining lacunae in the translation and to add an introduction and a list of names to the book. Oskar consulted Axel Olrik about completing the project and was directed to Viggo J. von Holstein Rathlou, who took on the task.
15 Hansen, Bjovulf (2019), p. 7. He filled the gaps, wrote an introduction, but did not compile a list of names, instead adding his own translation of “The Fight at Finnsburg.”
Finishing Hansen’s work was not easy. Von Holstein Rathlou lists dozens and dozens of emendations that had to be made to the text, which had been written in ink with alternative translations of words written above them in pencil with a question mark beside them.
16 Ibid., p. 14. The manuscript of Hansen’s translation is held in the Royal Danish Library where it is catalogued as “Ny kgl. sml. Folio, 1597.” Ibid., p. 15. In making his own decision about what the words meant, von Holstein Rathlou found that dictionaries did not help and the numerous translations of the poem from Müllenhoff’s German translation to Clark Hall’s English one were not useful, either. So he turned to the only
Beowulf scholar he knew who was both a great linguist and a great poet, N. F. S. Grundtvig, and used his translation of the poem as the mediator among disputing parties.
Here are the opening lines of Hansen’s translation:
Om spyd-daners færd i fortids dage,
om dåd og bedrift, af drotterne øvet,
om ædlingers sejrsry sagn har vi hørt!
Ofte Skjold Skéfing drev skarevis fjendernes
myldrende flokke fra mjødsalens bænke
og slog dem med jammer. Som hjælpeløst barn
blev først han fundet, men fanged så lykke
og voksed i hæder o gry under himlen,
så alle de folk, der fjernt over hval-vejen
rundt om leved, lyde ham måtte
og skat ham give: godt var hans styre!
Of the Spear-Danes dealings in days of yore,
of deed and feat performed by the lords,
of the nobles’ fame of victory have we heard!
Oft Scyld Scefing drove crowds of enemies
swarming bands from meadhall benches
and struck them with misery. As a helpless
child first was he found but had good luck
and grew in honor and glory under the sky
so all people who far over the whale-road
lived round about had to obey him
and give him treasure; good was his rule!
One could object to the omission of the formal, introductory “Hwæt!” (Behold! or Listen!) from the first line and the emphasis on rule rather than ruler in the last (“þæt wæs god cyning!” [that was a good king]), but Hansen here and throughout the translation abides by his goal of replicating the original meter of the poem without slavishly adhering to it.
17 Hansen, ”Ett Brudstykke,” p. 468.Thora Constantin-Hansen (1867–1954) took up the
Beowulf mantle four years after Hansen (they were not related), but this time explicitly for children and for only the first part of the poem, the Denmark part. She was born into a loving home as part of the Grundtvigian congregation at Vartov in central Copenhagen, where Grundtvig had been the minister from 1839 until his death in 1872 and where a famous statue of him kneeling still stands in the courtyard. In the summer of her sixteenth year, she went to Askov folk high school and subsequently worked as a tutor there, but later, tragedy struck the family. Her father developed dementia, a brother drowned, a sister went insane, and she was left to fend for herself. She did so by becoming a teacher for disabled children, later following the teaching principles of Montessori. She wrote many articles for education journals, translated books on teaching and on Montessori, and wrote children’s books and biographies as well as her memoir,
Et Skolelive i Strid og Fred (A School Life in Strife and Peace) in 1935. “Thora Constantin-Hansen was a pioneer and in many ways a forerunner of the pedagogical innovations of the decades 1910–30.”
18 “Thora Constantin-Hansen var pioner og på mange måder forløber for de pædagogiske nyskabelser i årtierne 1910–30.” Hilden, “Thora Constantin-Hansen.”Constantin-Hansen’s background, principles, and experience seem to have led her to paraphrase the first part of
Beowulf for children, as her foreword to the first edition of her book makes clear. She praises Grundtvig for being the first to take the poem seriously and translate it in its entirety. And she says that it had been his wish that the poem (in Danish) would be found in every house, would become a book for all children, would become for all the Nordic countries what the
Iliad and the
Odyssey were for the Greeks. Her book, hopes Constantin-Hansen, would “give Danish children the desire, when they get older, to read Grundtvig’s translation of
Beowulf in beautiful and amusing Danish verse.”
19 “give danske Børn Lyst til, naar de bliver ældre, at læse Grundtvigs Gengivelse af Beowulfsdrapen i smukke og morsomme danske Vers.” Constantin-Hansen, “Forord” to Bjovulf. They could later move on to Hansen’s translation in a verse form that replicates the OE as closely as possible and then Axel Olrik’s discussion of the poem in his
The Heroic Legends of Denmark. Her preparatory rendition of the poem begins thus:
Vi har hørt meget fortælle om Danernes Færd i gamle Dage, om Kongernes Stordaad og Heltenes Sejre. En af de bedste Fortællinger er dog den om Kong Skjold, ham der blev fundet som et hjælpeløst Barn, men havde Lykken med sig og steg saaledes i Magt og Hæder, at alle moboende Folk derovre paa den anden Side af Havet maatte adlyde ham og give ham Skat. Han styrede sit Rige godt. (9)
We have heard many stories about the dealings of the Danes in olden days, about kings’ great deeds and heroes’ victories. Yet one of the best stories is the one about King Skjold, he who was found as a helpless child but had luck with him and so rose in power and honor so that all the neighboring people over there on the other side of the sea had to obey him and give him treasure. He ruled his kingdom well.
The captivating simplicity of this paraphrase would surely attract young readers. The fascinating, whimsical illustrations accompanying the paraphrase would surely keep them reading. They are by Niels Skovgaard (1858–1938), a famous artist, sculptor, and book illustrator who created the statue of a kneeling Grundtvig at Vartov mentioned above and who was the brother of Joakim Skovgaard, the equally famous artist who painted “Christ in the Realm of the Dead” in response to Grundtvig’s hymn 243 on the Harrowing of Hell that was discussed in chapter 2 (see p. 65, figure 6). Niels was famous, too, for his humorous sketches of trolls and other mythical creatures.
20 Schultz, “Niels Skovgaard.”Another seventy-three years passed after Hansen’s book before the next translator took on the task of rendering
Beowulf into Danish. Barry Wilmont (1936–), a renowned Canadian-born Danish artist and book illustrator and member of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts whose work is exhibited in galleries worldwide,
21 See his website at https://www.wilmont.dk. both updated Hansen’s translation of the poem and accompanied the translation with close to fifty lithographs. In the foreword to the book, Ebbe Kløvedal Reich (1940–2005), a popular Danish author and political activist, reflects on the time gap between Hansen’s book and Wilmont’s. Hansen’s, he says,
became the next generation’s access to one of the oldest sources for what happened in Denmark in the old, old days. Adolf Hansen lasted for most of a century. It was a good piece of work. But lately he had started to creak and gather dust … And that, in brief, is the history of this book’s origin.
22 “blev de næste slægtsleds adgang til en af de allerældste kilder til, hvad der gik for sig i Danmark i gamle, gamle dage. Adol Hansen holdt i det meste af et århundrede. Det var et godt stykke arbeide. Men i den sidste tid var han begyndt at knirke og samle støv … Og det er i korte træk denne bogs tillblivelseshistorie.” Wilmont, Bjowulf, p. 3 of “Forord.”Not a scholar of
Beowulf but a painter and great admirer of the poem, Wilmont thought that the time was right to dust off Hansen and make his translation readable again for a contemporary audience; ample illustrations would give visual currency to the text as well. The publication was celebrated in a public event in Copenhagen on 19 October 1983 titled “Barry hilse Beowulf” (Barry Greets Beowulf), with music by Leif Johansson’s orchestra and comments by Ebbe Kløvedal Reich.
23 Wilmont, personal email correspondence. Here are the opening lines of Hansen’s translation again with Wilmont’s updated version below them. As you will see, there are quite a few changes:
Om spyd-daners færd i fortids dage,
om dåd og bedrift, af drotterne øvet,
om ædlingers sejrsry sagn har vi hørt!
Ofte Skjold Skéfing drev skarevis fjendernes
myldrende flokke fra mjødsalens bænke
og slog dem med jammer. Som hjælpeløst barn
blev først han fundet, men fanged så lykke
og voksed i hæder o gry under himlen,
så alle de folk, der fjernt over hval-vejen
rundt om leved, lyde ham måtte
og skat ham give: godt var hans styre!
Om spyddaners våbenfærd i svundne dage,
om dåd og bedrifter udøvet af drotter,
og om slægters sejre har vi hørt mange sagn.
Ofte Skjold Skéfing drevet i skarevis
fjenders myldrende flokke, bort fra salens bænke,
og slået dem med frygt. Som forældreløs barn
blev han fundet, og senere skulle han få
bade hæder og jarlers hyldest,
så folkeslag, fjernt overe havet,
måtte lyde, lovprise og hædre ham,
Samt yde store skatter, thi godt var hans styre.
A year after Wilmont’s book appeared, Andreas Haarder, whose work was discussed in chapter 5, published his translation of
Beowulf. He had been working on the translation since 1980, he says in his foreword, and he had a personal reason for doing so. A scholar a long time ago had postulated that Beowulf’s burial mound stood on the headland in Haarder’s home district in Denmark, Rønshoved, and the poem and the place had been linked for him ever since. (Zeruneith makes a similar remark in his 2023 book.)
24 Haarder, Sangen om Bjovulf, p. 7. Haarder also had professional reasons for translating
Beowulf. Such a poem transcends boundaries of time and place, is what Grundtvig called “the living word,” and the time was ripe for a new Danish translation of it.
25 Ibid., p. 11. The
Beowulf tradition in Denmark is unique in all the world; there the poem is directly connected to the people because of Grundtvig’s translations of many parts of it into songs for the folk high schools and that anyone, regardless of background, can sing. In Denmark, without any knowledge of the poem whatsoever, one can sing about Beowulf’s fight with Grendel or Hrothgar’s being liberated from monstrous violence.
26 Ibid., p. 13.There are four Danish translations of the poem, too, and Haarder comments briefly on them all. He considers Grundtvig’s 1820 translation “a feat of power, delivered by a remarkable personality who insisted as a pioneer researcher on having contact with scholars and as an intermediary, on addressing a wide readership.”
27 “en kraftpræstation, leveret af en mærkværdig personlighed, der insisterede på som pionerforsker at have kontakt med de lærde og som formidler at henvende sig til en bred læserskare.” Ibid., p. 15. He deems Schaldemose’s 1847 translation to be derivative, absolutely unoriginal and unlearned, but still with some limited value to readers until 1910, when Hansen’s translation appeared.
28 Ibid., p. 17. He lauds that translation as possessing a combination of fidelity to the original text and a “sense of wording, sound, and verse rhythm that makes the whole thing ring.”
29 “sans for ordføring, lydvirkning og versrytme, der får det hele til at klinge.” Ibid., p. 17. Constantin-Hansen’s translation, however, is troublesome, mainly because it contains only part of the text, but Haarder praises Skovgaard’s masterful illustrations, several of which are timeless.
30 Ibid., p. 15. Finally, Haarder is least generous with Wilmont’s translation, which he finds problematic as a whole, “obviously because of an inadequate knowledge of the OE as well as the Danish language.”
31 “øjensynlig på grund af et utilstrækkeligt kendskab til såvel det oldengelske som det danske sprog.” Ibid., p. 19.Where to go after Hansen, Haarder asks? The answer is to turn back to the original text, and he gives lines 320–31a, describing the paved path to Heorot, as an example of how he intends to do so. The use of half-lines bound by alliteration and two stressed and a variable number of unstressed syllables characterize these lines and the rest of the poem; Haarder reproduces those features in his translation to a great degree.
32 Ibid., p. 20. The lines in question read:
Vejen var stenlagt, stein førte dem,
krigere i klynge. Kampbrynjen skinnede,
fast, håndknyttet; funklende ringjern
sang i kamptøjet på samme tid,
som de kom duvende dådklædt til hallen.
De søtrætte satte de side skjolde,
den benhårde skjoldrand mod bygningens mur;
så tog de plads på bænken – brynjerne klirrede,
krigsmændens kampudstyr; deres kastespyd stod,
de seljendes våben og værktøj stod samlet,
gråspidset asketræ; gruppen var jernstærk,
våbenudsmykket.
33 Ibid., p. 21.The road was paved, stone guided them,
warriors in a group. Battle byrnies shone,
first, linked by hand; sparkling ring iron
sang in war gear at the same time
that they came dressed in deeds to the hall.
The sea-weary ones put their broad shields,
the bone-hard shield bosses, against the building’s wall;
then they took their places on the bench – their byrnies
clanged, the warriors’ battle gear; their spears stood,
the weapons of the sailors and tools stood gathered,
grey-tipped ash-trees; the group was iron strong,
adorned with weapons.
Haarder observes that translation is a balancing act between fidelity to the original text and to the norms of the target language into which the text is being translated.
34 Ibid., p. 23. Even if one does not know Danish or OE, reading his translation and the OE original together and out loud drives home his achievement:
Stræt wæs stanfah, stig wisode
Gumum ætgædere. Guðbyrne scan …
Vejen var stenlagt, stien førte dem,
krigere i klynge. Kampbrynjen skinnede …
Where OE names in the text have their counterparts in ON, Haarder uses the ON form as well as the conventional Scandinavian name for Beowulf since Grundtvig, “Bjovulf.” To make his translation even more useful to readers, Haarder supplies summaries of each of the forty-three fitts or songs of the poem, and Viggo Kragh-Hansen supplies numerous line drawings to illustrate the narrative as it proceeds. Haarder’s translation was reprinted in 2001.
Following Haarder’s translation of
Beowulf come five retellings of the poem for children seven years and older from 1986 to 2012. Children are not a scholarly audience or an educated general one, but are extremely important, nonetheless. One of the many uses of enchantment, to borrow Bruno Bettelheim’s title for his famous book, is to engender interest in such things as the early Middle Ages or
Beowulf that may lead to greater appreciation in adulthood. We do not know how well these books succeeded in producing serious readers or scholars of
Beowulf in Denmark, but the books themselves clearly have the power to entertain and delight. The first of these is by the Danish author Ole Pedersen (1939–), whose
Nordiske guder og sagnhelte (Nordic Gods and Legendary Heroes, 1986) includes the story of Beowulf’s fight with the Grendel kin among stories about gods and heroes from Thor to Sigurd and Brynild.
35 Pedersen, Nordiske guder, pp. 110–17. Two more are by Lars-Henrik Olsen (1946–), a children’s author and zoologist who has written several books about wildlife but is best known for a trilogy of novels about a boy’s encounter with the Norse gods.
36 Weinreich, “Lars-Henrik Olsen.” Norse heroes interest Olsen as well. Among a plethora of them, such as Weyland the smith, Rolf Krake, Sigurd, Gudrun, Svanhild, and Sigrid in his
Nordiske heltesagn (Nordic Heroic Tales, 2003), Olsen places Scyld Scefing and Beowulf. Scyld is second in the book after Weyland, and Beowulf comes three heroes later just after King Frode the First. Olsen’s welcoming Beowulf into this host of legendary figures is significant because Beowulf thus becomes unmistakably Scandinavian, not English, to an audience of young adult readers who will quickly become adults. Olsen’s first book on Beowulf,
Bjovulf: Et sagn fra Danmarks oldtid (Beowulf: A Story from Denmark’s Legendary History, 2002), prepared the way for the welcoming of Beowulf. Here are the opening two paragraphs of Olsen’s retelling of the tale in his
Nordiske heltesagn:
En af Skjoldungerne hed Roar. Han drog udenlands på store hærtogter, vandt guld, hæder og ære og blev berømt som sine forfædre. Folk flokkedes om ham, og hans hird blev stor og mægti. Landet voksede i ry og rigdom.
Kong Roar fandt da på, at der ved Lejre skulle bygges en stor og flot hal, større end nogen anden, hvor folk kunne more sig, spise og drikke. I denne pægtige hal ville han sidde på en tronstol for enden of højbordet. Taget skulle glimte af guld. Der skulle være stengulv, og hallen skulle være så smuk og imponerende, at det ville tag pusten fra selv de fornemmeste mænd, der kom på besøg.
37 Olsen, Nordiske heltesagn, p. 49.One of the Scyldings was called Roar. He went abroad on great expeditions, won gold, honor and glory and became famous like his forefathers. People flocked to him, and his army became great and mighty. The country grew in reputation and wealth.
King Roar then decided that there at Lejre a big and elegant hall should be built, bigger than any other, where people could enjoy themselves, eat and drink. In this stately hall, he would sit on a throne at the end of the high table. The roof would glitter with gold. There would be a stone floor, and the hall would be so beautiful and impressive that it would take the breath away from even the most distinguished men who came on a visit.
Because of the complex cultural work it tries to do, the Danish rendering of Henriette Barkow’s
Beowulf: An Anglo-Saxon Epic (2003) is the most intriguing translation mentioned in this book. Barkow, a children’s author, editor, and “Story Re-Teller” at Mantra Lingua Ltd. in London, retold
Beowulf for young children, and that retelling was then translated into several languages to accommodate the migration of peoples and their children across the world today. In multi-lingual elementary school classrooms,
Beowulf can be read or heard in Barkow’s English adaptation and in parallel translations of it into Albanian, Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese, Farsi, German, Gujarati, Portuguese, Punjabi, Somali, Mexican Spanish, Spanish, Turkish, and Urdu. In Denmark,
Beowulf og hvordan han bekæmpede Grendel – et angelsaksisk epos (Beowulf and How He Fought Grendel – An Anglo-Saxon Epic, 2004) can be read or heard in a Danish translation by Jakob Kjær and a Persian translation by Sajida Fawz and with captivating illustrations by Alan Down. Mantra Lingua Ltd.’s mission is a laudable one: to enhance home language acquisition as well as acquisition of the host country’s language “in bilingual versions of bestsellers, such as
The Hungry Caterpillar,
Brown Bear … We publish books with high quality illustrations and production standards so that our books sit proudly in any mainstream bookshelf. We cover a wide range of genres and ages, and our family of ‘Story Re-tellers’ ensure that home languages are child friendly and not mechanically translated.”
38 See Mantra Lingua’s website at https://uk.mantralingua.com/content/about-us. The power of translation to cross multiple boundaries – geographic, linguistic, and cultural – is made manifest daily in the work of this remarkable publisher.
The most recent retelling of
Beowulf in Danish is by John Rydahl (1959), a textbook author who spent a lot of time on storytelling, myths, and legends when he was a primary school teacher.
39 Rydahl, email communication to Bjork. His book for children aged ten to thirteen,
Bjovulf: Den gamle dragedræber (Beowulf: The Old Dragon Slayer), was published in 2012. Gitte Skov supplied the amusing and sometimes gruesome illustrations. When Grendel first attacks Heorot in the poem, for example, the text reads:
Grendel tog først den ene og så den anden af kong Roars sovende krigere og kvaste dem mellem tænderne, så blodet sprøjtede ud over gulv og vægge i den store hal.
40 Rydahl, Bjovulf, p. 17. Grendel took first one then another of king Hrothgar’s sleeping warriors and squashed them between his teeth so that blood spurted out across the floor and walls in the big hall.
One can imagine kids recoiling gleefully from this grizzly description and the seemingly twenty-feet-tall Grendel troll on the same page grinning out at them with mouth agape, rows and rows of spiked teeth like a shark’s thrusting up and down, and with the impaled head of a horn-helmeted Dane on one tooth and half the body of another Dane dangling from Grendel’s right hand. Grendel is fearsome, beastly, grotesque; the children are enchanted.
Figure 11. “Uhyret Grendel” by Gitte Skov, 2012.
Enchantment grips us beyond childhood as well. Keld Zeruneith, whose work was discussed in chapters 4 and 5, remembers his first encounter with ancient Greek texts in Danish translation in his youth:
The first books I bought with my own money, earned by weeding beets, were Otto Gelsted’s translations of
The Iliad and
The Odyssey. They were so inspiring that they later led me to Homer in the original language. So now that I have occupied myself with
Beowulf for several years, I have felt motivated in all humility to follow in Gelsted’s footsteps and create a new version of the major work of Anglo-Saxon poetry.
41 “De første bøger, jeg købte for penge, jeg selv havde tjent ved at luge roer, var Otto Gelsteds oversættelser af Iliaden og Odysseen. De var så inspirerende, at det siden førte mig til Homer på originalsproget. Så da jeg nu har beskæftiget mig med Beowulf i adskillige år, har jeg følt mig motiveret til i al beskedenhed at gå i Gelsteds fodspor og lave en gendigtning af angelsaksisk digtnings hovedværk.” Zeruneith, Beowulf, p. 126.Zeruneith is the most recent Dane to translate that major work, and his
Beowulf: En gendigtning med efterskrift og noter (Beowulf: A New Version with an Afterword and Notes, 2018) differs from all its predecessors: it is in prose, just as Gelsted’s translations of Homer are. The first editions of those translations are from 1954 (
Odysseen) and 1955 (
Illiaden), and by 2001 they had reached their nineteenth edition. By 2022, both were available as audiobooks. Gelsted’s translations are so dominant and well respected that they were even translated into other languages such as Swedish. Aspiring to Gelsted’s level is therefore a lofty goal. It is comparable to aspiring to the level of E. Talbot Donaldson (1910–87), whose prose translation of
Beowulf from 1966 dominated the field and was read by thousands of students in
The Norton Anthology of English Literature until it was replaced in the seventh edition in 2000 by Seamus Heaney’s verse translation. As well as being inspired by Gelsted to translate into prose, Zeruneith had two other inspirations: his students, who had trouble understanding Haarder’s verse translation of the poem, and Goethe, who greatly preferred prose translations of foreign texts over verse ones.
42 Zeruneith, email communication with Bjork, 2 August 2023. The initial reception of Zeruneith’s translation was quite positive. One reviewer, for example, praised it as “a magnificent gift” (
en prægtig gave), perfect in style and solemn and noble in tone. It “flows so easily and effortlessly along that reading and reciting it become the purest pleasure. It has in a noble way succeeded in retaining the poem’s heroic diction without adding anything to convey the dramatic tale.”
43 “flyder den så let og ubesværet af sted, at læsning og oplæsning bliver den reneste lyst. Det er på fornemste vis lykkedes at holde kvadets heroiske ordvalg uden at sætte noget til, hvad angår det at formidle den dramatiske historie.” Skyum-Nielsen, “Nyoversættelsen af ‘Beowulf’.” Here’s a sampling:
Hør her! Vi har før fået fortalt, hvordan spyddanskeres konger i tidligere tid høstede stort ry ved tapperhed. Sådan vandt Skjold Skefing et væld af mjødbænke fra sine fjender i mange lande; han indgød alle skræk og rædsel tilbage fra dengang, hvor han [var] blevet fundet, alene og hjælpeløs. Men han fandt trøst, for under himlen voksede han sig stor og blomstrede i ære; enhver, der var i hans nærhed, ja, selv hinsides havet, hvalers våde vej, måtte adlyde og betale skat til ham. Han var en god konge!”
44 Zeruneith, Beowulf, p. 4.Listen here! We have been told before how the kings of the Spear Danes in earlier times gained great fame for bravery. So Skjold Skefing won an abundance of mead benches from his enemies in many lands; he brought back all the terror and fear from the time when he had been found, alone and helpless. But he found comfort, for under heaven he grew great and flourished in glory; everyone who was in his presence, yes, even beyond the sea, the wet whale-road, had to obey him and pay him tribute. He was a good king!
Zeruneith uses ON equivalents of AS names when possible, just as Haarder does, except for Beowulf, and he has added features to his text that make it even more enriching and accessible. He includes full annotations and a detailed afterword, of course, and has also inserted useful cross references in the summaries of each of the fitts or songs. These are especially welcome in the second, often confusing, part of the poem. For fitt or song 40, for example, the summary reads, “The messenger awaits the hours of the wolf: the Franks and Frisians will attack in revenge for Hygelac’s attack (mentioned in songs 18, 33, and 35). The old Swedish king Ongentheow kills King Hæthcyn and is attacked by Hygelac (mentioned in song 35).”
45 “Sendebuddet venter ulvetider: Frankere og frisere vil angibe som hævn for Hygelaks angreb (omtalt i 18., 33. og 35. sang). Den gamle svenskekonge Ongenteov dræber kong Hætkyn og angribes af Hygelak (omtalt i 35. sang).” Zeruneith, Beowulf, p. 115.