Finland has produced two translations of Beowulf, the first begun by the engineer and naval captain Johan Rudolf Dillström (1885–1928) and completed by the Finnish translator and editor Matti Järvinen. Dillström published his alliterative verse rendition of lines 1–1472 and 2961–81 in 1927 in Laivastolehti (Navy Magazine), a publication of the Finnish Navy Officers’ Association, and Järvinen finished Dillström’s work and published it in book form in 1999 more or less simultaneously with the publication of the second Finnish translation. In their introduction to that publication, Osmo Pekonen (1960–2022) and Clive Tolley comment on Dillström’s 1927 work, unaware that it had been finished. Because I do not know Finnish, Clive Tolley kindly sent me the English version of the introduction, which I quote here:
A full translation of
Beowulf has not previously been published in Finnish. However, in the 1920’s a sea-captain by the name of Dillström published about half the poem in successive issues of the
Laivastolehti; the considerable concentration in the poem upon the sea and water was obviously a point of attraction for a maritime man. Dillström’s efforts mark a considerable achievement; not only has he translated on the whole fairly accurately, but he is also conversant with much of contemporary scholarship. Unfortunately he did not have sufficient discrimination always to distinguish the plausible from the hare-brained, and his background notes, while noble in intent, are perilous to venture upon. In particular his forced attempts to link aspects of the poem with Finland represent a sort of desperate historicizing nationalism now relegated to the dustbin in all respectable scholarly circles.
1 Tolley, “Introduction,” p. 28.Figure 13. Johan Rudolf Dillström, 1920s.
Pekonen, a mathematician, historian of science, author, and translator,
2 Anon., “Professori Osmo Pekonen.” and Tolley, a lecturer in the Department of Folkloristics at the University of Turku,
3 See his website at http://www.clivetolley.co.uk/About.html. make just two connections between Finland and
Beowulf. They note in the opening paragraph of the introduction that the poem contains the first reference in English literature to Finland in line 580b,
Finna land (land of Finns), the Finns being the occupants of far distant and mysterious Lappland. They try to preserve the mystery of the OE name by translating it as
Turjanmaa, the Lapps of the modern Russian Terskij Bereg region called
Terfinnas in Ohthere’s account of his northern voyage in the ninth century.
4 Tolley, “Introduction,” p. 1. They also connect
Beowulf and Finland through the mythic figure of Beow in line 18a, who corresponds to the Finnish agricultural deity Pekko, “a name which is probably borrowed from the ancient Germanic word for ‘barley’ from which Beow also derives.”
5 Ibid., p. 12.The source text for
Beowulf. Suomennos, johdanto ja selitykset (
Beowulf: Translation, Introduction, and Annotations, 1999) is George Jack’s 1994 edition of the poem supplemented by others, most notably Klaeber’s and Wrenn’s; the translators also consulted Björn Collinder’s Swedish translation of the poem.
6 Ibid., p. 27. Because their translation was to be the first in the Finnish language, they felt it necessary to be as faithful to the original as possible, “except where this would result in something unreadable in Finnish.” For instance, they translate lines 157–58 (rendered cumbersomely in literal English as “none of the wise men there had any need to hope for a more splendid recompense at the hands of the murderer”) as
mielevänkään miehen oli turha toivoa saavansa sakkoja surmaajan kädestä (“it was useless even for a willing man to hope to receive
wergild from the hand of the slayer”).
7 Ibid., p. 27. They also exploit the richness of Finnish in order to reproduce the poetic power of the original, occasionally using the vocabulary of prominent Finnish poets to do so and sometimes paralleling the poetic force of the original instead of giving a literal rendering.
8 Ibid., p. 27. As for the style of the translation, they decided that a verse translation is preferable to a prose one. They based their translation on the style of the original without strictly adhering to all its rules. Alliteration, for example, is not ubiquitous, and stress patterns differ from those of the OE mainly because the distinction possible between stressed and unstressed syllables in OE does not exist in Finnish.
9 Ibid., p. 28. Here is a brief example of the finished product with the OE original preceding it. Grendel’s approach to Heorot is described, beginning in lines 702b–709.
Com on wanre niht
scriðan sceadugenga.||Sceotend swæfon,
þa þæt hornreced||healdan scoldon,
ealle buton anum.||þæt wæs yldum cuþ
þæt hie ne moste||þa metod nolde,
se scynscaþa||under sceadu bregdan;
ac he wæccende||wraþum on andan
bad bolgenmod||beadwa geþinges.
Kolkosta yöstä
vaappui hahmo||hämärässä häilyen.
Avaran salin||vartijat nukkuivat,
kaikki paitsi yksi.||Ihmiset tiesivät,
ettei häijy hätyyttäjä||saattaisi heitä
Luojan sallimatta||varjoihin raastaa.
Yksi vain valvoi||raivoa rinnassaan,
kiivaana odotti||kamppailun päätöstä.
10 Tolley, “From Anglo-Saxon England to Modern Finland,” p. 10.The walker in shadows came
gliding in the dark night. The warriors slept,
those that were to hold that gabled house,
all but one. That was known to men
that the demonic foe, when God did not want it,
could not draw them into the shadows;
but he, keeping watch with fierce indignation,
awaited, swollen with rage, the outcome of the battle.