not very st. patrick's
We had a colloquium (is that how you call it?) in uni on Scandinavian epos (by the way, I find that there's no nice English term for a Russian word, so I'm gonna use... kind of... the same word), which was awesome. All the tales and the sagas, ah.
I may know more on Völsungs than I ever wanted and do not even care. Kind of a week devoted to exploring the different sources and its reflection in the JRRT version does that to you. An opportunity to study and examine and analyze Tolkien, to me, is amazing, no matter what work of his it is and even if it depends very heavily on some ancient sources, like Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun does.
By god, it's beautiful. I read the last... IDK, thirty stanzas of Guðrúnarkviða en nýja out loud, and it's so powerful.
Consider this bit, for example. It just... sings. Trembles.
‘I haughty see here heart undaunted.
Högni held it, heart untrembling.
Unshaken lies it, so shook it seldom
beating in boldest breast of princes.
Alone now living, Lord of Niflungs,
the gold I hold and guard for ever!
In hall nor heath nor hidden dungeon
shall friend or foeman find it gleaming.
Rhine shall rule it, rings and goblets,
in weltering water wanly shining.
In the deeps we cast it; dark it rolleth,
as useless to man as of yore it proved!
Cursed be Atli,
king of evil,
of glory naked,
gold-bereavéd;
gold-bereavéd,
gold-tormented,
murder-tainted,
murder-haunted!’
Fires of madness
flamed and started
from eyes of Atli;
anguish gnawed him:
‘Serpents seize him!
snakes shall sting him.
In the noisome pit
naked cast him!’
And the commentary (for which we must thank Christopher)! And his lectures and notes. Professor owns my heart. Along with Scandinavian myths and sagas.
The material of tale and verse came to them - and found very different conditions in Scandinavian lands to those which produced them: above all they found no wealthy courts in the Southern sense, nor headquarters of powerful warlike forces, no great captains of hosts or kings to encourage and pay for poetic composition. And more, they found a different local store of mythology and stories of local heroes and sea-captains. The local legends and the local myths were modified, but they remained Scandinavian, and they could not if we had them, and still less can the tattered fragments of later disjointed memories of them, be taken as a compensation for the loss of nearly all that belonged to more southerly Germania, least of all as the virtual equivalent of those vanished things. Related they were, but they were different.
(from a lecture on Edda)
I know it's kinda childish of me, but what I really love about Scandinavia is how special it is. <3
I may know more on Völsungs than I ever wanted and do not even care. Kind of a week devoted to exploring the different sources and its reflection in the JRRT version does that to you. An opportunity to study and examine and analyze Tolkien, to me, is amazing, no matter what work of his it is and even if it depends very heavily on some ancient sources, like Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun does.
By god, it's beautiful. I read the last... IDK, thirty stanzas of Guðrúnarkviða en nýja out loud, and it's so powerful.
Consider this bit, for example. It just... sings. Trembles.
‘I haughty see here heart undaunted.
Högni held it, heart untrembling.
Unshaken lies it, so shook it seldom
beating in boldest breast of princes.
Alone now living, Lord of Niflungs,
the gold I hold and guard for ever!
In hall nor heath nor hidden dungeon
shall friend or foeman find it gleaming.
Rhine shall rule it, rings and goblets,
in weltering water wanly shining.
In the deeps we cast it; dark it rolleth,
as useless to man as of yore it proved!
Cursed be Atli,
king of evil,
of glory naked,
gold-bereavéd;
gold-bereavéd,
gold-tormented,
murder-tainted,
murder-haunted!’
Fires of madness
flamed and started
from eyes of Atli;
anguish gnawed him:
‘Serpents seize him!
snakes shall sting him.
In the noisome pit
naked cast him!’
And the commentary (for which we must thank Christopher)! And his lectures and notes. Professor owns my heart. Along with Scandinavian myths and sagas.
The material of tale and verse came to them - and found very different conditions in Scandinavian lands to those which produced them: above all they found no wealthy courts in the Southern sense, nor headquarters of powerful warlike forces, no great captains of hosts or kings to encourage and pay for poetic composition. And more, they found a different local store of mythology and stories of local heroes and sea-captains. The local legends and the local myths were modified, but they remained Scandinavian, and they could not if we had them, and still less can the tattered fragments of later disjointed memories of them, be taken as a compensation for the loss of nearly all that belonged to more southerly Germania, least of all as the virtual equivalent of those vanished things. Related they were, but they were different.
(from a lecture on Edda)
I know it's kinda childish of me, but what I really love about Scandinavia is how special it is. <3