Customer Reviews

Beowulf & Grendel: The Truth Behind England's Oldest Legend

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an inspiring work. John Grisby has brought a wide array of factors concerning early northern culture together to make his point. His understanding of culture and myth and his obvious enthusiasm for these subjects make this one of the more interesting (and fresh) books to appear on the subject in a long time. Before I go further, I would like to point out that I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Norse/Germanic Mythology. If you are not greatly interested in Germanic and Indo-European linguistics you will enjoy the book greatly, and needn't read the rest of this review. If you are interested in linguistics, please read on.

Be very careful when reading this book. As he is enthusiastic, he is also academically reckless. There are a lot of passages starting with "some have been led to believe..." or "some claim that..." that end with no citation or note - My question to these passages is always "Who believes that, and how do I know that "they" offering an opinion that can be trusted as objective?". Furthermore, he makes it obvious on several occasions that he is no linguist. He offers Indo-European etymologies that don't conform to any known transcription standard, and on several occasions he seems to have trouble discerning Indo-European forms from Proto-Germanic (there is a big difference).

My intention here is not to be harsh, disapproving, or unduly critical. The subject matter of this book resides in a field that has all too often fallen prey to misunderstanding. To exemplify the type of error I am talking about, and to add credence for my objectivity here, I would like to point out two linguistic oversights that can be illustrated without excess circumlocution.

On page 69 Grisby raises the issue of a double meaning in the phrase "beow waes breme blad wide sprang" "Beow was renowned, far and wide his glory spread", arguing that this was a metaphor for the spread of agriculture throughout the north. The indication, he claims, is that the name Beow means "barley". That's true. In Anglo-Saxon the word "beow" does in fact mean barley. But that isn't the name that appears in the manuscript. The sentence he's referring to appears on the first leaf of the manuscript, (which he included as the first photographic plate in the book, just after page 118). The original manuscript reads "Beowulf waes breme blad wide sprang" - The name Beowulf here belonging to another character by the name of Beowulf. The only place that I can recall ever seeing this name appear printed in the poem as "Beow" and not "Beowulf" is in Seamus Heany's translation where he intentionally removes the sequence "-ulf" from the name to avoid confusion between this character and the hero of the poem. Scholars have posited that "Beowulf" was written here due to scribal misunderstanding, and that the name was in fact originally "Beo", but again, that is not what appears in the manuscript, and Grisby makes no mention of the fact that this point is an educated theory and not an attested fact.

Also on p. 156 Grisby makes reference to an Indo-European root "inguz" as the source of Germanic theonym Yngvi/Ingui/Ing. "*Inguz" is a Proto-East-Germanic word not an Indo-European root. Furthermore there is no consensus as to where the early Germanic speakers got this word and what its original meaning was. The name Yngvi, Ingui, Ing, etc. has no universally agreed upon etymology and very few linguists posit an Indo-European origin for the name. Further, the meaning of the word which Grisby offers "son" is not directly attested in any of the languages. The Old Irish name, Oengus/Angus by which Grisby claims an etymological connection to "Yngvi/Ingui", is similar in appearance but it is not related etymologically. The old Irish name is compound form, from Oen-gus; literally "one-strength" the meaning being "having solitary strength" these "-strength" names are very common in Old Irish and Modern Gaelic.

Hopefully without turning this into a term paper my sources are:
Vladimir Orel "A Handbook of Germanic Etymology", Winfred P. Lehman "A Gothic Etymological Dictionary", J.P. Mallory and Douglas Adams "An Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture", and Calvert Watkins "The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots" all works that are available (to my knowledge) from Amazon.com.

There are quite a few more problems, those are just two that I found the hardest to swallow, but by now I hope I've made my point clear: be careful when reading this book and looking for solid answers. The author jumps to a lot of conclusions - linguistically and otherwise.

All that said, I still give it four stars. The book is highly readable, enjoyable and insightful. I wish the author followed through more thoroughly on many of his claims with more citation and less speculation, but it is overall a very inspired work. Despite it's weak details, I still support many of the author's overall conclusions. This could be a seminal work redefining how the general reader, rather than just the scholar, views the Old North. If the author's love of the subject were the only judgement criteria, I would give him ten stars.

I apologise for the lack of brevity.

John Grigsby, in his book Beowulf and Grendel has accomplished a monumental feat, pulling together and enormous amount of information, covering a vast period of time, and fitting it into a recognizable whole. He begins with the most ancient worship of fertility goddesses in Sandinavia and northern Europe, continues into the development of Odin worship and creates a context for the events of the Beowulf Poem. There are lots of interesting excusions into other world mythologies, fairy tales and even bog mummies and the book includes photos and drawings of artifacts that bring the facts to life. I happened to read the book shortly after seeing Gunnarson's movie, Beowulf and Grendel and it really brought the story into focus, dangling bits and pieces of storyline formed themselves into a comprehensible pattern thanks to his research. Easy to read, yet backed with lots of academic references it is essential fo anyone interested in Norse mythology, the Beowulf Poem or the myths at the foundation of Tolkein's Lord of the Rings

This book makes the interesting case that the Beowulf poem is less a dim recollection of a particular historical incident or of a strictly mythological tale, than it is a veiled recounting of a religious change that overwhelmed the cultural lives of the ancestors of the English. John Grigsby brings archeological and ethnological studies to bear on this effort to reconstruct the actual circumstances and practices of the peoples who were to become the Angles, Saxons and Jutes (who in turn became the Anglo-Saxons who became today's English). In so doing he suggests that the Norse mythos and pantheon, as we have it from later times, was, in fact, relatively late on the scene and that the proto-English, whom he identifies with the Ingaevones of Roman times, were agriculturalists with a religion that reflected agriculturalist predilections long before they worshipped Woden and Thunor (Odin and Thor in later Viking times).

According to Grigsby, the Beowulf myth is a dim echo of the era in which latecomers in the area, worshippers of the sky gods identifiable with large segments of the later Norse pantheon, overthrew the old ways, ways that required the annual sacrifice of a king to a fearsome goddess and her son. Grigsby makes many connections with the triple goddess worshipping neolithic age that apparently once predominated in the Mediterranean and European areas, with the old myths of the Nile valley and with the old faiths which suffused the area in which Rome arose. But in the end his argument boils down to this: that the Beowulf story is a somewhat corrupted and confused recollection of some events which altered forever the older beliefs and practices of these peoples, traditions that the Angles, Saxons et al brought with them out of the old country (today's southern Denmark) when they conquered the British Isles. They were not yet sky god worshippers, not yet Wodenists, Grigsby maintains, but came from a backwater part of Scania which had remained more primitive than other parts of Germania and Scandinavia in the Dark Ages that followed Rome's fall. Thus, the story of Beowulf is as native to the early Germanic English as to the land from which they hailed.

It's an interesting claim and there's a lot to chew on in the information Grigsby brings forward. But the book, itself, lacks cohesion or a clearcut thesis as to the actual events which underly the famous Old English poem set in Denmark's Heorot. The parallels he draws with other traditions (including the Hrolf Kraki saga which deals with many of the same personalities, in a roughly comparable time, albeit from the perspective of the much later Norse tradition) are intriguing. But there really isn't that much new here and the failure to offer a firm conclusion or really unravel the story behind the story mar this book. Good for scholars, I think, and for those with a strong interest in the area, but not really right for laymen and not ultimately as satisfying as I had hoped it would be.

SWM
author of The King of Vinland's Saga

A very poor effort. The author displays no deep understanding of (1) the language of the work he undertakes to explain (2) physical circumstances of the text he examines.

The work is sloppy. The main point of discussion concerns the historicity of Beowulf, Grendel, and Grendel's Mother. Grigsby begins with an examination of the genealogy of Scylding dynasty found at the beginning of the Beowulf. He (as many others have) is drawn to the mysterious figure of `Sheaf', and uses the figure to springboard into what is really the main (and tiresomely repeated) theme of this book: that the fight between Beowulf, Grendel, and Grendel's Mother is the dim echo of a ritual of a corn/fertility god's death and resurrection, encompassing both positive and negative aspects of a Neolithic cult's understanding of divinity.

There is very little material to work with from the era of Beowulf - either its mythological setting or the time the text was composed/copied (Grigsby blandly states it was the 11th century). To fill this very large gap, Grigsby turns to a method largely (and rightly) discredited among the majority of modern scholars, namely, comparative myth. Thus, we are taken on grand tours of ancient Egyptian myths about corn; to Greece where we learn about corn myths; to Stone Age burial mounds that we learn are connected to features recurrent in the corn myths. Grigsby's method is circular: if it fits with the corn cult he posits, it is related to the corn cult. Circumstantial evidence is enough to prove the underlying continuity of this surprisingly resilient cult of the corn god.

Grigsby claims a unique place for his book because he does not work backwards in time toward an understanding of the text, but forward from dim prehistory - which amounts to starting from almost zero. The great pitfall of archeology is that the artifacts it discovers as symbols lack the context the original culture attached to them where historical documents are not present to provide these clues. In maters of ancient religion, speculation is at its most faulty here: Grigsby's analysis of prehistoric culture is flawed. He gathers together coherence across thousands of years and miles based on shoddy linguistics of rhyme and surface similarities and in a circular argument makes the pieces fit together (Beowulf=Barley wolf). The corn cult he fancies for the ancient Germanic tribes is largely based on a few snippets about Sheaf and information taken from late Medieval Norse sagas (material that is and should be held suspect, but Grigsby trusts it implicitly); the snippets are fleshed out by references to ancient Greek and Egyptian religion to make what I consider an anachronism at best or folly at worst: a cult of a divinity with a ceremony that is relatively static and coherent across centuries and cultures - the tatters of authentic religion and cult we can examine from historical sources are filled with ambiguities and show change over time: if the extrapolation method holds true for the barley cult, then it must account for how other religions do not behave with the neat regularity and conservative mindset of Grigsby's cult (which seems more static that modern orthodox dogma). Most damning of all, the cult is not carried on even where the symbols are half forgotten (compare old Roman prayers), but are clear enough in part (it is claimed) to the Christian scribe who wrote Beowulf as we have it now.

Grigsby's work is further weakened by such undergraduate infelicities as `some claim that' or `it has led some to believe' with never a citation in sight. `Beowulf and Grendel' is like so many other works where the main methodology is the comparison of myths: crude linguistics, a wild emphasis on symbols that have languished un-decoded for millennia, and a continuity of concepts over time assumed from surface similarities (it never seems to occur to the students of myth that one culture is at perfect liberty to borrow a myth from another and adapt it to concepts/values unique to the borrowers).

Anyone really desiring to understand the circumstances surrounding Beowulf should read the appendices in Mitchell and Robinson's critical edition of Beowulf.

The book reads a little like a college essay. Some of the author's points are better supported than others. In several cases he assumes the reader must agree with him and no further proof is needed. In some cases no real proof is available because the lack of historical data. However, the author discusses some very interesting topics and writes in an accessible style. If you have any interest in Beowulf or Germanic, Norse, or Celtic cultural roots, this book is certainly worth a look. I enjoyed reading it and was motivated to further explore the topic when I finished the book.

I'm a medical researcher with special interests in neuroscience, and Grogsby's thesis is fascinating. Neuroscientists, especially the bench scientists, like to play with historical events. One example was the rise of both flagellation and tarantella, which has been linked to humid warm weather and therefore mold on the rye harvest. So, it's a believable idea.

I am less familiar with the cultures that slew the king on a yearly basis - that sounds as though it wouldn't sustain itself very well. There may be other books on that subject, whether Fraser or others, that I should look into to see how this could work.

Finally, either I missed it or Grigsby didn't mention the dragon part of the Beowulf legend in any depth. One wonders how that links up with the religious shift theme.

I've heard of this legend, and wanted to know the facts behind it. Great buy for that purpose.

I recently saw the movie Beowulf and Grendel directed by Sturla Gunnarson, starring Gerard Butler, Stellan Skarsgaard, etc at the Vancouver IFF..Loved it- however it was one of those movies that has you looking up info, makes one curious, etc. This book was published on the day I saw the movie and was thrilled to order it..It came 2 days ago and I am thoroughly enjoying it! My knowledge of the migration period and pre-Roman occupation of Northren Europe was sadly lacking.. This book is a very easy to read, interesting and entertaining take on the original poem- especially for non-scholars..comprehensible. I've read in several places about JRR Tolkien being influenced by this poem in writing the Lord of the Rings-I can see why now. Therefore I suggest that LOTR and Beowulf enthusiasts read this book!

As several other reviewers mention, Grigsby performed a tour de force in tying together items as far-removed in time and space as Isis and Osiris, Inanna and Dumuzi, Demeter and Adonis, and Freyr and Freya in a very enjoyable and readable attempt to reconstruct the lost pagan mythology of the Anglo-Saxons, a task that even Tolkien never took on. And in doing so, he on occasion let himself get carried away and pushed the facts further than they may go.

The problem with dealing with the kinds of mythic roots Grigsby ties together is that no matter what fragments of archaeology and philology we can assemble (and in the case of the pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons, this is a VERY small collection), we can never think like a pagan Anglo-Saxon, no matter how hard we strain. Myth is not just tales told to children by candlelight, it is the not-always-logical thought-process by which a society tries to explain to themselves the world around them at a specific point in time -- for a superior example of this kind of reconstruction, see Aubrey Burl's "Prehistoric Avebury." As the numerous books on the market about the Holy Grail and the "Matter of Britain" show, Grigsby is by no means alone in letting his enthusiasm lead to seeing folkloric connections that may not really be there. So, as others have already warned, read this with enjoyment, but keep your critical judgement.

One other point: Grigsby repeatedly returns to the idea that prehistoric Europeans as part of their ceremonies drank a sacred mix containing small quantities of the very dangerous fungus ergot as a way of seeing ecstatic visions of the other world. While that may be true, I took an ergot derivative when I was younger, as it is still prescribed as a natural vaso-constricter for those who suffer, as I did, from migraine headaches. And it never made me see ecstatic visions -- while it decreased the migraine, it left me feeling like I'd been run over by an eighteen-wheeler, not the sort of thing that increases religious fervor very much.

After having the great honor to see the film Beowulf and Grendel at the Toronto Film Festival, this book was just what I needed to complete my "Missing Link". My 24 hr trip to Toronto was the most I spent in a 24 Hour period but is was just so worth it. The film has indeed cast a spell on me and has left me wanting more. Well after reading this great book by John Grigsby, it was like pure brain food. It took me back to another place in time and helped me explore more this epic hero called Beowulf!!!

This is a real must read for any fan!!! Once you pick it up you will not put it down.