Why read The Nordic Beowulf?

Book cover of The Nordic Beowulf

Book description

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…

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European history

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Nordic Beowulf as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Rowdy Geirsson

Author

The book presents a comprehensive overview of 100+ years of existing Beowulf scholarship and looks at that material and the poem itself with a fresh perspective. The conclusions Gräslund reaches are very thought-provoking. Namely, he states that the poem was composed in Scandinavia before being transported to England and that the Geats were from Gotland rather than the more commonly accepted Götaland. The geographic and archaeological evidence he presents struck me as particularly convincing for his argument regarding Gotland. Gräslund's ideas aren't without its critics and are still just a theories, but have taken off like wildfire in Sweden. The…

From Rowdy's 3 favorite reads in 2024.