Posted: September 16, 1999 at 12:15:23: by Michael Martinez
: Just a small correction, Ragnarok was a Norse conception, not
: an Anglo-Saxon one, or at least not a proven one. Martin may be
: able to correct me in this but I do not think we knew in what
: the Anglo-saxons (and Jutes) believed when they invaded
: England, but they got christened before learning to write and
: thus have left no trace of anything before that.Norse and Germanic mythologies were very closely related, and shared some of the same gods. Ragnarok is recorded only in Norse writings (Icelandic), but before the 7th, 8th centuries the Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians spoke essentially the same language and shared much the same poetic traditions. "Beowulf" is incorrectly called an Anglo-Saxon poem. It survives only in an Anglo-Saxon manuscript, but the story is not about Angles or Saxons -- it's about Danes and Geats (Scandinavians) and would have been heard throughout the northern world when it was popular (essentially what are now Denmark, Norway, Sweden, England, and Germany, perhaps also France). Some of the other Anglo-Saxon poems reflect this multinational tradition of the ancient world, such as "Widsith". The northern peoples travelled freely throughout the lands, exchanging stories, traditions, and ideas along with trade and war.
------------------
Xenite.Org: Worlds of Imagination on the Web
|
