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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 argues that the material, geographical, historical, social, and ideological framework of Beowulf cannot be the independent literary product of an Old English Christian poet, but was in all essentials created orally in Scandinavia, which was a fertile seedbed for epic poetry.Through meticulous argument interwoven with an impressive assemblage of data, archaeological and otherwise, Gräslund offers possible answers to the questions of the provenance of the Geats, the location of Heorot, and many more, such as the significance of Sutton Hoo and the signification of the Grendel kin and dragon in the sixth century when the events of the poem, coinciding with cataclysmic events in northern Europe, took place.

LITERARY CRITICISM / Medieval. --- Beowulf --- Bjowulf --- Criticism, Tetual. --- Scandinavia --- Antiquities. --- Eastern Sweden. --- Gotland. --- Grendel. --- Heorot. --- Scandinavian epics. --- Sutton Hoo. --- geats. --- To 1500

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Ever since Tolkien's famous lecture in 1936, it has been generally accepted that the poem Beowulf is a fantasy, and of no use as a witness to real history. This book challenges that view, and argues that the poem provides a plausible, detailed, and consistent vision of pre-Viking history which is most unlikely to have been the poet's invention, and which has moreover received strong corroboration from archaeology in recent years. Using the poem as a starting point, historical, archaeological, and legendary sources are combined to form a picture of events in the North in the fifth and sixth centuries: at once a Dark and a Heroic Age, and the time of the formation of nations. Among other things, this helps answer two long-unasked questions: why did the Vikings come as such a shock? And what caused the previous 250 years of security from raiders from the sea?

LITERARY CRITICISM / Medieval. --- The early North, Geatas, Tolkien, Scandinavia,. --- Beowulf. --- Scandinavia --- Civilization --- History. --- History --- Civilization. --- Barbarism --- Civilisation --- Auxiliary sciences of history --- Culture --- World Decade for Cultural Development, 1988-1997 --- Beowulf --- To 1397 --- Europe --- Europe, Northern --- Scandinavie --- Europe septentrionale --- Northern Europe --- Antiquities. --- Histoire --- Civilisation. --- Antiquités. --- Civilization, Viking. --- Mythology, Norse. --- Criticism and interpretation. --- Scandinavia.

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In the present as in the past, the dead have been deployed to promote visions of identity, as well as ostensibly wider human values. Through a series of case studies from ancient Egypt through prehistoric, historic, and present-day Europe, this book discusses what is constant and what is locally and historically specific in our ways of interacting with the remains of the dead, their objects, and monuments. Postmortem interaction encompasses not only funerary rituals and intergenerational engagement with forebears, but also concerns encounters with the dead who died centuries and millennia ago. Drawing from a variety of disciplines such as archaeology, bioarchaeology, literary studies, ancient Egyptian philology, and sociocultural anthropology, this volume provides an interdisciplinary account of the ways in which the dead are able to transcend temporal distances and engender social relationships. Until quite recently, literary sciences and archaeology were generally regarded as incommensurable in their aims, methodologies, and source material. Although archaeologists and literary critics have been increasingly willing to borrow concepts and terminology from the other discipline, this book is one examples of a genuinely collaborative endeavor. This is an open access book.

Archaeology --- Anthropology --- Literature: history & criticism --- mortuary archaeology --- dead-body politics --- memory studies --- agency of the dead --- archaeological theory --- literary studies --- medieval relics --- mass graves --- burial monuments --- prehistoric graves --- History of Egyptian Sepulchral Monuments --- Iron Age in Northern Central Europe --- Historic Sources about the Uses of the Dead --- Literary Tombs in the Twelfth Century --- Archaeological Traces in Beowulf --- National Identity through Merovingian Burials --- Skeletal Remains of Saint Erik --- Dissolving Subjects in Medieval Reliquaries --- Shakespearean Exhumations --- Archaeology. --- Physical anthropology. --- Literature --- Physical-Biological Anthropology. --- Literary History. --- History and criticism. --- Appraisal of books --- Books --- Evaluation of literature --- Criticism --- Literary style --- Biological anthropology --- Somatology --- Human biology --- Archeology --- Auxiliary sciences of history --- History --- Antiquities --- Appraisal --- Evaluation