Anglo-Saxon Saturdays: Wulfes-Heafod

This Thursday, the History Channel series, Vikings, opened Season 2 with an episode called "Brother's War." Aside from the fantastic Viking shield-wall battle, gorgeous scenery, and imaginative costumes, the episode dealt boldly with the issue of betrayal. Without giving too much away, I thought it strange that when the traitor came to trial in this episode, the punishment everyone expected to be carried out was death. Death is certainly a terrible punishment, and probably fitting for such a grievous betrayal, but I had expected the verdict would be the Germanic institution of wulfes-heafod.

wulfes-heafod

(wolf-es heh-av-od)



a wolf-headed creature in the 15th c. Nuremberg Chronicle

Wulfes-heafod translates literally to "wolf's head," and no, this is not a mythic creature or monster, some sort of human with a wolf's head. Wolf's-head was a severe punishment for severe crime. When someone committed a crime serious enough to warrant a verdict of wulfes-heafod, such as murder or betrayal of one's lord, a priest (or other leader) would place his hand on the convicted criminal and declare him a wolf's-head.

Last week, I talked about Anglo-Saxon agoraphobia and how they did not like open places, but instead felt secure under a roof - both a literal one and the figurative roof of societal laws. This is exactly why being declared wolf's-head was such a terrible punishment; a wolf's-head was declared to be a wolf.

If you were declared a wulfes-heafod, you were no longer considered human. You were an "outlaw," that is, you were no longer under the protection of the law. No one was allowed to acknowledge you as a person; they couldn't talk to you, or give you food or shelter. Worst of all, they could, and were almost obligated to, kill you. Wolves were a threat, they were pests who attacked livestock and sometimes people, so whenever a wolf was spotted, it would be hunted. The same idea was supposed to apply to a wolf's-head, if seen, he would be hunted.

This, alone, would be a horrible fate for anyone at any period in history, but it was especially terrible for Anglo-Saxons (and in other Germanic cultures, such as in Vikings) because of their agoraphobia, their fear of open spaces. Being declared a wulfes-heafod exiled you only to open spaces, and away from the protection of the law. Being an "outlaw" was not freedom, it was a punishment worse than death.

Anglo-Saxon Saturdays: Weox Under Wolcnum

Last time, I wrote about one way in which the Anglo-Saxon conception of the world is different from ours in Modern America. This week, I'd like to share another, and this one is also illustrated with the help of a phrase from the proem to Beowulf:

Weox under wolcnum

(way-ox oon-der wohlk-num)

This phrase is the first half of line 8 in Beowulf and refers to the legendary king, Scyld Scefing, as he grew into a man. Weox under wolcnum translates to "waxed under welkin" or with more familiar vocabulary, "grew under the heavens." The poet chose the word "wolcnum" to fit the alliteration* but the concept, not the particular word, is what is important here. The idea is that Scyld grew up under the protection of the heavens, under the safety of the skies. This is a sort of verbal fencing-in, giving the impression of a sheep fold or fenced pasture that was a safe and happy place in which to grow up.

The Anglo-Saxons were an agoraphobic people. They saw rules and boundaries and a roof over the head as safe and protective. This plays into how community-oriented the Anglo-Saxon culture was as well. They were closely tied with their local communities and the idea of leaving those ties was terrifying (as I will expand upon in the next Anglo-Saxon Saturdays post, wulfes heafod). The happiest scenes in Anglo-Saxon literature fall under the theme of "joys of the hall" or the eating and drinking and singing and boasting and general merriment that went on in the safety of an Anglo-Saxon mead-hall.

When Grendel comes to attack Heorot in Beowulf, he comes from the wilderness, from the fens. This is where monsters and dragons dwell and you don't have the protection of your fences or home or your fighting companions anymore. The laws of man and common decency do not apply there, and the wild is a dangerous place where the weather, the landscape, and the animals seem to conspire together for your destruction.

This is the exact opposite of how most modern Americans feel. Our culture is claustrophobic. We tend to see boundaries and walls as confining, as something to be challenged. We tend to see wide open spaces as places of freedom and adventure, where anything is possible (think of the genre of American Westerns). But this is exactly what scared Anglo-Saxons about open spaces: if anything can happen, then anything can go wrong.


*Alliteration is a convention of Anglo-Saxon poetry; rather than rhyme, in which words sound alike at the end (i.e. - walker, knocker, sock her), when words alliterate, they sound alike at the beginning (i.e. - Will would wish to wail?).

Anglo-Saxon Saturdays: Þrym

The Anglo-Saxon culture of early medieval England seems in some ways very familiar to us today, but in many other ways their culture was vastly different. For example, their conception of emotion was as an action, rather than a state of being. So they would express the emotion of anger as "I anger," rather than how we would express it in Modern English as "I am angry." This week's word from the Anglo-Saxon lexicon illustrates another way in which the Anglo-Saxons conceived of something differently than we do:

The first page of Beowulf in the Nowell Codex

Þrym 

(Thrumm)

The first sentence of Beowulf, in lines 1-3, reads like this:

HWÆT, WE GAR-DEna in geardagum, 
þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon, 
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon!

(Lo! We of the Spear-Danes, in days of yore
of the people's kings, the glory heard,
how the noble ones framed courage!)

This sentence sets the backdrop for the rest of the poem, starting with the story of the great Scyld Scefing, legendary leader of the Spear-Danes, as an example of a god cyning (good king). The word þrym, in the second line, translated here as "glory" carries a lot more meaning that just that. Þrym can also mean noise, sound, strength, power, majesty, and reputation. The last of these is the most telling, as the idea of "reputation" and noise typically do not go together in the modern reader's mind.

The Anglo-Saxon conception of reputation and glory was very different from ours today. Today, we tend to conceptualize "glory" visually, represented by bright light, often seen as a sunrise, halo, or a sort of glowing aura. (Try googling "glory" and you'll see what I mean.) The Anglo-Saxons, however, thought of glory as an audible phenomenon, thus, reputation and glory and noise could all be embedded in the same word. This has a lot to do with the Anglo-Saxon's warrior-ethos culture and the high value on boasting, storytelling, and reputation.

The Anglo-Saxons had a pre-individualist culture, meaning that in their culture, individuals placed their own needs below those of their community. Leaving your community was not really an option, and since you couldn't get away from the people you lived and worked with, their opinion of you was extremely important. The way to keep up your reputation was to act such that people spoke highly of you, that you could boast about your accomplishments publicly, and that people would continue to talk and sing about you even after you were gone.

So the idea of noise and reputation and majesty all being included in one word, þrym, helps us to understand a little bit more about the Anglo-Saxons; the more noise there was about you (the more people talked about you), the more power you had, the higher your reputation, and the more respected you would be in your community. 

Selected Sources:
Beowulf: A Glossed Text, edited by Michael Alexander, Penguin Books, 1995.
A Compendious Anglo-Saxon and English Dictionary, by Rev. Joseph Bosworth, Forgotten Books 2012, Originally Published 1848.

Anglo-Saxon Saturdays: Geol

In my previous post, I introduced my new series on the Anglo-Saxon world of England in the Early Middle Ages by discussing the word hwæt and what it can tell us about the nature of the Anglo-Saxon oral storytelling culture. This week, I'd like to share about the word:

Geol

Yay-ol ("ol" like in "bowl")


The word geol (sometimes spelled geohol) comes from the word gal, which meant "light" or "merry," and it once refered to the two midwinter months of December and January. This time was filled with various feasts and festivals celebrated by the Pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons. For example, December 25 was called Modranect (Mother's Night) and was celebrated as the beginning of the new year. Many of these festivals had to do with fertility (in winter, a time of infertility) and the Germanic god and goddess twins Freyr and Freyja may have been involved.

Once Christianity dominated the culture and Christmas replaced the pagan winter holidays by the 7th century AD, geol's meaning narrowed to reference the 12-day Feast of the Nativity, which began the day after Christmas Day (December 25) and ended on January 6, Epiphany, or the day when the coming of the Magi was celebrated. Later, use of the word geol narrowed even further to simply refer to Christmas Day, and was eventually replaced by the word "Christmas" itself. (Later on, the German version of the word, Yuletide, was imported into English again and still refers to the midwinter and/or Christmas season today.)

As a side note, there is no evidence that the Yule log tradition was celebrated in Anglo-Saxon England, though historian Henry Bourne theorized such. It is more likely that this particular Christmas-time tradition was imported to England in the Early Modern period, from the Germanic area of mainland Europe.

God Geol! (Good Yule!)



Selected Sources:
A Compendious Anglo-Saxon and English Dictionary, by Rev. Joseph Bosworth, Forgotten Books 2012, Originally Published 1848.
"Yule (n.)," Online Etymology Dictonary.

Anglo-Saxon Saturdays: Hwæt!

I'm starting a new series! There's a medieval culture and society that was extremely influential on modern speakers of the English language, and on Western Civilization in general: the Anglo-Saxons. These were the rulers and dwellers of Angle-Land (England) throughout the first half of the middle ages, and they spoke a language called Anglo-Saxon, also known as Old English.* So in this series, I'll share little tidbits of interesting slices of Anglo-Saxon culture, often illustrated and centered around a particular word from the Anglo-Saxon language.

And the first word is....

Hwæt!

Hwhat, ("a" like in "pat")

This word is probably best known as the first word of the Anglo-Saxon epic, Beowulf. It is often translated as "Lo!" or "Hear!" or something of that nature, but a direct translation into Modern English is really rather impossible. The term carries more meaning than a single MnE** word could convey, though Lo! Is probably the closest, albeit most archaic, possibility.

Hwæt! was a typical opening for a long story-poem such as Beowulf in Anglo-Saxon culture. It was the poet-performer's way of signaling to his audience, "Hey! Listen up! I'm about to tell a story in an authoritative voice that's not my own!" Meaning that the performer had the authority, or experience and knowledge, to tell the following story and he was not speaking in his own, everyday voice, but the voice of poetic and historical authority.

This is a good example of the Composition-in-Performance nature of Anglo-Saxon poetry that is almost completely foreign to the modern reader. This means that the extant versions of poems such as Beowulf that we have in written form were merely one version of a story that would have changed a little bit (or possibly a lot) each time it was retold. They were not memorized word-for-word, but instead the poet-performer (called a scop in Old English) would use the known story as a sort of roadmap or guide for his story, and add in details, stock filler phrases, and references to other stories or characters from his extensive repertoire to complete the alliterative scheme or meter, and show off his skill and knowledge.


The Anglo-Saxon culture had many facets and many fascinating stories to tell, so check back again next Saturday for the next peek into their rich literary and societal legacy!


*"Old English" is not the language of Shakespeare. Believe it or not, that version of English is actually called Early Modern English, and the language of Chaucer was the intermediate between Modern and Old English, aptly named, Middle English (which was an unparalled hybridization of Norman-French and Old English).

**MnE is an abbreviation for "Modern English."