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Tolkien's Problem with Beowulf Translations

Graham Scheper

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Tolkien was a cranky guy, and complained a lot. He was also one of the most educated people in human history, and a meticulous scholar. It's up for debate how much he was right about, but in this instance, I think he has a point!
#oldenglish #anglosaxon #tolkien #beowulf

Timestamps:
00:00 - What was Tolkien's issue?
01:44 - Tolkien's comment on 'ofer hronrade'
03:57 - Line 10a in Beowulf translations
06:06 - Who's right and who's wrong?
07:21 - Reading the gloss to Psalm 73
09:57 - The case for "hron" as a large delphinid

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20 Comments

@grahamamscheper Creator 1 year ago Pinned

Do you agree with Tolkien? Or is he being pedantic? Let me know here!

@StanfieldMacCue 11 months ago

That's not a whale, it's just seven dolphins in a trench coat.

@XaurielZ 11 months ago (edited)

A 10-minute video about the translation of one word in a 1000-year-old saga, complete with direct reference to a mediaeval calligraphic manuscript. This is the kind of thing that makes me still love youtube

@alan3179-n1r 1 year ago

I'm with Tolkien here. 'Dolphin's-riding' suggests dolphins playing at the bow of a ship as it's carried along on a strong breeze, with the sea spray in the faces of the crew.
I imagine something like that must have been a very evocative, and relatable, image for the audience of Beowulf.

@gcewing 1 year ago

I'm not a linguist, but Tolkien's argument makes a lot of sense to me.

@khuntasaurus88 10 months ago

As a non-linguist, i think that Tolkien's explanation makes the most sense because Beowulf is supposed to be a poeam/epic, not a historical document. It's expected that it shoukd contain a level of creative writing/prose within

@marcusdavey9747 10 months ago

This is where we get the song of the ancient Viking oarsmen: “I’ve been working on the whale-road, all the live long day.”

@kinnellian 1 year ago

"Whale Road evokes a Railroad, I don't like it"
hmmm - scritch scritch...
'Whale Way'
Dammit dammit dammit!

@john-paulgies4313 1 year ago

I opine that Tolkien's disagreement with the world of academia flows from this: Tolkien remembered to also be a poet.

@henriquenakamura5752 1 year ago

This kind of nitty-gritty scholarly content on a very specific, obscure topic is exactly the reason why I still think the internet wasn't a net negative for humanity. Thank you. Subscribed!

@skog5351 1 year ago

and also the very relevant point that the nordic people at the time was very familiar with orcas, not to mention that they are the ones that actually eats seals.

@missjuliapepperoni 11 months ago

As a (Greek) philologist, I both sympathize with and applaud "and then I went to look up every instance of this word to make sure I was correct about its extremely specific semantics". Thanks for this, really neat! I'm with you and Tolkien--a more specific poeticism every time, for me.

@Matt_The_Hugenot 1 year ago

Years ago I tried to read Beowulf in OE and this kenning tripped me up. Rād is a verb form and is only a noun in compound, post Roman names for Roman roads never use it, they're always stræt or _weg_. The only thing that made sense to me was whale-ride as if the poet was trying to allude to a horseride.

Hearing that Hron is a middle size cetacean makes much more sense. Pilot whales are much more common than any other species in the Baltic and North Seas.

@brendanward2991 1 year ago

Was this kenning originally suggested by the common practice of dolphins swimming alongside sailing ships? That's not something larger whales ever do.

@Kyrieru 11 months ago

Stuff like this always makes me recall English class and acting out Hamlet. The line was "Drink of this poison", which I assumed meant using the poison tipped sword the character was literally holding, whereas the entire class and the teacher insisted it meant "he takes the vial of poison and shoves it down his throat so he drinks it". I can only imagine how much is lost in translation.