Beowulf by Unknown

Beowulf Reviews

• 
  Warwick

  Never has there been a translation whose tone and argument are encapsulated so completely by the very first word of the text: translating the Old English Hwæt as ‘Bro!’ tells you more or less everything you need to know about what Maria Dahvana Headley is up to here. She's unlocked her word-hoard and used every nook and cranny of it in service of a very specific reading of the text.
  
  I really love Old English as a language, and have read Beowulf in the original more than once. But despite generally liking translation as a medium, I have never really liked any translation of Beowulf. I loved this, though. It does what I think the best translations always do, which is to write something completely new which translates the thoughts and ideas of the original without getting too distracted by the actual words.
  
  The thing is, what register should you use if you're translating a text from the Early Middle Ages? Most of the time, people go for the archaic stuff – words like ‘betwixt’, ‘verily’, you know, the things that tell you you're reading a serious poetic work. Tolkien said that if you didn't use archaisms, then you weren't doing justice to Beowulf at all, since much of its language would have been archaic even to its original audience (though this is very hard to be certain of). Seamus Heaney added a few regionalisms to the mix. Headley does use the odd archaism and regionalism – but her primary tool is an American ‘guy slang’, which is a wonderfully productive lens through which to read a poem like this one, concerned as it is with ‘manly virtues’.
  
  It cuts through the aphoristic vagueness of a line like Gǣð ā wyrd swā hīo scel (‘Fate will be as it will be’), reducing it to the pithy ‘Bro, Fate can fuck you up’, which is really what is meant. Individual translation choices are often glorious. Searwum fāh ‘decorated with artistry’ here becomes ‘blinged-out’, where again the audacity does not obscure the accuracy. It works particularly well in direct speech. When Beowulf is criticising one of the Danes for allowing Grendel to pillage at will, he says:
  
  

  hē hafað onfunden,    þæt hē þā fǣhðe ne þearf,
  atole ecg-þræce    ēower lēode
  swīðe onsittan
  
  [‘he'd found that there was no need to fear any enmity here, or any terrible sword-storm from your people’]

  
  
  Most translators stick to this fairly closely, often with some arty flourish in however they handle ecg-þræce. But Headley's approach gets right to the heart of the one-upmanship underlying this conversation:
  
  

  “Grendel was aware he had nothing to fear here.
  Your sword's soft, son.”

  
  
  In a similar vein, consider the bit where Hrothgar gives some advice to Beowulf. The original reads:
  
  

    Ðū þē lǣr be þon,
  gum-cyste ongit!    Ic þis gid be þē
  āwræc wintrum frōd.
  
  [‘Learn from this, understand manly virtues. I who recite you this song am many winters old.’]

  
  
  Again, Headley drenches the passage in coded male dynamics:
  
  

  Listen to me, boy. Keep your shit straight.
  I've been fostered by frost-seasons, fathered by time,
  and I'm dropping knowledge now.

  
  
  It must be said that a lot of the time, as is probably already obvious, Headley is inventing freely. At one point Beowulf is described as being ‘swole as a troll’ – what a brilliant way to translate…whatever that is, I thought; but when I turned to the original, I realised it wasn't translating anything, it was just a random insertion of Headley's own devising, presumably for added ambiance. Something similar happens at Wealhtheow's appearance in the hall, when we get the half-line ‘Hashtag: blessed’ as a complete invention. Some of these novelties are rather cheeky: she describes the dragon's treasure, in passing, as a ‘pile of preciouses’ (which I love). How you feel about such things will depend on many factors, including your opinions on translation and your feelings about modern slang. I really enjoyed it, but it should probably be understood that a lot of it is made up out of whole cloth.
  
  When it works, it works really well. When Beowulf boasts about his past exploits to Hrothgar, Heaney in 2000 translated it like this:
  
  

  They had seen me boltered in the blood of enemies
  when I battled and bound five beasts,
  raided a troll-nest and in the night-sea
  slaughtered sea-brutes. I have suffered extremes
  and avenged the Geats (their enemies brought it
  upon themselves, I devastated them).

  
  
  This is perfectly serviceable, and pretty ‘faithful’ on a word-by-word basis. But it seems utterly inadequate compared to Headley's already-famous rendering of this passage:
  
  

  Yes: I mean—I may have bathed in the blood of beasts,
  netted five foul ogres at once, smashed my way into a troll den
  and come out swinging, gone skinny-dipping in a sleeping sea
  and made sashimi of some sea monsters.
  Anyone who fucks with the Geats? Bro, they have to fuck with me.
  They're asking for it, and I deal them death.

  
  
  See, this is a translation with a real voice, which is something translators often struggle to find. In this case, the voice is in service of a very specific agenda, which has to do with rethinking the gender assumptions of the poem. Headley makes much of her reinterpretation of Grendel's mother, for instance, pointing out that āglǣcwīf literally just means ‘fighter-woman’, but is often translated with things like ‘monstrous hell-bride’ (that's Heaney).
  
  I think this is maybe not as controversial as she makes out – the nature of Grendel's mother has always been a rather uncertain thing, and in my copy of the text (Mitchell & Robinson, which is more than twenty years old), āglǣcwīf is glossed unremarkably as ‘warrior-woman, female combatant’. It seems to me more problematic that Grendel's mother is later described as grundwyrgen, which really has to mean something like ‘beast of the deep’. Headley doesn't mention this piece of vocabulary (which she translates as ‘reclusive night-queen’). Still, this translation is a kind of line in the sand, and it will definitely be impossible for future translators to make lazy assumptions about Grendel's mother's inhumanness from now on.
  
  (Incidentally, Headley also makes the dragon female, against the many translators who, she says, write it as male ‘rather than ungendered’. It's not clear what she means by this – true, Old English draca is a neuter word, but the monster is usually referred to as a wyrm, which is definitely grammatically masculine. Anyway, it works well as a female creature whatever the justifications might be.)
  
  Now look, I have to admit that I did not read this without some…qualms? about the way Headley appropriates the linguistic trappings of male-male socialisation. It is one thing to say, as a brilliant pub-conversation starter, that Beowulf is basically an Anglo-Saxon dudebro. It's another thing to sustain this conceit over three thousand lines. The effect is that we are reading a kind of parody of maleness which, while fascinating, strips away much of the emotional authenticity of what is being said, in favour of poking fun at the characters' preconceptions. It doesn't come across (to me) as a real depiction of how men interact, but rather as a strangely skewed, inevitably outsider's view of what male interaction can look like.
  
  But this is no bad thing; one of the reasons I think this is such a good translation is because it's such a productively argumentative one, with something really new to say about Beowulf. And about its eponymous central character, whose blokey claims to fame Headley smiles at even while fulfilling (with considerable brio) the poem's predictions:
  
  

  You're famous here, and long after your lifetime,
  you'll be known, your story sweeping as the sea,
  shores borne into being by waves of words.
• 
  Nicole

  Those of you looking for a precise, age-old translation of Beowulf need to go back to Heaney. This is no timeless classic, this is no pretentious, literary snobbery made to bore high school sophomores. This is living, breathing poetry as it's meant to be, rooted in the language of then and the language of now, full of drama and heroes and monsters and oh so much swag.
  
  Will this be hilariously dated in fifteen years when the slang has all changed and swole joins the ranks of rad and groovy? Yes. Do I care? Absolutely not. This translation is a masterpiece of its own kind, a unique update that explores the mutability of language and the tradition of oral storytelling in a way that honors the original poet who first wrote this oldest of English and yet brings the characters into a place where today's readers can contextualize and better understand the heart of the poem. This is not a translation for ivory towers and Norton Anthologies of English Literature. This is a translation for reading out loud, for shouting over the noise of bars, for spitting into the slam poetry mic. The rhythm here is just brilliant, the scattered kennings and alliterative lines serving as the beating heart of this story.
  
  This translation makes me want to fight dragons, and this Beowulf almost makes me think I could. You might not think this is your cup of tea, but I promise, you are wrong. Because it isn't a cup of tea. It's an old-timey flagon of mead poured into a line of shot glasses on a friendly bar, a whirlwind of words that absolutely pounds through you. Bro! You do not want to miss this.
• 
  Meike

  Bro! Maria Dahvana Headley has turned an esteemed classic into a fast, powerful 4D Dolby Surround action extravaganza that exudes the joy of storytelling. I've always wanted read "Beowulf", an Old English epic poem from the Early Middle Ages consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines that has survived only in the
  Nowell Codex. Unfortunately though, I don't understand Old English and I've also struggled with renditions that try to emulate some kind of ancient English (like the ones by
  J.R.R. Tolkien and
  Seamus Heaney). Now, Headley comes along and serves us a fierce, modern version of the text that makes for a riveting read. Beowulf (which probably was intended to mean "bee wolf", so "bear"), the warrior hero of the Geats, saves the day when he comes to help the Danish king who has been under attack from Grendel, an unspecified ferocious being and descendant of Cain. Beowulf slays Grendel and then Grendel's mother, a female warrior who wanted to avenge her son. So Beowulf is #badass, or, as he himself explains in Headley's translation:
  
  "Yes: I mean - I may have bathed in the blood of beasts,
  netted five foul ogres at once, smashed my way into a troll den
  and come out swinging, gone skinny-dipping in a sleeping sea
  and made sashimi of some sea monsters.
  Anyone who fucks with the Geats?
  Bro, they have to fuck with me.
  They're asking for it, and I deal them death."
  
  Beowulf travels home, becomes king and, 50 years later, slays a dragon and dies. Throughout the whole poem, vigilance, loyalty, and courage are core themes, and it's safe to say that out warrior-king isn't particularly woke when it comes to the importance of riches and fame: So. much. gold. Plus a momument at the shore - sure, why not.
  
  Reading this old text was so much fun, and Headley wrote a fantastic foreword explaining the importance of the text, talking about the feat of translating it and her intention to do right by the women in the text: For instance, "aglæca" was often translated as "hero" when referring to Beowulf, but Grendel's mother, the "aglæc-wif", suddenly was a "monstrous hell-bride" (Heaney), not a "warrior wife".
  
  A great book, now I have to read
  The Mere Wife.
• 
  Roman Clodia

  Headley has crafted a translation of Beowulf that is dynamic, fast-moving (in the first 60% or so, but the slowing down is the original poem, not the translator's effect), thrilling in places and which has some glorious renderings of Old English into a contemporary language that still contains rhythm, alliteration (so hard, that!) and a balance to the metre: 'He hurled the sword: / useless hoard-gilt. Let it shatter in the silt. / He'd fight like a man, and take her hand to hand, / his fingertips blueprinting her skin.'
  
  But I'm not sure what renders this a 'feminist' translation as blurbed? Headley is certainly aware of the gendered nature of this heroic tale but surely that's nothing new? She humanises Grendel's mother and makes her a warrior woman rather than a monster which works well but as a character, she doesn't get more than, at a guess, a few hundred lines at most in the poem. Headley does draw attention to the wiping out of women as individuals in some history and literature: 'And I hear he hand-clasped his daughter / (her name's a blur) to Onela' - that blurred name a sharp contrast to the heroic naming of Grendel and Beowulf himself. And the dragon becomes female. But is that all it takes to make this 'feminist'?***
  
  More prominent is the masculinised language of the text to foreground the way in which the world of the poem is ideologically founded on male homosociality - again, surely not a new insight? 'Bro!' is the opening word and, personally, I found this a bit too obvious especially since it is spoken by the bard or poet-narrator who thus becomes assimilated to the warrior-brotherhood of the characters. It also might be perceived as alienating female readers: where do we place ourselves in this world if even the teller of the heroic tale can only envisage a masculine audience for his words?
  
  Some of the other word choices didn't work for me: the switching of registers from, for example, 'Dude, this was what they call a blood feud' (though love that dude/feud rhyme!), or 'Anyone who fucks with the Geats? Bro, they have to fuck with me' (great for a school classroom?), or 'Meanwhile, Beowulf gave zero shits' to the more formal tones of 'Grendel was the name of this woe-walker' or 'war was the wife Hrothgar wed first' (see, great alliteration) felt jarring to my ear. And, unfortunately, I couldn't help giggling at 'Beowulf knew he was a goner'... On the other hand, I loved the sly mischief of the dragon sleeping on her bed which is 'a treasure: a pile of preciouses' - wonderful!
  
  Despite some misgivings, then, solely around some of the word choices, overall I'd say this is an engaging, accessible and wonderfully readable translation that thrusts us through the story, and it's particularly one which I'd recommend for schools or general readers - and if it sends more people back to Beowulf, then brilliant!
  
  *** Scholarship on classical epics - Homer, Virgil, even Hesiod - has been exploring them from feminist perspectives for the last 40-50 years, and a critique of the ethos of masculine warrior heroism is already embedded within even the Iliad when Achilles says he'd rather be alive and a humble goatherd that the famous and heroic king of the dead in the underworld.
  
  Many thanks to Scribe UK for an ARC
• 
  Tom Quinn

  Like most modern men, I read Beowulf at 18 years old, in college and away from home for the first time, making new friends in an all-male dorm less than lovingly nicknamed The Sausage Factory. My posse was all dorks, mostly English and History majors, the type to shout "Hwat!" when it was time to start a Venture Bros marathon, the kind who'd name their RPG character "Hrothgar, King of the Geats" for a laugh. Beowulf's band of sword swinging brothers-in-arms appealed to us on a deep and primal level, and Headley's spirited translation (wonderfully read by JD Jackson) threw me back in time so forcefully my heart hurts with nostalgia.
  
  In her deliciously unrestrained update to the stuffy old translations I labored under in my youth (twice, for whatever reason, once in 10th grade and again in college lit) Headley offers up a crystal clear explanation of this book's history and its significance to literature, and Jackson's gruff gravel voice creates a rich and resonant listening experience. Altogether they breathe fresh life into a centuries-old tale in the most wonderful way.
  
  5 stars. All that old man vs dragon stuff hits different at age 36.
• 
  David

  Bro! Hardly fucked by Fate, but rather hashtag blessed for this translation that gives zero shits. Our swole, sword bearing, son-of-a-bitch comes out swinging. Beowulf brings the beatdown, batters beasts, and bests the bringers of blood. Raring to be read aloud, voice raised over the roar of revelry. The song of sweaty soldiers with back slapping swagger who swear on the sword they saw it true. Headley is hard-core, heroic and hardly one to haver, hell-bent on hewing her own history here. Too much? Truly it is a touch too far at times but still a towering testament to her talent.
  
  Beowulf rode hard. He stayed thirsty! He was the Man! He was the man.
• 
  Nat K

  
  ”And yet.
  Possessions bring no peace. So many wars, so many kingdoms, so much calamity.”
  
  So says Maria Dahvana Headley in the foreword of her translation of Beowulf . And she is correct. To strive to have more possessions takes effort. To retain them, even more so. Ms. Headley’s introduction to the history of this epic poem is brilliant. There is no other way to describe it. If her knowledge and passion for this poem and the background to it don’t inspire you to at least consider reading it (whether or not you do), I don’t know what will. Her enthusiasm reminded me of some great teachers that I had in highschool. Particularly my Year 12 English teacher, Mr. Davidson. People that make it a joy to learn, a pleasure. To grow, to go back in time and be awed by what went before us.
  
  I have to admit to being a lazy reader. While I know of many books which can be classed as “classics”, and have at least a basic knowledge of them, in all honesty I can count the number that I’ve read on one hand. Same for the writers who inform us of times long past, such as Tacitus and Aeschylus. The unknown author of the original Beowulf. We’ve not crossed paths since high school.
  
  So why Beowulf and why now? Quite simply, I read Meike’s review a few months ago and enjoyed it very much. I’ve been looking for “shorter” reads to kickstart my 2021 reading, and I remembered this book and her review and thought, hmmmmm...interesting. Maybe. Why not. Let’s do this. Time to expand my horizons.
  
  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
  
  ”Privilege is the way men prime power, the world over.”
  
  I couldn’t help but be caught up in the cadence and rhythm of the writing. It begs to be read out loud. This would be a great work of performance art. A short, snappy piece that would easily catch the audience’s attention. I was swept along like by a giant wave reading this.
  
  The translation is fresh and written in modern language, with plenty of colloquialisms. I enjoyed that touch. It gave it an immediacy and an urgency. Parts of it made me smile with the use of urban terms. It shouldn’t, but it works. This is a very blokey poem, testosterone filled. It’s practically dripping off the pages. Parts are bloody and brutal. Visceral. There's liberal use of the word "bro". There are swear words. Many swear words. But fate is always spelt with a capital F.
  
  ”...yes, yes, bro!”
  ”Unlucky, fucked by Fate.”
  ”There’s a dress code! You’re denied. I’m the Danes’ doorman; this is my lord’s door... No! You’re not on the guest list.”
  ”...made sashimi of some sea monsters.”
  ”The hostess was impressed by Beowulf’s boasts. Brass balls, if nothing else.”
  ”I’m the strongest and the boldest, and the bravest and the best.”
  ”Bro, Fate can fuck you up.”
  (My personal favourite. I can see t-shirts printed with this slogan. Cutoff versions being worn at the gym)
  
  I don’t know that I understood it all. I cannot pretend that I did. The myriad of names confused me. But this didn’t lessen my enjoyment. The scenes were vivid and descriptive. It was the perfect accompaniment to the raging storm which hit Sydney late this arvo.
  
  I cannot compare this to any other translation of Beowulf, so I’ve no idea if this version pleases the purists. It’s clear to me that it was a mammoth task to undertake this interpretation, and that it was done with care and love. I have to say that I’m perfectly happy to have read this, and that I’ve no need to seek out any other variants. For me, this was a fun, raucous ride. 3.5 🌟pulsing stars. And a flagon of mead.
  
  PUBLICATION DATE: 05.Jan.2021
  
  ”Boy, enjoy the feast. Take your place in the tale of my heroes and their hopes.”
  
  Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher Scribe UK and the author Maria Dahvana Headley for the opportunity to read this advance copy in exchange for an honest review.
  
  #Beowulf #NetGalley
• 
  anna (½ of readsrainbow)

  women should be the only people allowed to translate classics, thanks
  
  
  the "yes. i mean—i may have bathed in the blood of beasts" line and the "any season / is a season for blood, if you look at it in the right light" line made me gay
• 
  Amanda

  Publicity materials and professional reviews of Maria Dahvana Headley's new translation of Beowulf have been using words like "radical" and "recontextualize" to describe her work, and making much of her use of modern slang. So great has been the effort to cast Headley's version as entirely different that I've been left wondering if it's so divergent that it should be considered an adaptation rather than a translation. Imagine my surprise when I read it and discovered it's actually a pretty standard translation.
  
  Published reviews I've seen have chosen to quote passages showing Headley's incorporation of modern slang into the ancient poem, but this gives a false impression of most of the text. These lines spoken by Wealhtheow are much more representative of the translation:

  Accept this cup from me, my lord of rings, and lift this golden goblet. Give the Geats their due. Be good to them who've been good to you. Gifts are for granting, and your hands should be open, your heart happy, even as you remember--I know you do--the good men who gave kith-gifts to you.

  That's definitely modern English, and it isn't deliberately archaic or full of poetic flourishes like some translations, but it's not earth-shatteringly radical either. Headley does use modern slang in places, but she also drops in old-fashioned terms just as often; readers are as likely to come across a "swan-road" and "warp and weft" as they are a "bling" and "hashtag." Oddly, this sparing use of slang actually works less well than more liberal use would have; the effect here is like a poseur trying to sound cool by slipping in words they don't really understand.
  
  The most radical thing about Headley's translation is her clear sympathy for the monsters. Her word choices emphasize Grendel's alienation and his mother's grief-fueled rage at the death of her son. This interpretation isn't unsupported by the text; it's just a different take from most other translations, and it certainly makes for thrilling action scenes. I must say I don't share Headley's enthusiasm for Grendel's mother: I find it hard to stir up much sympathy for someone who goes on a murder spree to avenge a son who was killed while breaking in next door so he could eat the neighbors.
  
  To sum up:
  
  Do I believe this version qualifies as a translation? Yes.
  
  Would I recommend this version to someone looking for an epic poem with some good action in it? Maybe.
  
  Would I recommend this version to someone looking for a good translation of Beowulf, the 1,000+ year old poem? No.
• 
  K.J. Charles

  A glorious translation that hits a perfect balance between modern language ("bro!") and archaisms. Brings gender to the forefront, including the less and more toxic varieties of masculinity, making it feel very much in the vein of the cowboy poet or pub storyteller. Which could be terrible in the wrong hands, but succeeds triumphantly here, mingling the bragging and the timeless-therefore-modern bits (reminding me of the fabulous
  The Emperor's Babe by Bernadine Evaristo) with really moving elegiac passages. And if you can't do elegy you can't do Old English because wow, those guys were miserable.
  
  Absolutely excellent. I will be rereading this soon.
• 
  Janet

  Imagine being excited about Beowulf! Don't I have other things to read? Hadn't I read it in high school, the Burton Raffel translation? All those fathers and sons I couldn't keep track of? Battles, and boasts? Fortunately for myself, my book club decided to read this new feminist translation by Maria Dahvana Headley, which begins "Bro! Tell me we still know how to speak of kings!" That 'Bro!' gives you a taste of her method, laden with humor, both in the plentiful, playful alliterations and rhymes, and in the anachronisms:
  
  "The war-band flew a golden flag over their main man;
  the salt sea saluted him, so too the storms,
  and Scyld's soldiers got drunk instead of crying.
  They mourned the way men do. No man knows,
  not me, not you, who hauled Scyld's hoard to shore,
  but the poor are plentiful, and someone got lucky."
  
  "Anyone who f*cks with the Geats? Bro, they have to f*ck with me.
  They're asking for it, and I deal them death.
  Now I want to test my mettle on Grendel, best him,
  a match from man into meat. Just us two,
  hand to hand. Sweet."
  
  Headley came to the work because of a long-ago sighting of Grendel's mother in a picture book, a savage wet warrior woman--and was sorely disappointed that Beowulf wasn't about her. She wrote a novel, The Mere Wife (mere meaning sea, or a kind of swamp), about her, then returned to the original text, deciding that she had something she could bring to it. The language, modern, with that relentless alliteration, is the charm of it and brings the whole tale to life, the missing emotion--the way old photographs recolored suddenly make that past world live again.
  
  Here's a certain sword:
  "When Hunlafing lay a legendary sword in his lap, well--
  it was named Flame-Fang for a reason. Any season
  is a season for blood, if you look at it in the right light.
  The Jutes knew this blade already. They should've
  expected it to twist, to key their kingdom."
  
  That 'key their kingdom'--the force of poetic necessity, of having to fit the line and say the thing and say it right... replacing "to open their kingdom like a key" gives you just a glimpse of the the delight of this translation.
  
  The translator's introduction, usually skipped over, was very useful, in that it clued you in to watch for certain people--namely, the women, which usually are overlooked, the way in which they have to navigate this perilous world and safeguard their children. The meaning of kings. It's a translation you could give to a young person, that they could follow, and feel the churn and roar of the times and the seas and the clash of clans, monsters and blood feuds and the loyalty of warriors.
  
  The shorter, second part brings in more nuance as the older Beowulf fights his last dragon and considers the mores of his society, the place of kings and heroes, and holds in higher relief the existential complexity of this ancient poem. Can't wait to read The Mere Wife!
• 
  Neale

  I have not read any of the multitude of translations of this epic poem. My rudimentary knowledge of the narrative comes from the film that was made about 15 years ago. I seem to remember Neil Gaiman’s name in the credits for writing and producing, but I may be wrong it was so long ago.
  
  Whether he had anything to do with the screenplay or not I remember enjoying it immensely.
  
  Without having read the original, I cannot compare this version to it, but the author, in a wonderful introduction, explains her intentions and reasons for how she has written this contemporary translation.
  
  A quick word or two about the poem.
  
  Hrothgar, king of the Danes has built this wonderful mead hall, in which he and all his warriors and kinsman, can get rolling drunk, reliving there halcyon years. However, before they can enjoy this wonderful mead hall, which seems to be known about far and wide, a huge troll like creature named Grendel turns up uninvited and proceeds to eat anybody he can get his hands on, stuffing the rest into a sack to save for later.
  
  Hrothgar and his men try but fail to slay this monstrous beast, and Hrothgar is forced to close the mead hall, despairingly boarding up the main entrance.
  
  This brings the hero of the poem, Beowulf, from across the sea, I told you that the mead hall had a reputation known far and wide. Beowulf and his trusty band of warriors promise to slay Grendel for Hrothgar. Beowulf in true heroic fashion defeats and slays Grendel with his bare hands.
  
  However just when you think all is well, along comes Grendel’s mother seething for vengeance. Grendel’s mother is every bit equal to Beowulf in the martial department and a truly epic battle between the two ensues.
  
  In a nutshell this is the story, there is a little more involving a dragon, but I do not want to spoil it for anybody, like me, who does not know the story.
  
  The poem itself is beautifully written. It flows along swiftly, and the author’s use of alliteration is phenomenal. Hearing this read aloud from a skilled orator would be magic.
  
  Maria Dahvana Headley has done a magnificent job of translating an epic poem written in Old English, giving it a cotemporary spin, and bringing it to everyday readers. Writing it in a beautiful style, that is a joy to read, even for those who very rarely read poetry. I know nothing about poetry and verse, but I do know that this is such an enjoyable read. As I said I cannot compare this to the original poem, I have a strong feeling I would struggle to even understand the first lines, but this translation is a wonderful read for everybody. 4 stars!
  
  One thing that did surprise me is that it is marketed as a feminist translation. But to me it still comes across as a very masculine poem. Not that there is anything wrong with this, I just struggled to find feminist undertones. I thought that perhaps we might find Grendel’s mother more humanized and grieving for her son. Very hard to tell with no knowledge of the original.
  
  Another point is that the language uses swearing, which I believe ties into the contemporary male braggadocio and adds a great deal to the tone that Headley is trying to achieve. Still if you are not a fan of “bad language” it may be an issue.
  
  Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher Scribe UK for the ARC
  
• 
  Molly Quinn

  Translators each have their own aspect of the story that they focus on. For instance, Seamus Heaney focused on the poetic elements of Beowulf.
  This Beowulf, translated by Maria Headley, is a feminist translation. I support that mission entirely; there are so many aspects of Beowulf that are often overlooked that have to do with gender roles. This translation, however, really fails at delivering much else.
  There are a couple of real big issues I had with this translation, but the most obvious one is the modern language and lingo that is used. It is possible to update the language while still using timeless language, but Headley does not do this. The text is sprinkled with words like "bro" "dude" (and the most egregious offense) "hashtag: blessed." Using language like this makes the poem sound hokey and in 10 years will be ultimately totally outdated. Can you imagine if, in the 1970s, there were a Beowulf with words like "groovy" in it? How cringe that would sound? This is the same.
  Headley also does some questionable translation choices even beyond the modern language. For instance, if you are more familiar with Beowulf you may be aware of the fact that the characters in Beowulf are not Christian and do not believe in a Christian God. The narrator is actually the only one who mention biblical references (such as Cain and Able), God, or anything else Christian. This translation, however, makes everyone Christian, or at least refer to a singular God, rather than many gods. I am not sure if this was an attempt at some sort of commentary, or if this was something that was just overlooked, but the fact that there is uncertainty about this makes it poorly handled either way.
  
  Over all art is dead and all that is left is the rotting corpse of mediocrity. Sound harsh? Yeah, maybe it is a bit. But I really, really hated the fact that this translation included "hashtag blessed."
• 
  Jenny (Reading Envy)

  "Bro! Tell me we still know how to speak of kings! In the old days,
  everyone knew what men were: brave, bold, glory-bound. Only
  stories now, but I’ll sound the Spear-Danes’ song, hoarded for hungry times."
  
  This new translation of Beowulf is a lot of fun, with Headley capturing the spirit of the original but using more modern words at times (I outright snorted at the use of "hashtag: blessed") - don't skip the intro where she discussed the research she did and why she's partial to Grendel's mother.
• 
  Sara

  ARC received in exchange for an honest review
  
  We all know a boy can't daddy until his daddy's dead.
  
  I'll admit this is my first time reading a translation of Beowulf, but I think I picked a good one to start with. This reads like a labour of love from Maria Dahvana Headley, and a lot of thought has been put into the translation and how the story is presented to the reader.
  
  In the introduction, Headley states that Beowulf is a poem between brothers, commrades and close friends all trying to outdo each other with tales of daring over many, many pints. It's a poem that shouts from the rooftops, mixing every emotion possible within its verses - and I think Headley goes a great job at showcasing this. It uses a mix of contemporary slang (never did I expect to find phrases like 'hashtag blessed' and 'brass balls' in a classics translation) and classic phrases and literary methods to maintain the feel of the story and it's setting, yet making it accessible and fresh. The use of alliteration that is repeated throughout is especially clever, helping the text to flow and linking the story together. I also love the way Headley has interpreted Grendel's mother as the true warrior single mother she is. She's easily a match for Beowulf. He just had luck in his side.
  
  I will say that the story itself isn't amazing, and there's a lot of repetition as we hear a story once and then it's repeated again to another group of people. However, I can appreciate this for the important text it is, and the seeds of influence it's had on other classic fantasy stories. This is a fantastic translation for those new to the story of Beowulf, and opens the door to a text that might otherwise feel intimidating.
• 
  Gabi

  I often struggle with the old classical poems, cause I can't concentrate on the language. So this modern - but still in character - translation hit the mark marvellously! The tale is vivid, sarcastic and feels so humanly real that I saw it play in my head.
  
  The foreword is a class by itself, wonderful explanations on Headley's take and thoughts of this classic. It set the right mood to dive into this masterpiece where modern vibes and classic verses meet.
  
  A great way to make the classics accessible for nowaday's students.
  
  MDH is a rockstar!
• 
  Tamara Agha-Jaffar

  
  Maria Dahvana Headley’s opening salvo in her translation of
  Beowulf: A New Translation is the word “Bro!” This sets the stage for an irreverent, rollicking, electrifying, and astonishing translation unlike any we have seen before.
  
  Headley has studied the poem extensively. Her goal was to render the poem as close to the spirit of its original form as possible. As she says in her extensive introduction, “The original reads, at least in some places, like Old English freestyle, and in others like a wedding toast of a drunk uncle who’s suddenly remembered a poem he memorized at boarding school.” She captures the rollicking spirit of the poem admirably, generating a work that is not so much a translation but a re-creation. Her goal was to create “a text that is as bubbly and juicy as I think it ought to feel.”
  
  Headley smashes the sedate lines of previous translations with flashes of lightning. As she explains in her introduction, some of the Old English words are difficult to pin down in modern English. Just as previous translators have had to interpret and take liberties with the wording, Headley has had to do the same. Whenever possible, she opts for wording that conforms with the original temperament of the poem. For example, the word “hwaet,” which has been variously translated as “Listen,” “Hark,” “Lo,” she translates as “Bro!” She conceives it as the poet’s attempt to capture audience attention and as a form of masculinist coded language. She punctuates traditional, stately passages of sublime poetry with the occasional four-letter word and phrases currently inhabiting social media. For example, Wealhtheow admires Beowulf’s “brass balls.” Treasure is now “bling.” The watchman in Denmark initially confronts Beowulf with, “There’s a dress code! You’re denied.”
  
  Headley perceives the narrator as “an old-timer at the end of the bar, periodically pounding his glass and demanding another.” He shouts to be heard in a mead hall of rowdy men falling over each other in a drunken stupor. He interrupts himself, comments on the action, engages in foreshadowing, and addresses the audience directly to retain attention. She argues his language is laced with satire as he interrogates definitions of masculinity with its concomitant heroic boasts and chest-thumping.
  
  One of the more interesting aspects of Headley’s translation lies in her treatment of Grendel’s mother. She allows her the simultaneous qualities of a monster while retaining her human qualities as a mother experiencing overwhelming grief at the loss of her only child.
  
  With its raucous rhymes, refreshing language pulsating with contemporary idioms, Headley successfully reclaims a thousand-year-old manuscript for today’s audience. She comes out swinging. This is definitely not your father’s Beowulf.
  
  Very highly recommended for its originality, riotous fun, effusive temperament, and sheer audacity.
  
  My book reviews are also available at
  www.tamaraaghajaffar.com
• 
  Jenna

  Though purists disapprove, I relish this approach to translating a classic: sharply intelligent; witty; sparkling with sound-play and gasp-provokingly bold choices of proposed equivalencies, evidence of a poet's ear; enriched by a coherent translatorial point-of-view, an unmistakable translatorial voice; and, on top of it all, fast-paced and wildly entertaining. Translator Headley sticks a dagger in the side of this old tale with a perfect blend of respect and effrontery, much like, say, a warrior confronting a dragon whom bystanders might suspect of outclassing him: though she begins her translation with a slangy "Bro!" and ends it with a likewise anachronistic-sounding "He was the man," making it her good-humor-laced quest to illuminate the work's modernity-relevant subtexts on gender performance and masculinity, yet she never seems to underrate or disrespect her source material or the poetry-loving soul of its characters' social system, and she somehow manages to endow that final "He was the man" with equal parts wit and sincere emotion. It's an impressive feat. Headley shows us Beowulf in multiple lights simultaneously: as an almost-caricature of machismo, yes, but also as a man of some depth -- a good fighter but rather reluctant ruler, capable of human empathy toward worthy adversaries ("For a moment, / he felt for his old foes, fen-bound, embarking alone"), his brain (or "word-vault") brimming with not only bloodlust but also eloquent language. If you like, say, Christopher Logue's takes on Homer, you may want to give this one a try.
• 
  Trudie

  This is the review where I reveal my complete and utter ignorance of classic works of English Literature or in this case Old English. I knew this was an "epic poem" ( groan ) that features an angry mother monster ( with the face of Angelina Jolie ) and a mead hall. I also knew if I was going to voluntarily attempt this, then something that markets itself as a "new feminist translation" was likely my best bet.
  
  It's always a good sign to be laughing away within the first few lines of something you might have been dreading. I am the kind of reader that is sold with some anachronistic "Bro!" and "hashtag blessed" thrown in. The vibe here was fun slam poetry, an astounding display of alliteration in action and something I actually would have loved to listen to.
  Did I follow the plot or more specifically the digressions ? .... hmmm, not exactly.... it's a little long on the battle scenes for my taste. I guess that's an issue to be taken up with "Unknown" rather than this translation.
  
  I suspect time spent with the text makes the reading itself more comprehensible and I find myself well disposed to try another translation sometime in the future ( Heaney's ?). That I would even entertain this crazy notion is down to the success of this book in igniting my interest.
• 
  Para (wanderer)

  The winged wringer had no time for survivors. She skywrote
  her grievances, then rewrote them roughly in land-fire
  from end to end of Geat-realm, her scaly helm
  shining as she sang insults from the clouds.

  Bro! I knew I wanted to read this as soon as I heard it’s going to be a thing. The concept of a more modern translation of an epic poem seemed fun and the early excerpts promising. I managed to finally get my hands on in September and read it in one go.
  
  If there’s one word I’d use to describe it, it would be “surprising.”
  
  Even though I have read
  The Mere Wife, a retelling, I have done so without being familiar with the source material. And when I finally got around to it, it was not what I expected. The structure was the biggest surprise. I expected the battles with Grendel and his mother to be a lot later than they were, not about done with by the halfway point. I did not expect storytime interludes or summaries of what has happened previously (though since it might have been meant to be spoken, the repetition makes sense). I did not expect the dragon. I expected the story to be structured a certain way based on my knowledge of modern stories, but again and again I have been proven wrong.
  
  As for the translation? I did pick it up for the gimmick – it seemed interesting and given that I knew I had issues with epic poetry, anything that might make it more modern and readable would be helpful – but it was overall far less gimmicky than the early reviews and hype led me to believe. Far from a reimagining, it seems more of a standard, fairly faithful translation with the occasional modern word thrown in. It’s beautiful, and for the most part, flows incredibly well.
  
  That said, it was still difficult for me to read. A more readable translation or no, my natural reading style is completely unsuited to epic poetry and I struggled. As much as I enjoy short-form poetry, I simply cannot focus on every word for a hundred pages straight. Perhaps this would have been the one case where I should have gone with the audio (which I don’t do), but I have trouble paying attention to audio as well and the narration in the sample grated on me a bit. Either way, it was simply not to be.
  
  Enjoyment: 3/5
  Execution: 4/5
  
  Recommended to: if you like longform poetry and the concept of a more modern translation sounds good to you
  Not recommended to: skimmers, if you find the idea of the occasional modern expression in an ancient poem offputting
  
  More reviews on my blog,
  To Other Worlds.
• 
  charlotte,

  Galley provided by publisher
  
  Earlier this year, I read Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf and, in all honesty, it didn’t really stick with me. Maria Dahvana Headley’s, however, absolutely did, and even made me laugh out loud once or twice.
  
  To be honest, my favourite part of any translation, particularly translations of classics, is the translator’s note. Maybe it’s an extension of my linguistics degree, but I love hearing just how the translator went about the translation, where and how they decided to deviate from previous translations, and why, and just discussions of choices of words. And here, I genuinely would have read a whole book-long translator’s note (similarly when I read Emily Wilson’s Odyssey translation a few months ago).
  
  So, bearing in mind that I have only read the two translations of Beowulf, what I loved in this one was that it modernised the text, while staying true to it. Headley talks about this in the introduction, specifically her choice to use “bro” instead of something like “hark”, but I think that’s the primary reason I connected more with the story this time around. Modernising the text makes it a whole lot more accessible, and you don’t feel like you’re trogging through it at all. It’s a whole lot more fun to read.
  
  So really, all I have to say more is that, if you want to pick up Beowulf and you don’t know which translation to start with, do yourself a favour and skip straight to this one.
• 
  Scribe Publications

  An iconic work of early English literature comes in for up-to-the-minute treatment … Headley’s language and pacing keep perfect track with the events she describes … [giving] the 3,182-line text immediacy without surrendering a bit of its grand poetry. Some purists may object to the small liberties Headley has taken with the text, but her version is altogether brilliant. STARRED REVIEW
  Kirkus Reviews
  
  [The Mere Wife] includes some tantalising snippets of Beowulf as translated by Headley. Now we have the full version, and it is electrifying … It is brash and belligerent, lunatic and invigorating, with passages of sublime poetry punctuated by obscenities and social-media shorthand … With a Beowulf defiantly of and for this historical moment, Headley reclaims the poem for her audience as well as for herself.
  Ruth Franklin, The New Yorker
  
  I have a lot of things to say about Maria Dahvana Headley's new book, Beowulf… The first thing I need to tell you is that you have to read it now. No, I don't care if you've read Beowulf (the original) before … I don't care what you think of when you think of Beowulf in any of its hundreds of other translations because this — this — version, Headley's version, is an entirely different thing. It is its own thing.
  Jason Sheehan, NPR
  
  Bold … Electrifying.
  Ron Charles, The Washington Post
  
  [L]ively and vigorous … I am delighted. I’ve never read a Beowulf that felt so immediate and so alive … It’s profane and funny and modern and archaic all at once, and its loose and unstructured verses are full of twisting, surprising kennings.
  Constance Grady, Vox
  
  The author of the crazy-cool Beowulf-inspired novel The Mere Wife tackles the Old English epic poem with a fierce new feminist translation that radically recontextualises the tale.
  Barbara VanDenburgh, USA Today
  
  Of the four translations I’ve read, Headley’s is the most readable and engaging. She combines a modern poetry style with some of the hallmarks of Old English poetry, and the words practically sing off the page … Headley’s translation shows why it’s vital to have women and people from diverse backgrounds translate texts.
  Margaret Kingsbury, Buzzfeed
  
  Headley brings a directness, intensity, and rhythm to her translation that I haven’t seen before. This is what it must have felt like to sit in a mead hall and listen to a scop tell the tale. Other translations may be more scholarly, literal, or true to the poetic form of the original, but it’s been a thousand years since Beowulf was this accessible or exciting.
  Steve Thomas, The Fantasy Hive
  
  Headley’s Beowulf is kindred in spirit to The Mere Wife — highly conscious of gender and modernised to the hilt — but totally different in form. Instead of changing names or places, Headley sticks closely to the original Old English text while updating the vocabulary with flourishes of internet humour … The feminism in Headley’s translation is embedded in the texture and language of the poem itself rather than in its individual events or characters … Her Beowulf is a tragicomic epic about the things men do to impress one another. It’s as fierce an examination of masculine weakness as The Mere Wife was of feminine strength.
  Jo Livingstone, Poetry Foundation
  
  [A]s a poetic meditation on the poem, it’s full of startlingly powerful and often raucously lovely language.
  Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Review
  
  Maria Dahvana Headley’s decision to make Beowulf a bro puts his macho bluster in a whole new light.
  Andrea Kannapell, The New York Times
  
  Beowulf is an ancient tale of men battling monsters, but Headley has made it wholly modern, with language as piercing and relevant as Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning album DAMN. With scintillating inversions and her use of au courant idiom — the poem begins with the word ‘Bro!’ and Queen Wealhtheow is ‘hashtag: blessed’ — Headley asks one to consider not only present conflicts in light of those of the past, but also the line between human and inhuman, power and powerlessness, and the very nature of moral transformation, the ‘suspicion that at any moment a person might shift from hero into howling wretch.’ The women of Beowulf have often been sidelined. Not so here.
  Danielle Trussoni, The New York Times Book Review
  
  The new Beowulf is incredibly exciting from beginning to end!
  Jason Furman, Harvard University
  
  The new translation of Beowulf by Maria Dahavana Headley is the best thing I've read all fucking year.
  Mike Drucker, TV Writer and Comedian
  
  Finally, a Beowulf translation that leaves us feeling ‘hashtag: blessed’.
  Alena Smith, SLATE/Future Tense virtual event
  
  Maria Dahavana Headley’s breathtakingly audacious and idiomatically rich Beowulf: a new translation is a breath of iconoclastically fresh air blowing through the old tale's stuffy mead-hall atmosphere.
  Mike Scroggins, Hyperallergic
  
  Beowulf: a new translation pulls Beowulf into the fraught discourse on masculinity in the 21st century … Headley’s choice of backward-hatterd beer-soaked vernacular has its origins in the grandstanding language of the hero as we've always known him — a beefcake who wants to pull off such incredible feats that dudes will hype his reputation for centuries to come.
  Miles Klee, MEL Magazine
  
  Joy. That is the primary emotion I felt as I was reading Maria Dahvana Headley’s new translation of Beowulf … I cannot recommend this translation more highly. It is accessible to the reader who has never encountered Beowulf before, yet it intrigues and challenges those who study the poem professionally.
  David Wilton, WordOrigins.org
  
  The sheer poetry lifts the reader into a realm that is both familiar and even enlivening. FOUR STARS
  Carpe Librum
  
  Now science fantasy writer, Maria Dahvana Headley has cut through with a punk sensibility. Hers is a culturally radical reading with a feminist edge and it opens a pathway to a deeper historical reading.
  Barry Healy, Green Left
  
  Compelling and persuasive … Maria Dahvana Headley’s new translation is bold, exciting and breathes new life into an old classic. With a more nuanced approach to some characters and some inspired language choices, Headley helps Beowulf reclaim its rightful place as a raucous and boozy crowd pleaser. FOUR STARS
  Simon Clark, The AU Review
  
  This latest reimagining of the epic is through the feminist lens of Maria Dahvana Headley. Bringing this ancient text up to date is no mean feat; Headley does it with flair, fury, and fresh relatability.
  Happy Magazine
  
  This is a version that is highly recommended, not so much to ensure you’re up with your classic education, but rather, for the sheer pleasure of the story and its execution … There’s nothing quite like reading the book.
  Magdalena Ball, Compulsive Reader
  
  In the wake of Seamus Heaney’s energetic and masterly translation 20 years ago, it took a brave writer to attempt a radically different one. But Headley’s engaging introduction to her almost rap-like version shows up many of the places where a translation can slant the original this way or that, and uses her own life and times as a starting point.
  Philip Pullman, Sydney Morning Herald
  
  [A] bold and fabulous feminist translation … This Beowulf is a joy to read: Headley has loosened herself from the shackles of stuffy scholarship and archaic language (although do not be fooled – she is adept at understanding her source material) to provide a rollicking good yarn.
  Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore, The Saturday Paper
  
  [An] incredible feminist interpretation.
  Keeping Up With the Penguins
  
  The critical aspect of this translation is that Headley uses language to bring the story vividly to life. Reinterpreting the text enables it to sing off the page, deploying verse and modern interpretations when necessary to recreate Beowulf as a flowing, visceral tale … a joy to read and highly recommended.
  Robert Goodman, Newtown Review of Books
  
  If you’ve ever struggled with the poem, this is the retelling for you, its ferocious clarity turning Beowulf into a Hollywood superhero.
  Rishi Dastidar, The Guardian
  
  Move over, Tolkien and Heaney. This translation of Beowulf into muscular urban slang is electric.
  Helen Brown, The Telegraph
  
  There is a glory and thrill to her verse, which brings the blood, fire and youthful energy of the original to the surface … a gift.
  Betta Howes, TLS
  
  Barrelling along at breakneck speed, pulsating and breathless with excitement, it’s an outstanding poetic feat.
  Carolyne Larrington, Literary Review
  
  Maria Dahvana Headley has satisfied the most deeply-felt and desired dream of any translator, to transfer into her language the words, feelings and cultural icons of a classic, lost tongue. Her Beowulf is wild and wiry, rich and ribald. It sings and dances, curtseys and copulates, although with a more graphic update of the latter, and it quite simply takes one's breath away … This Beowulf is born and eats from language at home in the world of the internet, robots, genes but maintains the alliterations and rhymes of traditional poetry, keeping the tradition alive and renewing it at the same time.
  Indran Amirthanayagam, judge in the Academy of American Poets' Harold Morton Landon Translation Award
• 
  K✨

  a genuinely brilliant translation that deserves every single award for the inclusion of the sentence "Meanwhile, Beowulf gave zero shits."
• 
  Eule Luftschloss

  I didn't get on with this at all, and I guess I might be too oldschool for this translation.
  The use of modern slang in there felt jarring and threw me out of the flow every single time - for example the shout "bro!" or the use of daddy/ daddying to describe a father. It felt forced, shoehorned in to make this appealing to a young audience.
  
  I am not saying you need to use archaism if you're translating a medieval text.
  I am saying that maybe I am just not the right kind of reader for this - and I am a linguist. This was not written for me. If this new translation gets new readers to this tale, and makes them enjoy it, it has a place in this world. It doesn't need to be liked by every reader.
  
  If you're considering to read this, maybe see if you can get hold of a sample first.
  The arc was provided by the publisher.
• 
  wishforagiraffe

  Audiobook is solid, though I still feel like I needed a print copy in order to follow along with some of the exposition.
  
  Overall, this translation is REALLY great, it's like if Hamilton had an Old English baby. It's accessible and modern yet still keeps the cadence of the poem. Definitely worth checking out.
• 
  Emily Duncan

  Stunning
• 
  Sheree | Keeping Up With The Penguins

  Bro! If the idea of reading Beowulf gives you traumatic flashbacks to high-school or university English lit classes, you need to check out this new translation.
  
  Headley incorporates distinctly modern phrasing and slang to make the text more accessible for today’s audience. Even though Beowulf: A New Translation is undoubtedly easier for a novice to read than, say, Seamus Heaney’s translation, it would be good to familiarise yourself with the plot beforehand to make sure you don’t miss anything. I’m so glad I got to read and thoroughly enjoy this one for fun, instead of study.
  
  
  My extended review of Beowulf: A New Translation can be found here.
• 
  Emmkay

  What a clear, energetic translation! I enjoyed the author's enthusiastic and irreverent introduction too, though while billed as a 'feminist' translation, that didn't come through that clearly to me in the text.
  
  For better or for worse, this is the "Bro!" Beowulf, from the invocation in the first line ("Bro! Tell me we still know how to speak of kings!"), and some of its more timebound contemporary stylings might not wear well (I could have done without a "Hashtag: blessed," for example). I can see them being great in the classroom or fresh to the reader now, but having the kids cringing, or just puzzled, in ten or twenty years. That's too bad, but when Headley is just versifying clearly and without any gimmicks, this is magical.
  
  Some examples:
  
  Death, no matter our desires,
  can't be distracted. We know this much is true,
  and it's true for all souls: each of us will one day
  find the feast finished and, fattened or famished,
  step slowly backward into their own dark hall
  for that final night of sleep.
  
  That dark entertainment was done - words had won over wine
  long enough. Now laughter conquered conversation.
  Serving boys poured pleasure from pitchers. Wealhtheow,
  weighted in gold, processed to her place between two good men.
  Hrothgar and his nephew Hrothulf, who back then yet trusted
  in the links of lineage. There, too, waited Unferth, at the feet
  of those men, the Scylding's lords, who trusted him, too -
  perhaps not as much as they trusted themselves -
  but still, a brave man, though a sibling-slayer, brilliant, though a brother-breaker.
  
  He was our man, but every man dies.
  Here he is now! Here our best boy lies!
  He rode hard! He stayed thirsty! He was the man!
  He was the man.
• 
  Drew

  A vibrantly modern translation. The headlines are the colloquialisms -- the "Bro!" opening, the sassy memespeak -- but what makes this translation actually brilliant is the way that it interrogates the masculinity of the original tale. Every other translation of Beowulf that I've read has felt more or less like the classical image of a bard or storyteller recounting the tale to a murmuring crowd; this feels like we've been dropped into the middle of a Saxon hall, with drinking and roaring and fighting and fucking. I want more translations like this, translations that root us in the feeling of the historical text as opposed to trying to aim for some glorified rarity. This is a translation that should be taught in schools (sorry, Seamus) not just because it'll actually wrap kids up in a text they'd otherwise write off... but because it will cause new generations to reconsider the meaningfulness (or the lack thereof) of war and violence and toxic masculinity.
• 
  Tanya Gold

  I want more translations like this 🤩
  
  

  Yes: I mean—I may have bathed in the blood of beasts,
  Netted five foul ogres at once, smashed my way into a troll den
  and come out swinging, gone skinny-dipping in a sleeping sea
  and made sashimi of some sea monsters.
  Anyone who fucks with the Geats? Bro, they have to fuck with me.