"Beowulf": Blood and Violence, Geat Style

I'm pretty sure I procured this from the book warehouse where I worked one winter season. I knew that I would want it for my library. I didn't read it for almost ten years.

It's very short, and this translation is brisk and breezy, especially  for something so violent and gruesome. On my 30th birthday the missus had procured tickets to the Banana Bag and Bodice production of their rock opera "Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage".

Having the copy and not having read it, I was inspired to read that year before going to the show. It didn't take very long to read. I always kind of found it weird that this was always considered an English work, rather, the early English work (besides Le Morte d'Arthur I suppose). But in the story, the hapless and helpless Danes need Beowulf's awesome ass-kicking force of Geats to help them with their demon problem, a sumbitch' named Grendel, and also his mom, who's kinda a pain in the ass.

I had to look up stuff about the Geats. They were a Swedish ethnicity, or at least that's what we'd call them now, and there is a state in Sweden called Geatland (I'm using the Americanized spelling). Now, the Swedes and Danes were mortal enemies for centuries, and the Geats wouldn't have called themselves Swedes by any means, but it always seemed funny to me that  the Danes are depicted in this English story as being ineffectual. But why this is the tale that survives?

I'll tell you why: It's the same reason big action movies get made, or used to get made. It is unbelievably violent and gory. Like, holy shit man. Nobody ever told me. Granted, I don't read a lot of horror, or zombie fiction, but this was the goriest thing I've ever read.

Before Beowulf shows up to help save the day, Grendel likes to kill the Danes and eat them, and the description of Grendel working their bones in his teeth sounds like my cat going at a chicken wing, gnashing his teeth on them and grinding the bones down with greasy glee. When Beowulf makes it to Grendel's lair at the bottom of a lake, he's not as shocked as you or I might be to see that Grendel decorated the inside with the peeled skin of his slain victims. Wall papered his lair with skin and guts, man.

Beowulf, during a fight, tears Grendel's arm off and beats him with it as he's fleeing..

Awesome.

The story got me nice and amped for that rock opera, which didn't disappoint. f you ever get a chance to see it, you won't be disappointed.

Sometimes the classics are classic for a reason.