I love this film, its brilliantly done! One thing that perplexed me was the transition to christianity within Beowulfs kingdom, at the start it says its set in 507 AD yet the Danes were pagan at that time, they didn't convert until 965 AD, over four hundred years later!
I agree. Even the post that says it was written in Christian times between the 7th and 10th centuries is not quite right. The Old English poets were still strung out between pagan and Christian (see the poem The Wanderer), but in Beowulf there is really no Christian references. A Christian teacher circa the 8th century famously complained that all his students did was to read Beowulf. And the poem is set in Denmark only as a recollection of a past homeland. The Venerable Bede (7th century) was writing the history of the English church, but it was mostly about miraculous conversions from pagan to Christian. The original poem Beowulf has married women in it, but no love affairs, no sex, no lusty ballads, and Grendel's mother is NOT a pin up, but despite all that, this film on its own terms is better than I expected.
shareActually there are Christian references in Beowulf. From the Wikipedia article about Grendel: "As noted in lines 105–114 and lines 1260–1267 of Beowulf, Grendel and his mother are described as descendants of the Biblical Cain."
shareYou are correct, there are plenty of biblical references, but those were added centuries later, when it was finally written down by a christian cleric. They are not part of the original story.
shareIt's a bit more complicated than that. Whether _Beowulf_ was composed early and emended by Christian clerics cannot be known. That is one possibility. It also may have been composed closer to the end of the 10th C. using the stuff of old Germanic stories together with a Christian worldview. There are also options in between. No one knows for sure, but I wouldn't say the biblical references were definitely not part of the original story.
shareWhen last I looke the vikings were not building gothic stone castles as well. Just forget about historical accuracy in this piece of ***.
Better of watching Beowulf and Grendel.
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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - Who watches the watchmen?
I know! I mean dragons and trolls in dark age Scandinavia? Did anyone even bother to read a history book?!!?!
shareBut the real point is that it was written in England (more accurately the Kingdom of Wessex in Anglo Saxon pre-England) and was about their own recent conversion to Christianity in the guise of a old Germanic story, so the fact that it is the wrong time frame for Christianity in Denmark doesn't really have much to do with it.
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