Interesting Links for 16-04-2023

[andrewducker]

1. Listen up! Bea Wolf is a brilliant retelling of a classic Old English saga—for kids

(tags:English history writing children books review )

2. Broccoli consumption protects gut lining, reduces disease, in mice

(tags:vegetables health mice )

3. Edinburgh's most dangerous road junctions named as council plans major safety upgrades

(tags:safety Edinburgh transport roads )

Comments

[hilarita]

1. Beowulf is not a saga. Dammit. Someone is wrong on the internet.

[andrewducker]

The British Library disagrees with you. https://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/englit/beowulf/index1.html#:~:text=This%20is%20the%20only%20known,itself%20is%20probably%20even%20older.

[hilarita]

Ewww. The British Library are using "saga" informally in a really really unhelpful way. I do hold two degrees in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic*, and as far as I can recall, the vast majority of the scholarly literature on the subject does not consider Beowulf in the incarnation in Cotton Vitellius A.XV to be a saga.
The crucial differences are: it's a poem, not a prose work with occasional verses included.** While the poem treats on Scandinavian subjects, it's not itself a Scandinavian work; it was produced in England, probably on the borders of Mercia and Wessex in around the year 700, and then copied down in this version a little before the Norman Conquest. The Sagas (of their various kinds), were primarily produced in Iceland in the 13-14th centuries, as part of a very different set of cultural pressures, and they were correspondingly very different in form and style.
I haven't kept up with the field in detail for a while, but unless there's been some fairly major reappraising of the definition of saga, this is a rather misleading description.

*This is what my degree is in; nowadays we'd probably not use Anglo-Saxon as a descriptor. I studied Beowulf in great detail for finals; I studied the translation of Alexander's Saga for my M.Phil, and the Family Sagas in undergraduate courses.

** This does mean that it's more legitimate to claim that The Lord of the Rings is a saga - a primarily prose work with bits of poetry included.

[andrewducker]

Thank you, that was fascinating!

[bens_dad]

So Beowulf is not a saga (partly) because it is too old !

I knew it had a Scandinavian background and had assumed that that meant it was following the tradition of the sagas.

Talking of versions for kids; I first came across Beowulf in the school reading book "Brave and Bold" - one of the later (maybe the last) in the "Janet and John" books. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brave-Bold-Janet-Mabel-ODonnell/dp/0720205328#

[anef]

How interesting! I did not know that (I am sure it has been explained to me before but I was probably Not Listening at the time).

Point 2

[dewline]

Calls for more crunch-mix salads in my life, then.

[channelpenguin]

My cat adores brassicas. But I don't encourage him too much after the squits he got when he stole and ate a whole cauliflower floret...

When I have a kebab, he's as interested in sniffing after the red cabbage as the meat! I have had to cover up my cabbage seedlings in the house as he munched 2.

Last year when he was born, the fields would have been full of rape plants when he was very wee,

[andrewducker]

It's fascinating when carnivores are interested in vegetables.

One of my parent's dogs loved frozen peas. Another one was a huge fan of mini apple pies.

[channelpenguin]

It's less surprising with dogs, their digestive system can cope with vegetables etc in a manner closer to ours and they can actually survive ok on a (carefully constructed) vegetarian diet.

Cats can't at all. They are obligate carnivores, whose digestive system really really doesn't do carbs. The amount in normal dry cat food is even problematic (esp) long term. So it's really odd for them to have much interest in veggies.(though, like us, it seems they are easily addicted to crunchy things...)

[darkoshi]

Bea Wolf is a book I shall have to read; it looks delightful.