Der Heliand

[mrph]

I'm sure that some of my friends list are already well aware of this, as you're a knowledgeable bunch - but I didn't know about it until last week, and I find the concept a little bit fascinating...

The poem Der Heliand ('The Saviour'), written somewhen between 803 and 840, is a long religious epic written in Old Saxon, depicting "the history of Jesus Christ in terms that would have been familiar to its target audience, the Old Saxons, and indeed to any Anglo-Saxon expatriates still to be found in the German religious world. This Jesus is a warrior king, a ring-giver, and his disciples or 'theganos' owe him the full allegiance unto death due to a lord: in short, a Jesus from the world of Beowulf".

(Quoted from Geoffrey Hindley's A Brief History of the Anglo-Saxons)

It's an interesting mental image, isn't it? I wonder if anyone's ever considered adapting it into a film...

Comments

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

The original isn't Der Heliand, unless you're talking about it in Modern German. It's just the Heliand, or Heliand (and tbh the original text doesn't have a title anyway). I studied part of it for my degree. It is quite cool, yeah :-)

[mrph.livejournal.com]

The 'Der' was also quoted from Mr Hindley's book, unfortunately - looks like it slipped up on this. Thanks for pointing this out!

[the-g-man.livejournal.com]

(Quoted from Geoffrey Hindley's A Brief History of the Anglo-Saxons)

Now that caused me to double-take!

[lougarry.livejournal.com]

surely that would upset some element of christianity because jesus is supposed to be a peaceful kinda guy and not a warrior dishing it out, thwacking enemies and smiting monsters...and it's not in the bible so it can't be true ;)

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

The Saxons loved their violent religious stuff. Judith, the poem retelling the biblical story of Judith, is almost a black comedy - as in the original Judith's city is beseiged and she gets dolled up and goes out to seduce the leader of the besieging army, gets him alone and cuts his head off. However, it's the scenes with Holofernes and his men feasting drunkenly and the army later wailing and kicking off when they realise he's dead that are the funny bits. (I'm sure they made it funny intentionally.)

A lot of Saxon Christianity was imported from the Celts, and Celtic Christianity had some big differences from Roman Catholicism.