Grendel

[Miloch]

Anyone else see this abysmal low-budget production of Beowulf on Sci-Fi last night? Vikings with mullets and horned helmets (anachronistic, or ceremonial at best), a crossbow that shoots what appear to be detonation bolts, a Norse feast hall that looks more fitting for ancient Rome than Denmark, and an adversary that looks like a cheesy 3D World of Warcraft animation. I don't remember any of that in the book. Why do filmmakers feel the need to mess up a perfectly good epic?

 

Maybe the 2005 Beowulf & Grendel was better, or possibly the still to-be-released Beowulf co-screenwritten by Neil Gaiman. All I know is the 1999 Beowulf starring Christopher Lambert was even worse than Grendel, if that's possible. Highlander II was better.

[Meira]

I think I've seen the 1999 Beowulf or at least one that was so utterly horrible that it was absolutely hilarious.

[berelinde]

I kind of liked the Thirteenth Warrior. It was kind of like Beowulf meets the Predator.

 

And it had Antonio Banderas.

[Meira]

But the vikings didn't use the horses they should.

[berelinde]

Cool! I didn't know there was such a thing!

[Miloch]

I kind of liked the Thirteenth Warrior. It was kind of like Beowulf meets the Predator.

Funnily enough, the 13th Warrior was Michael Crichton's stab at "what if Beowulf actually took place?" (Buliwyf = Beowulf). The book was originally called Eaters of the Dead and is better than the movie. In it he invents a semi-fictitious manuscript written by the Arab played by Banderas (Ibn Fadlan) and bases his Grendel (or grendels) on the Neanderthals (a bit of a stretch, since they were more like dwarves than giants).

[BigRob]

The Thirteenth Warrior was a pleasant surprise for me, I thought it was going to be an awful Hollywood film (This Grendel on Sci-Fi seems to have done that), but it was a pretty good film, all told. There were some historically inaccurate things in it, but there was nothing that screamed at me, as happens in some films. I must admit though, I didn't know about the horses, though it makes a lot of sense that they wouldn't have huge breeds in the mountains.

 

 

I thought the 2005 Beowulf and Grendel was a pretty good adaptation myself, even though it wasn't all that faithful to the texts that I've read.

[Miloch]

I must admit though, I didn't know about the horses, though it makes a lot of sense that they wouldn't have huge breeds in the mountains.

Wiki says the breed Meira described is extant in the western mountains of Norway (hence the fjords I guess). I forget where exactly they ride horses in the 13th Warrior, but in the book, they first get some in a place called Massborg, which is up a tributary of the Volga, the Oker (Oka?). It probably wasn't far from modern Moscow, if indeed Crichton wasn't describing the proto-Moscow of the late first millennium ("hardly a town but a camp of a few wooden houses"). Anyway, they ride these north several days til they get to a sea village called Lenneborg (probably on the Baltic, maybe around modern St. Petersburg). At which point they take another ship west til they make landfall again. Not sure if they get more horses wherever they end up (would've been Denmark or maybe Sweden if it was to match Beowulf), but the original horses anyhow could've been anything - maybe tarpans, which probably weren't too different from modern horses.

[EiriktheScald]

I have the 2005 Beowulf & Grendel on DVD. The costumes are realistic (no horned helmets).

 

* Spoilers *

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some things I didn't like: Beowulf has a distinctive scottish accent, while the others don't; King Hrothgar is portrayed as a drunkard; Grendel doesn't fight Beowulf and his men at first (plot element: he anly wishes to avenge his father's death at the hands of Hrothgar), but then cuts his own arm off when he gets it caught in a rope while jumping out of the roof of the meade hall; Grendel rapes the witch Selma, who has a child (again, part of the plot).

[berelinde]

Now why did they go and do that?

 

Such is always the case: you've got an epic story, but it's sparse on plot, so, instead of using the opportunity to focus on something credible, like maybe some interpersonal dynamics (warriors in Hrothgar's household boasting that they can take Grendl out and getting killed in the process, maybe a trivial plot non-essential love story, giving some camera time to arts like smithing or whatever), they have to go and throw in a lot of superfluous sensationalism. If it were done well, Grendl would already be a pitiable monster. That was part of the charm of Anglo-Saxon poetry: the bad guys had to be heroic, too, or it wasn't worth it. He didn't need to be off on some quest for revenge.

 

And they missed a perfect opportunity! Beowulf actually goes on to fight a dragon! I think it kills him, IIRC, but nobody said it needed a happy ending.

 

Anyway, my memory of the original is shaky, and shrouded by years of attempting to forget the hours I spent trying to overcome my reading problem well enough to understand poetry that didn't rely on sentence structure to convey meaning.

[Darios]

Not sure if they get more horses wherever they end up (would've been Denmark or maybe Sweden if it was to match Beowulf), but the original horses anyhow could've been anything - maybe tarpans, which probably weren't too different from modern horses.

 

Well, tarpans would seem to have been quite close to the fjord horse in appearance; an estimated 12-13 hands in height (about a hand less than the average modern fjording), and at least its descendants seem to have a similar colouring to the fjord horse, even down to a similar dorsal stripe.

 

Since large horses were more typical of Central Europe in the High and Late Middle Ages, the arab (standing 14-15 hands tall on average) could even have been considered a tall (yet slender) horse in the context of Viking Age Russia or Scandinavia.

[Guest Guest_Nythrun_*]

The only adaptation of Beowulf I ever thought was worth a fig was John Gardner's Grendel - which is a pretty remarkable book.

 

13th Warrior was campy fun though "Today was a good day!"

[Domi]

All I know is the 1999 Beowulf starring Christopher Lambert was even worse than Grendel, if that's possible.

 

I started watching that one, and sort of stopped real soon. And I think I did the same with one of the other adaptations which did scream B-movie.... I guess Beowulf just is not lucky.

[Miloch]

Since large horses were more typical of Central Europe in the High and Late Middle Ages, the arab (standing 14-15 hands tall on average) could even have been considered a tall (yet slender) horse in the context of Viking Age Russia or Scandinavia.

I will agree with that, though the Vikings could also have obtained their horses from North/Central Europe or anywhere else they pillaged or traded. But the Vikings making fun of the Arab horse for its smallness, calling it a dog, is either a blunder or permissable only under some sort of post-rationalisation that the Norsemen will make fun of anyone for any reason, even in spite of (or perhaps because of) the fact their own horses back home are smaller. Boys will be boys after all.

 

Interestingly, Ibn Fadlan is said to have described an elasmotherium which was active in the Pleistocene (maybe a million years ago) but may have survived into historical times, giving rise to unicorn legends if Ibn Fadlan's account is true (he was said to be reliable). The first few chapters of Eaters of the Dead (the 13th Warrior book) are supposedly taken from his account verbatim, though this part didn't make it in.

[BigRob]

But the Vikings making fun of the Arab horse for its smallness, calling it a dog, is either a blunder or permissable only under some sort of post-rationalisation that the Norsemen will make fun of anyone for any reason, even in spite of (or perhaps because of) the fact their own horses back home are smaller. Boys will be boys after all.

 

 

Given the ribbing that the Arab gets for his scimitar, name and evening under the cart, that sounds pretty probable to me.