Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
So begins the medieval poem Beowulf. In 1909, Francis B. Gummere translated that as: “LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped, we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!”
There have been many translations over the years, and they all disagree on these opening lines. Honestly, they all disagree about how to translate the opening word! In addition to “lo” people have used “hark” and “attend.” Seamus Heaney went for the more conversational “so,” and – one of my favorite recent attempts – Maria Dahvana Headley opens hers with “bro.”
“Bro! Tell me we still know how to speak of kings! In the old days, everyone knew what men were: brave, bold, glory-bound. Only stories now, but I’ll sound the Spear-Danes song, hoarded for hungry times.”
Some scholars (including the renowned J.R.R. Tolkien) argued that it shouldn’t even be translated at all, and people should just contend with the original language. A tall order, given how removed Eald Englisc is from modern English. And none of this is really my point. What I really want to talk about is: how amazing it is that we are able to have this discussion at all.
Even if you are not prone to nerding out about Beowulf, I am willing to bet that most people who read in English are at least familiar with the story: the great hero, fighting monsters and dragons, is a mainstay of modern fantasy. But, did you know that there is only one medieval copy of Beowulf, and that was nearly lost? The book containing the poem seems to have been written (by hand, mind you) around 1000 CE, and for a while its path through history gets a little muddy. Scholars know that by 1563 it had passed into the hands of Laurence Nowell (a Tudor era scholar – we know this because he wrote his name and the date in it, so never let anyone tell you you’re wrong to annotate your personal library), before making its way to the library of a book collector named Robert Cotton. These were eventually donated for public use, and then largely destroyed by a fire in 1731. Though damaged, Beowulf miraculously survived and came to be transcribed and shared in other editions.
Do you know how amazing and unlikely that really is? And yet, that could honestly be the backstory behind so many books throughout history. The survival of any book or story has always been through the crazy happenstance of it being passed on to the next person.
Ancient libraries, like the famous Library of Alexandria, relied on an untold number of scribes and translators to preserve the knowledge and stories that came to them from all over. Though much of what was there has been lost (not, as drama would lead us to believe, to fire, but to the gradual decline and decay that came at the hands of cultural disinterest), many of the books were preserved by being carried further east. A lot of the knowledge they held thrived in Arabic centers of learning, before gradually making its way back west as books once again traded hands. The medieval library of Timbuktu (in Mali, a country in West Africa), saw books copied and brought from Mecca and Cairo and many other places besides – not just in Arabic, but in local dialects as well – creating an amazing and public collection for the local populace. When invasions of the city resulted in the burning of the library, people smuggled out and saved as many books as they could. To this day, there are an estimated 300,000 books still in the hands of the surrounding population, saved and preserved throughout the trials of history. The Timbouctou Manuscript Project, established in 2002, has done amazing work in finding and digitizing these books to further save them for future generations. And there are many more stories like that, all over the world, through human history.
Librarians have always been in a relay race, passing literature and information on to the next generation of librarians and readers. Thanks to the printing press, mass publishing, digital archives, and so many other leaps in technology, we are able to preserve and share these treasures more reliably every generation. But most importantly it is people doing the work of preservation. We here at Skidompha are proud to be part of this long tradition, and we cannot express enough how much we appreciate every one of you for your role in this same history. Every time you come to the library, every time you share a book, you are helping carry that torch. We are indeed all brave, bold, and helping hoard stories for the hungry times. Thank you so much for all you do – whether it’s signing a petition, donating books or money or time, or coming to the library and reading – and we hope to see you soon.
Cheers,
Meghan
Meghan Hawkes
Communications Director
Skidompha Public Library