I once read an excerpt of "Beowulf" in Olde English to my second graders to show them how language changes over time. I never saw such wide eyes!

Greetings from Ireland on the 11th of September 2022 @10.02pm.❤️🇮🇪❤️

In HS we had to memorize part of the Canterbury tales. The AP had to do it in olde English. We did not. However, we got extra credit if we chose to do so. I was the only one in my class that chose tbis option. My teacher said I did better than most of his AP students! It is so fascinating how language has evolved

I tried to watch this documentary because I've never heard the legend or story of Beowolf. I found that the volume was too low and the narrator could have talked a little bit louder. I'm sorry but I can't really understand the story because of those things

I wrote a prequel to Beowulf called "Grendel's Aunt." 74 stanzas of metered, somewhat alliterative, loosely and internally rhymed poetry. One excerpt: Now her nephew in question, nefarious Grendel, the seed of her sister, descendant of Cain, was a monster whose drool filled a marsh full of moule, and whose breath spored infective murrain. "Tell me, where can I find him? He sounds just the part!" shouted Hymm, now excited to meet him. So they trudged themselves down into bowels of miry and boot-squished through through foul-smelling swamps of perspiry. The fetidness beckoned of Grendel, that knave, and they found him asleep in his cave... You can hear the entire poem, narrated by James Kingdon, here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/oLyHoMWgyquVg30.html

Brings back so many memories. My favourite high school English teacher read this to us. The old English, I mean. At least an excerpt. I think the introduction essentially. He himself was Dutch, and had been living in Canada for a very long time. But he could really get the pronunciation down. And he read it very theatrically. At the end of his reading, a bunch of 16 year old jaded high school kids, stood and gave him a standing ovation. The vast majority of us kids, including myself, had roots in parts of the world that were nowhere near Britain. My ancestors were from India and Afghanistan. But it didn’t matter! This was just freaking amazing!

Beowulf is Beornwulf who is also Ragnar who is actually Ecghberts son and Aethelwul’s brother. This is real, this is true.

Lol I realized I had a hack for the audio badness. The music only comes through my right earbud and the left carries the normal audio track. Much better after that. Love the legend of Beowulf.

There is music playing beneath the speaker's words that make this video almost impossible to listen to. Is there someway I can lower -- or eliminate -- the music coming through my computer. And I have twice shut off the volume to understand where the music is coming from.

Why is the music and sound so off?

more anglo saxon history please!! a forgotten age of the original englishmen

It's nearly unintelligible over the WAY too loud background music...

The background music is too loud

The helmet is stunningly beautiful. That was an amazing, talented craftsman/men

It's said that they think they found the foundation of Beowulf house on the swedish island Gotland in the middle of the Baltic Sea.

I wish the sound quality was better.

Anyone else get ten minutes in while only wearing one ear bud wondering what the heck is going on?

The recorder music adds nothing.

so hard to hear the narration with music of equal loudness layered over it

This was hard to listen to with headphones. The narrator was only speaking in my left ear and the rest was in my right. Really uncomfortable and frustrating.

Berserk is someone that wears a ”bear shirt (särk)” that is someone that can turn into a bear or fight like one. Maby Beowulf was a berserk, if the name hints at bear ( hunter of honey).

Too bad the awful sound tract drowns out the narrative . : (

The audio of this documentary is really wrong, the background sounds are too prominent and the narrator nearly indistinguishable. Sorry.

the audio mix is painful. compressing it to mono might even be better

The prologue is worth the price of admission

We read Beowulf if high school it was so cool

Anybody else had problems with the sound?

Greetings from Florida💕

Y'all complaining of not understanding just turn on the subtitle but the edit is quite bad loud music

hard to listen to with the background music

I keep trying to break into Beowulf, to see what all the hoopla is about, and I'm sorry but I can't. The language is impossible, even in modern translation. "He" is used for everyone, and there are no identifiers regarding the "He" being discussed. It's so frustrating, I think I need to just let it go.

The audio is way over the top…

Honestly, being an English teacher I'm so ashamed. I've never read it, nev listened to it and didn't assign it. My bad. I've got some catching up to do

Seen

This narrator's accent has switched from Scottish to Nordic to scouse to Manchester to Welsh. What sort of accent is this?

I'm having a flashback man

Really bad audio

my right ear hurts thanks ffs

Too much echo...

The background noise is so loud on this it is hard to follow the narration. It is really irritating. I don’t think I want to listen to an entire hour of it, though I am interested in the subject.

15:52 a man clears his throat... whats with that?

The mixing of the audio in this film is horrid! Unbearable! Narrating hard in my left ear while music rolling along in my right. Shocking. You’re welcome for the comment but you won’t be getting more than 30 secs of listening from me.

The narrator should probably stop talking altogether. Never heard someone who whistles and spits with every second word. You'd need a face guard standing next to him to cover yourself for the spray. Cannot listen to him, what a shame

I've got a bilingual book about Beowulf, in modern and old english.

Better than Rings of Power.

Terrible audio, not worth attempting to watch. Waste of time.

Read from a book and saying I do not know. Seems historical. Do a video like this again if you want to lose subscribers.

Sounds so Dutch/German😝 And as a Norwegian I’m pretty aware that we all belong to the Germanic language family.

This documetary is overly credulous of medieval christian mythos, pushes the ridiculous notion of the inevitability of cultural assimilation and destruction, and presents disproven theories as fact. If you want a video with actual substance on Beowulf, go watch The Histocrats' video on the subject. Very disappointed by this video, since this channel usually covers its subjects quite well.

You english call everything anglo-saxson. The Engelans were just a small group and Saxsons were never called as a group before Charles the great (end of 8th century/beginning 9th century) Forget Bede, he was ignored of the real history. Start DNA and find out the frisians migrated first, your english language already shows this influence. Old English and Old Frisian are the same. Even in Alfred the Great his time. The frisians were already in England before the great migration. The fought for the Romans, traded from The Netherlands to England. Also, in the Netherlands, the incomming eastern parties who took over the empty land, build there houses not with wattle en daubt. And let's be real, all western germanics wore a saks, as a daily use. Only scandinavians wore knives.

Kind of loony. My own theory is that it was a story created to celebrate Canute as King of England, perhaps something translated into Old English from some sort of Norse source, now lost.

The Lord of the Rings is NOT A TRILOGY!!!!!! A trilogy is three separate stand-alone stories unified by a common theme. The Lord of the Rings is ONE SINGLE STORY that in some cases was broken up into three sections. Geeze, if you're going to speak English, damned-well use it like you know what you're doing!