Book Review: The Faraway North by Ian Cumpstey

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Ballads, Book Review, Ian Cumpstey, Medieval, Medieval Literature, Scandinavian, The Faraway North, Translation

Title: The Faraway North: Scandinavian Folk Ballads

Translated and Introduced by: Ian Cumpstey

Published by: Skadi Press (June 23, 2016)

Pages: 91 (eBook)

Blurb: These ballads convey a fantastic vision of the world as it was imagined in medieval Scandinavia, with monsters and magic intermingled with the very human concerns of heroism, tragedy, love, and revenge.

The great hero Sigurd is joined in this collection by troll-battling warriors including Holger Dane, Orm the Strong, and others. There are dramatic scenes of romance, betrayal, and loss. Some of the ballads translated here are attested by paintings or maps that date from earlier than when the first full ballad texts were first written down in the 1500s. An adventure ballad relevant to the history of an Eddic poem is also included.

The ballads are storytelling songs that were passed down as part of an oral folk music tradition in Scandinavia. This collection brings many new ballads to the English-speaking reader. The readable verse translations succeed in conveying the rhythm, spirit, and imagery of the originals. The translations are mainly based on Swedish and Norwegian ballads, with some from Danish tradition.

For each ballad, there is also a short introduction with commentary and background information.

The paperback edition includes fifteen full page black-and-white illustrations.

The ballads included are:
Åsmund Frægdegjeva; Steinfinn Fefinnson; Esbjörn Proud and Orm the Strong; Sunfair and the Dragon King; Bendik and Årolilja; Sigurd Sven; Sivard Snare Sven; Little Lisa; Sven Norman and Miss Gullborg; Peter Pallebosson; Sir Svedendal; King Speleman; Holger Dane and Burman; Sven Felding; St Olaf’s Sailing Race.

Praise for Warrior Lore:
“A charming introduction to Scandinavian Lore.” — Sam Smith, in The Journal (once ‘of Contemporary Anglo-Scandinavian Poetry’)

My Take: Oh how I loved reading through this. The Medievalist in me delighted at these short and catchy ballads. Ian did a great job at translating them in a way where repetition, rhyme, and rhythm all seemed to be in tact. Being no expert at Scandinavian, I cannot say how faithful the translations themselves were to the original text but, based upon the notes provided I am inclined to trust that Ian is knowledgeable about the language as well as the lore surrounding these Medieval Ballads.

The introductions accompanying each ballad did a good job of setting the scene for the events about to transpire. There were plenty of times that, without those introductions, certain details or events might have been overlooked upon a first read because they appear in allusions or in fast-passing moments during the ballads. So those introductions are perfect companions to each ballad in this collection.

There are a lot of similarities with these ballads and the literature of the Anglo-Saxons and the Icelanders, the two areas of Medieval literature that I am most familiar with. After reading this collection, I feel a level of comfort in expanding my interest to Scandinavian literature from that period as well and look forward to uncovering more literary treasures and seeing what else Mr. Cumpstey has to offer. I cannot express enough how wonderful this short collection of ballads was to read, and highly recommend them to anyone with an interested in literature from medieval cultures or even fans of fantasy.

I was provided a free eBook copy of this in exchange for an honest review.

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Tolkien on Translation

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Beowulf, J.R.R. Tolkien, Medieval Literature, Middle English, Old English, Translation

Yesterday we celebrated the works of J.R.R. Tolkien with a Tolkien Reading Day, so it is only fitting that today, for Scholarly Saturday, the post concerns Tolkien. This turned out to be a coincidental scheduling, as I did not remember the Tolkien Reading Day until Thursday, but it was a fun day. I helped run a chat throughout the day on Twitter, and you can search through the #TolkienChat entries to see what we discussed and chime in with your own thoughts on the books, movies, soundtrack, and more.

There are many excellent works of literature out there to read, and understanding how translation affects your experience with a text is essential to getting the most out of anything that was written in a different language. Tolkien was a linguist and a Medievalist. He devoted himself to reading texts like Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Poetic Edda, Prose Edda, and many others. He formed a group known as Kolbitars (Coal biters) that would sit by a fire at night and read their own impromptu translations of Icelandic Sagas. He developed his own languages throughout his works, the most popular being the Quenya and Sindarin (both of them a form of Elvish) languages. He understood the importance of translation and wrote about it at some length.

In his essay, “On Translating Beowulf” (originally published as “Prefatory Remarks on Prose Translation of Beowulf“), Tolkien writes that, “No defence is usually offered for translating Beowulf. Yet the . . . publishing of a modern English rendering needs defence: especially the presentation of a translation into plain prose of what is in fact a poem, a work of skilled and close-wrought metre” (Tolkien, ix). In other words, the translator fails to defend their reasoning for providing this new and different translation of Beowulf to the world (when there are already many good translations to be had), and felt that those who translated the poem into prose especially needed to provide a strong defense for their decision. A poem loses something when it becomes a prosaic story, yet the ironic thing is Tolkien’s own translation of Beowulf was in prose form. Granted, he never anticipated this translation being published and, if he had, I imagine he would have either done a poetic translation or else offered a suitable defense for his decision to translate it into prose. For, as Tolkien himself stated regarding a prose translation of Beowulf, “The proper purpose of a prose translation is to provide an aid to study” (Tolkien, x) rather than one to read and study on its own. A prose translation was to function as a supplement to a poetic translation, or the text in its original form.

Tolkien also weighed in regarding the choice of using modern words or the words that would have been fitting for the time period of composition. Tolkien believed, “if you wish to translate, not re-write, Beowulf, your language must be literary and traditional: not because it is now a long while since the poem was made, or because it speaks of things that have since become ancient, but because the diction of Beowulf was poetical, archaic . . . in the day that the poem was made” (Tolkien, xvii). So he was firmly entrenched in the camp that believed using older terms, fitting for the time period, was the way to go rather than pandering to the modern crowd’s choice of vocabulary. This is something you can see not only in his translation work, but also seeping through all of his writing. Even children’s tales, such as Roverandom, use words that fit the story rather than ones that fit the audience. Yet while Tolkien was a proponent for a traditional translation, he also cautioned that “words should not be used merely because they are ‘old’ or obsolete. The words chosen . . . must be words that remain in literary use, especially in the use of verse, among educated people” (Tolkien, xix), which is why you won’t see thees and thous and other completely outdated stylistic language in his work.

This is only scratching the surface on Tolkien’s thoughts regarding translation. I highly recommend getting a copy of The Monsters and the Critics, which has his essay “On Translating Beowulf” in full along with six other worthwhile essays/lectures from Tolkien.

When it comes to translations, here is a list of the works he translated and had published:

Beowulf
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Pearl
Sir Orfeo
Ancrene Wisse
The Old English ‘Exodus’
Finn and Hengest: The Fragment and the Episode

Works Cited

Tolkien, J.R.R. “Prefatory Remarks on Prose Translation of Beowulf.” In Beowulf and the 

          Finnesburg Fragment: A Translation into Modern English Prose. Tr. John R. Clark Hall.

Ed. C.I. Wrenn. London: Allen & Unwin, 1950: ix-xxvii. Print.