swan-rād

Old English poetry was full of a metaphorical technique called kenning, in which regular words were replaced by compounds which gave a poetic flavour to the description. Thus 'sun' can become 'sky-candle', and 'warrior' can become 'feeder of war gulls' - a double modified expression, in which war-gulls refer to ravens, the carrion birds attracted by the dead after a battle (nice, eh?). And what of the sea? In the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf, mighty ships plough the sail-road, the whale-road and the swan-road.

The when light hits the surface of the water, it creates a dispersed pattern of reflection stretching from the horizon towards the viewer. As light scatters off the moving surfaces of the ripples, only those beams which reflect towards the observer are visible. The resulting twinkly surface is called a glitter-path, and when the individual twinkles are summed together (as in this long exposure), the result is a clear, bright bridge. Here, the moon-bridge stretches right across the bay to the old town of Swanage (Anglo-Saxon name: Swanwich, meaning... wait for it... swan-village). Anyone fancy a stroll along the moon bridge across the swan-road to Swan-town?

Captured at Boscombe, Dorset

grendel, your pea soup is ready...

It's the line of the poem. Most famous and best remembered: "ða com of more under misthleoþum Grendel gongan, godes yrre bær" He came off the moor, under the mist-cliffs, Grendel striding, bearing the wrath of God.

How could a thick fog at the cliffs not remind me of that line, and of Grendel's powerful, furious stomping... But also of the injured monster - retreating from his encounter with Beowulf, arm torn off, slouching back to his cave, to see his monster mum. A substantial portion of the poem is devoted to Grendel's mum (rather curiously portrayed by the foxy Angelina in the recent film). So perhaps she did brew him up some restorative soup, before heading out to slaughter Hrothgar's men in their sleep... thanx mum. x. gr.

there's clearly something about monster mums that i find absurdly amusing...

Ða com of more under misthleoþum...