The first source for my final project is from The National Endowment for the Humanities. (http://www.neh.gov/news/old-english-new-influences) The source itself is very brief, but provides great insight into the impact that old English literature, especially Beowulf, had on the modern epics such as Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. In Lord of the rings especially, anglo saxon themes becomes apparent in regards to charaters and the role they play. Saruman for example derives from searu which means "treachery" or "cunning." So Saruman is a treacherous man. Not only do themes play in to the modern epics, but so do the characters, dragons, mermaids, horned monsters all play into the story telling of danger and adventure that the old English epics portrayed. Another big point made is alliteration. This alliteration and use of more compound structuring of phrases and sentences helps to bring forth who a person is by not just labeling them a warrior or evil individual, but using terms like helmberend or "helmet bearer" to really help to visualize who these individuals are and to use words to create this more refined and detailed image of a character and those around him.

For my final project I plan on assessing beowulfs impact on the English language by presenting it in a prezi format

Germanic mythology

• ·         Early Germanic tribes- mythology that was written comes from sources written down centuries

Later

• ·         6^th century onward writing became more common with the spread of Christianity and Roman conquest
• ·         Northern Germanic tribes converted later and recorded more
• ·         First written account of German religion comes from Julius ceaser
• ·         Next major source- tacitus- notes worship to roman gods (mercury), prominent god was woden, which didn’t show up till 3^rd century
• ·         Connections between gods named days of week, ie Wednesday, wodensday
• ·         Conducted ceremonies in forests and woods, casting lots to determine will of gods, future, etc. Called hlotum, hlot, then lot
• ·         Cast from old norse to throw away, cast lots
• ·         Word lot lead to words like lottery and lotto, games of chance
• ·         Words that described methods of predicting future with nature lead to words such as spectate, latin words from watch
• ·         Aster-astrology/ con-stella- constellation watching stars used to determine fate
• ·         Du-aster= disaster, when bad fate was seen in stars
• ·         Early germans had own pantheon of gods
• ·         Eul marked the 12 day winter festival, eul log, eul time.
• ·         Sinter claus, st Nicholas, then santa claus- based off odens wild hunt through the sky on an eight legged horse
• ·         Each of the three tribes comes from the sons of german “sky god”, tiu, tier.
• ·         Thursday is thors day, thunder god, thor=thunder
• ·         Friday is named after a Germanic goddess, friga or frea, possibly eastra
• ·         East comes from direction of suns rise, eastra and fertility can connect to easter
• ·         Bunnys and eggs represent fertility and fertility with eastra
• ·         Loki-father of hel, daughter banished to cold dark world of evil dead, name borrowed by Christianity became name of Christian concept of hell
• ·         Secured in kings james bible to describe hades
• ·         Germanic tribes had split belief of land of the dead (Viking funeral) burial at sea in ship
• ·         Soul can be traced back to place where the dead went
• ·         Original version of hell was an underwater kingdom of souls
• ·         Cella- sella- cell= place where person is contained
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