As our surprisingly pleasant spring turns into the beginnings of brutal summer heat here in Central Texas, we are reminded of all the wonderful words we use to describe the weather. Scorching. Sweltering. Stifling. Blazing. Boiling. But if I know anything about KWBU listeners, it's that you are always looking for more words to describe the world around you and more interesting connections to help you understand the words you already do use. That's where Eleanor Parker's lovely book, 'Winter's in the World: A Journey Through the Anglo-Saxon Year', comes in.
Professor Parker is a lecturer in medieval English literature and her book takes readers through a year in the calendar of the Anglo-Saxons. Before the Norman Conquest. The English language had very few Latin and Greek roots, but sounded like Norwegian or Icelandic. Winters in the world makes all sorts of brilliant connections that also give Eleanor Parker a chance to show off something that many folks never get a chance to connect with...Anglo-Saxon poetry.
That world was so different from ours. And in studying the language and poetry of this people, Parker gives a detailed picture of a world that still barely exists in parts of England today. A world governed, not my clock time and connectivity to electronic devices, but one in which human life was lived through the seasons as part of an organic whole, inseparable from the patterns of nature, she says, were the natural, the human, and the holy were interrelated in the most essential ways.
It's really the perfect book for word and history nerds. In 'Winters in the World', you'll learn why midwinter comes on December 21st. When winter actually begins. Why the days of the week in English are named after Norse gods. Why the word wassail, the Christmas drink actually comes from a greeting.
Aside from trivia, though, one of the most amazing things about Parker's well-documented scholarly work, is that it doesn't read like a well-documented scholarly work. It's a page turner. So much about this cultural and historical period isn't very well known and the way that Parker weaves her exploration of words and histories and seasons and feasts together makes for fascinating storytelling.
Probably the best thing about this book, though, is that it makes the Anglo-Saxons familiar. Parker helps her readers to see the beauty and universality in their poetry. Take her translation of 'The Seafarer', for instance, an anonymous poem about springtime.
"I can sing a true song about myself", the poet says.
"Speak of journeys, how I have often suffered in days of struggle, times of hardship, bitter heart, sorrow I have experienced, found in a ship many places of trouble, the terrible tossing of the waves, where often the anxious night watch held me at the prow when it crashes by the cliffs."
It's a beautiful rendering that could have come from any time period, any season of life in which you might feel storm tossed and anxious. And so give 'Winters in the World' a chance to enlarge your understanding of time and seasons and poetry, and it just might provide a much needed escape from the Texas heat.
