A little Halloween treat for all you Saga Thing fans. You'll want to listen with headphones to get the full effect on these two spooky tales.

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Music Credits

Intro Music - from “Death Awaits” by Billy Malmstrom

Outro Music - "Mythic Force" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hwæt a Movie is back! This time we dive deep into the uncanny valley epic Beowulf from 2007. Released at the height of Robert Zemeckis's motion-capture mania, this version of our favorite Old English classic promised to bring the poem to life like never before. It was slated to be an event like no other, at least for John and Andy.

In this star-studded and CG-saturated film, Ray Winstone voices a Beowulf who looks suspiciously like an action figure and swaggers like he just killed nine nicors. He's accompanied by the ageless Wiglaf, played by Brendan Gleeson. The great Anthony Hopkins plays a jovial but somewhat mad King Hrothgar, Robin Wright plays the deeply troubled Queen Wealhtheow, and John Malkovich does his best John Malkovich as Unferth.

But if we're honest, this is the Grendel family's movie from start to finish. Crispin Glover turns in a unforgettable performance as a Grendel who swells with anger and shrinks with vulnerability. Grendel's mother is a gold-dipped, shape-shifting femme fatale with stiletto feet. She's also very much Angelina Jolie. And then there's Grendel's little half-brother dragon. That's right, the dragon is part of the family!

Is this adaptation a clever deconstruction of heroism and myth-making? Or just an excuse to get Beowulf naked on an animated dragon? Zemeckis, Gaiman, and Avary take some bold liberties with the source material in this one, and we’re here to guide you through it all from the perspective of two curmudgeonly middle-aged medievalists.

As always, this episode of Hwæt a Movie includes a thorough summary and discussion of the film, a brief Q&A, and our final ratings: how well the film handles Beowulf, Grendel, and Grendel’s mother, plus our ever-important scores for faithfulness to the source and overall entertainment value.

Beowulf (2007) was a wild ride to discuss, and we hope you enjoy it half as much as Beowulf enjoys shouting his own name. Or at least as much as Zemeckis likes cleverly blocking Beowulf's bare bits from view with conveniently placed objects.

Once you’ve listened, let us know your thoughts. Is this the definitive Beowulf for the 21st century? Or just a fever dream in a damp cave?

And do you forgive us for being grumpy when it comes to Beowulf movies?

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All music taken from the film for this episode is written and produced by Glen Ballard and Alan Silvestri.

In this episode, we finally sit down with Dr. Yoav Tirosh, one of the leading voices in Old Norse–Icelandic studies and an all-around fascinating person to talk to. Yoav has written extensively on topics ranging from Ljósvetninga Saga and saga authorship to storytelling, cultural memory, and disability studies. He’s also the creative force behind the webcomic Viking Comics, a seasoned Icelandic tour guide, and a delightful companion for wandering around Kraków. Or was it Prague???

Yoav recently completed a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship at Aarhus University and now works as a researcher at the Center for Disability Studies at the University of Iceland. You can pick up a copy of his latest book, How Genre Governs Creation in the Medieval Icelandic Sagas. It’s very affordable.

We talk with him about his current work, his interdisciplinary approach to medieval texts, and what motivates him as a scholar.

But our main focus, naturally, is Ljósvetninga Saga—a text that Yoav knows better than just about anyone around (one might even get the feeling that he's obsessed with it after listening to this interview). Having written both his MA thesis and PhD dissertation on the saga, Yoav walks us through its manuscript history, important differences between the A and C versions, and the ongoing debates around whether the saga represents a cohesive narrative or a collection of shorter tales. He also scolds us for our many failings in the

Along the way, we discuss Guðmundr inn ríki (Guðmund the Powerful) and the saga’s broader commentary on leadership, power, and corruption in Icelandic society. Yoav shares his thoughts on generational memory, cultural context, and what the saga reveals about the anxieties of its age.

After suffering the stings and barbs of his wrath, we invite Yoav to offer his own judgments and to give us his final rating for Ljósvetninga Saga. There’s also something in there about David Lynch and saga structure, John loses power and disappears for a bit, and we learn about a fortuitous encounter between Yoav and his nemesis in an Icelandic bathroom.

Join us for a wide-ranging and deeply engaging conversation that feels a lot like the grad school conversations that inspired Saga Thing.

Have fun with this interview and then let us know what you think on our social media:

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Music Credits:

Introduction – from Icelandic Folk Music: Tröllaslagur

Outro – Ólafur Liljurós