The wooded landscape of Old English poetry

Mary Ward

Landscape History, 2013, vol. 34, issue 1, 23-32

Abstract: Trees and woodland, and their products, were of considerable significance to the daily lives of the Anglo-Saxons. The usefulness of these as a resource was counter-balanced by the threat posed to the human community by the wildness of forests; both natural dangers from wolves and other animals, and the refuge that forests offered to the lawless and dispossessed. The tree and woodland imagery of the vernacular poetry of the period shows how the Anglo-Saxons used both aspects within the texts to develop ideas and concepts that go beyond the physical realities of not only the resources obtained from trees, but also the woodland as a feature of the landscape around them. Analysis of the vocabulary used reveals a differentiation between the application of two of the terms for woodland, holt and weald. As a holt , in the form of metaphorical forests composed of spears, the landscape can protect the human community as well as threaten it. The forest which, practically speaking, is outside the confines of society becomes, by the use of weald in the poetry, a vehicle for conveying the concept of the boundaries of normality.

Date: 2013
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DOI: 10.1080/01433768.2013.797185

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