Anonymous, The Heliand

Hugh Magennis (Queen's University Belfast)
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The

Heliand

(the word means 'Saviour'), a verse retelling of the life of Christ, is the only substantial poetic text surviving in Old Saxon. It consists of 5938 alliterative lines (and is incomplete). We also have fragments of an Old Saxon

Genesis

poem, which was also reworked in an Old English version, the latter referred to as

Genesis B

(also fragmentary), but the

Genesis

material amounts to only a fraction of that of the

Heliand

. The text of the poem has been preserved in two major manuscripts, Munich Cgm 25 (ninth century) and British Library, Cotton Caligula A. vii (tenth century), and in two other fragmentary witnesses. The Cotton manuscript is thought to have been written in England.

Old Saxon was the language, closely related to Old English, of continental neighbours of the

592 words

Citation: Magennis, Hugh. "The Heliand". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 April 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=11996, accessed 19 March 2024.]

11996 The Heliand 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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