Joe Clark

The Heliand in HTML

The Heliand

Read ☞

The Heliand is a retelling of the Gospel in Old Saxon. It uses cultural reference-points that would make sense to Vikings, which term I am using approximately: The Three Wise Men are warriors (presumably on horseback), Jesus is wrapped not in swaddling clothes but in a bejewelled raiment, and suchlike.

Here, for example, is the Lord’s Prayer in the Heliand:

Father of us, who art all Thy folk-bairns,
Thou who art on high in the kingdom of Heaven,
Hallowed Thy name here in every world,
Thy kingdom come in strength and craft,
Thy will be done over all the world;
As here on earth; so there above
On high in the kingdom of Heaven.
Give us each day, good Lord, Thy gracious guidance,
Thy holy help, and absolve us, O Warder of Heaven,
From the manifold mischief we do against mankind,
Let not loathsome wights lead us astray,
As is their will and as we are worthy;
But help us against all our evil deeds.

And the Ten Commandments:

That thou shalt not slay;
Neither commit adultery;
Nor steal nor cause strife;
nor swear falsely,
nor bear thou false witness nor be thou too stubborn of mind,
Nor hating nor hateful; commit thou no robbery.
Forsake thou all envy; to thine elders show kindness, to thy father and mother.
Be thou fair to thy friends,
to thy nearest be gracious.
Then wilt thou be granted joy in the kingdom of Heaven, if thou wilt keep this and follow God’s teachings.

Book and HTML versions

The Heliand is the coolest thing I’ve read in years, and almost the only book in living memory I devoured from cover to cover. The book I refer to is the translation by Mariana Scott.

Now, this book has all sorts of copy-errors, not atypically absent or unbalanced quotation marks. The PDF is internally malformed, as all PDFs not put together by me tend to be, and yielded no end of errors when output to plain text or like formats. Most preposterously, the ligature was misrendered as R.

Still, I tell anyone who will listen that I am the last severe technical editor extant. Certainly I have all the right tools – in this case, BBEdit and a wide monitor.

Hence I have produced a version of the Heliand in valid HTML that you can read on any device. Go ahead and start reading now.

Colophon

Videos

Again

Read ☞


Posted: 2025.06.26 ¶ Updated: 2025.06.29

You were here: Catholic projects ☞ The Heliand in HTML