Child was reading and loving a rendition of Beowulf and was curious about monsters and dragons. My attempt at explanation: before we had cameras and airplanes and internet, it was reasonable to believe that monsters and magic and dragons existed.
Like how we tell stories about aliens. Our descendants will explain to their little ones how 21st century people lacked faster-than-light and nanotechnology and synthetic cognizance so they could entertain weird ideas about alien life.
@22 I see quite the opposite: Monsters and dragons are more popular than ever before. And most alien stories are nothing more than ancient sagas taken to outer space. I think technology is driving a desire for archaic storytelling (and magical thinking). 👾 🐉
@stefan well then here’s my question. Were the people listening to Beowulf a thousand years ago taking it as fiction or as a folk tale or as history? I realize now that I was suggesting to the child that Beowulf’s singers did actually believe dragons and monsters likely existed—unlike today!, when they’re popular but only as fiction (flat earth and reptile men conspiracy nuts notwithstanding)—but likely the truth is more complicated than I summarized.
@22 hard to tell. I think people generally believed in supernatural beings, but it could have differed across classes and regions. And most likely there were sceptics and people attached to superstition in medieval times just like today.
@stefan
@kensanata
Consider the first people to encounter gorillas, and their wonder if these were human.
And the Papua New Guinean highlanders’ astonishment at meeting whites, from Australia for the first time, less than a century ago! They inspected the visitors’ poop and (apparently) had women sleep with them to confirm that they were indeed human.
Today there’s a lot of support for skepticism about “supernatural”. A thousand years ago, much less so—who knew what wonders existed far away?
@22 @stefan seems to me that the popularity of bestiaries, and the moral nature of beast, and their allegorical use all point to the possibility that perhaps for them there was no difference. If revenge exist invisibly, and the dragon stands Grendel’s mother’s revenge – then does the dragon exist any less? But generally speaking if people copy Strabo‘s geography and it’s monsters then I’m sure they believe in their existence „elsewhere.“