Wild: Tales from Early Medieval Britain

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Reading Wild feels like being led by the hand through a gnarled, old growth forest, along empty shoreflats, and along the edge of windswept cliffs – and shown how to experience them through medieval eyes. Reading Wild feels like being led by the hand through a gnarled, old growth forest, along empty shoreflats, and along the edge of windswept cliffs - and shown how to experience them through medieval eyes.

As with Storyland Wood engravings (the authors own) imbue chapters with a haunting gothic edge; the silhouette of leafless trees, hunched figures in empty spaces, bursts of white life amidst the darkness.The chapters open with a reimagining of a poem or riddle from the Exeter Book, and end with the author’s reflections upon what was just written.

Jeffs’ writing shows the reader that the abstract notion of the Wild, ever present to the medieval mind, is still accessible in the modern day. I had really loved the storytelling and art work in Storyland and when I found out that there was a sequel coming out covering the early medieval period in a similar fashion I was excited. Both the academic and the storyteller/lover crave for more, these brief glimpses into a whole wild world are just not enough to satisfy my wildly voracious tale-hunger. Similarly, the contemporary climate crisis echoes the experience of Lindisfarne before the Vikings invaded.This epic novel from the American historian and activist traces the history of an African American family from slavery to the present day. The messages that shine through are timeless in their comfort: this too shall pass, we are part of something beautiful, creation is full of wisdom. We are experiencing delays with deliveries to many countries, but in most cases local services have now resumed. We use Google Analytics to see what pages are most visited, and where in the world visitors are visiting from.

They blend reflections of travels through fen, forest and cave, with retelling of medieval texts that offer rich depictions of the natural world. It also doesn't hurt that (the hardback edition at least) has a larger print, making it a really friendly book to get into.The inspiration for this shimmering tale is an Old English poem The Wife’s Lament, which features in the Exeter Book, a 10th-century anthology of verse, often known as the Old English Elegies, which is one of the largest surviving collections of early medieval literature (several of the original poems feature in Wild’s appendix). In Wild, Amy Jeffs journeys – on foot and through medieval texts – from landscapes of desolation to hope, offering the reader an insight into a world at once distant and profoundly close to home. For me this gives the poems and tales far more immediacy and a way to relate to them more than reading a translation, no matter how good. Her previous book Storyland, which focused upon the history and legends of the United Kingdom and Ireland as a whole, was covered in Season 7, Episode 108 of The Folklore Podcast.