Epic Continent

Award-winning travel writer Nicholas Jubber journeys across Europe exploring Europe's epic poems, from the Odyssey to Beowulf, the Song of Roland to the Nibelungenlied, and their impact on European identity in these turbulent times.

Jubber explores how attitudes to population movement, borders, kin relations, sex, class and political structures are dramatised in the ancient and medieval epics. From Homer's Odyssey, through the devastating conflict of the French Song of Roland and the German Nibelungenlied, to the great Viking sagas such as Beowulf and the Icelandic Njal's Saga, these are timeless tales about human nature; but also windows into other societies, with different emphases on matters of honour, kinship, fundamentalism and fate.