Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: An Environmental Romance
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the most famous Middle English romance for modern readers, though it survives in only a single manuscript witness. Written in an intricate form that combines alliterative long lines and “bob-and-wheel” rhymes in every stanza, it tells the story of a series of interlocking exchange games between the Sir Gawain, young hero of Arthur’s court, and alternatively an otherworldly Green Knight and the lord and lady of a forest castle, Hautedesert. Throughout, the narrator famously indulges in intricate material and environmental description. The following discussion highlights a handful of such passages (from many), describing: Gawain’s journey through Wales (and beyond) to find the Green Knight’s base of operations, a mysterious “Green Chapel” (Scenes 1 and 2); the castle and forested grounds of Hautedesert (Scene 3); and finally the Green Chapel itself (Scene 4). As even this brief summary suggests, the romance abounds with examples of environmental description.
To account for the great number of images provided for this romance, my discussion of it has been split over multiple pages; please use the link at the bottom of each page to progress, or use the Main Menu in the upper-right corner to move forward at any time.
Keywords: forest; coastline; castle grounds; hills and caves
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Citation
Middle English passages on this and following pages have been quoted from:
Anonymous. The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron. 5th Edn. University of Exeter Press, 2007.
All Modern English translations were done by the website author, with recourse to the Middle English Dictionary and glosses in the cited edition(s).
Possible Provenance:
The map of Great Britain above highlights the possible provenance(s) — that is, place(s) of composition — suggested by scholars for this romance. The numbered markers denote the areas depicted by 360-degree photos or videos I have included on this page, listed in the order that they appear in my discussions below.
In the map, click the box icon in the upper-lefthand corner to display the legend.
This map is based on information regarding provenance supplied in the cited edition(s) of this romance, along with a long history of scholarship related to locating this poem. See especially the works of R.W.V. Elliot cited on this website’s sources page, and further my monograph.
For an insightful website that engages with personal photographs of locations along Gawain’s route, and arguments relating to the geographical identification of those locations, see Michael Twomey’s “Travels with Sir Gawain.”
Scene 1: Wales and the Wirral
Now ridez þis renk þurᵹ þe ryalme of Logres,
Sir Gauan, on Godez halue, þaᵹ hym no gomen þoᵹt –
Oft leudlez alone he lengez on nyᵹtez
Þer he fonde noᵹt hym byfore þe fare þat he liked;
Hade he no fere bot his fole bi frythez and dounez,
Ne no gome bot God bi gate with to karp –
Til þat ne neᵹed ful neghe into þe Norþe Walez.
Alle þe iles of Anglesay on lyft half he haldez
And farez ouer þe fordez by þe forlondez;
Ouer at þe Holy Hede, til he hade eft bonk
In þe wyldernesse of Wyrale. Wonde þer bot lyte
Þat auþer God oþer gome with goud hert louied.
And ay he frayned, as he ferde, at frekez þat he met
If þay hade herde any karp of a knyᵹt grene,
In any grounde þeraboute, of þe Grene Chapel.
And al nykked hum with “Nay!” – þat neuer in her lyue
Þay seᵹe neuer no segge þat watz of such hwez
Of grene.
Þe knyᵹt tok gates straunge
In mony a bonk vnbene,
His cher ful oft con chaunge,
Þat chapel er he myᵹt sene (ll. 691-712).
Now rides this man through the realm of Logres [i.e., Britain],
Sir Gawain, on God’s behalf, though he thought it no game
Often he remains friendless and alone at night:
There he found before him no fare [i.e., food] that he liked;
He had no friend but his steed by forests and downs,
No one but God to speak with by the way –
Until he came close to the North of Wales.
All the isles of Anglesey he holds on his left side
And fares over the fords by the forelands:
[He crossed] over at Holy Head, until he had [reached] again the shore
In the wilderness of Wirral. Very few lingered there
Whom either God or anyone with a good heart loved.
And always he asked, as he went, of folks that he met
If they had heard any word of a Green Knight,
Or of the Green Chapel, anywhere thereabout.
And [they] all answered him that “No!” – never in their lives
They never saw any man that was of such hues
Of green.
The knight took strange ways
On many a cheerless bank.
His cheer quite often changed
[also: He looked everywhere]
Before he might see that chapel.
This passage details Gawain and Gringolet’s journey through Wales, heading northwest through the mountains to the coast facing Anglesey, and then east along the shoreline to the Dee Estuary and Wirral Peninsula. Though a relatively brief stanza, it covers a great deal of ground, with the place names at least nominally anchoring the story in real-world locations.
As such, I have paired here images and recordings of the landscapes roughly overlapping with Gawain’s path. They have been organized into two sections: 1) examples of inland Welsh topography from the base of Cwn Idwal and at Dolbadarn Castle; and 2) images from Flint Castle on the coast of the Dee Estuary, facing the Wirral Peninsula.
This image shows the view in Wales from just below Clogwyn y Tarw, looking up at the mountains and waters of Llyn Idwal, and down a long valley to the north. The same view can be seen in the video just below this caption.
This still image shows the waters of Llyn Idwal, framed by mountain slopes and a pebbly beach. The same view can be seen in the video immediately below this caption.
The dramatic views afforded by Cwn Idwal, lying beneath the peak of Glyder Fawr and, here, the closer crag of Clogwyn y Tarw, offer examples of the breathtaking topography Gawain would cross on his way into “North Wales.” Indeed, looking down the sun-dappled valley, away from the mountain and the waters of Llyn Idwal, provides a view that slopes down to Anglesey Island itself in the far distance. Even today, this location remains bereft of much human development; hiking trails and associated gates and signs, rock monuments, a single road, and small outbuildings are the only markers on the mountainside itself, while further out the countryside splits into graph lines of hedge-bordered fields. While the area is regularly busy with tourists and hikers, the variable topography and grand views provide nevertheless a lingering sense of isolation that befits Gawain’s journey. The area, however, is by no means “untouched” by human activity – as illustrated below by the views from nearby Dolbadarn Castle, which face the hulking remains of a slate quarry.
This image shows the view of a slate quarry from the base of Dolbadarn Castle.
This photograph a view of the Dee Estuary coastline (with some exposed mudflats) from the top of a surviving tower in the ruins of Flint Castle. The Wirral shoreline is visible across the water.
This image shows the view from lower walls of Flint Castle, with the woods and grassy slope of the shore in front of the photographer and the castle’s interior grounds behind.
The image of Flint Castle and the Dee Estuary, meanwhile, tracks Gawain’s progress east towards the Wirral (visible across the water). Flint lies just a couple of miles from Holywell and its Shrine of St. Winifred, and the image of the receding tide denotes the estuarial mudflats that, when revealed, could provide a ford for an intrepid and quick-moving traveler. This context, though, with the crumbling castle ruins and the town riding up close behind, reveals the distance that modern readers always must work to bridge between themselves and medieval literary representations of the environment – that is, the sense of “ruin” that twenty-first century readers carry with them.