Author: blueskies97
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Obscene and Offensive Early Medieval Nicknames
FAIR WARNING – there are some naughty words below. Nicknames are not an uncommon occurence in early medieval Europe, and can be given to all ranks and classes of peoples (although, notably, female nicknames are substantially less frequent). One of the remarkable features of early medieval nicknames is their shock factor. The frequency of names…
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Beacons of the Past: Help Find a Hillfort!
This week I’d like to highlight an amazing website which has endless potential to provide both a fun passtime and contribute towards archaeology: Beacons of the Past. The project builds on a massive set of LiDAR data, covering 1400 km2 across the Chilterns. The issue is, this is a HUGE amount of data, and it’s…
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The Early Medieval Nicknames Bot
To help keep me sane during this heat, and as part of my Very Serious Research™ (read: pissing about with a dictionary and writing down the occasionally funny name), I have constructed a new Twitter bot (@botmedieval), which you can follow here. The bot feeds off my database of nicknames that I am currently in…
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‘Anglo-Saxon’ England – An Introduction
The ‘Anglo-Saxons’ inhabited what would become England following the fall of Rome, from c.410 up until the invasion of the Normans in 1066. Their lives covered some momentous social changes – the widescale (re?)adoption of Christianity, the emergence of an idea of ‘England’, invasion and occupation by the ‘Vikings’ and finally the introduction of feudalism.…
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The Anglo-Saxon Timelines Game
I’ve just found a fun little web game revolving around Anglo-Saxon history – a great excuse to take a break! You can access it here: https://timelines-ruby.vercel.app/. Simply enter ‘Anglo-Saxons’ into the search bar and continue – there’s a whole wealth of options to explore, from Hinduism to the Battle of Waterloo, but I’m even worse…
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The Terracotta Warriors – Artefacts in Context?
The Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum in Xi’an China, known popularly for its Terracotta Warriors, is an archaeological marvel. But what does the site actually consist of, how has the museum managed to display a set of artefacts on such a colossal, breath-taking scale. In a new series on MuseumCraft, we take a look at Qinshihuang’s…
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Exploring and Travelling the Roman Empire
This week’s free online resource is the ORBIS website from Stamford University, which can be found here – https://orbis.stanford.edu/ The site focuses on exploring inter-connection through travel routes and, as a unique and amusing feature, lets you calculate how long travel would have taken between two locations, dependent on a vast number of factors –…
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Herman ‘the Crippled’ – Early Medieval Disability
This week, I want to take a quick look at Herman Contractus (elsewhere Hermann of Reichenau). An eleventh-century German Benedictine monk, Herman is the subject of Berthold of Reichenau’s Chronicle, the author of his own chronicle, and an impressive portfolio of music. Despite his contributions, Herman is most remarkable for his Medieval Latin nickname contractus.…
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Icelandic ‘Viking’ Nicknames – My First Conference Paper
This year I was fortunate enough to give a presentation at The Háskóli Íslands Student Conference on the Medieval North, a wonderful conference for graduate students to share their early research across literature, history and archaeology. Sadly, with Covid, this took place in the slightly dingy confines of my room rather than Reykjavik, but it…
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The Tolkien Estate Website
The Tolkien Estate have recently launched a new website (no doubt in response to the increased interest due to the upcoming TV series and film), and it’s a great resource to explore the writings and life of Tolkien, as both a writer of fiction and an academic. You can access the website here. There are…