Seven years ago I had the opportunity to visit the Jorvik Viking Festival and ever since I have been dying to return. It has grown over the years to be one of the largest Norse-themed festivals in Europe, attracting over 40, 000 international visitors each year and providing education as well as a whole heap… Continue reading Return of the Vikings
As part of my plans of outlining aspects of early medieval life I was going to write a post on Trade. In The Northumbrian Saga, Leodgar and Aethelwin are both traders of Anglo-Saxon Northumbria and with the invasion of the Vikings comes a whole new orbit of trade and trade partners, including Thorstein. As usual… Continue reading Trade
I recently saw an article pop up on my facebook page that immediately had me excited.Better Identification of Viking Corpses Reveals: Half of the Warriors Were Female.This was followed of course by a very aptly chosen picture of Lagertha from Vikings... which I have also used... shamelessly.But the more I read the article and all… Continue reading Sisters doing it for themselves?
Dublin, Ireland: The archaeological site of Kilmainham-Islandbridge in Dublin “...is now demonstrably the largest burial complex of its type in western Europe, Scandinavia excluded”. This has come after a massive 15 year project making sense of the archaeology under Dublin’s streets with results expected to be published in an 800 page report titled ‘Viking Graves… Continue reading Viking burials under Dublin’s streets
After covering farming and domestic buildings, royal estates and halls, this month we will move on to Churches and Monastic complexes. Many of the towns and cities all around England started either as religious centres or else satellite villages and hamlets that serviced such centres. They were integral in helping with the administration of government… Continue reading Anglo-Saxon Churches
This week I am involved in another blog tour, this time looking at the main character of my novel. I was invited to join by Edoardo Albert, author of many fiction and non-fiction books including "Northumbria: The Lost Kingdom" which was co-written with Paul Gething, "Professor Tolkien of Oxford", "Call to Prayer: The Story of… Continue reading Blog Hop: Meet my main character
Under the pump a little this month so instead of another in depth article I want to share another long poem from The Northumbrian Saga, one that I like almost as much as The Wanderer but for very different reasons. This one is Viking in origin and is called Rigsthula, or the Lay of Rig.… Continue reading Rigsthula
As I have touched on in a few of the earlier posts, Anglo-Saxon society was based on a hierarchy of kings and their families at the top and everyone else underneath them. So what was keeping these men (and let’s not underestimate their women either) from doing as they liked and terrorising their own people… Continue reading The Witan: Trying to keep kings in their place since 5th century AD
Hi everyone. Well you are all very lucky to not only receive two blog posts in two days, but also two writing updates in a month... sort of. I have been tagged in the My writing process blog tour by author Matthew Harffy. The idea is not only to let readers know a few things… Continue reading My writing process blog tour
After the initial migration period of Angles and Saxons in the 5th and 6th centuries there was a shift from chieftainships and petty kingships with small territories to larger kingdoms (such as the kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia which themselves joined to make the larger Kingdom of Northumbria). The larger the kingdom became the more… Continue reading Anglo-Saxon palace complexes
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