Riddled with spears, clinging to his faith, King Edmund of East Anglia was beheaded on 20 November 869 at the orders of Ivar Ragnarsson ‘the Boneless.’ Or at least that is what […]
Creating a Saint – King Edmund the Martyr & the Great Viking Army
The Battle of Winwæd and the Rise & Fall of Pagan Mercia
The Battle of [the] Winwæd in 655 is a little known and sparsely recorded battle, yet one of critical importance to the social, political and religious evolution of the various English and […]
Crusaders on the Baltic Shore – The Livonian & Estonian Crusades (c. 1198 – 1290)
The Eastern Baltic was unlike any other region where Rome sanctioned Crusade. The Northern Crusades cannot be cast as either a purely political expansion of territorial borders, or a purely religious expansion […]
Sweyn Forkbeard, Olaf Tryggvason, and the Kingship of Norway
Dressed in armour, watching his fleet fall to his Danish rival, King Olaf I Tryggvason of Norway threw himself into the sea, sinking to his death and denying his enemies the pleasure […]
Crusaders on the Baltic Shore – The Wendish Crusade (1147 – c.1185)
In 1147 Pope Eugenius III declared a crusade against the pagans of the Eastern Baltic, the first papal call to holy war not explicitly aimed at reclaiming Christian territories from Muslim rule. […]
Viking Identity & Christianity – The Performed Violence of Olaf Tryggvason
Olaf I Tryggvason took the throne of Norway in 995, reigning for a brief but eventful five years. Though Olaf had been a pagan Viking raider, by the time he took the […]
The Postgrad Chronicles 