There is a manuscript in the British Library with two famous illuminations of early English queens. The images below do not really do them justice. What looks like a brownish colour is […]
A Case of Mistaken Identity: Ealhswith and Æthelswith
Defining Queenship in the West Saxon Dynasty
Exactly what constituted a queen in ninth- and tenth-century England is a key topic of Matthew Firth‘s new book, Early English Queens, 850-1000: Potestas Reginae. Queenship is not always easy to define. […]
The St. Brice’s Day Massacre: History, Archaeology, and Myth
The St Brice’s day massacre looms large over the legacy of Æthelred II (978-1013/1014-1016) as a well-known tale often held to exemplify the English king’s reign: a poorly considered act of fear, […]
Reading England in the Icelandic Sagas: Cultural Memory and Archaeology
‘In those days’, Gunnlaugs saga relates of the eleventh-century, ‘the language in England was the same as that spoken in Norway and Denmark’. It is an assertion which raises some compelling questions […]
The Postgrad Chronicles 