Gunnhildr konungamóðir (mother of kings) is one of the most notorious women of medieval Scandinavian literature. A tenth-century queen consort of Norway and Northumbria, she appears in the Icelandic sagas as a […]
Universal History Archive / Contributor/Getty Images Matthew Firth, Flinders University When King Æthelred II came to the English throne in 978 CE as a child of around ten, England had enjoyed decades […]
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 […]
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. […]
