Medieval Mondays: Christian Viking Runestone Uncovered in Medievalist's Yard

It's every medievalist's dream come true--to find a rare artifact from the Middle Ages in their own back yard.

That recently happened to Dr. Sarah Jane Gibbon, a specialist in early church history, when her father found this fragment of a runestone on her farm.

It helps, of course, that she lives in the Orkney Islands, one of the richest areas for archaeological finds in the United Kingdom, and that's saying a lot. These rugged islands off the north coast of Scotland were home to an advanced Neolithic culture that made some amazing tombs and stone circles. Much later in the Middle Ages, it was home to a colony of Vikings.

What's interesting about this runestone is that it's using Viking runes to express Latin words, in this case, “who art in heaven hallowed”, part of the Lord's Prayer. Thus this runestone dates to after the Vikings had converted to Christianity. No similar inscription has ever been uncovered in the Orkneys or the Shetland Islands further north.

I bet Dr. Gibbon and her dad will be looking down a lot more as they walk around the property.

Image courtesy The Orcadian.

Medieval Mondays: Archaeologists Discover Anglo-Saxon Cross

West Face, showing Christ trampling on the beasts and St. John as a falconer.

Last month archaeologists in Weardale, County Durham in northern England, discovered a portion of an Anglo-Saxon cross dating to the 8th century. This isn't a picture of it. This is the Bewcastle Cross, which dates to the same century or a bit earlier. The archaeologists in Weardale found only a worn fragment. Hit the link above to see a picture of this intriguing lump and read about the discovery.

While the Weardale cross is in a lab getting photographed, drawn, and studied, you can actually visit the Bewcastle Cross. It's located at St Cuthbert's church in Bewcastle, Cumbria, northern England. As you can see it's lost its crossbar, either through weathering or during the English Civil War when various hardcore Christian factions destroyed anything that smacked of "Popism".

One side is covered with figures and an inscription in Runic that reads, "This slender pillar Hwætred, Wæthgar, and Alwfwold set up in memory of Alefrid, a king and son of Oswy. Pray for them, their sins, their souls." Another Runic inscription reads, "In the first year (of the reign) of Egfrid, king of this kingdom [Northumbria]."

The other sides have elaborate designs and the earliest sundial in England. Jump the cut to see a picture. This cross, along with the Ruthwell Cross, are considered the two finest Anglo-Saxon crosses in existence.

Photos courtesy Tom Quinn (top) and Doug Sim (bottom).

Norse Gods Blogfest: Naglfar, the Ship made from Dead Men's Nails

Today I'm participating in the Norse Gods blogfest. Wanting to be a bit different, I'm not going to talk about a deity per se, but a magical ship called Naglfar ("Nail Ship").

The Norse envisioned the end of the world as a titanic battle between Gods and the forces of Surtr, which included giants, rival gods, and various other fell beings such as the giant wolf Fenrir.

Sailing against the gods is the ship Naglfar, captained by the trickster god Loki and made entirely from the fingernails and toenails of dead men. It's a vast ship carrying hordes of warriors. In this apocalyptic battle many of the gods are killed, the world is consumed by fire and then flooded, and then rises from the waves fresh and new. Some gods remain to rule over this new land.

Only two humans are going to survive that particular era in human history, a sort of Norse Adam and Eve who will repopulate the land. The Prose Edda warns us to make sure to trim the nails of the dead to keep the enemies of the gods from completing Naglfar, but since it's all fated to happen anyway, I don't see how we can stop it!

Below is a shot of the Tullstorp Runestone from Sweden, showing the wolf Fenrir and the ship Naglfar.

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Guest Blogging About Fantasy Fiction Over At Sean Mclachlan's Blog

I'm guest blogging over at Sean McLachlan's blog today about Using Real Cultures in Fantasy Fiction. Hop on over and check out that post, and also the rest of his blog, which focuses on writing, the Civil War, Wild West, and travel.

No Medieval Mondays today, but I'll be back on Wednesday with a post for the Norse Gods blogfest. See you then!

Medieval Mondays: Early Irish Ogam

The Great Court at the British Museum is full of interesting objects such as Greek statues and Native American totem poles. Off to one side is a simple slab of rock that many people pass by. From a distance it doesn't look like much but it's perhaps the rarest object in the room.

If you look more closely, you'll see a series of slashes cut into the rock. This is a simple form of writing called Ogam. The Irish developed Ogam in the 4th century AD. The system was simple: letters were made up of one to five slashes, either short or long, on either side of a natural edge of the rock or a carved line. Slanted lines and lines that cut across the dividing line were also used. It was generally read counter-clockwise.

This particular stone dates to the 5th century and was found along with two others, having been reused to build a later medieval fort. The inscription reads, "[stone] of Vedac, [son] of Tob of the Sogain."

Such a short inscription is common with Ogam. Like Viking runestones, most Ogam stones were simple memorials that only recorded the carver and who the stone was dedicated to. Ogam died out after a couple of centuries as it was replaced by Latin.

Medieval Mondays: Byzantine Silver in an Anglo-Saxon Burial

We've all heard of Sutton Hoo, that amazing treasure-filled ship burial of Anglo-Saxon royalty. One interesting aspect of the hoard buried with this man was there was a large amount of silver from the Byzantine Empire. This was the eastern part of the empire centered on Constantinople that survived nearly a thousand years after the last emperor in Rome was overthrown in 476 AD.

The most splendid example is the Anastasius Platter, a large decorated platter that bears the reign stamp of Anastasius I,  who ruled 491-518 AD. This was basically a control stamp guaranteeing the purity of the silver, something you still see on good silver today. Here are some shots of this work of art courtesy the British Museum.

By the time of the Sutton Hoo burial in the early 7th century, this platter was already more than a century old. so it certainly had time to make it all the way to England. The Byzantine Empire was famed for its power and artwork, and even as far away as England, people craved to have something from its workshops.

Central decoration

One of four control stamps of Emperor Anastasius I on the back

Rim decoration

Medieval Mondays: Parasites found in Crusader poop

This ugly picture is of a whipworm. It's a common parasite in the human gut along with roundworm. Back in the Middle Ages they were even more common thanks to poor sanitation.

Now Reuters reports that archaeologists working at Saranda Kolones castle, a 12th century Crusader castle in Cyprus, have discovered a medieval latrine. It consists of a stone bench with a half circle cut through it, so the Crusader poop could drop into sewer. We archaeologists have an insatiable curiosity about life in the past so this was a great opportunity to dredge up some 800 year-old sewage and look at it under a microscope.

The team discovered large numbers of whipworm and roundworm eggs, showing the Crusaders had trouble with these little critters. These worms suck out nutrients from food before the body can absorb them and can often kill someone if they are already malnourished, a common problem for medieval soldiers.

Experts estimate that 15-20 percent of medieval troops died from malnourishment or infectious diseases while on campaign.

Medieval Mondays: Why Did Leprosy Disappear from Europe?

They are one of the enduring images of the Middle Ages. With their horrible open wounds and missing fingers, lepers caused fear and revulsion wherever they went. In some places, they still do. While leprosy is hard to catch, the simple medicine of the time didn't know this and had no cure. A disease so horrible, people thought, must be contagious.

It was also considered a judgement from God. In some areas, lepers were forced to stand in an open grave as a priest declared them dead. They were forbidden from living in towns or cities and had to wear bells in order to warn people of their presence.

Leprosy was widespread, with up to one in 30 people affected in some areas. But by the 16th century it was disappearing. Why?

A recent archaeological research project set out to answer this question. A team of archaeologists and biologists exhumed the bones of medieval lepers and sequenced the DNA of five strains of the leprosy bacteria. They found no significant difference between medieval leprosy and the strains still found today in Asia. The disease hadn't become any less virulent, so why did it die out?

It appears it was the victim of its own success. People have a genetic level of resistance to particular diseases. Those who were most susceptible died from it and didn't pass on their genes. Leprosy was one of the few grounds for divorce in medieval Europe. Only those individuals who had stronger resistance to leprosy remained, and thus the disease all but died out in Europe.

Medieval Mondays: Archaeologists trace Viking voyage in North America

One of the things that has always fascinated me about my field is how you can discover so much from seemingly innocuous remains.

Take this piece of jasper, for example. It was found at the site of L'Anse Aux Meadows, the Viking settlement in Newfoundland, Canada. This is the only Viking settlement so far discovered in the North America, but an analysis of this piece of jasper hints they went further afield.

It was used as a fire starter. If you struck it against a piece of steel it would make sparks. Bits of jasper are common finds in Viking sites. What's interesting about jasper and many other stones is that their chemical composition differs depending on where they come from. Thus you can analyze them and determine their origin.

Archaeologists analyzed this fire starter and found that it came from Notre Dame Bay, 143 miles (230 kilometers) south of the settlement. At that time (c. 1000 AD) the bay was inhabited by the ancestors of the Beothuk people and was rich in timber and wildlife. This would have been a good place to trade, being much more inhabited and rich in resources than the bleak area around L'Anse Aux Meadows.

Perhaps more investigations will reveal more detail about the lives of these rugged explorers from a thousand years ago.

Estonian armor from the early Middle Ages

Travel writer and novelist Sean McLachlan sent in this interesting photo from his recent trip to Estonia. Sean writes:

"I spotted this reconstructed armor in Kiek in de Kök tower in the capital Tallinn. The city is one of the best-preserved medieval old towns in Europe, and this tower is now a museum. Before the medieval city, there was a hillfort at nearby Iru hill from the 6-11th century. Among the many finds from the excavation was this armor.

"It's what's called scale armor, an improvement on leather armor that added metal scales for extra protection. At this period, plate armor didn't exist, and even in more technologically advanced regions like France soldiers wore leather or chain mail."

Sean is the author of the Civil War novel A Fine Likeness, available in paperback and ebook. The ebook is only $2.99 at the moment.

Do you have any interesting photos to share of medieval or Renaissance subjects? Drop me a line!

Did the Battle of Hastings really happen where we're told it did?

The Battle of Hastings is perhaps the most famous fight in medieval history. When King Harold died with an arrow through the eye (the most popular theory, there are others) and William got his new nickname "the Conqueror" on that day in 1066, the history of England and Western Europe changed.

For centuries we've been told that the battle happened on Senlac Hill near the town of Hastings. Indeed, Battle Abbey, commissioned by WIlliam himself, stands atop it.

But now some historians doubt that story, and they have two different candidates for the battle site. One suggests that the battle happened a mile north on Caldbec Hill, while the other says it happened two miles south of town at Crowhurst.

The Caldbec Hill site is the most intriguing. It's a steeper hill than the gently sloping Senlac Hill, and contemporary accounts said the hill atop which Harold and his Saxons stood was as steep one. On the other hand, a thousand years of weathering could have mellowed out Senlac hill. More telling is the fact that no weapons or bones have ever been found on Senlac Hill and that it was cultivated at the time, while accounts of the battle said it happened on unploughed land.

Also, the Normans erected a cairn of stones called a "Mount-joie" on the battlefield to celebrate their victory. The summit of Caldbec Hill is still known as Mountjoy. There's also the account of John of Worcester who that the battle was fought nine miles from Hastings, the same distance as Caldbec Hill.

The Crowhurst site is supported by a historian who has made a close study of medieval documents and looked at the landscape shown on the Bayeaux Tapestry and said that Crowhurst is the best candidate.

The Battlefields Trust, which manages the site, says in a press release says that they still think the traditional place is the correct one. They stated there's insufficient evidence for the Crowhurst site to be considered, and that they're still analyzing the argument for Caldbec Hill.

I'll have more on this as this story develops. Stay tuned!

Top photo by Antonio Borillo. Bottom photo from Wikipedia.

Medieval Mondays: Were the Vikings Potheads?

A new discovery reveals that the Vikings in Norway grew hemp.

Examination of material excavated from a Viking farm in southern Norway uncovered hemp pollen dating from 650 to 800 AD. Hemp is Cannabis sativa, a subspecies of which, Cannabis sativa indica, is marijuana. Industrial hemp such as what the Vikings grew can't get you high because it contains almost no THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.

Instead, hemp can be used for clothing and rope, as well as numerous other products. While the archaeologists stressed that they found no evidence that the Vikings grew marijuana, I have a hard time beliving they didn't have a little patch set aside for those long winter nights. The sagas would have sounded pretty cool while high on a mixture of pot and mead.

They couldn't have smoked too much, though, otherwise they wouldn't have made all those voyages of conquest and discovery. They'd have just stayed home eating Doritos and watching TV instead.

Photo of industrial hemp (not the Grateful Dead kind) courtesy Evelyn Simak.

New evidence for Vikings in North America

Recent excavations have found new evidence for Norsemen in Canada.

National Geographic reports that an archaeologist has reexamined the artifacts found at four sites in northern Canada and thinks they're Norse. Back in the 1960s, some strange cloth was found from sites belonging to the Dorset culture, the predecessors of the modern Inuit. The cloth didn't look Dorset and when it was looked at again this year, the researcher discovered it looked just like cloth woven in Viking Greenland in the 14th century.

Other evidence was found too. Whetstones that had lain in a museum for decades were analyzed with modern methods and found to have been used to sharpen bronze. The Dorset culture had virtually no metal tools. Only when they were lucky enough to come across meteoric iron would they have metal to work with.

Early researchers also found a sizable building that was much bigger than Dorset structures but the right size for a Viking hall. This was before the 1960s discovery of L'anse aux Meadows, the Viking settlement on Newfoundland. Since back then the idea that Norsemen came to the New World was only supposition, the evidence wasn't looked at as closely as it should have been.

As yet there's no smoking gun, but it does raise some interesting possibilities. The four sites from which the new evidence comes range over a thousand miles from northern Baffin to northern Labrador. The Norsemen, or their trade goods, seem to have gotten around.

Besides L'anse au Meadows and the Baffin Island finds, there is some fuzzy evidence for more widespread Norse explorations of North America. This 13th or 14th century carved figurine, called the "Bishop of Baffin", shows a person in clothing quite unlike that worn by the Dorset or Inuit cultures, yet strangely reminiscent of a European cloak. Also check out my post on the Maine Penny.

Archaeologist discovers witchcraft site on her front lawn

As an archaeologist, I'm always wondering what's under the land I'm walking on. I've had the privilege to live next to a Roman road, on a Mesolithic camp site, and near a Bronze age burial mound. That's not too exceptional if you live in England.

Archaeologist Jacqui Wood in Cornwall, however, has me beat. When she decided to do some construction on her land she found evidence of witchcraft rituals dating back centuries. She's uncovered a series of pits dug into the earth that were filled with swan skins covered in feathers. The skins had been turned inside out so that the feathers lined the pit.

One of the pits included not only the swan skin, but the claws of several different species of bird and pebbles found only on the coastline at least 15 miles away. Another pit had 55 eggs sitting on top of the swan-feather lining, including seven feathers that were ready to hatch. Magpie remains had been placed on either side of the eggs. Some of the pits had been emptied but still had a few feathers and stones remaining to show what had been there.

Radiocarbon dating found that the earliest swan skins dated to the 1640s during the English Civil War. Eerily, others dated as recently as the 1950s. One even had plastic in it!

Wood also discovered a spring-fed pool lined with white quartz so that it would glow in the moonlight. As offerings, the locals had thrown in strips of cloth, nail cuttings, heather branches, pins, and bits of shoe.

I'm not well versed in paganism, so I'll put it out to my readers. Anyone know what these rituals could have been for?

Maybe next she'll find a witch bottle!

The Maine Penny: an archaeological mystery

While every history reader knows the Vikings came to North America around 1000 AD, that wasn't always the case. A half century ago, there was heated debate over whether the Vikings had reached so far west. The Vinland Saga seemed to indicate they had, but there was no real evidence. It wasn't until the excavation of L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland in 1978 that there was definitive proof that the Vikings colonized North America.

There was some evidence before this. In 1957, archaeologist Guy Mellgren was excavating a midden (trash heap) at a Native American site in Maine discovered this silver coin five inches below the surface. Coin experts determined it was minted in Norway between 1065 and 1080 AD. This set off a huge controversy. Some archaeologists even accused Mellgren of "seeding" the site in order to win fame.

Now that we know the Vikings did come to the New World, Mellgren has been vindicated. He hadn't found a Viking settlement, though. The site was purely Native American and now researchers believe the coin made its way south as a trade item. It's now in the the Maine State Museum.

Medieval penny found at Richard III dig

Suspense author Jeremy Bates wanted to see the medieval silver penny that was found at the excavation in Leicester looking for the body of Richard III. Ask, and ye shall receive! This comes courtesy the University of Leicester. Not sure what the date is for this, I'm not much of a numismatist. This is the reverse side and looks like the pennies minted during the reign of Edward IV, who ruled during the troublesome War of the Roses, sitting on the throne twice from 1461-70 and again from 1471-83. The date certainly fits with Richard's burial in 1485. I could be wrong, though.

Archaeologists hunt for Richard III's tomb

Archaeologists in England are hunting for the lost tomb of King Richard III, in a parking lot in Leicester!

The king was killed at the nearby Battle of Bosworth in 1485, the turning point in the War of the Roses that eventually saw the Tudors take control.

Richard was buried in the Franciscan friary of Greyfriars. The friary was later demolished and built over and all traces of it lost. Now, using old maps, local archaeologists deduced the friary lay under the parking lot of a local council building. They got to work and found the friary's cloister after only one week. This is a covered courtyard where the friars could practice walking meditation in all types of weather. They've also found the edge of the church where Richard was buried.

The team has uncovered paving stones, window tracery, shards from the church's stained glass windows, and a medieval silver penny.

Work will continue into an unscheduled third week in the hopes of finding the burial place itself. A descendent of Richard is on hand to supply a DNA match.

Stayed tuned for more on this developing story! And sorry for posting my Medieval Mondays on a Tuesday, yet again. Mondays are bad for me, although I do like the alliteration.

"Honey, there's a medieval well in our living room!"

Here in England we're used to living on top of history, but one couple discovered they were living atop more history than they ever suspected.

Colin and Vanessa Steer of Plymouth never much thought about the slight indentation in their living room floor. Once while doing some work on the house Colin realized that it appeared to be a shaft leading down. He covered it up but after 24 years of living in the house Colin decided to get to the bottom of the mystery. It turned out the bottom of it was a medieval or Renaissance well that goes down 33 feet!

It dates back to at least the 16th century, perhaps earlier, and Colin found what appears to be the remains of a sword among the debris filling the well. He's installed lighting and a trap door and can now safely show it off to friends and family.

Their house was built in Victorian times, right atop an earlier site. This is common in England where many towns and villages are centuries old, but it's rare to find such a well-preserved feature right next to the TV.

The Daily Mail has published some interesting photos.

Medieval Mondays: The Oldest Bras in the World

I try to give you lots of interesting information in my Medieval Mondays posts. Apparently everyone is most interested in the oldest condom in the world because that's by far my most popular post. So in the same vein, here's the oldest bra in the world. It was found in an Austrian castle a few years ago along with three others. They came to light during an excavation at Lengberg Castle in East Tyrol and were found amidst a pile of other clothing in a vault that was sealed off in the late 15th century. It was previously thought that bras didn't date before the 19th century, although there are vague references in medieval literature to “bags for the breasts” or “shirts with bags". I couldn't find any copyright-free images of these bras, so I'm embedding a new story from YouTube on them. Like most TV news stories, this one has a mistake. The second piece of clothing they show, which looks like a set of women's panties, isn't a bra and isn't even a women's garment. It's male underwear. According to an article on Medievalists.net, only men wore underpants because it was a sign of "male dominance and power." Why? I'm not so sure. I guess it's more that women didn't wear underwear and that made them vulnerable to knights with no sense of chivalry.

Medieval Mondays: Cursing Stones!

This is a reproduction of a cursing stone made in 1525. It's inscribed with a curse laid by the Archbishop of Glasgow on the heads of the Border Reivers, Scottish raiders who crossed the border into England to steal livestock. The curse runs more than a thousand words. Here's a sample:

"I curse their head and all the hairs of their head; I curse their face, their brain, their mouth, their nose, their tongue, their teeth, their forehead, their shoulders, their breast, their heart, their stomach, their back, their womb, their arms, their leggs, their hands, their feet, and every part of their body, from the top of their head to the soles of their feet, before and behind, within and without. . . May all the malevolent wishes and curses ever known, since the beginning of the world, to this hour, light on them. May the malediction of God, that fell upon Lucifer and all his fellows, that cast them from the high Heaven to the deep hell, light upon them. . ."

As scary as the curse is, it didn't work. Only a large English military presence eventually stopped to Reivers.

This isn't the only cursing stone in Europe. They come in all shapes and sizes and another has just been discovered. A so-called bullaun stone discovered on the Isle of Canna, Scotland, dates to about 800 AD. Bullaun stones are found all over the UK as well as France and as far away as Sweden and Lithuania. A bullaun is a natural or artificial depression in a stone that catches rainwater. The water is supposed to have magical properties. Sometimes a stone is placed in the hole. This is then turned as a prayer or curse is made.

The one on the Isle of Canna is a stone with a depression at the base of an early Christian cross. Recently a round stone carved with a cross was found that fits exactly into this depression. Check out the link above for more.