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).

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: The Byzantine Solidus

In these days of financial crisis, it's important to have your investments in hard currency like the pound or the dollar. This has always been the case.

The later Roman Empire saw serious economic upheavals and a debasement of the coinage. Emperors tried to pay their expenses by minting more coins with less valuable metal, but of course people noticed and this led to inflation.

The Emperor Justinian (ruled 306-337 AD) reversed this trend by creating the solidus, a pure gold coin set at 1/72 of a Roman pound (about 4.5 grams). This helped stabilize the economy, but didn't save the Western Roman Empire from being overrun by Germanic tribes in the following century.

In the east, Rome continued as the Byzantine Empire, and the solidus was the benchmark currency. The solidus was trusted everywhere, and has been found as far away as India and China. It remained unchanged until the 11th century, when Byzantium started having economic problems of its own and the coin was debased. Even so, the old solidi remained in circulation through most of the Middle Ages. We have lots of examples of this coin because, unlike many other coins, it was such a trusted currency nobody wanted to melt it down for its metal.

For more on medieval money, check out my post on small change in the Middle Ages.

Photo of a solidus from the reign of Julian (reigned 361-363 AD) courtesy Wikipedia.

Medieval Mondays: A Poisoner's Ring from Bulgaria

Archaeologists working in Bulgaria have found a 14th century ring that may have been used to slip poison into someone's drink, the Sofia Globe reports.

The ring, which was found at the fortress of Cape Kaliakra on the Black Sea, is small and would have probably been worn on the little finger. It has a box-like decoration that's hollow and has a small hole on the side that would be covered up by the ring finger. All the wearer would have to do is spread his fingers and the contents of the box would spill out, supposedly into someone's drink.

Similar rings have been found elsewhere in Europe, especially Italy and Spain.

It's of a style generally worn by men. The archaeologists theorize that it played a part in the political intrigues of the day, when aristocrats vied for control of Bulgaria and even played a role in Byzantine and Venetian politics.

Last year a vampire skeleton was found in Bulgaria. Sounds like it was quite the place in the good old days!

Medieval Mondays: The Dunstable Swan Jewel

This beautiful little piece of jewelry is called the Dunstable Swan and is one of the overlooked treasures of the British Museum. It was found in a Dominican Priory in Dunstable, England, and probably dates to the 14th or early 15th century.

Knights at that time liked to think they were descended from one of Arthur's Knights of the Round Table, such as the Knight of the Swan. Both the powerful de Bohun family and the House of Lancaster had the swan as their symbol and when King Henry IV (reigned 1399-1413) married Mary de Bohun he took the swan as his personal symbol.

This was probably the personal ornament of a member of the family or one of the knights who swore fealty to them. I love the detail on this little figure, which is only about two centimeters tall!

Medieval Mondays: Gilded Leather

Before there was wallpaper there was gilded leather. Wealthy homeowners would decorate their walls with panels of leather such as these.

Gilded leather has its origins in Libya, where it was first developed around the 6th century. By the 9th century it had made it to Spain. It was slow to spread north of the Pyrenees. Eventually it caught on in the Low Countries and became popular in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Gilded leather is a bit of a misnomer. It's actually leather covered with a silver foil. To keep the silver from oxidizing a varnish was applied that gave it a golden color.

These photos were taken at the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, Belgium. This old printing company dates back to the 1550s and is filled with some fascinating old printing presses, antiquarian volumes, and of course walls decorated in gilded leather!

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.

A new historical fantasy novel

Historical fantasy author Sean McLachlan has come out with his latest novel. Called The Quintessence of Absence, it's out now on Amazon, Amazon UK, and Smashwords. The blurb goes:

Can a drug-addicted sorcerer sober up long enough to save a kidnapped girl and his own Duchy?

In an alternate 18th century Germany where magic is real and paganism never died, Lothar is in the bonds of nepenthe, a powerful drug that gives him ecstatic visions. It has also taken his job, his friends, and his self-respect. Now his old employer has rehired Lothar to find the man's daughter, who is in the grip of her own addiction to nepenthe.

As Lothar digs deeper into the girl's disappearance, he uncovers a plot that threatens the entire Duchy of Anhalt, and finds the only way to stop it is to face his own weakness.


Congratulations, Sean!

Medieval Mondays: Sunstone found in English shipwreck

In a previous post I talked about the Viking sunstone, a legendary crystal that could detect the location of the Sun on cloudy days. This, of course, would be a boon to navigation in the age before GPS.

Sunstones are mentioned in some Viking sagas and historians have theorized they were double-refracting crystals such as cordierite, tourmaline, or calcite, which are common in Scandinavia. These crystals only allow light through them that's polarized in certain directions and thus appear darker or lighter depending on the polarization of the light behind it. While the Sun may be blocked by clouds, it's still sending out a concentration of polarized light that can be detected by the crystal as it's moved around.

But that's only a theory. No sunstone has ever been found. . .until now.

A team of French archaeologists studying artifacts from a British ship that sunk in 1592 found a rectangular block of Iceland spar calcite crystal, a type known for its double-refracting properties. The wreck was near Alderney island in the English Channel.

You can see the sunstone in this picture, next to a pair of dividers that may have been used for navigation. Both items were found close together in the wreck.

It's interesting that the sunstone was found on a ship dating centuries after the Viking era. It looks like these things were more popular than anyone ever suspected.

Photo courtesy Alderney Society.

Medieval Mondays: A Medieval Snowball Fight!

I love it when medieval art humanizes the distant past. This is a fresco on a wall in Buonconsiglio castle, Trento, Italy. It dates to about the year 1400. It's part of a series of paintings done by a Bohemian master called the "Cycle of the Months" showing the activities for each month.

As you can see, this is quite clearly a snowball fight! I wonder when the first snowball fight was? Did the Neanderthals chuck snowballs at each other?

Photo courtesy Terra Italia.

Medieval Mondays: Previous popes who have resigned, part two

Last week, I talked about the early popes who resigned, or at least are said to have resigned. The records are scarce for the early Papacy. In this second of my two-part post, we're on firmer ground in the Middle Ages.

The most colorful pope from the last post was Pope Benedict IX, who turned the Vatican into a giant block party and got bribed to resign in 1045. The guy who bribed him, who then became Pope Gregory VI, soon had to resign himself. While everyone appreciated his getting rid of Benedict, he had committed the sin of simony--paying for holy offices. So in 1046 he had to go.

For a time the Popes managed to keep their office until their death. There wasn't another resignation until Pope Celestine V in 1294. Celestine only spent five months on the throne of St. Peter before he decided the job wasn't for him, issued an edict saying it was OK for popes to resign, and left to live the life of a hermit.

His successor, Pope Boniface VIII, worried that he might change his mind and so he threw Celestine into prison, where the hermit-turned-pope-turned-hermit died ten months later. Celestine was later canonized and Boniface was lampooned by Dante in his Divine Comedy.

The next resignation came when Pope Gregory XII stepped down. This was a time of deep schism in the Church. Two rival popes had set themselves up at Avignon and Pisa. Both had considerable support. Kingdoms lined up to put their weight behind one pope or another. World War One looked like it would break out 500 years early.

The Church Council of Constance met in 1414 to avert disaster. Gregory and the pope from Pisa agreed to step down in 1415. The Avignon pope refused and was excommunicated. The Council then elected Pope Martin V.

From then on no pope has resigned, until this week.


Image of Pope (later Saint) Celestine courtesy Marie-Lan Nguyen.

Medieval Mondays: Mons Meg, supergun of the Middle Ages

When we think of the Middle Ages we don't usually think of artillery, yet black powder cannons were around for most of that period. The first European cannon was depicted in a manuscript in 1327. Within a hundred years they were becoming commonplace.

They were a cumbersome and slow to load, so mostly were used for sieges. Soon, though, they began to be used on the battlefield and even on ships. In the 15th century there was an arms race to see who could build the biggest cannon. One of these giant cannons, called bombards, was Mons Meg, which you can see at Edinburgh Castle.

It was made in Burgundy in 1449, one of the centers for artillery production at the time, and was given as a gift to King James II of Scotland in 1457. It weighs more than 15,000 pounds, is 15 feet long, and fired stone balls 20 inches in diameter and weighing 400 pounds. It was supposedly made for James II to knock down castle walls. Records show that it had a range of more than two miles!

Like the typical big guns of the era, it was made from long iron bars fused together and strengthened with iron hoops. This was so much like making a barrel that the term "barrel" began to be used for the long tube of a gun.

Sadly, it no longer works. It was fired for the last time in 1680 by an English gunner. The Scots say it was blown up on purpose because the English were jealous of the Scots having such a huge gun. Ah yes, bombard envy!

This was also the era that saw the development of medieval firearms.

Photo by Phil McIntosh.

Flying penises of the Middle Ages

Yes, this is exactly what it looks like. It's a penis with wings from the British Museum. This little guy is a lead badge that would have been worn by pilgrims to medieval holy sites. They were so common back then that this particular item can't be dated with any precision. The most precise date the curators could come up with was 400-1500 AD.

There were many badges sold as mementos and good luck charms at pilgrimage sites back in the Middle Ages. Some were of eyes or legs to help with ailments to those particular body parts. These are still used in Mexico. The penis, however, was popular for giving luck and, of course, love and fertility.

This pewter phallus badge dates to the 15th century and sold for £190 ($300) at Timeline Auctions.

This one is a reproduction by Medieval Market of a Dutch flying penis dating to around 1375-1425.

Flying penises weren't always beneficial. At a witchcraft museum in Spain I saw a display telling how in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe, women would often go to work as fruit pickers away from home. Sometimes they'd encounter a flying penis and become pregnant. Whether the guys back home really believed this story or not is another question.

Flying phalli have a long history. They were popular with the Romans. This bronze tintinabulum form the first century AD was a common garden wind chime. They were a good luck charm and protected the household from evil. This photo was taken by Darren Foreman in the British Museum.

It seems strange that the Catholic Church would allow such randy items at its holy spots, but the church was a bit strange at times. There were abortionist saints, carvings of naked women in church, and all sorts of other craziness. One researcher even made the controversial claim that the Catholic Church allowed gay marriage.

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.

Merry Christmas, Byzantine Style!

This is a Byzantine ivory from the 10th century. Mary rests beside the manger with the swaddled Christ Child. Three angels emerge from behind the mountain, one of whom announces the birth of Christ to the standing shepherd on the left. In the foreground, the infant receives his first bath while the seated Joseph watches. The motif of Christ receiving his first bath is characteristic of Byzantine images of the Nativity and rarely appears in western European art.

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Medieval Mondays: Ottonian Ivory

One of my favorite artistic movements of the Middle Ages was the creation of ivory miniatures during the Ottonian Renaissance (c. 951 – 1024). Launched by the German Ottonian dynasty, this was a flowering of art and culture heavily influenced by the earlier Carolingian Renaissance and contemporary Byzantine artistic styles. The Ottonian kings ruled over much of Germany and Italy and called themselves the "Holy Roman Emperors", a title used by many rulers before and since.

The renaissance encompassed all forms of art but I've always been most impressed by the ivory miniatures ever since I first saw them in the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert in London. The photo above is of a diptych made in Trier at the end of 10th century. It shows two scenes: Moses receiving the Ten Commandments and The Doubting Thomas.

This is a situla, a bucket for holding holy water. It's carved with twelve scenes from the Passion of Christ arranged in two rows and was probably made around 980 for the visit of Emperor Otto II to Milan.

This also comes from Milan around 962-973 and was donated to Magdeburg Cathedral by Otto I. It depicts the Flagellation of Christ.

All images courtesy Wikipedia.

Leather armor in the Middle Ages

In the first chapter of my fantasy novel Roots Run Deep, a team of goblinkin are preparing for a raid on a human city.
 
Like anyone who lived on the Reservation, Kip went armed at all times. Not that she had much. Her tattered leather jerkin gave scant protection, and for weapons she carried a flint knife and a tfaa, a traditional goblin fighting stick. A balanced, two foot-long rod carved from ironwood, the tfaa didn’t look like much, but in skilled hands it could disarm and cripple a swordsman. Prenta had gotten rid of her showy clothes and dressed in a more practical leather jerkin similar to Kip’s.

These impoverished goblinkin are wearing leather armor because they can't afford anything better and their human rulers forbid them from bearing metal weapons and armor. (This ban doesn't last, but that comes later in the story. . .) Leather armor is a staple of fantasy fiction and roleplaying games, yet many people don't realize just how common it was in medieval warfare. Even knights wore it.

Leather armor goes back to ancient times and continued in use through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. This picture shows the shoulder and upper arm portions of an elegant suit of leather dating to the Italian Renaissance, courtesy of the Schola Forum. As you can see, it looks much like regular metal armor, and many historians believe that it was worn as much as or even more than metal armor. A suit of plate was hot and heavy, so on the march or during a friendly tournament the knight may choose to weather cooler leather. The rank and file would also be fitted with leather and perhaps some portions of metal armor for vulnerable places such as the head and chest.

While leather was much cheaper, it provided pretty good protection. Regular soft leather wasn't much help, but combined with quilted padding provided some protection, especially against blunt weapons such as maces.

More effective was cuir bouilli--boiled leather. If you soak leather in water and then place it in boiling water, it becomes elastic and pliable. It soon begins to shrink, thicken, and harden. As it's hardening, the leather is hammered onto shaped blocks to create breastplates, greaves, vambraces, and anything else. A full suit of armor could be made in this way.

The 14th century French chronicler Jean Froissart claimed that it was "leather that no iron can pierce" and while that may be overstating the case, leather armor certainly gave good protection. Games such as D&D probably undervalue its effectiveness. Modern experiments show that the average sword blow wouldn't get through, although a good English longbow would make short work of a leather breastplate! This basic article (PDF) explains the technique. Also check out this thread from Schola Forum for some more insights and pictures.

The picture below from The Historians' History of the World shows some improvements on leather armor, with overlapping metal scales, discs, and rings. These were all cheaper yet pretty effective alternatives to full plate and variants of these were used from ancient times into the Renaissance.

Medieval Mondays: The Iron Arm of Götz von Berlich

"I will crush you."

The German knight Götz von Berlich (c.1480-1562) had a nasty reputation. The veteran of numerous battles, he estimated that he had fought 15 feuds in his own name and many others for friends. In 1525 joined the German Peasant's revolt and led the peasants against the Holy Roman Empire.

"The peasants are revolting, and I'm revolting too!"

Perhaps he got his bad attitude when he lost his right hand and forearm during the siege of Landshuf in 1504. A cannonball hit his sword, making it swipe down to cut off his own limb! That's enough to put anyone in a permanently bad mood.

Luckily, craftsmen in this period were skilled at making prosthetics for just such occasions. They made him an iron limb that could open and close it fingers, so it could still be used in battle. He became known at Götz of the Iron Hand. His hand was so well made it could even hold a pen. Perhaps he used it when he wrote his memoirs.

Just goes to show that the late Medieval/early Renaissance period was more sophisticated than we generally believe.

Images courtesy Wikipedia.