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Blog Profile: Heptarchy Herald

We are profiling a brand new blog – The Heptarchy Herald – which offers just a few posts so far, but it looks as if it will provide some interesting discussions:

Heptarchy Herald

We interviewed the blogger behind The Heptarchy Herald:

I normally start my questions with why you started your blog, but I think you wrote up a pretty good first post on that subject. Instead, I will ask how you got interested in the Early Middle Ages?

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I got into the game kind of late, college in my mid-thirties. I have studied the Middle Ages as an amateur since junior high, discovering Tuchman’s “A Distant Mirror” in seventh-grade. When I entered college, I intended to focus on parliamentary history in the High MA. In one of my classes, however, I wrote a term paper over Female monasticism in early A-S England. That is when I “fell in love” with early medieval studies.

You just started your blog a few days ago – have you developed a kind of overall plan on what you will be blogging about over the coming weeks and months, or will your future posts emerge from what you will be doing and reading?

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I don’t really have a plan, other than using the blog as a way to interact with other scholars. I’m rather isolated at my university. I’m the only Ango-Saxonist in the department, including the faculty, so I thought a blog might help by allowing me the opportunity to engage in discussions that otherwise would have to wait for conferences. I am also working on my thesis, so I will occasionally post with issues that might pop up there. Overall, the response to the first few posts has been incredible. One of the things that first attracted me to medieval blogs was the community that they seem to have built, and I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the cooperation and encouragement of Dr. Nokes at Wordhoard, Jennifer at Per Omnia, Jonathan at Tenth-Century, and Dr. Swains at Ruminate. They have been wonderful and accepting. So much for the insularity of the “Ivory Tower!”

You are blogging anonymously, or at least anonymous enough that it would be hard for someone to figure out who you are. Why did you choose to be anonymous?

The anonymity question is interesting. I didn’t really think of my blog along that line. I certainly don’t have any reason to remain anonymous. The day of my first post one of my Facebook friends even commented, “Have you read the new Medieval blog, wink, wink.” I never told him I was starting a blog, so maybe the issue is a dead end. Honestly, I haven’t had a lot of time to tinker with the “about me” section of the blog, but my name is Michael Fletcher and I attend Middle Tennessee State University.

What other blogs and websites do you follow (medieval or non-medieval)?

There are several blogs that I read religiously; Tenth-Century Europe, I think Jonathan is a top-notch scholar and I love the detail of his posts; Unlocked-Wordhoard, a great way to keep up with important issues on the blogosphere and also for his insights into medievalisms; Per Omnia, I thought her summer series over bad medieval movies was hilarious, she’s also quite the scholar; Heavenfield, Michelle tends to focus on Northumbria, but her blog has frequently forced me to look closer at some things. I also love Magistra et Mater, Got Medieval (go Carl!), Dr. Swain’s Ruminate, and I would be horrible if I did not note Another Damned Medievalist, she’s great. Medieval News, Anglo-Saxon Archaeology, and, of course, Medievalist.net are all valuable resources that I mine frequently.

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