Where the Middle Ages Begin
This work contains many elements common to supernatural tales of its time-shape-shifting, magic fountains and marriages between humans and fairies – yet it is also surprisingly relevant to our own age, whose popular culture is saturated with modem myths and vampire love-stories.
The donestre, a mediaeval race of lion-headed polyglots with a taste for human flesh, demonstrate an ancient form of monstrous transgression by their corporeal violation of both social and natural law.
The historical development of St. Martin’s Day in Ireland, and its relationship with the more ancient festival of Samhain is examined, revealing circumstances that saw much of the ritual nature of Samhain being adopted within a Christian context in the medieval period.
Similar to many monsters or aliens in our current science fiction culture, some medieval monsters could be dangerous and life threatening.
Though the ghoul has origins as old as the Mesopotamian civilization, Arabs were largely responsible for popularizing it. Because Islam incorporated this being in its doctrine, the ghoul remained a source of fear and mystery in the Arab culture.
In his Otia Imperialia, Gervase of Tilbury tells of many strange creatures he knows all about. One of these creatures is the werewolf.
In the Old Norse saga there is peculiar technique of divination called utiseta that is practised on burial mounds.
From Antiquity to the present day, the idea of the dead returning to interact with the living has greatly influenced human imagination, and this has been reflected in literature — the product of that imagination.
It is argued that Viking Age people built ‘doors to the dead’ of various types, such as freestanding portals, causewayed ring-ditches or thresholds to grave mounds; or on occasion even buried their dead in the doorway.
I intend to look at magic bowls in order to see how and for what purpose they were used, and to get a glimpse at the way they worked and what hidden treasures can be found within them.
Robin Hood has enthralled generations of readers and movie goers. This English outlaw-hero has become of symbol of freedom against tyranny, stealing from the rich to give to the poor. But who was Robin Hood? How much is grounded in myth and how much is reality?
Today’s horror movies could make use of this story from the ninth-century, of how an evil spirit terrorized a village, and the attempt to get rid of it, which seems to be one of the earliest recorded exorcisms from the Middle Ages.
If there’s anything we have in common with our medieval ancestors, it’s our love of monsters.
Few topics play a more central role in the way scholars have thought – and, in some cases, continue to think – about medieval folk cultures than has the issue of continuity.
The purpose of this study is to examine cultural conceptions of the possible afterlives of suicides in medieval (ca. 1200– 1400) Iceland.
Magic was a regular part of daily life in pre-Christian Europe, as it was and still is in many other parts of the world. In this context, the term ‘magic’ is distinct from its modern usage which is better described as optical illusion.
As Christianity arose in Celtic and Anglo Britain, the indigenous fairy beliefs were grafted into the Christian lexicon, altering beliefs further. Not only did powerful deities of mythology become shrunken into fairy lore, but ideas about fairies changed to fit the Christian paradigm.
In this article I intend to discuss the role of the malevolent restless dead in medieval Iceland by making a case study of the so-called wonders of Fróðá, the Fróðárundr episode in Eyrbyggja saga.
Florentine writer Brunetto Lattini explains what mermaids are in his Book of Treasures.
Hundreds of years ago, sailors were terrified by the Kraken, a dreadful sea monster capable of sinking ships and with a taste for human flesh.
Sins of evil black magic, as listed by the medieval theologian Burchard of Worms in the 11th century.
Is a BBQ summer on the cards in 2015? Will farmers make hay next year? And is there a political scandal on the election horizon? Well take a peek out of the window with the University of Reading’s Medieval Weather Forecast guide on the 12 days of Christmas and you’ll find out!
A 1300-year-old onion has been discovered as part of a woman’s grave in Denmark.
In 589, a great flood of the Tiber river sent a torrent of water rushing through the city of Rome
What really happened on June 26, 1284, in the German town of Hamelin?
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