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Why Medieval? with Elton O. S. Medeiros

My first real memory about that I was 7 or 8 years old whatching the film “Conan the Barbarian”, with Arnold Scharzenegger and James Earl Jones, on TV. I was just amazed by that world “when the ocean drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Aryas” and then I started to read all the Robert E. Howard’s short-novels and the Conan stories on Marvel Comics. Of course this led me to other fantasy books, RPG and miscellaneous…

But after I’d read all of that fantasy stuff, about fierce barbarians, bloodsheds, battles and etc., in high school I decided to learn more about the “real barbarians” and I discovered the barbarian tribes attacking Rome in late Antiquity, Norse mythology, the Vikings and at last, in university, the Anglo-Saxons.

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Hence, I got my graduation in History with a monography about the presence of Vikings in Anglo-Saxon England and the reign of king Cnut the Great. Immediatly after that I started the research for my masters degree about Old English poetry and a translation of Beowulf poem to portuguese. Now I am finishing my PhD research about politics, Old English heroic poetry and biblical tradition during king Alfred the Great rulership.

Well, it’s funny to think nowadays that all of these began with me, a long time ago on a saturday night, watching the actual governor of California (mr. Scharzenegger) holding a sword and swearing in the name of Crom.

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Elton O. S. Medeiros
PhD Research Student
University of Sao Paulo – Brazil

Click here to view our Feature: Why Medieval? Go Medieval!

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