International Relation’s Medieval-Sovereignty Debate: Three Rival Approaches
When did a recognizably modern concept of sovereignty first emerge in Europe? Historically, can we point to a medieval idea of sovereignty? If so, how did this historically specific idea of sovereignty differ from its modern counterpart?
The First Christian Rus’ Generation: Contextualizing the Black Sea Events of 1016, 1024 and 1043
What caused the largely naval wars of 1016, 1024 and 1043 which involved commanders and rulers of Rus’ and Byzantium? Have modern interpretations of these events done justice to them?
Medieval Property Investors, ca. 1300–1500
The subject of this article is the role of freehold land and property in the developing commercial economy of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
The Forgotten Battle of Bevershoutsveld, May 3, 1382: Technological Innovation and Military Significance
It may have been at Bevershoutsveld where gunpowder weapons first decided the outcome of a battle.
A thirteenth-century theory of speech
Robert Grosseteste (c.1175–1253) was a celebrated medieval thinker, who, as well as writing on philosophy and theology, developed an impressive corpus of treatises on the natural world.
Around the Barbarian Sea: Settlements and Outcomes in the Early Medieval Baltic
The Viking towns of Birka, Kaupang, Hedeby and Ribe have captured the imagination of archaeologists and the public alike, presenting the lives of their enigmatic inhabitants.
Aquinas on Infinite Multitudes
To my knowledge, it is only in ST I, 7,4 that Aquinas considers quite on its own the question whether actually infinite multitudes are possible.
Mægð Modigre or Þeodnes Mægð: Judith’s Heroism in the Anonymous Anglo-Saxon Judith
The Old English Judith tells the story of a Jewish virgin whose people, the Bethulians, are subjugated under the Assyrian King Holofernes by the orders of the great King Nebuchadnezzar.
All in one Boat: The Vikings as European and Global Heritage
This paper presents a survey of contexts and places where Vikings are currently highlighted as a European cultural heritage, and discusses how this heritage is presented, and why so.
Memories of migration? The ‘Anglo-Saxon’ burial costume of the fifth century AD
It is often claimed that the mortuary traditions that appeared in lowland Britain in the fifth century AD are an expression of new forms of ethnic identity, based on the putative memorialisation of a ‘Germanic’ heritage.
The Earliest Wave of Viking Activity? The Norwegian Evidence Revisited
It is argued that the first recorded Viking attacks were only possible after a phase in which Norse seafarers had acquired the necessarily level of a priori environmental knowledge needed to move in new seascapes and coastal environments.
1066 and Warfare: The Context and Place (Senlac) of the Battle of ‘Hastings’
In this essay, I shall first be extremely traditional by focusing on the battle of Hastings (or better, Senlac) and then turn briefly to what happened afterwards.
Viking Age Hair
In Viking-Age Scandinavia, hair also seems to have played an important role in social dynamics.
The 1259 Pipe Roll
The 1259 pipe roll is certainly a vast and unwieldy manuscript roll, taking 23 rotulets and over 200,000 words to set out the accounts of 24 counties or pairs of counties.
Trans-Saharan gold trade and Byzantine coinage
This article suggests that minting at Carthage of the Byzantine gold coins known as globular solidi was related to the acquisition of metal through developing trans-Saharan contacts.
The Naval Power of Norse Dublin
In the ninth to twelfth centuries the Dublin fleet was one of the most formidable war machines in the Irish Sea area.
A Transient Pulse of Genetic Admixture from the Crusaders in the Near East Identified from Ancient Genome Sequences
Human migrations, which often accompanied historical battles and invasions, have profoundly reshaped the genetic diversity of local populations in many regions.
World Literature is Trans-Imperial: A Medieval and a Modern Approach
The global is everywhere, and in literary studies, as in so many other fields, efforts thrive to find common ground on how to define scopes that are global as well as those that are less than global.
Mapping European Population Movement through Genomic Research
This article reviews scientific publications that have attempted to use genetic and genomic data in order to investigate European migrations between the fourth and ninth centuries.
A genetic perspective on Longobard-Era migrations
According to historical records, around the first century CE a Germanic population called “Longobard” was settled in the northern Elbe basin.
Population genomics of the Viking world
We find evidence for a majority of Danish Viking presence in England, Swedish Viking presence in the Baltic, and Norwegian Viking presence in Ireland, Iceland, and Greenland.
Defamation, Gender and Hierarchy in Late Medieval Yorkshire
At some point in 1362, one Robert de Berlay, servant in a gentry household in the West Riding of Yorkshire, was accused of impregnating Margery de Pickworth, the unmarried daughter of Thomas de Pickworth, a knight and Robert’s master.
What makes Breton lays ‘Breton’? Bretons, Britons and Celtic ‘otherness’ in medieval romance
The ‘Breton lay’ is not easy to pin down because the characteristics of the genre are ill-defined, even within the broader category of ‘romance’ which, in turn, has almost no frontiers.
Horse Armour in the Medieval Islamic Middle East
The widely held view that horse armour was not used in the early Islamic Middle East is incorrect.
Speech Representation as a Narrative Technique in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The spoken word plays a central role in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, one of the best-known Middle English texts.