Scholar of Old English, Tolkien and Early Medieval England
What if Wealhtheow, the gracious queen in Beowulf, wasn’t just handing out mead cups to guests and giving politically savy speeches? What if she was harbouring vengeful feelings and set in motion a secret murder plot? In a recently published article, I have tried to unveil something of a Beowulf ‘conspiracy theory’. You can read […]
A first look at the Old English song lyrics in the soundtrack of The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (2024). Through its incorporation of Neo-Old English lyrics, the film draws connections with Tolkien's works, especially through references to Old English poetry.
This blog post introduces four new knowledge clips about an interesting topic: cultural contacts between 'the East' and 'the West' in the Early Middle Ages!
A special find has been made in the Alkmaar Regional Archive: a number of 17th-century book bindings contained pieces of parchment from a manuscript from the 11th century. This discovery is a possible key to a European mystery: pieces of the same manuscript were previously found in England, Germany and Poland. The original manuscript may […]
An introduction to the fascinating world of Old English glossed Psalters!
The Beowulf Thesaurus is freely available and can offer unique new insights into the vocabulary of early medieval England's best-known epic.
A 9th-century scribe's mistake can now finally be remedied.
From the Viking mead drinking in Valhalla to the unending punishments of the Greek underworld, the afterlife has always been an imaginative place. In this blog post, I survey how the afterlife was conceptualised in early medieval England, in particular with reference to ‘old age’. Heaven is a place without old age The prime place […]
"Men þa leofestan!" This blog post deals with the ways in which a very common Old English phrase was differentiated by early medieval English scribes.
The manuscripts of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle show a fascinating variety, even in those annals for which there was little to nothing to report.