Myriah Williams writes:
On Saturday, the 26th of October the
Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic participated in the University of
Cambridge's Festival of Ideas, an event held annually since 2008 designed to
encourage the community and anyone with an interest in Cambridge’s work and
research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, to come over, check us
out and meet the faculty and students.
Several
events were held within our department on the Saturday, with two well-attended
lectures by faculty members Dr Richard Dance and Prof Simon Keynes, speaking on
‘Frontiers in Anglo-Saxon England’, on the Tuesday following. The majority of Saturday's events, organized
under the theme ‘Beyond Borders: Exploring the Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic
Worlds’, were run by graduate students, led by Christine Voth. Upstairs in the department itself, attendees
could enjoy a re-enactment of Groenlendinga saga, have a look at the work being
carried out by the Orkney Project, or, for the young (and young at heart),
there was a colouring session where future ASNCs were invited to hone their
artistic skills with a variety of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic art, or to try
their hand at the runic and Ogham scripts.
Downstairs
we were happy to present two brief lectures.
The first was a discussion of the Otherworld in Celtic mythology and
literature, including a dramatic retelling, in English and Welsh, of a tale
from the Mabinogion, a celebrated collection of Medieval Welsh prose
texts. The second lecture was an
exploration and appreciation of the importance of borders and marginalia in a
selection of medieval manuscripts originating from each of the cultures covered
by our research.
Running
concurrently with the lectures was a poster session, encompassing a wide
variety of topics within the fields covered by ASNC, where attendees of the
Festival were welcome to browse at their leisure. Use of the English Faculty Library’s iPad,
generously loaned for the occasion, to explore high-resolution digital images
of manuscripts was a popular feature of this session, and was helpful in
demonstrating the increasing value of new technology in the study of medieval
artifacts.
It’s
not every day that we get to share our enthusiasm in our research with the
general public, so we hope to see the Festival of Ideas continue to celebrate
the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences for many years to come!
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