Report: The Orkney Viking Heritage Project Field School

Dr Brittany Schorn writes:

From April 14 to April 20, Kirkwall hosted the field school of The Orkney Viking Heritage Project. Eight current (and three former) members of the ASNC Department travelled to Orkney together with fellow students and colleagues from the universities of the Highlands and Islands, Oxford, Nottingham, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Birmingham, Cardiff, York and Kings College London. The Orkney Viking Heritage Project is an AHRC-funded interdisciplinary training programme. It brings together scholars and heritage professionals to explore the literature, history and material culture of Viking Orkney and provide hands-on experience of a heritage landscape.

[photo credit: Nicola Lugosch]

During the course of the week, we saw viking grafitti on neolithic monuments at the Ring of Brodgar and the spectacular burial chamber of Maeshowe, and visited the ruin of St Magnus Kirk on the small island of Egilsay where Earl Magnús was killed, along with the imposing St Magnus Cathedral, which St Rögnvaldr established on the Mainland.

[St Magnus Kirk, photo credit: Bernadette McCooey]

Through presentations, discussions and excursions, we reconsidered medieval texts and artefacts in situ in order to contextualise our understanding of the past within the reality of the physical landscape. With the help of local academics, heritage professionals and Orkney residents, we also explored how this past, and modern perceptions of it, continue to inform the way current islanders define and relate to the landscape around them.

For more information on the project, including our blog, photos, podcasts and other resources, see the Orkney Project website. You can also find information about our travelling exhibition, which made its first stop at the Midlands Viking Symposium at the University of Nottingham on April 27.

Kennings in the Community and Poets on Viking Poetry

Dr Judy Quinn and Dr Debbie Potts have been awarded funding to run two cultural engagement projects from February–April 2013 as part of an AHRC pilot scheme. The projects – Kennings in the Community and Modern Poets on Viking Poetry – are aimed at nurturing a wider public interest in the aesthetics of skaldic poetry through creative writing workshops and collaborative cultural translation. As Debbie Potts elaborates…

At a workshop last weekend, I fell into conversation with a poet about kennings. To my surprise and gratification, she not only knew what kennings were, but was able to relate an interesting little anecdote about them. A colleague of hers had recently conducted a workshop on kennings with school children. The exercise involved developing ways of referring to family members using items and actions associated with their character or behaviour. A certain precocious child came up with a wonderfully original kenning for his father: sofa-farter.

Some of the most linguistically dexterous of skalds, experts in the rhetoric of defamation, would have found it hard to respond with a kenning equally as cutting. The idea behind sofa-farter is simple, but it carries with it a great deal of cultural resonance (irrespective of whether we would describe our own fathers in such terms). It plays on a cultural stereotype that is both gender and class specific – i.e. the working-class male couch potato (which is in itself a kenning) – and could only emerge from a social milieu in which it is acceptable to occasionally make fun of one’s parents rather than holding them in a perpetual state of reverence.

I think this story provides an excellent illustration of the kenning’s universal cognitive appeal, its capacity to accommodate the mindset of a given individual or particular speech community. The project Kennings in the Community seeks to produce resources for creative writing workshops based on the kenning. My aim is not only to nurture a wider public interest in skaldic metaphor, but to encourage people to create their own kennings relevant to their everyday experience, thereby prompting them to question and re-imagine the way our culture conceptualises the world.

I’m excited to be working with three practicing word-smiths: Lucy Hamilton, Emma Hammond and Jane Monson. These habitual quaffers of Odinnic mead will be applying their creative writing expertise to the development of the workshop materials. Some ‘test’ workshops will take place at the beginning of April and the resources will be made available on the ASNC website before May, so watch this space! If you simply can’t wait until then to try your hand at creating kennings, you can take a look at an exercise I wrote for the Poetry Society’s Young Poets Network here.

(from Wikimedia Commons)

The sister project Modern Poets on Viking Poetry is all about extending the skaldic aesthetic into the creative consciousness of contemporary poets. My intention is to encourage a dialogue between academic research and modern poetic practice.

In the wake of the Poetry Parnassus – the largest ever international poetry festival, hosted by London’s Southbank Centre last summer – it seems an opportune moment to be tapping into the poetry world’s enthusiasm for cultural exchange. Poets will be encouraged to engage with basic translations and commentaries provided by skaldic scholars; they will have complete creative freedom in the way they choose to interact with the poetry, and may produce anything from a poem that seeks to replicate the phonic qualities of skaldic metre to a multimedia art-piece…I’m intrigued to see what they come up with! Selected poems will be published on a blog attached to the ASNC website, and two events will take place (in Cambridge and London) at the end of April where poets will be invited to read or perform their translations.

Debbie and Snorri

It must be acknowledged that neither project would be possible without the boundless curiosity of poets, who are constantly looking for new ways of understanding and expressing the world around us, however bizarre and alien (so much the better). And, of course, the open-mindedness and intellectual generosity of skaldic scholars, who are happily rather less mercenary than Mímir when it comes to offering a drink from the well of knowledge.

https://www.facebook.com/modernpoetsonvikingpoetry

@eehammond

Final congratulations of 2012

Hoping that all our readers are enjoying the holiday season, here's a final round-up of good news from the ASNC department:

Dr Rory Naismith, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in ASNC, has been awarded the 2012 Jan H. Nordbø scholarship and medal by the Norwegian Numismatic Society. This prestigious award exists to bring foreign scholars of numismatics to give a lecture in Norway. On 30 October, Dr Naismith lectured to the Norwegian Numismatic Society in Oslo on the subject of ‘Gold Coinage and the Fall of the Western Roman Empire’, and received the medal accompanying the scholarship. He also delivered a lecture the following day at the Museum of Cultural History in the University of Oslo, on ‘The Agnus Dei Coinage of Æthelred II’.

The Research Centre of St John’s College Oxford has awarded pump-priming funding for the initial stages of an international research project, ‘Interpreting Eddic Poetry’, to Dr Carolyne Larrington (Oxford) and ASNC's Dr Judy Quinn (Principal Investigators). The project will support an interdisciplinary research network which will convene for its first Workshop ‘Interpreting Eddic Poetry: Interdisciplinary Perspectives’ in Oxford in July 2013. Details of the programme and registration arrangements will be announced shortly.

Funding has been awarded to Dr Judy Quinn and ASNC alumna Dr Debbie Potts from the pilot AHRC Cultural Engagement Fund to support the projects ‘Kennings in the Community’ and ‘Modern Poets on Viking Poetry’. Dr Potts will be based in the Department for three months from February to April 2013 to develop the projects and organise events related to them.

Congratulations to all of them, and best wishes to all of you for the New Year ...

Notices

Reminder: Network Facilitator Post, deadline 15 June. Details here.

Last chance to register for the ASNC Open Day on 27th June. Closing date for registration: 14 June. Details here.

Job vacancy in ASNC

The Faculty is seeking to appoint a part-time (0.6 FTE) Network Facilitator in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic with effect from 1 August 2012, or as soon as possible thereafter, for 15 months. The appointee will assist the Principal Investigator on the Leverhulme Trust-funded International Network ‘Converting the Isles’ in the smooth running of the logistical and academic elements of the Network.  The Network will consist of three colloquia and up to two workshops held in various locations within and outside Cambridge, dissemination of their proceedings via a website, blogs and podcasts, a number of associated outreach activities, and will culminate in two edited volumes for publication.

Further particulars available here.  The closing date is 15 June 2012.

Anglo-Saxon Coinage c. 600 - 1066

It never rains but it pours ... with good news.

Congratulations to Dr Rory Naismith, who has just been awarded a three-year Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, to work on Anglo-Saxon coinage in the period c. 600 - 1066. Rory outlines his research project here:

This project is aimed at the preparation of a new volume in the series Medieval European Coinage, published by Cambridge University Press and inaugurated – with support from the Leverhulme Trust - in the early 1980s by Professor Philip Grierson (1910–2006) and his first research assistant Mark Blackburn (1953–2011). Volumes so far published have dealt with early medieval Europe as a whole, along with parts of Spain and Italy. My own volume will be focused on England in the period c. 600–1066. It will contain a fully illustrated catalogue of some 2,500 coins in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum, as well as a new commentary and introduction. The gold and silver coins of these centuries illustrate the slow metamorphosis from sub-Roman gold shillings, made when Christianity was freshly arrived in England, to the famously sophisticated late Anglo-Saxon coinage, one of the most impressive monetary systems in tenth- and eleventh-century Europe. They show the development of kingship, Christian culture and a dynamic economy, often more vividly than any other source. The coins therefore constitute a resource of critical importance to many branches of scholarship, including archaeology and history as well as numismatics. My goal is to provide a fresh and authoritative survey of the full range of Anglo-Saxon coinage, embracing new research and innovative approaches, as well as the impact of numerous new metal-detected finds. It will be the first survey of the whole period to be published in several decades, and the first in more than a century accompanied by such a broad and representative collection.

Letter to Demetrias (British Academy Post-docs Part II)

Following on from our news of Dr Paul Gazzoli's British Academy Post-doctoral Fellowship to work on the Life of Anskar, we also wish to congratulate another ASNC, Dr Alison Bonner, who has also been awarded a British Academy Post-doctoral Fellowship. Ali will be departing for Oxford University, where she will be working on Pelagius' Letter to Demetrias, and she outlines her project here:

My research project is to create a critical edition of a work by the first known British author, Pelagius, famous for his defence of human free will; in his Letter to Demetrias he made a comprehensive case for human free will. Pelagius was excommunicated in 418 AD because of his statements that human nature was inherently good and that human free will was a necessary component in God’s justice. Pelagius’ Letter to Demetrias occupies a special position in his surviving canon because it can be securely attributed to him, and also because it presents a summation of his thought written at a crucial time in his career, when he was aware that he was under attack for maintaining that the principle of free will was integral to the Christian message of salvation. No critical edition, based on a wide comparison of manuscript copies, has ever been made of this Latin text; scholars have had to use a text that was created from just a few manuscripts, has no critical apparatus, and thus has no real authority. As a result scholars have been unable to draw from the letter definitive conclusions about Pelagius’ thought or style. The large number of surviving copies testifies to the influence of Letter to Demetrias throughout the Middle Ages. A critical edition will present the data on the number of surviving witnesses to this text. I will also seek to ascertain whether or not Pelagius was read more widely in Britain than elsewhere in Europe.

The Life of Anskar (British Academy Post-docs Part I)

We are delighted that two members of the Department have recently been awarded British Academy Post-doctoral Fellowships, a particular achievement given the stiff competition for awards this year. In this first post, Dr Paul Gazzoli outlines his proposed research project:

Rimbert's Life of Anskar is our most important document of life in Viking-Age Scandinavia. Unlike most of our written evidence for the period, which was either written centuries later or by people who had never been to Scandinavia, both the subject and the author of the life had spent time in Denmark and Sweden as missionaries. It is also unusual as a piece of hagiography as it devotes a good deal of space to describing the workings of pagan societies without recourse to the normal stereotypes. Despite this, the Life of Anskar has not received the attention it merits, a situation not helped by an old and inaccurate English translation and an edition of the Latin text that does not give enough attention to the different versions of the Life. A falsified version was produced around 1100 at Bremen for political reasons, and it was this version that was known in Germany and Scandinavia for the rest of the middle ages. The chief aim of my research will be to produce a new edition with a full translation and commentary encompassing not only the original Life but also its later development. This new edition will give more attention than the previous one (published in 1884) to the version of the Life produced around 1100. The edition will be accompanied by a new edition of the anonymous Life of Rimbert (again last edited in 1884 and never translated into English).

Round-up of recent awards in ASNC

The Leverhulme Trust has made a grant to the Department for an international network entitled ‘Converting the Isles: Conversion to Christianity in the Insular World’. Máire Ní Mhaonaigh will serve as Principal Investigator for the grant, working in collaboration with her co-applicant, Roy Flechner. A Network Facilitator for the grant will be appointed in due course. A colloquium on one aspect of the theme will be held on 12 May in the Department; for further details click here.

Megan Cavell, who has just completed her PhD in ASNC on Old English literature, has been awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Post Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto.

Denis Casey has been awarded a fellowship by the European Institutes for Advanced Study (EURIAS) international researcher mobility programme. He will hold his fellowship at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies during 2012-13, conducting research on ‘The intellectual world of Conall Mag Eochagáin: the medieval and early modern contexts of the Annals of Clonmacnoise’.

Congratulations to all concerned!

More ASNC-related news stories

The BBC reported yesterday that funding has been secured to conserve the Nigg cross-slab.

Also, to celebrate the discovery of the Ardnamurchan Viking boat burial, ASNC's Dr Elizabeth Ashman Rowe was on BBC Radio 4's 'World at One' news programme, reading some suitable Skaldic verse in Old Norse and in English translation (skip forward to 0:28:50. N.B.: the BBC iplayer facility is not available in all countries, and programmes can only be heard for 7 days after broadcast).

Peter’s Pence and Beyond: Monetary Links between Anglo-Saxon England and Rome

Dr Rory Naismith writes:

Despite being separated by a thousand miles of sea, land and mountain, Anglo-Saxon England enjoyed a close connection with Rome: seat of the papacy and a leading beacon of spiritual and cultural authority in early medieval Europe. This special relationship went back to the first mission of St Augustine to the English in 597, sent at the behest of Pope Gregory I (590–604), but persisted in the centuries that followed as English kings, clergy, pilgrims and traders made frequent trips to the eternal city. Many kinds of evidence survive to show how large Rome loomed in the minds of early medieval Englishmen and women. One particularly vivid source for both their piety and their economic interests comes in the form of money brought from England to Rome in the Anglo-Saxon period. Written records show that such gifts were taking place as early as the eighth century, though by the tenth century they had assumed the more or less regular form of Peter’s Pence: a penny donated by every Anglo-Saxon household to St Peter at Rome.

House of the Vestal Virgins in the Forum Romanum, where a hoard of over 800 English coins dating to the tenth century was found in 1883. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RomaCasaVestaliDaPalatinoOvest.JPG]

Dr Rory Naismith, a Junior Research Fellow at Clare College, and Dr Francesca Tinti, Ikerbasque Research Professor at the University of the Basque Country and an honorary research associate of ASNaC, have recently been awarded a research grant by the British Academy to look afresh at the movement of money between England and Rome at this time. In the course of 2012, they will go on research visits to Rome to re-examine material in museums and archives. Finds of English coins have been numerous in Rome, among them such famous pieces as a unique gold coin in the name of Offa, king of the Mercians (757–96), made in imitation of an Islamic gold dinar (now in the British Museum). Also, there has been a glut of major hoards from the tenth century comprising about a thousand coins in total. Indeed, English coins constitute the bulk of all those found within Rome dating to between the late eighth and late tenth centuries. These have much to tell about England’s coinage at that time, and also about the nature of links between England and Rome: they say as much about economic activity as devotion, and should be seen as the residue of trade and exchange as well as pious donations. Dr Naismith and Dr Tinti’s research will shed new light on the significance of this material for bonds – cultural, religious and monetary – tying England to Rome at a formative stage.

Coins of Pope Hadrian I (772–95) and Wulfred, archbishop of Canterbury (805–32), the latter drawing inspiration from Hadrian’s earlier coinage. Both coins illustrated courtesy of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

A parallel strand of research will involve analysing the metallic content of a selection of silver coins from the Fitzwilliam Museum minted under the authority of the popes from the 770s to the 970s. These fall during the heyday of movement of English coins to Rome, and have never before been examined in this way. Determining the purity of these coins’ silver, and the quantity of other trace elements within them, might pave the way towards some understanding of where the popes looked for models and bullion in minting their coinage. This might in turn shed some light on the fate of English silver on arrival in Rome: was it melted down to provide local currency, or were other sources of silver drawn on? What was the final chapter of movements of English coin to Rome? 

Digital Resource for Palaeography

Congratulations to Affiliated Lecturer in ASNC, Dr Peter Stokes, who teaches Palaeography in the department, and who has just been awarded a prestigious Starting Grant from the European Research Council for a project to develop a 'Digital Resource for Palaeography', based at the Centre for Computing in the Humanities, at King's College London. The details of the project can be found here.