This one took a long road. After an initial peer-review, it morphed into something different from my 2024 paper in Leeds' IMC. It combines some of my doctoral research with my own later review of it and ideas from notes I've been taking over the years.

This year's IMC was fun. No travel issues, no cancellations. Went straight to the bookfair Monday morning, enjoyed others' papers, found folks from last year, met new people, and discussed future projects. An overall positive experience. And I still can't eat an English breakfast 😅

Unusual of me to be doing this so late, but it's in the making and should be ready by Friday 🫡 Leeds IMC 2025 is just around the corner and I sure hope my flight does not get canceled like last year's...

Não sei se estão a oferecer doces ou se quer tudo muito ir para a praia, mas eu estou habituado a ter 300 e tal votos ao final do dia e neste momento são já quase 200 dentro da urna. Ainda nem sequer é meio-dia. #legislativas2025

That time I explained folks that Snorri's Edda is a poetry manual, not a work on Norse mythology, using as an analogy modern self-taught books 😅 Skaldic poetry for dummies. Learn to be an old-fashioned poet. Skaldic poetry: learn to construct it on your own.

The longest paper I've written thus far is thirty one pages long (including four of bibliography) and has ten maps. And I just submitted it for publication.

Feliz Solstício de Inverno! Happy Winter Solstice! Glad Vintersolstånd! Hyvää Talvipäivänseisausta!

In a not-so-distant-future, Europeans travelling to the US will be advised to have their shots in order & US Americans coming to Europe will be required to have theirs. Congrats, US! You voted yourselves into underdevelopment. www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

Começa na quarta, vai até sábado. Quatro dias sobre uma prática antiga e multifacetada (mas nem por isso menos atroz). Eu vou falar na manhã do primeiro dia, mas se puderem vão a todos, que vai haver muita comida para a mente.

🇵🇹 Serviço púbico... público! 🇬🇧 Pubic... public service! 🇵🇹 E a inscrição referida no terceiro skeet é esta – transcrita, transliterada, normalizada e traduzida para português.

Cheguei à mesma conclusão ao ler artigos académicos brasileiros. Não é só o sotaque e as expressões: é a própria estrutura da língua que está a mudar e a separar as duas variantes. Se não são dois idiomas distintos, caminham para tal. E isso não tem de ser uma coisa má.

Hyvää itsenäisyyspäivää, suomalaiset! 🤍💙🤍 (Hope I'm not forgetting a grammatical case ending)

Topographic map of downtown Lisbon. The red cross signals the castle, the blue one the old inlet of the Tagus (nowadays part of the urban plot), the purple the low-lying area of Santos. I may or may not be using it in a viking-related way.

Se celebramos o 1° de Dezembro, também devíamos celebrar o 13 de Fevereiro. O primeiro foi o golpe que depôs o governo espanhol em Portugal, o segundo o tratado que pôs fim à Guerra da Restauração. Ou pelo menos devia ser assim pela lógica dos celebrantes do 25 de Novembro ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

This is a very niche skeet, but Montpellier maples (Acer monspessulanum) are native to Portugal and they're beautiful, yet very rare these days. Even finding them in tree nurseries is a challenge. So it makes my morning a little better to see c.20 of them in a corner of Lisbon

Isto é um skeet muito de nicho, mas a zelha (Acer monspessulanum) é uma espécie autóctone em Portugal e é linda, mas rara nos dias que correm. Até em viveiros é muito difícil encontrá-la. Por isso, a minha manhã fica um pouco melhor quando eu encontro c.20 num recanto de um parque em Lisboa 💚

It's like a Christmas card, only it's not, but it's just as good. It's mostly red in colour, it's a treat offered by the IMC organizers, and I'll be talking about a Norwegian saint. All very much on Christmas topic.

This is true. Man-made extinction of wildlife goes back thousands of years. The issue is much deeper than capitalism versus marxism (or whatever folks want to replace the former with). Solving the ecological crisis requires a much wider and structural transformation.

Eu ainda me lembro de à esquerda ter-se elogiado o Gouveia e Melo por, durante a pandemia, ter dito algo como "a democracia não se faz de homens providenciais." Até se comentou que o 25 de Abril fez escola. E acho que foi o @danielolivalx.bsky.social (que me corrigirá se estiver errado).

[A Portuguese thread on the link between Portuguese and Urdu, following a fact-checking report on public services in Portugal supposedly being offered in Arabic] A migrar para o Bluesky um fio que eu publiquei no inferno do Moscão sobre uma notícia de instruções "em árabe" numa loja do cidadão.

Optimist: the cup is half full Pessimist: the cup is half empty Thor while visiting Utgarða-Loki: what do you mean, the damn cup is still full?

I have this small, personal project of nature restauration where I'm turning c. 1100 m2 of a family plot into a native grove, making use of naturally-grown Portuguese oak trees already in situ. Been adding oak, maple, hawthorn, pine, laurel, strawberry, holly, carob, yew, poplar and pine trees.

When I was like 8 years old, my grandparents gave me a History of Portugal in comics. Been hooked ever since. Vikings came later in college.

Accurate! 👌

So I'm writing the bibliography of a paper I'm finishing & there's a book with four places of publication. Four! Seriously, is that info still relevant? It dropped out of use for journals & I've seen style guides telling authors to mention just one place of publication when there are two or more.

O Paulito está de volta ao céu azul! Deem-lhe muito amor para ele ficar de vez!

Malta tuga, há um projeto meritório de conservação e renaturalização a ganhar forma e a precisar de doações para seguir por diante. Vejam se e o que podem dar. greensavers.sapo.pt/sociedade-po...

Written 12 years ago & still relevant today, if not more so. "The problem with “I’m entitled to my opinion” is that, all too often, it’s used to shelter beliefs that should have been abandoned. (...) And this attitude feeds, I suggest, into the false equivalence between experts and non-experts"

It's small reading, but packs a strong punch.

Get surveying and sharing, folks!

Part of being an historian means migrating a small portion of one's library to the living room table, because the bibliography is too big for the desk. It's a bit like a bird migration, only indoors and a lot less relaxing.

Twitter habits die hard, for some people not at all. But do as Iron says and block (or mute) freely. Don't make stupid people famous, don't engage with them, don't give them the benefit of your attention.

And thus I literally cried from laughing out loud for the first time on Bluesky 😂 Partly because I'm as or more inept when playing video games I'm not familiar with.

Let's acknowledge that despite paying lip service to freedom, the majority of US Americans have no real commitment to democracy, its values & principles. Most care for petty, short-term self-interest & will vote accordingly, no matter the candidate. And no single future election will redeem that.

Am always amazed that in the US there are still single-line voting sites. As opposed to voting sites organized by, e.g., sections of no more than c. 2000 voters spread out alphabetically. Though for that of course you need a well-organized registration process – which is an additional issue...

Mais disto, por favor. Muito mais disto! 💚

Saw it in the store a couple of months ago, but decided not to buy it. Went back to the store today to get something else and couldn't resist twice. It's the closest I'll ever be of adopting what I'm sure was one of the most beautiful animals ever to walk on this planet.

Populism described 👇

Love it! 😂

Quando me perguntam porque é que eu tenho interesse em aprender finlandês, basco ou nahuatl, eis uma resposta: Gramática molda a percepção. E ver o mundo de diferentes formas faz maravilhas pela mente e capacidade de compreensão.

The Viking Society for Northern Research is looking for folks willing and able to translate «Alice in Wonderland» into Old Norse. Someone qualified please step forward 😍 #medievalsky

Transgender, third gender & gender fluid are not a modern invention, nor is binary gender universal. Portugal did not create or kick-start globalization. And Prince Henry, the so-called «Navigator», was a douchebag. The USA have a fossilized constitutional framework & outdated electoral process.

No one, but four History books in Portuguese on Viking-Studies subjects. Have plans for more – on the same and other matters. www.wook.pt/autor/helio-...

The linguaphile in me is in love with this! ♥️

Felt represented in this 👌

If you think a more visible impact of climate change is going to debunk skeptics & outright deniers and mobilize people to take action, you may be wrong.

Can't say I'm surprised that Twitter failed to publish my final tweet while it included this image. Elon is a needy man-child. Long live @bsky.app!

One of my childhood books on dinosaurs, a 1987 Portuguese version of «Windows of the World: dinosaurs and how they lived», was wrong.

Berengária, filha de D. Sancho I de Portugal e mulher de Valdemar II da Dinamarca, teve uma segunda vida como fantasma da igreja onde foi sepultada – diz a lenda local. A mesma igreja onde o crânio e uma trança de cabelo dela estão hoje em exposição.

Things are coming together for Leeds IMC 2025, but the sessions I'll be taking part in (Learning in and with Old Norse-Icelandic Hagiography) can still accommodate additional contributions, should anyone reading this be interested.