Day 24 and we’ve reached the final window of this year’s Coastal Lexicon Advent Calendar! Today’s word is: 🌊 tide — the rising and falling of the sea twice each lunar day A Common Germanic inheritance concerned with time; cognate with German "Zeit", Dutch "tijd", Norwegian/Danish "tid". 1/3

Offre d’emploi – Stellenausschreibung: Wissenschaftliche:r Mitarbeiter:in in Mittelalterlicher Geschichte (6.-12. Jh.) § 28 Abs. 1 HmbHG rmblf.be/2025/12/24/o...

there's got to be a story to tell about academics under siege held together by eduroam, and the original republic of letters. google thinks no one has ever made this link, which is how you can tell google is not the republic of letters.

Day 23 and we've reached penultimate window of this year’s Coastal Lexicon Advent Calendar! Today’s word is: 🌊 strand — 'the land bordering a sea, a shore or beach' Common to Germanic, strand being the default ‘beach’ word in Dutch, German, Danish and Norwegian.

Day 22 of the Coastal Lexicon Advent Calendar and today’s word is: 🌊 eddy — water that runs contrary to the direction of the tide or current, a small whirlpool "Those great eddees...that suck into them and overwhelm whatever comes within their reach" (T. Burnet, Sacred Theory of the Earth, 1684)

“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.” — Aldous Huxley

A small piece of sea off Hoy

Today is the December solstice at 15:03 GMT/16:03 CET. This @eumetsat.int MTG‑I1 image from 19 December 2025, 06:00 GMT, shows Earth’s day–night terminator tilted near its annual maximum of about 23.5°.

Day 21 of the Coastal Lexicon Advent Calendar and today’s word is: bight — 'a bend in a coastline, a shallow bay' Common to Germanic, cognate with Dutch bocht, German Bucht. As in German Bight from the Shipping Forecast: "There are warnings of gales in Forth, Tyne, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight…"

The complete Bayeux Tapestry has finally been released and proves that Bishop Odo had absolutely nothing to do with the illegal Norman invasion of England.

Day 20 of the Coastal Lexicon Advent Calendar and today’s word is: 🌊 fog dog — a break or clear patch in a fog at sea "These transient breaks, which are called by the sailors ‘Fog dogs’...are generally considered good" (Athenæum, 2 April 1831) 📸 Sea, gulls and fog, neekoh.fi (CC BY 2.0)

Another beer post for the evening: In 1241, Pope Gregory IX informed Archbishop Sigurd Eindridesson (r.1231-52) that children who are baptised in beer can not be considered to have been properly baptised.

@rbb mit unklarer und ziemlich harscher Berichterstattung: Bezieht sich die Überschwemmung mit Jauche nun auf das Berliner Kindl oder den "Glühwein! 3,50 €"?

Herausgegeben von der tollen Christine Kleinjung mit vielen Beiträgen ebenso toller Kolleg*innen: www.campus.de/buecher-camp...

Möchten nur auch Sie diese nächsten schlimmen Wochen heiter und froh durchleben und dann im Januar wieder munter zu uns und Ihren hiesigen Geschäften zurückkehren. An Goethe, 11. Dezember 1798

Another beautiful Shchedryk performance amidst ruins. It was set in what used to be a DTEK thermal power plant — now destroyed by russia. The contrast between russia’s destructive nature and the Ukrainian will to create beauty even in the darkest times is palpable.

Shoutout to our dear colleague Dr. Mikola Volkau for his new NAWA funded project "The route to Europe: urbanization and roads in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the 16th to the middle of the 17th century" at the Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences 2025-2027.

Hot on the heels of my first book contract with Palgrave MacMillan (2026), I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve just signed a contract with Bloomsbury to publish a book on the sailors and song collectors who saved the sea shanty (due March 2027). I can’t wait to get stuck in! ⚓️🎶 #seashanties #maritime

Day 19 of the Coastal Lexicon Advent Calendar and today’s word is: 🌊 geo — a rocky gully on the coast in Caithness, Orkney and Shetland A Norse borrowing < gjá 'rift, cleft, chasm', as in the Faroese village Gjógv Formed by high-energy wave erosion along a line of structural weakness in the rock

From salt to... sanitation! 🧂➡️💩 This 15th-century salt-trade barrel was repurposed as a latrine lining in #Constance. A good example of #MedievalRecycling and resourcefulness in everyday life. 📷 @almbawue.bsky.social 🏺 #archaeology

The MIDDLEBURG reached the Cape on 18. Dec 1625 Master Willem Kornelisz. Schouten died before. They fougth 2 Portuguese carracks near St. Helena, afterwards lost. resources.huygens.knaw.nl/das/detailVo...

Join us in January! We offer four PGT programmes, including MLitt History & MLitt History of the Highlands & Islands. In the latest Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey, our MLitt History scored a perfect 100% for overall student satisfaction. To find out more and to apply ➡️ bit.ly/CfH-PGT-study

Day 18 of the Coastal Lexicon Advent Calendar and today’s word is: 🌊 cuddy duck — a local name in NE England for the Common Eider, a large seaduck found along northern coastlines Named after St Cuthbert, the 7th-century Northumbrian saint traditionally associated with various bird-related miracles

Day 17 of the Coastal Lexicon Advent Calendar and today’s word is: 🌊 shingle — smooth, waterworn pebbles as found on the seashore Origin unclear, perhaps imitative of the sound of water running over such pebbles. As in various coastal place names, notably the Suffolk village of Shingle Street.

Publication – « Companion to the Later Crusades (1400–1700) », éd. Magnus Ressel, Emir O. Filipović rmblf.be/2025/12/17/p...

Day 16 of the Coastal Lexicon Advent Calendar and today’s word is: 🌊 lee — the sheltered side of a ship, turned away from the wind Whence leeway — ‘the sideways drift of a ship leeward of the desired course’, and also figuratively — ‘scope for freedom of action or thought’ 📸 Dguendel (CC BY 3.0)

We saw a ship come sailing in... a rather fine Narbonnese sailing ship going past a lighthouse on this mosaic from Ostia. #MosaicMonday #ClassicsBluesky 🏺 www.romansociety.org/Imago/Image-...

Day 15 of the Coastal Lexicon Advent Calendar and today’s word is: 🌊 whorl — each turn or coil of a spiral shell "See what a lovely shell...With delicate spire and whorl" (Tennyson, 1855) The European Ribbed Wentletrap below takes its name from the Dutch word wenteltrap — ‘spiral staircase’.

One argument I used to make to my students about why it was important to learn history (and historical thinking) is that someone was always going to be trying to tell you things were natural or had always been this way and that you needed to be able to see that as an exercise of power.

Job: 1 Wiss. Mitarbeiter:in (m/w/d) "Projekt Culture Cloud" (Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Bibliothek, Hannover) https://www.hsozkult.de/job/id/job-159323 Hannover, -30.09.2030, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Bibliothek – Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek, Bewerbungsschluss: 11.01.2026 …

Day 14 of the Coastal Lexicon Advent Calendar and today’s word is: 🌊 wash — a tract of land “washed” regularly by the sea As in The Wash, where King John was caught out in 1216: "half my power this night...are taken by the tide; These Lincoln Washes have devoured them" (Shakespeare, King John)

Day 13 of the Coastal Lexicon Advent Calendar and today’s word is: 🌊 selkie — a seal, or in folklore a spirit which can shapeshift between human and seal form "I am a man upon the land and I am a silkie in the sea" (Ballad The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry) 📸 Baron Reznik (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 cropped)

Day 12 of the Coastal Lexicon Advent Calendar and today’s word is: 🌊 wrack — remnants or goods from a wrecked vessel, esp. when driven ashore Borrowed from Dutch/Low German, as in Du. "scheepswrak" ‘shipwreck’ "As rich…As is the ooze and bottom of the sea With sunken wrack" (Shakespeare, Henry V)

Heute ist mein Buch Dark Medieval Times über das Mittelalter im Metal auf den Markt gekommen. 🍾 Schaut doch mal rein!

Day 11 of the Coastal Lexicon Advent Calendar and today’s word is: 🌊 neap (tide) — occurring at the 1st & 3rd quarters of the moon, when the high-water level is lowest "Such a dead Neipe...as no Man living was known to have seen the like, the Sea fell so far back from the Land" (H. Spelman, 1698)

Day 10 of the Coastal Lexicon Advent Calendar and today’s word is: 🌊 staithe — ‘a landing-stage, wharf’ A Norse borrowing, found especially in eastern England. Whence the name of the Yorkshire village of Staithes, where Capt. James Cook once worked as a shopkeeper’s apprentice. 📸T Eyre, Staithes

Day 9 of the Coastal Lexicon Advent Calendar and today’s word is: 🌊 tang — a collective name for large, coarse seaweed growing above the low-water mark As in the Tangie in Orkney & Shetland, a horse/man sea-spirit covered with seaweed, which haunts the seashore. 📸 Ryan Hodnett (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Day 8 of the Coastal Lexicon Advent Calendar and today’s word is: 🌊 shoal — ‘a place where the water is of little depth; a shallow, sandbank or bar’ Prized for fishing, though also feared: "When shauldes and sandie bankes apears What pillot can direct his course?" (c.1585, Early Naval Ballads)

Ich sehe immer mehr, die sich an Madeleine Krause abarbeiten, sie verhöhnen, sich selbst erhöhen. Das nötig zu haben😱 Meine Hochachtung für Frau Krause wächst dagegen. Ihr Mut👏 Ja, Uni kann schwierig sein.Wir sind da, um zu helfen. Die wahre Uni will nicht verschlossen bleiben

Großartig! Und ganz herzliche Glückwünsche! Ein starkes Ergebnis. Viel Glück und Erfolg Samet Yilmaz bei der neuen Aufgabe als Oberbürgermeister von Kiel!

Day 7 of the Coastal Lexicon Advent Calendar and today’s word is: 🌊 skerry — a rocky islet covered by the sea at high water or in stormy weather Perilous for mariners, as captured in the Norse saying "sigla milli skers ok báru" — 'to sail between skerry and wave‘ i.e. be in a difficult situation

Acts of injustice done between the setting and the rising sun in history lie like bones, each one W H Auden

Derick Berck of Cologne https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436659

Day 6 of the Coastal Lexicon Advent Calendar and today’s word is: 🌊 links — gently undulating, grass-covered ground near the shore, esp. along Scotland's east coast Traditionally common ground, hosting fairs, gatherings, livestock grazing, archery, and of course: golf! 📸 Iain Lowe (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Offre d’emploi – Doctoral Researcher Position in “History of Knowledge of the Medieval World” rmblf.be/2025/12/03/o...

Day 5 of the Coastal Lexicon Advent Calendar and today’s word is: 🌊 the offing — the distant part of the sea visible from shore, where approaching ships would first appear Whence in the offing — ‘nearby’, ‘at hand’, ‘imminent’ Photo: Rain in the offing, Dornoch, Julian Paren (CC BY-SA 2.0)

New data suggests an eruption cooled Europe, disrupted harvests and pushed Italian states into grain trades that may have begun one of history’s deadliest pandemics. https://cnn.it/3XAsSSI

Day 4 of the Coastal Lexicon Advent Calendar and today’s word is: 🌊 voe — ‘a bay, creek or inlet’ A Norse borrowing in Orkney & Shetland dialect, found in place names across the Northern Isles — including Hamnavoe, the old name for Stromness. 📸 Stromness waterfront, Mike Pennington (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Day 3 of the Coastal Lexicon Advent Calendar and today’s word is: 🌊 haar — ‘a cold sea-fog’ Found especially along the east coast of Scotland and England, alongside "sea-fret", "sea-roke". Photo: Sea fret, St Mary's Lighthouse, Whitley Bay, hayley green (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Day 2 of the Coastal Lexicon Advent Calendar and today’s word is: 🌊 marram — as in the "marram grass" which thrives in coastal dunes A Scandinavian loan (< marr ‘sea’ + hálmr ‘straw/reed’), known as "marehalm" along Norwegian and Danish coasts. Photo: Marram grass, Alan Hughes (CC BY-SA 2.0)