New Cambridge Element 🚨 A Franciscan Tombstone in Fourteenth-Century China, by Nancy Wu was just published. Read it for free for the next 2 weeks at cup.org/4dM6PAg

In case it might be of interest, last year the volume "Royal Blood - The Passion of St Cnut, king and martyr" was published, & it is available online: museumodense.dk/wp-content/u.... The book is edited by Mikael Manøe Bjerregaard, Kirstine Haase & myself, with a translation by Francis Young.

Now that all my backers received their copies (both digital and printed), Inks & Paints of the Islamic Golden Age is available as an ebook: payhip.com/majnouna/col...

Here @parergon.bsky.social our call is open for proposals for special issue 45.2 (2028) - please circulate widely! www.parergon.org/index.php/pa...

📢 Call for Book Chapters in our book series 'Old Norse Studies' TIMES OF CHANGE: NORWAY IN THE 13TH CENTURY, ed. Mary Catherine O’Connor & Jonas Zeit-Altpeter 📅 Abstract deadline: 31 July More information on submissions below. See the full Call here: trivent-publishing.eu/blog/post/36...

This is one of those days when I feel that I'm good at my job. It's a feeling to be treasured.

Me hace mucha ilusión compartir con vosotras y vosotros que este verano participaré en este maravilloso curso que imparte la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela para hablar, cómo no, de mujeres en época vikinga 😊(1/3) Para más info munarqas.com/la-ciudad-de... @dianapelaz.bsky.social

In this blogpost Alec Ryrie looks at the life of Samson Occom, a Native American preacher, writer and anti-slavery campaigner who used the Protestant faith that educated him to challenge the racism, hypocrisy and broken promises of colonial Christianity. yalebooks.co.uk/samson-occom... #reformazing

I was a script consultant for the BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Last of the Mohicans and later led a discussion of the work's legacy with Choctaw scholar Bethany Hughes, Seminole/Mvskoke playwright Tara Moses, and Indigenous Studies scholar Mark Rifkin. See it here! www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl1r...

So important! And please please please if you want to know the magnitude of the Holy See’s failing, do yourself an enormous favor and read José Lingna Nafafé’s astonishing book on the 17th C case brought against slavery: www.thriftbooks.com/w/loureno-da...

"The Popes, the Catholic Church and the Transatlantic Enslavement of Black Africans 1418-1839" by Pius Onyemechi Adiele, PhD. A Catholic priest of Ahiara Diocese Mbaise, he obtained his PhD in Church History from the University of Tübingen in Germany. #OpenAccess library.oapen.org/handle/20.50...

#Profecía #libros www.lavanguardia.com/vida/2026052...

En el mundo de la ciencia y la tecnología hay magos, profetas y, ahora mismo, buscavidas que se hacen pasar por ambos sin ser ninguno de los dos. ¿Cómo es posible que los confundan? Mi columna de hoy en @elpais.com elpais.com/opinion/2026...

Twenty-first-century tech-bros: AI will usher in an era of unparalleled creativity. Twelfth-century masons: [Fachada de Platerías, Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela]

This month, @globalvoices.org is putting a spotlight on how people and communities in the Global Majority are taking significant action to protect and improve their environment - stories that don't get enough coverage in the US-focused, rich-people-centered media. Like this story:

8000 fragments! Congratulations, @fragmentarium.bsky.social! Folks, PLEASE survey your early modern bindings and share what you find. #fragmentology

While immoral amounts of money are poured into machines that can generate empty, doubly-extractive texts, countless volumes of texts in pre-modern languages remain untranslated. These are extremely unhealthy priorities.

This analogy is very useful for understanding how AI-generated texts function as literature. While the strings of words might be intelligible, the meaning of those strings are conferred solely by the reader as there is no meaning behind the product itself. AI-generated texts are empty. (1/n)

I'm en route to Bergen, & as usual that means thinking a lot about the fjords & their kaleidoscopic variety. So to represent this point, here's another snapshot from a midnight walk two days ago.

Happy to share my latest article in Aschkenas, “Rachel Was Shapely and Beautiful: A Jewish Woman in Hostile Archives”—on a 13th-century woman from Nottingham, archival silences and hostility, and critical speculation. Check it out: www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

Hello German speakers: would you like a signed copy of Die Brücke, the German translation of my first novel, The Girl in the Road? I’m trying to save money for a car, so I’m selling my last three copies! Write [email protected], or tag a deutschsprachiger science fiction fan in the comments 🩵

This morning's catch.

NEW! Companion to the Hispanic Romances of Chivalry edited by Axayácatl Campos García Rojas and Daniel Gutiérrez Trápaga, is the first comprehensive overview of Hispanic chivalric romance in English. Find out more 👉 buff.ly/8Uby6r4 #Booksky

Now writing the next issue of NOTES FROM A SCIENCE HISTORIAN, out later today. It's a piece about the crossroads between beauty, monsters, and the existential crises that plagued Europeans during age of Atlantic exploration. Sign up to make sure you don't miss it! #earlymodern #arthistory #histsci 🗃

A scene from a late walk yesterday. At twilight in the fjords, time ceases to make sense.

Lunch seminar on the survival of medieval art in Protestant churches by Justin Kroesen. 🗓️ May 22nd 12 p.m. Organised by #collegiummedievale 🎨 #Arthistory #HistoryofArt #Medieval 🔗 Information and link: www.khm.uio.no/forskning/fo...

Give a man a can of surströmming, disgust him for a day. Teach a man to make surströmming, disgust everyone around him for a lifetime. - Guy Montgomery, Guy Montgomery's Guy-Mont Spelling Bee S03E04

This evening, my parents & I set out the fishing nets on our main fishing lake for the first time in 2026. It is always a welcome milestone in the annual cycle, & a signal that summer is approaching.

Here are my four Gorgias Press books — two on Jacob of Serug, a martyrdom, and a Greek-Syriac lexical index to the De Mundo — if you need to add anything to your purchase during the sale:

Such a good word.

Wall paintings at the Basilica of St Sernin (Saturnin), Toulouse, dating from 1180 and rediscovered in 1972. The basilica, said to be the largest Romanesque church in Europe, was an important stop for pilgrims on the way to St James's shrine in Santiago de Compostela. 👣 📸2023

🎉 The print copy is here! My essay "Framing the Beneventan aristocracy in the first half of the ninth century" is out in Aristocratic networks. Elites and social dynamics in Italy in the age of Lothar I (ed. Albertoni, Fauliri, Sernagiotto) books.fupress.com/catalogue/ar... #medievalsky

Springtime in the fjords, & I am once again reminded why the provincial law codes of medieval Norway include rules for how to deal with cattle that has broken free from their enclosures.

Since we are going through the Second Portrait Data Craze, here is my text on why historical data is not your familiar kitten. It’s a saber-toothed tiger that will eat you and your village of data scientists for breakfast if you don’t treat it with respect. mfafinski.github.io/Historical_d...

It was probably not a good thing to learn that the shipping costs for books from Spain to Norway are significantly lower than I had thought.

Once carrying chant, now carrying contents: this liturgical #manuscript fragment is recycled as the cover of a small storage case. Just one of the many examples of the afterlives of medieval manuscripts! #rarebooks #bookhistory 💙📚📜

Hobbes dijo que el verdadero poder está en la capacidad de controlar el lenguaje, decir qué significa qué. Su intuición nos busca en la era de los grandes modelos del lenguaje. En mi columna explico porqué @add-hawk.bsky.social tiene una clave para analizar su influencia. elpais.com/opinion/2026...

I'm using this Tuesday to promote my article "The functions of religion and science in utopian thinking in the middle ages and the early modern period", published open access in the Belgrade Philosophical Annual: scindeks-clanci.ceon.rs/data/pdf/035....

19th May is the feast of St Dunstan. Here is the initial 'R' at the beginning of Osbern's Life of St Dunstan. BL Arundel 16; Osbern, Life of St Dunstan; ; last quarter of the 11th century or 1st quarter of the 12th century; England, S. E. (Canterbury); f.2r @blmedieval.bsky.social

Tatort Mainzer Dombibliothek 2 'Iste liber pertinet ad librariam Sancti Martini ecclesiae Moguntinae. Marcarius syndicus scripsit 1479.' in einer Mainzer Hs. des 9.Jhs. Der Domsyndikus Marcarius von Buseck trug dies in zahlreichen Handschriften der Dombibliothek ein. Rom, BAV, Pal. lat. 578, fol. 1r

An excellent Songhay website got updated recently: www.songhay.org/en/

Today I'm yet again reminded that more people should attend university. Not because of the grades or the degrees, but because you are then more likely to encounter a broader cross-section of the world around you.

I'm not a very typical Norwegian, but on this year's Constitution Day I escaped to a shieling & spent my time reading & napping. This is probably the most Norwegian thing I have done since accidentally confusing the Spanish word for "hair" with the word for "testicle" in the autumn of 2018.

I am not a classicist, nor have I read the Odyssey, & I have little interest in watching Nolan's adaptation of it. However, the rightwing outrage over artistic choices induces me to make a couple of points about how asinine the outrage is. (1/n)

The story of Brendan's voyage was one of THE great medieval bestsellers so I wrote about some of the weirder bits and what they may have meant to medieval audiences here - open.substack.com/pub/medieval...

Done by Prof. Rossana Guglielmetti (Milan), it brings the famous work of Giovanni Orlandi to completion who began to study the Nauigatio in the 1960s. In celebration of Brendan's Day, we offer the book for a special price for two weeks. More info: shop.dias.ie/product/navi.... /3

Biblical literacy is always needed when analysing contemporary US politics, & @karenattiah.bsky.social does a great job of it.

16th May is the feast of St Brendan the Navigator. St Brendan and his fellow monks meet Paul the Hermit. Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc. 173, Part E; Navigatio S. Brendani; 14th century, third quarter; France; f.131v @bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Not runes: "Bumerke" from 18th century Norway. Wikipedia translates it as "house marks". A symbol that was the individual signature of a person. Can look a lot like runes, but aren't. Wiki says it's a North European (German/Nordic) thing. Is that true?

For the feast of Saint Brendan, the Irish abbot who reportedly arrived at the gates of the Earthly Paradise, here is the woodcut vignette for his chapter in Steffen Arndes' 1492 edition of the Lübeck Passionael. [Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA M 15, f.192v]