Yesterday I visited Malmesbury Cathedral, burial place of Athelstan - coronated 1,100 years ago #OTD !

The Society has today launched a new funding grant in honour of Dr Ryan Foster, supporting those who have come or returned to academia later in life.

Join us online tomorrow from 7pm for 'How to Read a Hogback' - delivered by @rebekahbeatnik.bsky.social & Ancrum Heritage Society. Register here: bit.ly/HogbackAugustSeminar

The Minster Lovell Jewel Perhaps from the same workshop as the Alfred Jewel, the gold and cloisonné enamel Minster Lovell Jewel may also be an 'aestel' (a manuscript pointer used to follow text) from the reign of Alfred of Wessex, c. AD 871-899. My 📷 | Ref. @ashmoleanmuseum.bsky.social AN1869.20

7th century Reliquary of Theuderic, a masterpiece of silversmithing and cloissoné work. Good stuff. At Saint-Maurice d'Agaune.

Make them pay

This is a copy of the medieval Nuremberg chronicle... I love how they unabashedly depict the world through a German lens. This picture is meant to be ancient biblical city of Nineveh 😂 I imagine the scribe instructing the illustrator said something like: “Think Mesopotamia, but make it Munich”

Celebrating their 600th anniversary, I attended the London Guildhall Library’s Summer Soirée today. They brought out some of the most amazing items from the archives, including this fabulous chained bible - it belonged to the medieval guild of ‘Tylers and Brickmakers’, who used it to swear oaths on

29. ‘And if anyone comes upon a thief and of his own accord lets him escape without raising the hue and cry, he shall make compensation by the payment of the thief's wergeld, or clear himself with the full oath [asserting] that he did not know him to be guilty of any crime.’

Perfecting my infographic slides as I gear up to teach my Rare Book School class on medieval manuscripts.

New article by Ryan Foster just published on -thwaite names in Cumbria. Much missed colleague and committee member of Scottish Society for Northern Studies who died last year, still bringing new insights to Viking Age Cumbria www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... #placenames #medievalsky

Currently in England working on a Scottish text for a Welsh institution while listening to a podcast from India and wondering why I feel a bit scattered.

Thanks to everyone who came to our stall at @imc-leeds.bsky.social! We were giving away colourful copies of old editions of our journal ‘Northern Studies.’ You can access our back catalogue for free online! www.ssns.org.uk/our-journal/volumes

Such a great book, with essays on all kinds of topics - from “What Have the Romans Vikings Ever Done For Us?” to “Elements of the (Anti)Hero’s Journey in Two Classics of 1970s Danish Children’s Literature.” Worth £19.95 brand new - repost with the #northernstudies for a chance to win a free copy!

We're getting set up in the Leeds Student Union for the @imc-leeds.bsky.social Historic Societies Fair - come down from 10:30am and grab some free copies of the Northern Studies journal!

Kind of disappointing they've called it 'Doom: The Dark Ages' instead of 'Doom: The Early Medieval Period Which Was Not a Period of Intellectual Decline', but you can't have everything.

Years after taking @janmachielsen.bsky.social’s class on witchcraft at Cardiff Uni, it is fascinating to revisit evidence of trials in the Basque; a region early modern witch-hunters perceived to be geographically, linguistically & politically at the edge “[…] of the known and familiar.”

In London earlier this week I was excited to visit the iconic purveyors of occult literature, Treadwell Books, for the first time. I was hunting down a copy of @janmachielsen.bsky.social’a ‘The Basque Witch-Hunt.’ Imagine my delight to find it was signed!

Yesterday I was delighted to attend the Janette Harley prize where I collected ‘highly commended’, for the online exhibition I curated for the Regional Ethnology of Scotland Project (RESP). Thanks to RESP and the Scottish Society for Northern studies for making it possible to attend in person.

Last spring in Normandy 📸💧🌼

Thanks for the shoutout! I’m presenting a poster and giving a lightning talk about the exhibition too at an upcoming Scottish Council on Archives event at Glasgow University on March 10th - free tickets are still available! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/connecting...

Photos from a trip to the Scottish borders to explore some family history open.substack.com/pub/rebekahb...