Articles about 'Department of Anglo-Saxon Norse and Celtic'

Six academics from the University of Cambridge have been made Fellows of the prestigious British Academy for the humanities and social sciences.

Byzantine bullion fuelled Europe’s revolutionary adoption of silver coins in the mid-7th century, only to be overtaken by silver from a mine in Charlemagne’s Francia a century later, new tests reveal. The findings could transform our understanding of Europe’s economic and political development.

Researchers from Cambridge and Queen’s University Belfast have identified and defined 500 Irish words, many of which had been lost, and unlocked the secrets of many other misunderstood terms. Their findings can now be freely accessed in the revised version of the online dictionary of Medieval Irish (www.dil.ie).

He was just a boy when he became King of the English and his reign was marked by repeated attacks by the Danes. Æthelred, who died 1,000 years ago on 23 April 1016, is remembered as ‘the Unready’.  But his nickname masks a more complex picture.

Fiona Edmonds (Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic) discusses devolution and the medieval kingdoms of England.

Rebecca Merkelbach (Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic) discusses the monstrous heroes of Scandinavian mythology and literature.

The Cambridge Animal Alphabet series celebrates Cambridge's connections with animals through literature, art, science and society. Here, D is for Dragon. Watch out for fire-breathers among the treasures of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, in Anglo-Saxon proverbs, and in fantasy literature from medieval Scandinavia to the present day.

One of the UK’s most important medieval manuscripts is revealing ghosts from the past after new research and imaging work discovered eerie faces and lines of verse which had previously been erased from history.

A conference taking place today in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic is the first step in an ambitious graduate-led project to create an online database of the diverse and often confounding miracle accounts which abound in the vast body of saintly literature produced by medieval authors. 

As Ireland marks the millennium of the Battle of Clontarf – portrayed as a heroic encounter between Irish and Vikings which defined the nation’s identity - new research argues that our main source for what happened may be more literary history than historical fact.