#early medieval
“Duke Amalo sent his wife to another estate to attend to his interests, and fell in love with a certain free-born girl. And hen it was night and Amalo was drunk with wine he sent his men to seize the girl and bring her to his bed. She resisted and they brought her by force to his house, slapping her, and she was stained by a torrent of blood that ran from her nose. And even the bed of the duke mentioned above was made bloody by the stream. And he beat her, too, striking with his fists and cuffing her and beating her otherwise, and took her in his arms, but he was immediately overwhelmed with drowsiness and went to sleep. And she reached her hand over the man’s head and found his sword and drew it, and like Judith Holofernes struck the duke’s head a powerful blow. He cried out and his slaves came quickly. But when they wished to kill her he called out saying: “I beg you do not do it for it was I who did wrong in attempting to violate her chastity. Let her not perish for striving to keep her honor.” Saying this he died. And while the household was assembled weeping over him the the girl escaped from the house by God’s help and went in the night to the city of Chalon about thirtyfive miles away; and there she entered the church of Saint Marcellus and threw herself at the king’s feet and told all she had endured. Then the king was merciful and not only gave her her life but commanded that an order be given that she should be placed under his protection and should not suffer harm from any kinsman of the dead man. Moreover we know that by God’s help the girl’s chastity was not in any way violated by her savage ravisher.”
~ Gregory of Tours
Historia FrancorumIX:27,6th century CE
A few of my recently sent out orders and restocks. All based on extant Viking Era finds in museum collections.
The first is an arm ring based on a gold one found at Wendover in England.
The rings are based on a silver one found at Bornholm in Denmark, although the style was fairly common.
The brooch is based on a couple different artifacts from England and Sweden, but with rolled terminals more typical in Sweden due to Baltic influence.
The second arm ring is based on a silver one found in Östergötland, Sweden.
The Old Icelandic “calendar” relative to the modern Gregorian calendar. I say “calendar” for the Old Icelandic one because it, and the reconstructed Old Norse one that predate it, were lunar based and therefore the dates moved around relative to the lunisolar one that we use, and also because they didn’t really use the concept of numbered years like we do (2020, 2021, 2022, etc).
One of the main changes I often make when using this in an Old Norse context is to change Mörsugr to Jólmánuðr; the latter appears to have been an older name that was replaced by the former, likely as a result of Jól having been moved into Ýlir (or late December on the Gregorian calendar) and given a more fixed date. Given that this change occurred during the later part of the nominal Viking Period it’s not necessarily “wrong” to have Mörsugr there; I just prefer to focus on earlier contexts.
What is clear, though, is the division of the year into Summer and Winter halves, beginning several weeks after the astronomical Spring and Autumn equinoxes, respectively. Here in the PNW I’d say some years this is fairly accurate, while for some others that summer half could definitely be narrowed down a bit.
In early October I capped off the summer half of the year with a couple of friends by accomplishing one of my long-time goals and doing an overnight viking hike in the Cascades. All historical or at least speculatively historical gear aside from a modern water filter for filling waterskins, backup lighter, phone and charger.