Pirates, Doodles and Sinking Castles - Medieval News Roundup

This week's collection of news and tweets for medievalists.

Armour on Bodies, Divergent Bodies, and what it takes to have a volcano named after you

Our latest medieval news roundup, including a few articles, archaeology news, tweets about upcoming conferences, the next medieval TV show, and catching up on progress at Guédelon Castle:

Medieval News Roundup: The Viking Facebook, drunken archaeologists, competitive jousting in Australia and ranting about Lancelot

The Verge takes a look at some of the interesting work being done by statistical physicists Ralph Kenna and Pádraig Mac Carron on medieval sources. Using their background in understanding connections, they examined works such as the Táin Bó Cúailnge to learn more about the relationships between the characters found in its pages.

What Kenna and Mac Carron found was that the epics fell between the real networks and the fictional ones. The network in The Iliad is relatively realistic, and Beowulf's also has realistic aspects, with the exception of the connections to Beowulf himself. That chimed with the idea from the humanities that he, unlike some others in the story, may not have existed. The Táin's network was more artificial. Interestingly, however, they found that a lot of the Táin's unreality was concentrated in just a few, grotesquely over-connected characters. When they theorized that some of those characters might actually be amalgams — for instance, that some of the times the queen of Connacht is said to speak to someone, it might be a messenger speaking for her instead — the network began to look more realistic. At least from a social network perspective, perhaps the Táin is not as fantastical as its reputation would suggest, the researchers proposed. That doesn't mean the events really happened, or that the people are real. But it raises the question of why the network looks the way it does. 

You can read the article The Viking Facebook here.

In First Things, Dale M. Coulter takes a look at the life and influence of Jacques le Goff, who passed away earlier this year. He notes that:

Le Goff sought to help Europeans recognize themselves as still connected by the cultural fabric of a common medieval civilization. Along with his fellow members of the Annales school, he also strengthened the case for the long Middle Ages, extending them all the way to the mid-nineteenth century. Le Goff’s body of work, then, stands as a challenge to historians who argue for the Italian Renaissance and Reformation as a break that unleashed a series of forces, intended or not, ultimately leading to the current social imaginary.

Click here to read the article The Good Historian Resembles an Ogre

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National network offers a look at the world of competitive jousting at an event taking place just outside Sydney. One of the competitors, L. Dale Walter explains how dangerous this sport can be:

"I broke my back in 2011 jumping off my horse when he was slipping in the mud and falling at the end of a list. We came in, I went to pull him up, it was slippery, he started to fall, and I had two pictures in my head: one him falling across my leg, which would shatter my leg, and more scary to me, him falling with his legs crossed, which would shatter his leg."

You can read the article and listen to their broadcast at Competitive jousters take medieval re-enactment seriously

In an article about the upcoming changes to the comic book character Thor, Russell Smith of The Globe and Mail shows that he knows a few things about medieval literature:

I say the original King Arthur rules, and I have no tolerance for a politically correct “modernization” of the story. Everybody knows there was no Sir Lancelot or Holy Grail in the original King Arthur story, as told by Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae in the early 12th century. Lancelot and the Grail were rudely added by Chrétien de Troyes 50 or 60 years later, around 1180. Are we really going to tolerate some French upstart turning King Arthur from a warrior into some kind of romantic soap-opera star just because it suited the spirit of the times?

You can read the full article - Hero mythbusters have gone too far - here

What else should you also check out:

Five Tips for Sieging your Favourite Medieval Castle - the good people at Battle Castle have the pictorial evidence of what the really watch out for when going castle-hopping!

The first episode of the new podcast Drunk Archaeology:



The medieval band Vagarem has just released their new album "Codex Bricolia". You can hear some of their sounds in this YouTube video:



Please visit their Facebook page for details.

Doomsday Castle: When crazy people build a castle and we get to see it on TV

The National Geographic Channel has come up with a TV show that blends the medieval with the modern world by... having an American family build a castle to protect themselves against a worldwide catastrophe.

The family is headed by Brent, a former soldier who is worried that a zombie apocalypse electromagnet pulse will take the world back to the stone age (actually the nineteenth-century, which was obviously a time of chaos). To protect his family from the hordes of people who will come to pillage food and other essentials,  Brent is building a castle in the hills of Carolina.

A film crew has captured all their exploits for our viewing pleasure (jokes going to be on us when the EMP blast shuts down our TVs). We see them building a castle, having family fun, and preparing to defend it against people that are starving.

Here are some clips from the show:


I hope they realize that many castles were actually captured by mining underneath them. The show began airing last month and I guess they have several episodes. You can learn more from their website and Facebook page.

Ten Fantastic Facts and Legends of Edinburgh Castle, Scotland

1. Edinburgh Castle is built high on an impressive 700 million year old extinct volcano called Castle Rock, in the middle of what is now the city of Edinburgh. People have lived on Castle Rock since the Bronze Age, around 850 BC, and there has been a royal castle on the site since at least the 12th century.

 5. The ‘Stone of Destiny’ or ‘Stone of Scone’ is kept at the castle with the crown jewels of Scotland. The stone is the traditional coronation stone of all Scottish and English Kings and Queens and has been much fought over by England and Scotland over the ages. As legend has it, the real stone was swapped for a fake either in the 13th century or the 1950’s, and to this day the authentic stone is still secretly hidden.

7. The castle is also one of the most haunted places in Scotland, one famous ghost being the Lone Piper. As the story goes, a few hundred years ago secret tunnels were discovered deep underground, running from the castle to other places in the city. A piper boy was sent down to investigate, instructed to constantly play his pipes, so those above could chart his progress through the tunnels. When the playing suddenly stopped, they went and searched for the piper boy but he had vanished. His ghostly pipes can still be heard playing in the castle to this day, as he eternally walks the dark tunnels beneath. 

Click here to read all Ten Fantastic Facts from Tea Time Magazine

Archaeological dig uncovers castle walls in Northampton

Remains of the walls of Northampton Castle have been discovered at an archeological dig ahead of the £20 million redevelopment of Northampton railway station.

 Preparations for the development start at the end of the week, and the dig is taking place until Thursday to learn more about the building which once stood on the site.

 Experts from Northamptonshire Archaeology dug a trench will be within the area currently used for short-stay car parking, and discovered part of an old stone wall, a stone line drain and a late-Saxon pit. 

Northampton Castle was situated on part of the current station site, but it is believed most remains were destroyed and displaced over time as the railway was developed.

Click here to read this article from the Northampton Chronicle and Echo

New excavations begin at Bulgaria’s medieval Urvich fortress

Archaeologists began new excavations at the medieval Urvich fortress 20km from Bulgaria’s capital city Sofia at the beginning of October 2012, with the first finds including silver rings, earrings and bronze and iron personal items, Bulgarian archaeology professor Nikolai Ovcharov said.

Urvich fortress is near the banks of the Iskar River in the Pancharevo area close to the road from Sofia to Samokov.

The fortress is estimated to date from the 13th century CE, during the time of the Second Bulgarian Kingdom.

Ovcharov told a news conference that work was to begin at a large necropolis near the fortress and the monastery.

Click here to read this article from the Sofia Globe

Castle for Sale: Fortress of Miolans, Savoy

This impressive medieval castle is located in the heart of the Savoy Valley, and is situated on a strategic site 200 meters (550 feet) above the hamlet of Miolans, which part of the small town of St-Pierre Albigny in eastern France.

The site has been occupied since the 4th century AD, with the earliest reference to the fortress going back to 1083. By the second half of the 14th century, the lords of Miolans extended the fortifications with a second tower, and a third tower was added in the early 16th century.

In 1523 the ownership of the castle passed to the Counts of Savoy, and for the next two hundred years would serve as a prison. More than 200 people could be kept within the fortress, which became known as the Bastille of the Alps. The names of its dungeons included Hell, Purgatory, Paradise and Treasury. Among its most notable ‘guests’ was the Marquis de Sade, until he escaped in 1792. All the prisoners were freed during the French Revolution and the castle fell into ruin. It has currently been in the same family for almost six generations and the entire fortress was given full listing by the French Historic Monument Society in 1944.

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net

The Netherlands: Locals faced with medieval tax to pay for castle renovations

The owners of a medieval castle east of Utrecht are pressing ahead with plans to make dozens of locals pay towards the upkeep of the property – using a local tax dating back at least five centuries.

 Several people living in the village of Kamerik have been sent final demands for the payment, known as the ‘dertiende penning’ or ‘13th penny’, local farmers union official Joop Verheul told the Telegraaf. Verheul says 30 people in the village have been given bills totalling over €1m.

 One man, 67-year-old Nico Weesjes, told the AD he had been asked to ‘cough up’ €18,500 but has no plans to pay the tax. A foundation has already sprung up to fight the levy.

Click here to read this article from DutchNews.nl

State of War: Syria’s Crusader Castles and Medieval Fortresses

The conflict in Syria is the product of very modern forces — a legacy of dictatorship and regional geo-politicking — but it’s taking place over a terrain with a rich and deep history. Syria’s deserts, river valleys and mountain passes bear the traces of some of the world’s oldest civilizations; its major cities, especially Damascus and Aleppo, are among the longest continually inhabited on the planet and have endured both the scourges of man (invasions, massacres) and the ravages of nature (earthquakes, plagues). As the rebellion against President Bashar Assad’s rule rages on, concern mounts over the state of the country’s antiquities. Veteran British correspondent Robert Fisk warned of “Syria’s pulverized past,” with precious artifacts disappearing from unattended museums and storehouses, all the while as the daily toll of war imperils some of Syria’s venerable monuments themselves.

 Syria has been the site of bitter conflict before. Some nine hundred years ago, a motley band of Frankish, German and Italian soldiers and mercenaries turned up on Levantine soil under the Papal banner of the First Crusade. Seizing a number of important cities — Jerusalem, Tripoli (in today’s Lebanon), Antioch (modern day Antakya, Turkey) — they attempted to entrench themselves in the Holy Land permanently. This international coalition of the willing would ultimately be driven out, but not before leaving behind a host of beautiful fortresses, many of which, while astonishing testaments to medieval engineering and construction, bear the intractable scars of newer conflicts.

Click here to read this article from Time magazine

Guédelon: Trades come alive at ‘medieval’ site

Visitors are not usually welcome at building sites but not so at Guédelon, a site in Burgundy which is being run entirely along medieval lines.

 Its castle-builders of all trades are keen to show off their skills, whether they are woodcutters, carpenters, blacksmiths, tile makers, stonemasons or basket and rope makers. Master mason Florian Renucci, in charge of daily organisation, checks that the work carried out is historically, architecturally and archaeologically correct.

 Learning to use 13th century building techniques effectively has not been easy, he says, especially when the walls are three metres thick and the stone is being quarried locally, by hand (the site is located in an old quarry).

 “It’s ironstone, a very hard stone that we had to learn to extract,” he said. Quarry workers also had to master the art of searching for lines of weakness in blocks of sandstone, before drilling holes and inserting steel wedges with sledgehammers, creating shock waves to neatly split the rock.

Click here to read the rest of this article from The Connexion

Medieval castle to be built in Austria

The Austrian town of Friesach will be home to a new medieval castle, to built using construction methods from the period. The project, which is being called a unique cooperation combining sustainable tourism and science, is expected to take thirty years and will involve work by a number of Austrian historians.

Medieval castles are regarded as buildings of particular stability: Even after 1,000 years, many have successfully withstood the ravages of time. Making the most of a construction site, where a castle is being constructed using medieval methods, historians are critically examining the existing knowledge about tools and materials, in an effort to gain new insights.

Click  here to read this article from Medievalists.net

France: A Medieval Castle in the Making

The construction of Guédelon about 100 miles southeast of Paris has already been underway for 15 years, yet workers are proud about how long it’s taking. That’s because you don’t build a medieval castle in a day using 13th-century techniques only.

 The project, begun in 1997, is the brainchild—or, as it was said at the time, the idée folle—of Michel Guyot, an architectural historian who restored the nearby Château de St.-Fargeau. In the process he discovered the remains of a castle that predated the elegant 17th manor. Fascinated by the building they suggested, he decided to recreate it in the forest a dozen miles from St.-Fargeau, enlisting experts who studied illuminated manuscripts, stained-glass windows and extant medieval structures to devise a fully authentic design.

 With Guédelon now on the rise, no one’s calling Guyot crazy and the point of the exercise grows ever more apparent. Like one of those illustrated children’s books by David Macaulay—”Cathedral,” “Castle,“ “City,“ “Pyramid”—it is aimed at answering a question everyone asks when visiting remarkable edifices from the Middle Ages: How did workers do it without trucks, bulldozers and power tools?

Click here to read this article from Smithsonian.com

Click here to visit the Castle's website

Scotland: Archaeologists uncover medieval defences on grounds of historic castle

Archaeologists have unearthed a surprising discovery on the grounds of an Aberdeenshire castle.

Experts excavating at Fyvie Castle, near Turriff, expected to uncover a 400-year-old garden.

Instead they have discovered what they believe to be an 800-year-old defence system which they say teaches them a lot more about the castle's history.

Archaeologist Alison Cameron said: "Initially when I was digging down one of these post holes I found a huge piece of 13th century pottery which I knew hadn't been moved around a lot, so I was thinking there was probably some structure underneath."

Click here to read this article from STV

Europe's 'ugliest castle' celebrates 1000 years

A new exhibition in Carlisle Castle's Militia Store tells the near 1000 year story of the often battered castle – at various times a Norman castle, frontier fortress, administrative centre, royal palace and garrison.

Nearby is the Captain's Tower, probably built by Henry II in the 1180s, and open to the public for the first time in 25 years.

New research is also being carried out on a number of intriguing medieval stone carvings in an upper floor of the Keep. The intricate carvings, now thought to have probably been made by bored guards, include images of mermaids, stags and heraldic devises. These have been subjected to a new specialist survey technique called photogrammetry.

Click here to read this article from The Guardian

Crac des Chevaliers in danger as Syrian forces shell town around medieval castle

Video emerged yesterday which appears to show that the town surrounding Crac des Chevaliers in Syria under artillery fire from Syrian forces. The two-minute video was posted on Youtube by Souria2011archives, an anti-government source that has uploaded over two thousand videos related to the uprising against the Assad regime.

The video shows the town below the castle being hit with artillery blasts – one building can even be seen smoking after being struck. The footage is too poor to see if the medieval fortress has been damaged from the fighting.

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net

Thieves target medieval castle

Police have turned to the public for help after metal thieves struck at a tourist hot-spot. Sometime over the weekend raiders targeted Helmsley Castle and took the lead guttering from the front fascia of the visitor centre.

It is estimated the lead is worth around £1,000 and officers are checking CCTV to try and identify the the thieves.

PC Andy Rogers said: "I am appealing to anyone who saw any suspicious activity in the area of Helmsley Castle over the weekend. It is likely that the offenders will have used a vehicle to transport the lead from the scene, therefore I would also like to hear from anyone who saw any suspicious vehicles in the area around the time of the theft.”

Click here to read this article from the Darlington and Stockton Times

See also Relic Robbing: Church’s Medieval Treasures in Jeopardy?

Radar search for medieval remains

A radar system that can detect the underground remains of old buildings has been used to investigate a site near Towcester where a Norman ringwork castle once stood.

The investigation at The Mount, in Alderton, followed archeological digs carried out in 2009 and 2010 that found substantial stone foundations of two ‘high status’ buildings, dating from the 12th and 13th centuries.

Among the findings were rare pieces of medieval glass and worked stone – suggesting the owner was wealthy – and a 1.7 metre stone wall.

Derek Batten, who owns the site, called in Subsurface Geotechnical to carry out a ground probing radar scan to try to find more foundations beneath the ground.

He said: “It’s obvious there’s potential here for finding more evidence of substantial high status medieval buildings. The problem is that we ran out of money.”

Click here to read this article from the Northampton Chronicle and Echo

White Rock company takes a siege approach to history

A small White Rock-based feature-type documentary film producer believes her company's latest series Battle Castle will help take it to a new stage of development.

Parallax Film Productions co-owner and series producer Maija Leivo said the show - described as an interactive, trans-medieval journey into castle engineering, siegecraft and clashes that transform mortals into legends - began airing on Thursday nights on History Television Feb. 23 and is doing very well.

"It's been amazing," said Leivo of the $2.5-million production, which was put together over a 16-month period and will run until March 29. "We've filmed on location at each castle and other areas in Europe. We'll build on this and enter another phase of development.

"There's a future in history."

Click here to read this article from the Vancouver Sun


Click here to read more about Battle Castle

Slovakia’s Krasna Horka castle destroyed in fire

Children playing with matches has led to a fire gutting one of Slovakia’s most important medieval castles on Saturday. Krasna Horka, which was built in the 14th century, has suffered extensive damage, with the castle’s roof, the exposition in the Gothic palace and the bell tower were completely destroyed. The heat from the flames even melted down three bells from the bell tower.

Although there were fears that much of the castle’s collection of artefacts were also destroyed in the fire, it seems that only the upper parts of the castle were damaged in the fire. Daniel Lipšic, Slovakia’s Interior Minister, has announced that “the vast majority of exhibits remained undamaged.”

Click here to read the full article and see videos from Medievalists.net