Welcome to Litsy!

"... the personal, intimate parts of people's lives matter every bit as much as the famous, dramatic, narrative defining ones."

Another wonderful selection from the #wpnf25 long list. An interesting, engaging history of the Viking Age told through everyday objects and everyday people. Barraclough's narration is excellent, I highly recommend the audio!

Fascinating book, filled with details you didn't know you needed about "ordinary" Viking life.

Got to watch those guys who bath once a week...

One is the Gosforth Cross from Cumbria, carved in the first half of the tenth century, towering 4.4 metres high in the churchyard of St Mary's... [it] also has carved stories that we might remember from Norse mythology, including Loki bound and tortured with snake poison for his crimes, and a figure with its foot in the mouth of a monstrous fanged beast, perhaps Odin fighting the wolf Fenrir at Ragnarok.

#WPNF25 longlist
This was a fascinating read about a period of human history I knew little about, the Viking age. I appreciate the way this was organized; chapters were focused on universal human experiences such as “love”, “play”, “beginnings” and “endings”. I found it fascinating to learn how anthropologists have learned about the people living during this time period using artifacts found in bogs, drawings, bones, burials, and more.

Similar parchments and manuscripts were used in other parts of medieval Europe, with prayers to the saints for safe delivery, invocations against evil, and holy images. One of these, an English scroll from c.1500, was found to have traces of human proteins associated with vaginal fluids, as well as honey, cereals, milk and legumes (all used as historical treatments during pregnancy and childbirth).
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And I moan about biscuit crumbs 😮

Not your average footnote...

Place names might also hint at religious beliefs and practices, the location of cult sites, a local preference for a particular deity....place names such as Selby, Whitby and Wetherby.... 'Willow Farmstead', White Farmstead' and 'Sheep Farmstead'....

Elsewhere, we glimpse... individuals who lived there... Grimsby ('Grim's Farmstead'), Ormskirk ('Orm's Church') and Skegness ('Skeggi's Headland')...

#OffMyShelf (Published over 10 years ago)
#Roll100

I didn‘t realize this was the start of a 16 book series! 😬 First published in 2006.

This is the story of Uhtred, the Saxon son of a Northumbrian Eorlemann who is taken at the age of 10 and raised by the invading Danes. The Last Kingdom refers to Wessex, which is the last Anglo-Saxon holdout against the Danes. This is excellent historical fiction. Violent but likely historically accurate.