When was Beowulf composed? In the 10th and 11th centuries as the Toronto School decided in a postmodern whiff? Around AD 700 as linguistic studies have proven? Or as an oral epos, around AD 550, and in Gotland as suggested in a new book?
Category: 6th century
Stevns – Home of Hrodgar and Heorot?
Stevns is a peninsula in South Eastern Zeeland in Denmark. Flat, although it raises towards the east, where it breaks into the sea in the form of high cliffs, it has recently been suggested as the location for Heorot, the hall of Hrodgar, and the home of Grendel. What did it look like in the 6th to 10th century?
Kinship and Culture in an Alemannic Burial Ground from the early 7th century
In 1962 an Alemannic graveyard in Niederstotzingen in Southern Germany was discovered and excavated. The graves of thirteen individuals – ten male adults and three infants - were buried with an array of inscribed horse gear, jewellery, arms and swords. In the graveyard, the archaeologists also found three horses buried.
Genetic Perspective on the Bavarians from the Migration period
Recently the human remains from 41 graves from six early medieval cemeteries in Southern Bavaria yielded genomic data showing that while men generally had ancestry resembling northern or central Europeans, the women exhibited a very high genetic heterogeneity.
The Genetics of Longobard-Era Migrations
For some time an international and interdisciplinary group of archaeologists, scientists, and historians have worked to uncover the minutiae of the Longobard invasion of Italy in AD 568. Genetic explorations are shedding extremely important new light on the linkage between genetics and cultural profiles.
Siberian Cold and Pastoralism in the Early Medieval Alps
When winter came to Italy in the 6th century, people took to the hills and had to find new ways of surviving. This changed their subsistence and diet.
Burgundian and Longobardian “Fara”
"Fara" is an enigmatic term. Traditionally meant to designate an Germanic agnatic clan or lineage as well as a band of brothers, the meaning still eludes us.
How to perform Beowulf?
When the famous Nobel Prize winner, Seamus Heayney, took upon himself to translate Beowulf, he also made the poem a fashionable part of the medieval circuit. The wider question raised in a new book is what it takes to "perform beowulf"?