Aelfgyfu

I just heard: Linne Mooney has identified Chaucer's scribe Adam and some details of Adam's life. Very cool! The most interesting part is that Adam Pinkhurst worked for Chaucer for years and copied the Hengwrt (yes, I spelled that right; I think it's Welsh!) and Ellesmere Manuscripts. The article notes that this implied he worked on them over the course of the years; they're not so likely to have been later copies made without Chaucer's supervision. They've long been taken as having more authority than other manuscripts, but this finding adds further weight to that judgment. So why do we have no single authoritative ordering if he worked directly for Chaucer when he made these manuscripts? Ellesmere and Hengrt have different orderings, and Hengrt lacks the Canon's Yeoman's Tale entirely! (Dolores Frese suggested a number of years ago in her book An Ars Legendi for The Canterbury Tales that CYT was written after a "workshop disaster" that resulted in the disordering of the manuscript and reimagines that disaster through alchemical allegory. I'm still trying to decide how far to accept that argument.)

Yes, I'm very geeked about this! It isn't every day we learn something new about Chaucer and the people with whom he worked!

Not much time to post, but two items of interest, both from the BBC news website:

'Sea monster' whale fossil unearthed

France's new medieval castle
I haven't even had time to watch the video at the latter yet.

I'm a bit busy. I ask your pardon in advance if I should possibly be a day or two late posting the next installment of my Primeval repost.

Run and see ethelfleda's Vuvuzela brings Armageddon entry. Awesome!

There's a new entry at Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog!

I bought the book Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog: Medieval Studies and New Media (I'll withhold the author's name because I suppose that's a spoiler!) It has some analysis (or meta, if you prefer) of the Chaucer blog and fandom, by the Chaucer blogger Geoffrey and by some other academics, and all the blog entries through 10 September 2009. I read the first chapter, which is quite short, aloud to Brilliant Husband (it's called "Why Ye Sholde Nat Rede This Booke," by John Gower); that alone was worth the price of admission!

If you buy it, be sure to buy the paperback direct from Palgrave; Amazon only has the much more expensive hardcover.

Watch this audio slideshow on the Parker Library from the BBC; it's a little over four minutes and gives a better look at the manuscript I used in my icon here (Parker 286—the Augustine Gospels), as well as several other manuscripts.

The Roskilde Museum has a little video of a tiny figurine they think represents Odin. I've had this up on my browser for a few days and keep meaning to spend more time puzzling out what the text around the video says, but at this rate I'll never get to it and you'll never get to see the video, so I put it up without fully having read the text. I know one bit says the piece is niello with gilding and inlay. It's about 2 cm high, and they think the birds are Odin's ravens Munin and Hugin (but you can read that without my help anyway).

ETA: Corrections from "Thor" to "Odin" thanks to dudethemath. I need the end of term soooo badly. . . .

I thought I had posted about the original find last summer, but either I failed to tag it or I simply forgot to post and thought I had (very likely).

As you'll see in the story, a mass grave was found last summer, and the murdered or executed men were thought to be Vikings. "Weymouth ridgeway skeletons 'Scandinavian Vikings'" confirms the suspicion: tests on the teeth shows at least some of the young men grew up in a colder climate than that of the UK, and died between 910 and 1030. Scholars rather want to link the apparent executions—the dead men are all young men, not armed, stripped, and killed with no signs they fought back—to the St. Brice's Day Massacre. Of course, Anglo-Saxonists also tend to be rather a cautious bunch, so no one is committing to that theory yet (as far as I know); it's just suggested at this point.

From bentleywg: Tattúínárdœla saga: If Star Wars Were an Icelandic Saga. Note: I did spend a couple of minutes trying to work out translations without my dictionaries; I didn't fare too well, but I don't have a lot of time tonight and figured I'd come back later. Naturally, I discovered at the end that the bits in Old Norse are translated at the bottom of the entry.

They may have found the grave of Queen Eadgyth, daughter of Edward the Elder and granddaughter of Alfred the Great! I'll be very curious to see whether they can indeed identify the bones as belonging to someone from Wessex.

I have no words, so just go here to see (and hear) about Christopher Lee's concept album, Charlemagne.

Michael Everson recently reminded ANSAXNET of this gem by Ezra Pound (it's probably funnier if you know the Middle English "Sumer Is Icumen In," lyrics here with Modern English translation on Wikipedia):
( Warning: language may be mildly to moderately offensive )