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Maybe this just means they need to do more archeological exploration in Halland?

Anyone have any recs for books on the coastal Salish people of the Pacific Northwest? Specially ones that examine them as a seafaring people.

Since 1900, 1,200 country houses have been demolished in England. In Scotland, 378 architecturally important country houses have been demolished,

It actually looks startlingly similar to the design found in Ödeshög https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Archaeological_record_of_Mj%C3%B6llnir

I remember bookmarking one of those sites long ago thinking, oh thank God I'll never have to click through a slide site again.....

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What profession are you in now?

Thanks!

That looks exactly like the one Ragnar gives Uhtred.

The girdle or belt is named Megingjörð, and it is said to double Thor's strength.

The powers of the gloves Járngreipr aren't as clear, but they are listed next to Megingjörð and Mjölnir was his most important possessions, so they must do something cool. I've heard them being sent the hammer returns to his hand, or that it also doubles his strength - so combined his strength is increased fourfold.

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Most McDonald's aren't owned by a guy named McDonald, but are named and designed after a restaurant owned by a guy named McDonald. In the same way, this amulet wasn't owned by Thor, but was named and designed after a hammer that was supposedly owned by Thor.

When is the gap in celebrating Samhain in Ireland?

By 'created in Scotland ' do you mean the name being coined? Samhain itself is present in medieval Irish literature and possibly before then.

It's literally the name of the month in Irish and people in Ireland have been lighting bonfires, dressing up and playing games with apples throughout history and not just by planters.

I know it's Wikipedia but it's well referenced: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samhain

Competitors on Forged in Fire nod in approval

Why don't you try collecting coins?

Coins are common enough that even quite old coins can be had for cheap.

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I've never heard of this before. Do the girdle and irongrippers have any other unique characteristics? Can ordinary humans wear them? Can I build my own?

Its very easy to separate Halloween from Samhain from the complete lack of evidence of Halloween in Ireland (outwith pockets in the Scots planter communities) before the modern era or of any continued celebration of Samhain as a harvest festival (or whatever it actually was because that's pretty damn fuzzy).

Halloween was created, in Scotland, to continue Catholic traditions in an era where Calvinism made any "popery" either unwelcome or outright illegal. The mask of older Celtic traditions from half remembered folk tales was at best a ruse to obscure that it was just people who wanted their parties to keep going after the new protestant religion tried to ban them.

And while there is a complete lack of Irish evidence, Scots literature and other primary sources are filled with Halloween from the late 1600s onwards.

I mean it's not just the Irish Neolithic, pretty much all of Europe had the same beliefs. We know farming came sooner to Ireland than Britain, but that's just what we've found yet. It's likely the Neolithic package was spread by sons looking for new farms for theirself and they taught people along the way. It doesn't take that many centuries to spread out from the middle east this way. You also have the beaker folk who the original ones seem to have been far distance traders who basically created trading posts by settling in to new populations bringing new techs. Then you have the massive depopulation of Britain soon after this time. Could have been from disease brought by the new people... still, once the Neolithic package came to an area, it was much the same, just with local variants.

Turnip head is much more frightening

Well because it gave me chills and I just loved it. Nothing really rational about my decision tbh. I also love ancient history but had enough trouble with Latin, didn't want to tackle Greek. I discovered fairly late that I didn't enjoy teaching that much though. If you don't know Latin well, medieval can be a real challenge. I never mastered it.

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