Absolutely. That simplistic sketch and writing a name loads of times in a 'textbook' is classic childish behaviour. It may well have been an educated woman but I wouldn't be surprised if this was a child writing on a parent's text or even a slightly older child bored when studying.

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I've actually been looking at the Winchester pipe rolls (basically accounts of the bishop's tenants) lately, which started in the first decade of the 1200s, and you still see quite a significant amount of Old English names. It's maybe 10% of women's names at most, and not many women appear in the first place, but it's still enough that I wouldn't rule the post-Conquest period out.

protip, carve your memes into clay tablets today

Eadburg is very unlikely to be a name given more than a generation or two after the Norman Conquest though! So I don’t think you’d find it among later medieval schoolchildren or their crushes.

>…your complete personal written journal with all its writing and doodles.

Oh, my journal is going to be one of the representatives of the culture of our time? Hmm… brb, I suddenly have a lot of boobs and penises I need to draw in my journal.

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Yeah, given this was kept in an abbey for several centuries, I think there's a good chance it was a child initiate.

The manuscript was kept in an abbey until the 1500s - abbeys were often used as schools for aristocratic children and would also educate peasant children given to them as initiates (who sometimes would decide against becoming a monk or nun as an adult). It's entirely possible this was the case here.

Ever since Bluetooth we know that there were female scribes.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46783610

"Eadburg was here" definitely seems a possibility.

A bit of doodling. Maybe even a child who had learnt to spell their name .

There's literally a whole field of study about marginalia in medieval manuscripts - yes they were expensive, but that's never stopped graffiti.

Even cartoons from 12 centuries ago only have 4 fingers. Interesting...

Was the "writer" able to see what was written or drawn ?

Children tend to have better vision , maybe .

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Blew up actual troy in the search for troy. Found an older town underneath. Smuggled the gold out to greece and was caught because his wife was wearing a trojan necklace. But he atleast found it!

My sister is an amazing woman, far more intelligent than me but sometimes she misses the mark massively on things like this due to her aspergers lol. Sounds like she wrote this. Gave me a chuckle

That was my 2nd thought too

The texts and pieces that survive.

Imagine losing 99% of all global data 1,000 years from now ... there was a huge catastrophe, an asteroid hit the planet and blew away half the surface and much of what was left barely survived. A few thousand humans survive but they lose all of civilization and are thrown back to hunter survival mode. A couple hundred years go by and people start to pick up the pieces of their lost ancestors.

They find a partial chapter of the Bible, a few pages of the Koran, some Hebrew texts, a dozen books on New York tax law, a partial copy of hustler magazine and your complete personal written journal with all its writing and doodles.

Scribes were always writing insults and whatnot in manuscripts. I wouldn't be so sure that delinquents or the lovesick wouldn't too.

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My money is on a woman's contribution ignored for 1200 years.

Maybe she was a co-author and they conveniently didn't notice for 12 centuries?

These historians are a bunch of dweebs!

Yeh this is ridiculous. Totally jumping to conclusions.