Yes! After a week of waiting, the router arrived and the Lopez and I finally have interwebs in the flat.  Hurrah!  The flat is lovely and in a most salubrious area of Bath.  It is also rather spacious (lots of room for visitors, hint hint) to the extent that it took us three days to discover a walk-in cupboard we never knew we had.  Bath is nice, ( Read more... )

And so it came to pass that Olaf the Naked and his shoulder-companion Graegham Ragnvaldsson journeyed to the frozen wastes of Niflheim and there did battle with the mighty ice giants.  Though armed only with short wooden staffs - for sharp metal edges are of no use in this realm - they channelled the heat of Muspelheim through a magical talisman.  ( Read more... )

fram deop to eorðan ic cam ænextan
fram utgarsecge to grene grunde
widlast widfarend, ic lyfte ymbærndede
ða ic forlet sunhate sæ
feower gesceaftena ic mæne, ond an me sylfum
saga hwæt ic hatte

þrie hringa cyngum ælfcynnes heaum
in middangeardes grenholtum heanes to hrofe
seofon sincgiefum dweorgas of dunum
seo foldesbreost forhelest symbelhus stænen
nigon manndryhtnum guþweardum gumcynnes
wyrd sceol gescieran læne lif of licum
ond an thaem deorcan on his sweartan stole
in westnese mordores fæste forbræded
an hring ælce to wealdanne ælce to ( Read more... )

While passing Magdalen College school...

Irate shouting teacher: "Will you pull your trousers up???  I'VE WARNED YOU!!!"

I started to do some short pieces based on Maxims. As I'd got a copy of Owen-Crocker's Dress in Anglo Saxon England for Christmas (yay!) I began with such universal truths as

Het sceol on heafode
Socc sceol on fot

And then raised the tone with this:

Ecg sceol scir scinan
Scild sceol stedefaeste standan
Wiga sceol on scildburhe swith ond leafful

So,
( Read more... )

What a pleasant man James Watson (yep, the DNA guy) is. We all know he doesn't much like women and gays, but now we can add black people to the list.

BBC story here

A fine example of a robust and well-supported scientific hypothesis, I must say.  The Science Museum have cancelled his planned talk, which opens up the perennial debate of whether it's ( Read more... )

So I wrote Olaf Sigurdsson's Saga instead.

Woo!!  Here's some pictures:


( Read more... )