Vikingology Podcast · The Art and Science of the Viking Age

Catching up with Clare

·1 hr 29 min·5 clips

The Balatyr woman's skull was cut, and the injury was identified as the cause of death.

1. Vikingology Podcast focuses on Claire Downham's source book on Vikings in Britain and Ireland. 2. Claire Downham, from the University of Liverpool, returns as a three-time guest to discuss her compilation. 3. The conversation asks what a Penguin Classics source book can show about Vikings in Britain and Ireland. 4. Claire says the book contains about 30 sources and includes both written texts and archaeological images. 5. She names Balatyr on the Isle of Man, Repton's Thor's hammer, and the Inchmarnet Cottages slate as examples. 6. Claire says the selection includes Irish, Scottish, English, and Celtic-speaking material. 7. She says the book also includes well-known sources such as Alcuin's letter on the sack of Lindisfarne. 8. Claire describes the Balatyr mound as having a youngish male in the central burial and a woman in an upper layer. 9. She says the woman's forearms were missing and her upper arms suggested a raised position. 10. Claire explains that rigor mortis likely set in before burial, based on the body's position. 11. She says a doctor examined the skull and judged the cut at the top to be the cause of death. 12. Claire links the Balatyr burial to ritual display, grave robbery, and the possibility of sacrificial meaning. 13. Terry Barnes raises the idea that the posture could have made the grave look like a warning or a draugr-related trap. 14. Claire says weaponry in such graves would have been valuable enough to tempt robbers. 15. Claire argues that historians need imagination because primary sources leave gaps. 16. She says responsible history requires critical reading, competing hypotheses, and a return to the original evidence. 17. Claire describes the episode's style as a chatty, back-and-forth interview with shared examples and digressions. 18. The tone stays informal, with Terry Barnes and Claire Downham speaking as colleagues rather than in a formal lecture. 19. Listeners interested in Viking sources, burial archaeology, and medieval method. 20. Listeners wanting a fast-paced narrative with no source criticism.

As heard by us

A loose, witty source check on what "Viking" means.

Vikingology turns a casual chat with Claire Downham into a loose source check on what "Viking" means. It starts in a Christmas tree farm and lands on the odd line about Christmas coming in October when trees ship to Asia, which gives the episode its easy, slightly strange…

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A pub-table Viking chat that keeps asking what the label really means.

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