Tag: European History
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Origins of Wedding Traditions
With all of the engagements announced over the festive period, my friends and I were discussing weddings we had been to and what we might like for our own weddings one day. My friends seemed mildly impressed by some of my basic knowledge of where some of the traditions we tend to celebrate in England…
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Happy New Year, or End of the World? Early Modern Apocalypse Predictions
If you’ve spent any time on social media in the last few weeks, or pretty much just spoken to anybody, then I am sure you will have heard the chorus of “I can’t wait for 2016 to be over!” “Worst year ever!” “2017 can’t surely be worse?!” and so on. It was only a few…
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Have Yourself a Merry Little (Medieval) Christmas
With Christmas soon approaching, it is only appropriate to have a Christmas themed post! We all have our own Christmas traditions on how we spend our time over the festive season, and lots of these traditions are influenced by the culture we grew up in. But how would you be spending this day if you…
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Royal People: Emperor Charlemagne, King of the Franks
It has been said that if you are of vaguely European descent, you are almost certainly related to Charlemagne. In fact, due to maths calculations, you are probably related to pretty much anyone alive in ninth century Europe who left descendants. As this week’s blog post was delayed because I took a trip to Germany,…
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The Medieval Titanic: The Tragedy of the White Ship Disaster
Every one of us knows the tragic tale of the Titanic. It has been made into a blockbuster film, with a similarly famous theme song, and helped launch Leonardo DiCaprio as a heart-throb (and an almost-oscar-winner meme… until recently). The Titanic certainly was a horrendous disaster, in many ways, and it will probably remain in…
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Fairy Tales or Medieval Reality? Historical origins of fantasy stories
You would be hard pressed to find anyone who did not grow up hearing fairy tales, especially after Disney popularised many of them for the big screen. Many of us are aware that the stories we see from Disney, with happy endings and mild scare-factor, often originated from far more dark and violent stories compiled…
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Mischievous Monks and Naughty Nuns
Many people perceive the medieval times to be extremely religious, with the Church constantly pushing the ideas of sin and salvation onto the population. Ideas of overly zealous churchmen preaching to trembling congregations are conjured, with everyone concerned about the soul and the afterlife. Whilst aspects of this are true, the reality is that medieval…
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Medieval Vampires
As Halloween has just passed, I thought it only fitting that I would do a themed blog post. At some point during my undergrad, I remember reading an article that spoke about graves found buried with things in their mouths that were believed to be graves of suspected vampires. So I thought I would dig…
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