Health, Grooming, and Medicine in the Viking Age. "John of Wallingford, the abbot of St. Albans Abbey wrote in his chronicles that the Norse invaders in England were far more attractive to Anglo-Saxon women since, unlike Anglo-Saxon men, they combed their hair daily, took baths weekly, and laundered their clothing regularly."
posted by rodgerd on Aug 19, 2010 - 48 comments

An inanimate object comes to life: The interactive staging of the thousand year old runic stone Mejlbystenen. [more inside]
posted by sveskemus on Jan 28, 2009 - 10 comments

Rongorongo! Say it twice -- don't it feel nice? Most people think of the enigmatic maoi when they think of Easter Island but an equally vexing mystery is found in twenty-six wooden objects which contain pictographic symbols comprising...what? A language? A mnemomic system for recording stories now long forgotten? A resource for modern primitives' tribal tatoos? We could ask, but the authors are long-gone -- the victims of hard times -- leaving only a few tablets and a bunch of carved stone to puzzle over.
posted by Ogre Lawless on Jan 19, 2004 - 5 comments

The Kensington Runestone. In 1898 a farmer in Minnesota named Olaf Ohmann, dug up from his property a stone covered in runes (viking enscriptions). When it was deciphered it read:

8 Goths (Swedes) and 22 Norwegians on a voyage of discovery from Vinland (of) the West...

Read more inside.
posted by lagado on Dec 12, 2000 - 22 comments