The British History Podcast

History is known as a field for being a bit of a slog. Tracing events, and people, and social movements through decades and centuries is a huge task and the results are usually dense at the best of times. But once in a while,

Northumbria was always the hot mess of the...

For a full transcript, go to thebritishhistorypodcast.com

We can probably assume that Harald Fairhair, the King of Norway, had fantastic hair. It was either big, or really long, or super glossy, and it was almost definitely blonde. But it wasn’t the only trait he was known for.

Ok, where were we? With all this focus on culture, it’s been a little bit since we last talked about the political situation in Britain.  So lets remind ourselves of where things were politically.  

This isn’t going to end well.

Today, we’re going to wrap up this cultural series with a focus on my favorite group of people.  The people who rarely, if ever, get talked about. The commoners.

For a full transcript, go to thebritishhistorypodcast.com

When we left off, we were talking about Thegns. Specifically, we were talking about King’s Thegns and how they could wield degrees of power that could rival even the formidable Ealdormen.

Ealdormen… Thegns… Ceorls. These were the  important cogs in the machine of government. They had powerful roles, and held powerful spaces within anglo saxon culture. And it’s time we get to know these roles like the back of our hand. You see,

Links to material referenced in the show. The Achavanich Beaker Burial‘Ava’: a Beaker-associated woman from a cist at Achavanich, Highland, and the story of her (re-)discovery and subsequent study, Published in the Proceedings of the Society of Anti...