Daily Medieval

In 1073CE, a young man entered the Monastery of the Caves in Kyiv. The Monastery was only about 20 years old at the time—founded by Theodosi...

The largest ethnic and linguistic group of peoples in Europe in the first millennium CE was the Slavs of the Kievan Rus . Although they chie...

Many Viking coin hoards included coins from far afield, especially Islamic dirhams , such as in the Spillings Hoard . The Spillings Hoard al...

We have previously mentioned the dinar   here and here . Usually of gold, it was used alongside the dirham , usually of silver and of a les...

And now for the absolute largest Viking hoard of silver treasure ever found (I should add: "so far"). In 1999, a Swedish televisio...

The Vale of York Hoard was the largest hoard since  the Cuerdale Hoard. So what was special about Cuerdale? Well, the York Hoard had over 6...

With almost 4600 items, the Staffordshire Hoard is the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver jewelry found in England. Another d...

The Vale of York Hoard was the largest hoard of Viking coins since the Cuerdale Hoard (you will see the words "largest" and "...

Silver has always been valuable as a unit of exchange, but it would be wrong to assume silver was always in the form of coins or small (or l...

Besides an impressive array of carved stone slabs , the Picts also did some sophisticated metalwork. One important piece is the Whitecleuch...

Much of existing Pictish art is carved on standing stones and falls into three "classes." The oldest art falls into Class I (date...

On the Moray Firth in Scotland is the remains of a Pictish fort, called Burghead Fort because of its proximity to the small town of Burghead...

As mentioned previously, the Picts were not necessarily a homogeneous culture, but the archaeological record can help us determine a few th...

It is likely that the name for the Picts really is related to the modern word "picture." The first occurrence of the word was in a...

Besides  Brehon Laws , Ireland had Cáin laws ( Cáin ="law"; redundant, I know) that were made with the help of church figures. Ado...

Congal Cáech was a king of the Irish province of Ulaid (on the north east coast) in the early 7th century. Cáech means  "squinting...

Early Irish Brehon Law, so-called because it was administered by Brehons (from Old Irish breithem ("judge"), was more interested ...

Early Irish law was called Brehon Law, a system of civil (not criminal) rules, some of which survived until the 17th century when they were ...

So the inevitable invasion of Ireland by the Anglo-Norman forces of King Henry II of England was initiated by an invitation from Diarmait Ma...

The first mass arrival of Normans in Ireland was actually by invitation of Diarmait Mac Murchada, King of Leinster until he was deposed by t...

The illustration is a 19th century portrayal of King Henry II of England in Waterford, greeting the Irish delegates whom he intended to plac...

Prince John (24 December 1166 - 19 October 1216) had been made Lord of Ireland by his father, Henry II, in the 1177 Council of Oxford. He to...

The British Library contains a unique manuscript, acquired from the Cotton Library , labeled Cotton Julius B XIII. It is the sole known cop...

Gerald of Wales (c.1146 - 1223) wrote about Henry II and his sons, giving a different facet to the most prominent figures in England at the ...

Gerald of Wales (c.1146 - c.1223) provided us with extensive information on  Ireland and Wales and England of his time. Serving several Pla...

The Topography of Ireland by Gerald of Wales seems to have been designed to paint the Irish as an ungovernable, crude people in need of co...

This title is a joke, since Gerald of Wales ' Topographia Hibernica ("Topography of Ireland") was mostly history.* It did inc...