Martin Rundkvist
Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, chairman of the Swedish Skeptics Society, atheist, lefty liberal, board gamer, bookworm, and father of two.
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Posts by this author
December 29, 2016
Today is Aard's tenth anniversary! And 16 December was my eleventh anniversary as a blogger, since I blogged at Blogspot for over a year before I came to Scienceblogs.
2016 has been a good year for the blog's traffic: about 540 daily readers which is better than 2014 and 2015, very encouraging! It…
December 20, 2016
Would it be cruel and unusual to wake Cousin E with a rousing rendition of the Brigands' Song from the Ronja movie?
Went to the snow-covered golf course, sat down in the moon shadow of a spruce tree at the edge of the fairway, watched until I had seen three meteors, went home.
Place-name scholar…
December 10, 2016
OK so Google Inbox is excellent and I use it all the time. Takes so much of the stress out of e-mail. But I wonder, when are we getting Google Imbolc?
Hehe. This Swedish author intends to talk about the actions of the Medieval aristocracy, instead puts "their acting". And his language reviewer does…
December 2, 2016
There was a major 19th century arts magazine titled Glissons, n'appuyons pas. This means "Let's glide, not support", that is, "Let's live an easy life without having to support ourselves". Opera reviews were a big thing in the mag.
Private parking is "idiot parking" in Greek, because here the word…
November 28, 2016
Professors tend to have a few pet issues that they emphasise time and again over their careers as researchers and supervisors. This is quite clear with two 1960s-70s professors in my field. In Bertil Almgren's case, one such pet issue was the source-critical quality of archaeological information.…
November 22, 2016
Downtown Kavalla's mix of well-kept properties and hopeless ruins confuses me. I've seen similar in the Baltic States, but there it has to do with uncertainty about the ownership after the Soviet period, I've been told. That doesn't apply here. So I googled real estate agencies and went visiting on…
November 21, 2016
Thanks to metal detecting, the 7th century material has exploded with duckbill brooches / næbfibler in Denmark and conical brooches in Norway. The making of every one of those brooches resulted in a pile of durable, easily identified mould fragments. Where are those? Ground up into grog / chamotte…
November 19, 2016
I watched ten films at the 2014 festival, fourteen last year (at two festivals back to back), and this year I managed ten again. I had bought tickets for fourteen, but stuff got in the way: a huge blizzard that knocked out public transport, subtitles disappearing, and a call to marital duty.
The…
November 18, 2016
Fornvännen 2016:1 is now on-line on Open Access.
Anton Seiler on a weapon grave with fragments of a Vendel helmet found at Inhåleskullen near Uppsala. Some of the metalwork is interestingly decorated in Salin's Style III/E and must be late additions to the assemblage.
Rune Edberg and Johnny…
November 14, 2016
This past weekend saw my seventh annual boardgaming retreat: 43 hours in good company at a small hotel (in Nynäshamn for the first time), all meals included. My buddy Oscar organises everything. This year we broke the attendance record, with 28 participants, mainly guys in our 30s and 40s. Before…
November 11, 2016
The Swedish national register of archaeological sites is one of the best in the world. But if you ever consider using it for any kind of research purpose, have a look first at the register's map of sites just west of Örkelljunga in Scania. The diagonal line is the parish boundary between Tåssjö and…
November 10, 2016
Tree-house ruin near the old chapel cemetery on Skogsö.
Fear me! I make bad puns in really, really bad Mandarin!
One Celsius and sleet. I have to drive for four hours today, so I'm switching tyres first.
Skänninge is dying. So many empty shop premises and housing properties. Facades flaking.…
November 8, 2016
For the first time since 2011 I haven't got any teaching this autumn semester, which is really bad both for my finances and for my troop morale. (I feel like my colleagues would celebrate or not even notice if I got eaten by a grue tomorrow.) To boost both I'm instead seeking paid extramural…
November 7, 2016
My detectorist friend and long-time collaborator Svante Tibell found a seal matrix in the field next to Skällvik Castle this past summer. In the Middle Ages of Sweden, people of means didn't sign their names to documents. They carried seals around, with which they made imprints into chalk-mixed wax…
October 31, 2016
Leonard Cohen got from the used books store to the cake shop ahead of me. /-:
Wish somebody would demolish all the modern houses on top of the ruins of Visborg Castle.
The ruin of St. Olav's church in Visby is a protected ancient monument. It is being damaged by the ivy that covers it. Sadly the…
October 22, 2016
The New Dawn rose I've been pampering has almost outgrown its trellis.
Movie: Kubo and the Two Strings. Oddly titled Japanese fantasy story with beautiful imagery and sappy moral. Grade: Pass.
The UK imports roughly the same amount of tea annually as the rest of Europe combined.
About the Trump…
October 10, 2016
The New Dawn rose I've been pampering has almost outgrown its trellis.
Movie: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. Two film-making high school boys befriend a girl just as she is diagnosed with leukaemia. Grade: Pass With Distinction.
Heard this ad for contact lenses offering prices that are "up to…
October 4, 2016
Cousin E pointed out something odd about the International Mathematical Olympiad. It's an annual competition for high school students. And girls do super poorly in it. We ran some stats on the data for 2015 and 2016, and found that a national team with more than one female member gets less than…
October 3, 2016
From 2014 on, Swedish metal detectorists have had to report all finds datable to before 1850 to the authorities. I have recently shown in a note in Fornvännen that this rule came about by mistake, and that it has broken the County Archaeologist system. It takes hours for a county heritage…
September 30, 2016
Just got the application referees' evaluation for a job I've been hoping for. I'm afraid to read it. Taking a walk first.
I'm really tired of this thankless shit. Impatient for December, when I'll know if I'll have money to write that castles book or if I should start calling people about a steady…
September 20, 2016
The former school / functions venue in my housing area has been converted into housing for single male asylum seekers. I'm putting a note on their front door, offering to teach them some boardgames.
Wonder if the weight-loss advertisers realise that the pics of amply built women they intend to…
September 14, 2016
Learned a neat German expression: Eier kraulen, lit. "to fondle the eggs", means "to fondle someone's testicles", that is, "to stroke a man's ego".
Lithuanian plumbers put the hot water to the right even though the colour coding on the taps is the reverse.
This Romanian researcher thinks that the…
September 13, 2016
In December of last year I finished a collection of short humorous archaeological essays. It's my sixth book, my first one in Swedish, my first one aimed at the lay reader. Since then I've been waiting for established Swedish publishing houses to pronounce judgement on it. Five of them have now…
September 7, 2016
Dress pin heads from Viidumäe on Saaremaa.
Fornvännen 2015:4 is now on-line on Open Access.
Therese Ekholm compares radiocarbon dates on bone versus charcoal from ostensibly closed contexts on Stone Age sites in northern Sweden.
Tony Björk & Ylva Wickberg on continued investigations of the…
August 31, 2016
Today is the big book-selling festival on Drottninggatan in Stockholm, "the world's longest book table", which is probably true since the term "book table" is almost unknown outside Sweden. I'm bringing a backpack and the names Bengtsson, Bujold, LeGuin, Maugham, Paasilinna and Piraten.
Several…
August 30, 2016
Here's a guest entry by my correspondent Ben Bishop who's doing a project on Medieval scabbard mounts using data from the Portable Antiquites Scheme (PAS).
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I am researching medieval English scabbard chapes formed of folded copper alloy. They date from the period c. AD 1050–1300. The…
August 26, 2016
Several colleagues have told me this bizarre rumour that I hope is unfounded. Contract archaeologists at two sites on Öland and in Småland have found more Medieval coins than their conservation budget can cover. So they have to prioritise which coins to conserve. So far so good, and congrats on the…
August 20, 2016
Getting your fridge filled with rusty Medieval nails isn't actually as hard as many people think. Just marry an archaeologist!
It's been decided that from now on the word is pronounced ever-yone or ever-yawn.
Jrette joined me and Lasse for tonight's sailing mini-race. She steered throughout the…
August 17, 2016
I've been away from my various desks for almost two months while excavating and then enjoying some time off. Here's what's on my plate right now. Saddle. I mean my saddle, in which I'm back.
Landscape archaeology conference, three days in Uppsala. I'm giving a paper on my Bronze Age project.…
August 11, 2016
I just meta-mimed singing into my electric shaver. I wasn't miming singing. I was miming someone in a movie who mimes singing.
Family spooked at one in the morning because a burst of engine noise has been heard. Have burglars arrived at the island? Nope, no strange boat at the dock. Investigation…