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
In Roald Dahl's last book, Matilda (1988), we are invited to laugh at the main character's parents. They hate books, love TV, dress tastelessly and subsist on microwave TV dinners. Yet only when I saw the musical at the Cambridge Theatre in London this past Tuesday, where the mother…
At concerts these days people wave their phone flashlights instead of cigarette lighters during the slow numbers.
I broke the rice cooker's handle. Then I fixed it. Jrette smiled and called this macho display. I replied that I wasn't actually using my willie for the work and that breasts wouldn…
Dear Reader, it is with great pleasure that I announce the PDF publication of my fifth monograph,* In the Landscape and Between Worlds. The paper version will appear in April or May. Here's the back-cover blurb.
Bronze Age settlements and burials in the Swedish provinces around Lakes Mälaren and…
Ken & Robin have an interesting discussion in the most recent episode of their podcast, on childhood fears. Specifically, they talk about childhood responses to horror stories and movies. I was inspired to write about my own childhood horrors.
Luckily there were no actual horrors in my…
Oh fuck. I just installed the operating system update/trojan that makes this particular Samsung smartphone model slow.
I wonder how classical liberalism views labour unions. On the one hand, the right to form one is clearly a civil liberty. On the other hand, it can be seen as what Smith called a…
Stephen Jarvis's upcoming novel Death and Mr Pickwick is a sprawling book, in terms both of its 800-page girth and of its structure. I've read the first third and decided to write about it now before I forget the details.
There's a present-day frame story about the narrator writing the book,…
Having read yesterday's entry about what I need to get hold of before I can dig a site, Apel Mjausson asked me on Facebook, "How do you decide where to dig? Sweden is lousy with unexplored sites. Are you following a specific story, looking at place names, take nominations...?"
Disregarding sites I'…
I've headed my own research excavations since 1996. Now I'm preparing for four weeks of fieldwork during the upcoming season. I operate as an independent scholar in this context, and none of my excavations have been prompted by land development. Here's what I need to get hold of before I can break…
I thought my pet was a meerkat, but it was in fact a mere cat.
Movie: Wild Tales. A collection of unconnected short wry films about revenge. Grade: pass.
Eagle-eyed Roger Wikell found something that looked like a duplicate entry in my database. A flanged axe found at Vappeby hamlet by someone…
Boomer neighbour calls me and tells me his water meter reads "420". "You're such a stoner" is what I avoid replying.
Every year my employers each send me a piece of paper telling me how much they've told the tax man that I've earned. A few months later, the tax man sends me a piece of paper…
I've finalised the cover of my upcoming book with designer Bitte Granlund!
Cover image: detail of a rock-art panel at Hemsta in Boglösa, Uppland. An axe with its characteristic s-shaped haft, an incomplete ship and two cupmarks. According to Johan Ling, the panel’s ship types and the level above…
Facebook's Android app seems to be monitoring whom I talk to on my phone. A few days after I've called somebody who wants to submit a paper to Fornvännen, or after I've texted the mom of one of Jrette's buddies, the web site will suddenly suggest, "Hey, maybe you might want to be Facebook buddies…
Medical marijuana is just a backward strategy to get recreational marijuana legalised. It's like the potheads twenty years ago who would praise hemp's excellent properties as a fibre and fuel source. They didn't care about any other fibre crops. It was a transparent ruse.
A medical intervention's…
Bitte Granlund of Happy Book has sent me PDF proofs for my forthcoming Bronze Age book, looking bee-you-tiful!
If you'd like to help me proofread it, please email me. Everyone who finds ten errors gets a dedicated copy sent by mail.
To my delight, the response to my plea has been…
Me & Jrette just sat in deck chairs and took turns watching comet Lovejoy through hand binoculars. The nucleus is like a big pale fuzzy blob among the stars. Start from the Pleiades, which are gorgeous in simple binoculars, and move about 10 Pleiades diameters in the 4 o'clock direction to…
Country Funk -- Country Funk (1970)
Here are some good albums that I’ve been listening to lately.
Country Funk -- Country Funk (1970). Not country and not funk: folk psych.
GOAT -- Commune (2014). Eclectic psychedelia with screamy female vocals and bongos!
Opeth -- Pale Communion (2014). When…
I'm not a big blog reader, sad to tell, and I have almost no insight into what's going on elsewhere in the science blogosphere including ScienceBlogs. But a few days ago I got curious about what the network I'm on is like these days, and I did some investigating. I was surprised by what I found. In…
The Opportunity rover landed on Mars eleven Earth calendar years ago today, and it still works fine after driving ~42 km! This is the farthest any off-planet vehicle has gone so far. Oppy's mate Spirit was mobile on the Red Planet for over five years and then functioned as a stationary science…
After my first marriage I briefly dated a stoner girl. She was sweet and mild-mannered, her conversation laggy. There was a sleepy micro-pause before each of her replies. She'd spent four years on social security in a Copenhagen squat, smoking pot as a full-time occupation, before moving back to…
Fornvännen 2014:2 is now on-line on Open Access.
Hans Göransson on Middle Neolithic vegetation history.
Frans-Arne Stylegar reinterprets a famous Viking Period grave find with smith's tools.
Ronnie Carlsson & Christian Lovén on the urban parish churches of Medieval Uppsala.
Anders G. Nord…
Five years ago I blogged about a study by the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education, identifying the higher education degrees that were likely to give you the best chances of a Swedish job in the period 2010-2020. This was because I complain a lot here on the blog about how useless a degree…
From now on I'm not appending my CV with job applications any more. I'll send a list of my LinkedIn endorsements instead.
We've seen a series of arson attempts on Swedish mosques, almost certainly motivated by xenophobia and racism. A lot of good people are showing their solidarity with the…
Fornvännen 2014:1 is now on-line on Open Access. We've had trouble with our on-line archive for more than a month. This was because the UV units, Sweden's largest contract archaeology organisation, moved from the umbrella of the National Heritage Board to that of the Swedish History Museum. The IT…
Last spring I stepped down from the chair and the editorial board of the Swedish Skeptics, but I remain an enthusiastic member of the association and we have a really strong executive board these days. Now they have announced the Swedish Skeptics' annual awards for 2014.
The Enlightener of the Year…
Yay! The new reading chair finally arrived!
Sw. kujon "coward" is cognate with Sp. cojon "testicle". Both go back to Lat. coleus "leather sack". In the Swedish case the cowardly sense comes by way of a word for eunuch.
I never did understand what exe2bin did.
Wife: ”After I've been out running…
Here are the ten boardgames I played the most during 2014.
Sechs nimmt / Category 5 (1994, gets swift intense buy-in even from non-gamers) *
Innovation (2010)
Magic: the Gathering (1993) *
Plato 3000 (2012) *
Keltis (2008, travel version, very handy)
Glass Road (2013) *
Archaeology: the Card Game…
Things are coming together with the post-excavation work for last summer's castle investigations so I'm putting some stuff on-line here.
I've submitted a paper detailing the main results to a proceedings volume for the Castella Maris Baltici symposium in Lodz back in May. There are no…
I’ve been blogging for a bit more than nine years now, and today Aard turns eight! Traffic for Oct, Nov, Dec has been ~450 daily readers. Dear Reader, is there anything you'd like me to write about?
GOAT: the new groovy weirdness from Gothenburg
Here are some good albums that I've been listening to lately.
Dowling Poole - Bleak Strategies (2014). For all who miss the later Beatles and the Super Furry Animals.
GOAT - World Music (2012). Eclectic psychedelia with screamy female vocals and…
Jon Peterson: Playing at the World. Highly recommended to gamers!
Here are my best reads in English during 2014. My total was 49 books and 14 of them were e-books. Find me at Goodreads!
In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad…