Category Archives: EUROPE

EUROPE, SWEDEN, WORLD

Thor’s Hammer Amulet Found in Sweden

Thor’s Hammer Amulet Found in Sweden

A 1,000-year-old amulet of Thor’s Hammer discovered in Sweden shows the lasting popularity of the ancient Norse deity, who has now won a new audience with Chris Hemsworth’s portrayal of the Viking god of war in Marvel movies.

Thor's Hammer Amulet Found in Sweden
Archaeologists think the amulet was worn around the neck, perhaps as spiritual protection. It’s thought the design of Thor’s Hammer could signify an adherence to the old religion of Norse gods, rather than to the “new” Christian religion.

Thor had always been a popular figure, perhaps because he was concerned about humans, Carolyne Larrington, a professor of medieval European literature at the University of Oxford, told Live Science.

“Of all the Norse gods, Thor is the one most interested in the fate of humanity,” said Larrington, author of the upcoming book “The Norse Myths that Shape the Way We Think,” (Thames and Hudson Ltd, 2023) who wasn’t involved in the recent discovery. “His main job was patrolling the east and keeping the giants [the Jötnar] out of the lands of humans and the gods with his hammer.”

Archaeologists unearthed the amulet over the summer during excavations near the southwestern town of Ysby, Per Wranning, the head of archaeology at the Cultural History Museum in Halland County, told Live Science in an email. 

The region faces Denmark across the strait between the North Sea and the Baltic, which for centuries has been called the Kattegat — “cat’s passage” — because it is dangerously shallow.

The archaeological investigations of the site, which has been earmarked for new houses, have also revealed several firepits, post holes and pieces of pottery and metal that may date to before the end of the late Viking Age in the mid-11th century A.D, he said. 

The Thor’s Hammer amulet was found in the southwestern Swedish town of Ysby this summer. It is thought to be made of lead and is dated to around the 10th or 11th centuries A.D.

Viking Age

Similar Thor’s hammer amulets have been found previously in Scandinavia, but this is the first uncovered in Halland, said Wranning, who led the dig.

It’s cast in metal and has intricate embossed designs on its upper face, and it may have been gilded (decorated with gold) or silvered, but the archaeologists won’t be sure until it’s been properly cleaned and preserved, he said.

A hole in the shaft — the bottom of the “handle” of the hammer — indicates the amulet was hung on a ring or thong and suggests it was worn around the neck, but it might have formed some other type of jewellery, he added.  “The find probably dates to the 900s or 1000s — that is, the late Viking Age — and appears to be made of lead,” Wranning wrote in a translated blog post. 

Such amulets might have been worn during the religious transition of the region at the end of the Viking Age as a symbol of adhering to the old Norse gods, rather than to the “new” religion of Christianity.

“One theory is that these large, ornamented Thor’s hammers were a clear marker for those who still worshipped the [Norse] gods when Christianity began to take root in Scandinavia,” he said.

Preliminary dating of the latest finds at Ysby suggests they are from the Viking Age, which traditionally starts in 793 — the date of the first Viking raid in England, on a monastery on the holy island of Lindisfarne on the coast of Northumberland — and ends with the Battle of Stamford Bridge in September 1066, where an English army led by King Harold Godwinson defeated an invading Norwegian army near York.

Thor’s Hammer

The divine hammer represented by the amulet is the war hammer Mjölnir , which according to legend was crafted by dwarves for the gods of Valhalla in a competition to create the most wondrous treasure, Larrington said.

Although the other treasures included a ship that could fold up and be placed in a pocket and the gold-bristled, glow-in-the-dark boar called Gullinbursti that could be ridden into battle, Mjölnir was judged the most marvellous and was given to Thor for his wars against the giants, she said.

“It has both a destructive power and a sacred power,” she said. “It seems to have been used to hallow things, to make them sacred.”

When worn as an amulet, representations of Mjölnir might have been thought of as a form of spiritual defense: “It’s protecting you, in a very positive way,” she said.

Thor was also a god of the weather, and through that association, he was a god of seafaring. “If you’re sailing from Norway to Iceland, you want decent weather, you don’t want a storm — and Thor is very much connected with that,” Larrington said.

She noted that Ysby, where the amulet was found, is only a few miles from the coast. “So I would imagine it is about travelling,” she said.

According to the blog post by Wranning, the remains of two “longhouses” from the late Iron Age have been found at Ysby, and walls from a Christian church built in the 1100s or 1200s.

Early maps also show a ford across the nearby Lagan River: “this could have contributed to the fact that the site has been of interest to control in ancient times,” he wrote.

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

Sensational find in Ephesus: more than 1,400-year-old district discovered

Sensational find in Ephesus: more than 1,400-year-old district discovered

During this year’s excavations at Ephesus in Turkey, archaeologists from the Austrian Academy of Sciences (AW) discovered an incredibly well-preserved early Byzantine business and dining space that had apparently been destroyed suddenly in AD 614/615.

The discovery, according to the head of the excavation Sabine Ladstätter, is the most significant one to have occurred in the ancient city since the discovery of its renowned hill houses.

Ephesus is one of the world’s largest and most impressive ancient cities, as well as one of Turkey’s most important ancient cities.

Its cultural and historical significance was highlighted in its addition to the UNESCO World Heritage Site list in 2015.

The remains of the city lie just 80 km inland from the popular seaside city of İzmir and close to the charming towns of Selcuk and Sirince.

Numerous oil lamps were unearthed in one of the shop rooms.

The newly discovered neighbourhood is on Domitian Square, a prominent square directly adjacent to the Roman city’s political centre, the Upper Agora.

The excavations this year are part of a large research project on Ephesus’ changes between the Roman Empire and Late Antiquity.

Byzantine shops and workshops were built over a large Roman square complex, with the team focusing excavations on a structure consisting of several business premises that covers an area of around 170 square meters.

A storage room was also discovered, which was full of vessels that could still be found with their original contents.

The researchers dug up filling material meters high and eventually arrived at a fire layer about half a meter thick. Sealed by this, a unique snapshot of life at the time was preserved at a depth of about 3.5 meters.

Individual rooms are preserved, containing thousands of pieces of ceramics, including whole bowls with the remains of seafood such as cockles or oysters, as well as amphorae filled with salted mackerel.

Also found were thousands of barrels, including whole bowls of seafood remnants such as cockles or oysters, amphoras filled with salted mackerel, peach, almond, and olive kernels, charred pulses, with more than 700 copper coins and four matching gold coins and gold jewellery.

In the storage room, there were numerous small jugs and cups, which can be assumed to have formed a set. Filled with wine, they were served to the clientele in adjacent rooms (tabernas).

Based on the finds, it was also possible to reconstruct the earlier use of the rooms. So it is a cooking shop, a storage room, a tavern, a workshop with an adjoining sales room, and a shop for lamps and Christian pilgrim souvenirs (indicated by the discovery of around 600 small pilgrim bottles that were sold to Christian pilgrims).

However, coin dating indicates that the bustling trade and craft industry abruptly ended in the year 614/15 beneath the half-meter thick layer of fire.

The scientists surmise a military conflict because there are no signs of an earthquake, such as shifted walls or vaulted floors. The numerous spearheads and arrowheads discovered also attest to this. The causes of this were unknown prior to this.

The Christian pilgrim ampoules were only a few centimetres in size and could be worn around the neck. They contained sacred substances, such as holy dust, which could thus be taken away from Christian pilgrimage sites.

Based on the new finds, “this turning point in the history of the city of Ephesus will probably have to be associated with the Byzantine–Sasanian War”.

EUROPE, SWEDEN, WORLD

Viking Age Silver Hoard Discovered in Sweden

Viking Age Silver Hoard Discovered in Sweden

A 1000-year-old silver hoard containing several beautiful torque-style neck rings, arm rings and coins has been discovered in Viggbyholm, Täby, outside Stockholm. “This is something you probably only experience once in a lifetime”, says Maria Lingström at The Archaeologists, National Historical Museums in Sweden.

Viking Age Silver Hoard
A unique treasure hoard dating from the Viking Age has been uncovered in Täby, Stockholm. Consisting of arms rings, coins and eight torque-style neck rings.

The treasure was found during an archaeological excavation of a Viking Age settlement in Täby outside Stockholm, an area thought to have been inhabited for several hundred years.

The archaeologists have found more than 20 houses and buildings, the earliest dating from around 400 AD, continuing into the Viking Age (800–1050 AD) and early Middle Ages.

The treasure was buried under what was once a wooden floor in a building. The coins were deposited in a pouch made of linen, which together with the jewellery had been put into a small ceramic pot.

– When I started to carefully remove the neck rings one by one, I had this extraordinary feeling of “they just keep coming and coming”. In total there were eight high-quality torque-style neck rings, extraordinarily well preserved despite having been made and deposited almost a thousand years ago. They looked almost completely new, Maria Lingström says.

In addition to the neck rings, two arm rings, one ring, two pearls and 12 coin pendants (coins used as jewellery), were found in the ceramic pot.

Why the inhabitants chose to hide some of their most valuable objects and bury them in the ground, is at the moment unclear, but several theories exist.

– One common interpretation is that people hid and buried their treasures in difficult and tumultuous times. We have yet to see if that was the case here, archaeologist John Hamilton says.

The coins are a perfect example of the far-reaching connections and blossoming trade, which flourished in Viking Age Scandinavia. Several coins are of European origin, representing countries such as England, Bohemia and Bavaria. In addition, the treasure consisted of five Arabic coins, so-called dirhams.

One of the European coins is extremely rare and was minted in the city of Rouen, in Normandy, France. It dates to approximately the 10th Century AD.

According to Professor Jens Christian Moesgaard at Stockholm University, this type of coin has previously ever been identified from drawings in an 18th-century book.

The Archaeologists also found other objects, such as arrows, quernstones, and beautiful amulet rings, within the area. But the discovery of a silver treasure was somewhat unexpected.

– This is something you probably only experience once in a lifetime, says Maria Lingström.

EUROPE, POLAND, WORLD

Crypts, Tunnel Discovered Beneath Knights Templar Chapel in Poland

Crypts, Tunnel Discovered Beneath Knights Templar Chapel in Poland

Crypts, Tunnel Discovered Beneath Knights Templar Chapel in Poland
The Knights Templar constructed the Saint Stanislaus chapel in the Polish village of Chwarszczany during the 13th century.

Around 1119, in the midst of Christian Crusades to wrest the Holy Land from Muslim control, a French knight named Hugues de Payens formed a small military order dedicated to defending pilgrims as they travelled from West to East.

Known today as the Knights Templar, the group (and various legends surrounding its history) has captured the public imagination for centuries.

As Patrick Masters, a film studies scholar at the University of Portsmouth, wrote for the Conversation in 2019, 13th-century epics and Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code alike link the order to the mythical Holy Grail—albeit with little supporting evidence.

Over the years, physical traces of the organization’s existence have yielded insights into its actual role in medieval society. In villages across the West Pomeranian region of Poland, for instance, 13th-century Gothic buildings created by the knights upon their return from the Holy Land testify to the order’s lasting influence.

Now, reports Małgosia Krakowska for CNN, an ongoing archaeological dig at a Knights Templar chapel in a remote Polish village of about 100 residents is offering up an array of exciting new discoveries.

Last fall, a research team using ground-penetrating radar (GPR) uncovered a number of crypts, as well as the possible remains of an underground passageway or tunnel, while conducting excavations at the chapel of Saint Stanislaus in Chwarszczany.

“According to legends and medieval documents, there was a well in the vicinity of the chapel,” Przemysław Kołosowski, the lead archaeologist working on the site, tells CNN. “Rumor has it that the well served as an entrance to a secret tunnel. This still requires an exhaustive archaeological investigation.”

Interior of the chapel of St. Stanislaus.

As Jakub Pikulik reported for the Polish newspaper Gazeta Lubuska last year, renovations and archaeological work at the site have been ongoing since 2004. Kołosowski’s team commenced work in July 2019, scanning the chapel and surrounding fields with the help of a hundred or so volunteers.

An excavation expected to unearth a medieval fortress yielded no substantial findings from the period. But archaeologists did discover centuries-old cobblestones, the walls of an 18th-century distillery, Bronze Age pottery and iron nails, and a 1757 coin likely left behind by Russian troops stationed nearby during the Seven Years’ War.

Inside the chapel, archaeologists investigating a small depression beneath the stone floors found seven vaulted crypts.

As Per a statement from OKM, the German manufacturer of the GPR technology used by the researchers, these underground crypts “cannot be dated back to Templar times.” Instead, Gazeta Lubuska notes, the crypts were likely constructed later, only to be emptied during renovations in the second half of the 19th century.

Built on the site of an older Romanesque temple in the second half of the 13th century, the red-brick Chwarszczany chapel was “both a place of worship and a defensive fortification,” according to Sarah Cascone of artnet News.

At the time, the Knights Templar wielded significant power in western Poland, local historian Marek Karolczak tells CNN.

“Back in those days, the appearance of Knights Templar on this soil was a popular trend,” Karolczak explains. “This is the time of the Crusades. Local rulers wanted to strengthen their power by inviting military orders to settle on their land and build commanderies.”

Because the Knights Templar were protected by the pope, they “enjoy[ed] papal privileges, tax breaks and lavish donations while also accruing legendary status,” reports CNN. But the group’s luck changed in the early 14th century, when Philip IV of France ordered members’ arrest, perhaps out of a desire to seize their vast wealth or assert his political dominance over the papacy, writes Mark Cartwright for Ancient History Encyclopedia.

Those arrested were tortured into giving false confessions of homosexuality and sacrilege, and in 1312, Pope Clement V officially disbanded the religious order.

EUROPE, NORWAY, WORLD

Large-Scale Trade in Herring Dates to the Viking Age

Large-Scale Trade in Herring Dates to the Viking Age

Large-Scale Trade in Herring Dates to the Viking Age
Lane Atmore has spent weeks and months in the lab extracting DNA from tiny herring bones like this.

Historians have believed extensive herring trade started around the year 1200 AD, later controlled by the Hanseatic League. Now, a new study shows that it was already established in the Viking Age.

“We found that this trade existed already around 800 AD, 400 years earlier, which really pushes back this extensive fishing,” says Doctoral Research Fellow Lane Atmore at the University of Oslo.

She is the first author of the study, published today in PNAS, which shows that herring bones from western populations around Sweden and Denmark were found as far east in the Baltic as Truso in today´s Poland. Truso is known as an important Viking Age trade port.

“In the genetic signature from these bones, we found that the fishes were adapted to higher salinity than you find in the central Baltic. This means they were coming from around Kattegat, and then they were being shipped into the eastern Baltic,” Atmore says.

The lower salinity of The Baltic Sea means that herring from the population in Kattegat will have a hard time adapting to the waters further east.

“That high salinity adapted fish are never found that far in,” Atmore says.

More difficult to trade

Her co-author, Associate Professor Bastiaan Star, has previously studied cod trade in the same area.

“Earlier we have seen that cod from the trading place Hedeby in what is now Germany had travelled all the way from northern Norway. Our new study shows that it was not just cod. It was also herring, a fish that technologically is much more difficult to trade,” Star says.

Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus) is a much fattier fish than cod and not easy to store, let alone trade if you don’t have the right technology.

“If you don’t cure it with salt or smoke, it will go bad very quickly. You need access to salt and wood so that you can cure it and then ship it. You need to have extensive trade networks and to catch enough fish if it´s going to be worth the investment,” Atmore says.

“I think that fish was traded over greater distances than previously anticipated. We can now pin down this date because these bones are absolutely dated between 800 and 850,” Star says.

“We can´t prove that it was the Vikings who brought the herring from one place to the next, but we know that we have herring bone from a site where Vikings were trading,” Atmore says.

Biology and archaeology

Atmore and Star are both biologists. In this study, they have worked closely with archaeologists. One of them is Professor James H. Barrett at NTNU University Museum.

“The herring industry of the Baltic Sea supported one of the most important trades in medieval Europe,” Barrett says.

“By combining the genetic study of archaeological and modern samples of herring bone, one can discover the earliest known evidence for the growth of long-range trade in herring, from comparatively saline waters of the western Baltic to the Viking Age trading site of Truso in north-east Poland,” Barrett says.

The study also reveals what has happened to the herring populations in more recent times.

“The economic and political ramifications of the herring industry are well-charted, but its ecological impacts have been much debated,” Barrett says.

Spring spawners and autumn spawners

The different populations of herring have their own spawning grounds, hence their adaptation to different levels of salinity. Populations also differ in spawning season.

“There are two major populations that spread across all Atlantic herring. One spawns in the springtime, and one spawns in the autumn. These populations spawn in unique locations and in different seasons, so they don’t interbreed much. This means they are genetically different from each other,” Atmore explains.

She is now able to identify where these fish are coming from to see how populations grow and decline, and how this is impacted by the fishing industry.

“We found that earlier in the historical record, starting around 800, you get more fish in these archaeological sites that come from the autumn spawning population in the western Baltic. This is a population that was targeted by a famous fishery around 1200,” Atmore says.

Collapsed 100 years ago

In more recent times it was the opposite.

“They were then targeting the autumn spawners and this population collapsed in the 1920s. In the Baltic now commercial catches are 90% spring spawners,” Atmore says.

“It´s not that the autumn spawners entirely disappear in the Baltic. It is more that they are not commercially interesting anymore. They are still there, but not in the numbers we were used to,” Star says.

He is not in doubt that the fishing industry had a major impact on the herring populations.

“There is a consistent pattern with over exploitation that takes place over centuries,” Star says.

“Our results provide a new and persuasive way to test the archaeological hypothesis that human impacts on super-abundant European marine fish started already in the Middle Ages, and that different herring stocks were targeted sequentially through time,” Barrett says.

This also means that the ecology of the Baltic Sea has shifted. Autumn spawners spawn in a different place at a different season.

“They are also bigger than the spring spawners and they eat slightly different food. When the population of autumn spawners goes far down in size, the ecology is going to change,” Atmore says.

“The Baltic Sea is much more confined compared to the North Sea. Some of the impacts that humans or climate may have, is amplified in such a small system,” says Star.

CROATIA, EUROPE, WORLD

Croatia’s Roman City of Ridit Investigated

Croatia’s Roman City of Ridit Investigated

The ancient building has massive walls and a rectangular outline (approx. 20 x 10 m). Georadar images show the frame of the entrance, according to scientists most likely in the form of relics of a colonnade.

The foundations were discovered under and next to the Church of St. Daniel in the village of Danilo near Šibenik, the former Roman city of Ridit.

Although archaeologists have been finding numerous architectural elements and decorations from the monumental Roman sacral building until now its location was unknown.

View of the valley where the village of Danilo is currently located, in ancient times it was the city of Ridit/Municipium Riditarum.
Georadar surveyed the church in Danilo, under which relics of the Roman sacral building were discovered.

Polish research leader, Professor Fabian Welc from the Institute of Archaeology of the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw, said: “The data we have collected indicate that under today’s church and the adjacent cemetery there are relics of a temple, which was part of the forum, the most important part of a Roman city.”

Georadar survey in the area around the Danilo cemetery.

He added that the forum was the centre of the social and economic life of the inhabitants of every Roman municipium (city). This forum was located at the intersection of the main communication arteries and was also the central point in the city. In addition to the temple, it was the location of the most important public buildings of cities, such as courts or municipal offices. The forum was additionally decorated with monuments or triumphal arches.

Georadar survey in Danilo.

Next year, scientists plan to conduct archaeological research near the church to verify the findings of geophysical surveys. It is known that the current 18th-century church was built on the foundations of an earlier, small Romanesque Christian temple. Under it – according to the latest research – was the oldest, Roman temple.

The LIDAR aerial scanning technology was also helpful in locating the temple. It enables a very thorough analysis of the terrain and makes it possible to detect the remains of former architecture, very weakly outlined on the surface.

According to the scientists, not only the church was built on the ruins of the former temple. The nearby cemetery, which functioned from the 9th to the 15th century, was also partly located within its original range. Next to it were other buildings surrounding the forum.

Some of the medieval graves were dug directly into the relics of the Roman baths along with the adjacent vast building with a central courtyard and a portico surrounded by numerous rooms.

Professor Welc said: “This means that the extensive medieval cemetery was founded directly on the relics of Roman buildings.”

The Croatian project coordinator, Dr. Ana Konestra added that thanks to large-scale geophysical surveying and analysis of the ALS model, a number of other Roman buildings were identified around the modern-day cemetery in Danilo. According to the archaeologists, they were mainly residential and utility buildings.

Croatia’s Roman City of Ridit Investigated
Reconstruction of a building with a courtyard made by Professor Fabian Welc.

Even before the recent surveys, there were suspicions concerning the location of the forum within the area of the cemetery, because reused fragments of monumental architectural decorations and a large column were discovered in the stone walls surrounding medieval graves.

Professor Welc said: “The very size of these elements indicated that somewhere near the cemetery there had to be a large, monumental building, which had to be part of a complex of buildings surrounding the city forum. However, previous excavations did not allow us to determine its location.”

Archaeologists have been conducting research in Danilo for over 70 years.

The first extensive work was associated with the construction of the water pipeline. It brought finds in the form of hundreds of Roman inscriptions, some of which mentioned Municipium Riditarum, an enigmatic city founded somewhere in Danilo by the local community of the romanised Ridit tribe.

A fragment of an ornamented monumental beaming of the Roman temple was unearthed in the 1950s in the medieval cemetery near the church in Danilo.
EUROPE, ICELAND, WORLD

19th-Century Farmer’s Cottage Uncovered in Iceland

19th-Century Farmer’s Cottage Uncovered in Iceland

Archaeologists have unearthed a cottage near Úlfarsfell, a mountain and popular walking area between Reykjavík and Mosfellsbær. The discovery was made during exploratory excavations made preceding the construction of the shopping centre.

Archaeologists Unearth Cottage Between Reykjavík and Mosfellsbær

According to Icelandic law, an archaeological investigation must be conducted before construction and any finds registered with the Cultural Heritage Agency of Iceland.

The cottage in question, called Hamrahlíð, was found to have been inhabited from around 1850 to 1920.

Among the everyday objects found to include a knife, pottery, plates, cups, glass bottles, and some agricultural tools.

An archaeologist from Antikva ehf., the contractor responsible for the excavation, stated to RÚV that: “We’ve found cooking pits, so people were cooking something here or working with food.

We don’t have any mounds or any built-up fireplaces, but we do have these holes. In one, which is 35 cm deep, we have at least six layers of moss with burnt bones and charcoal. It can be seen very clearly on the floors that they busied themselves around this area.”

Hermann Jakob Hjartarson, the archaeologist at Antikva, has stated that relatively few studies of such small cottages have been carried out. He started to RÚV, “undoubtedly, I think that this is still just one part of a bigger story. Most people here at that time were just cottage farmers.”

EUROPE, SCOTLAND, WORLD

Rare golden sword pommel acquired by a Scottish museum

Rare golden sword pommel acquired by a Scottish museum

Rare golden sword pommel acquired by a Scottish museum
A pommel is a decorative piece attached to the bottom of a sword sometimes used as a counter-weight

An “exceptionally rare” gold sword pommel discovered by a metal detectorist near Stirling has been acquired by National Museums Scotland. The pommel, which is about 1,300 years old, was found in 2019 and was declared to the Scottish Treasure Trove unit.

The gold decoration which would have sat at the top of a sword handle measures 5.5cm wide, weighs 25g and was valued at about £30,000.

The find has been described as “hugely significant”.

Dr Alice Blackwell, senior curator of medieval archaeology and history at National Museums Scotland (NMS), said goldwork from this period was “virtually unknown” anywhere in the UK.

She said it showed the spectacular skill and craftsmanship of the early medieval period.

The pommel is thought to date from about 700 AD.

The solid gold object is encrusted with garnets and intricate goldwork which features religious motifs and fantastical creatures.

The discovery was made at Blair Drummond towards the end of 2019 but NMS said that due to restrictions during the pandemic decisions about its acquisition were delayed.

It was allocated to them on the recommendation of the Scottish Archaeological Finds Allocation Panel.

Dr Blackwell said its archaeological value was due to what it told us about important cultural, political and artistic interactions in northern Britain at this time.

She said its decoration combined elements from both Anglo-Saxon England and the kingdoms of Early Medieval Scotland.

“Early medieval Scotland is a really interesting period,” Dr Blackwell said.

“You have a number of culturally distinct kingdoms and the pommel’s design has taken from the different cultures and melded them together “

That melding of different cultural styles is known as the “insular art” style, which was made famous by illuminated manuscripts such as the Lindisfarne Gospels.

Dr Blackwell said this fusion of styles had made it hard to determine where exactly it was made and to whom it may have belonged.

However, she said it potentially could have belonged to royalty due to the higher standard of goldwork the pommel had compared with other goldware found in this period.

“In a way, this is the start of the artefact’s journey,” Dr Blackwell said.

“A lot of research and work is still to be done to uncover what stories it can tell us about the political and cultural landscape of Northern Britain at this time.”