Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Tuesday, 19 July 2022

Assessing the claimed discovery of the tomb of King Harald Bluetooth


In my recent posts  Locating King Harald Bluetooth and An update on the Vikings I linked to online articles which reported on the suggested identification of the burial mound of King Harald Bluetooth of Denmark at Wiejkowo in the extreme north west of modern Poland. In sharing them I tried to sound cautious about the idea, whilst not rejecting it altogether as I do not profess any particular expertise in that field.

However someone who does have that is the author of the site produced by The Welsh Viking. In a recent post he gives a critical examination of the evidence adduced for the Wiejkowo site. He finds it seriously lacking in hard evidence or indeed, academic credibility. His video can be seen at Archaeologist Debunks Harald Bluetooth's Tomb Discovery

It looks very much as if my own initial caution was probably right in this instance, although further ‘hard’ evidence might yet, of course, turn up to substantiate the theory.


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