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.


Sunday, 20 October 2024

The Viking and Norse trade in Walrus Ivory


Recently published research into the trading networks established by Viking and Norse  seafarers across the North Atlantic in search of walrus ivory and their internal trade routes across Europe as far as Kyiv to sell this valuable commodity were reported upon recently by The Independent and on the Life Science website.

The period concerned stretches from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries, the period of the colonisation of the coasts of southern Greenland by Europeans.

Analysis of the physical makeup of surviving examples of such craftsmanship has been compared with that from existing walrus colonies on the coasts of Greenland and northern Canada. What has emerged is that the sources of the tusks were further afield than had been thought and this opened up the possibility of more contact between the Vikings or Norse and the Inuit of the sub-Arctic than had been thought previously.





No comments: