The Fake History Hunter has another worthwhile study on Substack about English attitudes to the Danish community in the country in the lead up to the St Brice’s Day massacre in on November 13th 1002. I have posted about this before because Oxford was one of the principal locations for the attack on the Danes, notably in 2011 in Massacre in Oxford and in 2021in Keeping it in the family
Wikipedia has an account of the events of 1002, their historical context and the discovery of the human remains at St John’s College in 2008 which can be viewed at St_Brice's_Day_massacre
St John’s College has an online feature about the remains, including a facial reconstruction of one of the victims, which was work done by Lady Sue Black, who is now the President of the College. This can be seen at Remembering the St Brice's Day Massacre
The author of the Fake History Hunter does an excellent job unpicking the narrative of the St Albans chronicler John of Wallingford, written some two centuries later, and showing how modern unthinking repetition or depiction reinforces an inaccurate understanding of the past.
The article can be read at Viking hygiene according to Chronica Joannis Wallingford
Reading it I was reminded of Alcuin’s strictures about the long hair of the Northumbrian nobility and warriors in 793 following the sack of Lindisfarne. To Alcuin long hair was a sign of decadence, both personal and socially, and by implication had led to the success of the attack. It is a recurring theme with churchmen - in the post-Tridentine world Catholic clergy were very much ‘short-back-and-sides’ judging from the portraits on the priests on the English mission. I am sufficiently old to recall the horror produced in the 1960s by longer hair, let alone long hair, and, relevant to John of Wallingford, its association with sexual promiscuity. Things don’t change much.
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