la_marquise | It being that sort of time...

I am always looking for good reads on history, culture, and religion. Have any good recommendations for the Celts, or any of the Nordic countries? Broad question, I know, but worth asking :)

That is indeed a broad question, and I don't know what you already know. However, a good starting point is Simon James, The Atlantic Celts for the whole 'pan-Celtic' thing (with which he disagrees). On Wales, a good introduction is Wendy Davies, Wales in the Early Middle Ages (or my own The Welsh Kings, as Kari Maund). On Ireland, Daibhi O Croinin, Early Medieval Ireland is probably the best place to start. Scotland is rather more complex, and in a lot of ways, A A M Duncan, Scotland, the Making of the Kingdom is still the most accessible, even though it's very old.
There are lots and lots of good books on vikings. I like Else Roesdahl, The Vikings as an introduction, and Peter Sawyer, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings. The latter's Age of the Vikings (2nd ed.) is the one of the best books on early mediaeval history I know and revolutionised its field. For individual countries, it's patchy. Denmark is well served with books by Else Roesdahl (Viking Age Denmark and K Randsborg (The Vikings in Denmark. Norway and Sweden are harder -- lots of articles and a hard-to-find short book by Sawyer. For Iceland, Jesse Byock, Medieval Iceland and Viking Age Iceland.

Brilliant! All of those titles are new to me, and sound excellent. There is so much material out there I am usually too daunted to jump in and start reading, this will help :)

Thanks you!

You are very welcome.

Has anyone ever done an economic flow-analysis of medieval Welsh law of the court to determine whether all the specific amounts and proportions mentioned are plausible as part of an actual functional micro-economy? (Obviously there are large chunks missing from the necessary economic inputs and transfers, but for the specific items mentioned, is it an internally-consistent system?)

Not that I'm aware of, unless you count the chapter in Wendy Davies, Wales in the EMA on the economy, and that's largely dependent on the Llandaff material. I wish they would: as far as I know, though, no-one has tried as yet.

You may want to answer this off LJ. I've been curious for ages why I know you with two different surnames--only I never remember to ask.

The short one is my legal surname, but it's hard to pronounce and it's what I use for academic and non-fiction. Sperring is a family name -- it was my maternal grandmother's maiden name.

Thank you. That makes sense.

I want to know about your cats, actually. They seem to have interesting lives. :)

Goodness, where do I start? Moon is the oldest: she came to us as a 12 week old kitten when our first cat (Caspian, the Best Cat in the World) was about 12 or 13 (he was a rescue and we didn't know exactly how old he was). She's a blue-cream point Birman, with a very sweet nature and a craving for affection. She loves to be combed, to follow us around and to supervise, but when she feels ignored, she bites ankles. She also bites noses, but the latter is Mooncat love of the highest order. She has lots of funny little habits, including 'burying' things she wants to keep for later (as a kitten, she did this to toys, and my hand) or which she thinks are muck (alcohol, coffee, boy cats). She was a millenium kitten, born April 2001. Ish (short for Iskander) is a caramel Asian. He's smart, loving, strong-willed and very determined. He's the top cat, most of the time (Moon has Views). He is prone to protest spraying, which is not encouraged, but is also the most sociable and easy-going of the three -- he is very easy to pill, for instance, and will let you handle his feet or ears with only minimal wriggling. And he loves to go to the vet, as he likes to meet new people. He also adores little girls, and is convinced they exist to play with him. He's very much 'my' cat and can be jealous: this has been so since he chose me when he was 6 weeks old. He also, alas, sprays the legs of men he likes. He's just coming up on 7. Horus is silver Egyptian Mau. He's long, pointy, beautiful, ingenious and has no common sense whatsoever. We got him to help keep Ish occupied (Ish has too much energy) and they mostly love each other -- they sleep together, groom each other and play -- though now that they're both adult, there are some squabbles. (Ish is Top Cat, but Horus is bigger and heavier.) Horus' daftness is hard to quantify: he's smart and can open doors, for instance, but he is also a total scaredy cat and will take fright at the oddest things. He's horrible to take to the vet, and is shy with new people, but once he takes to you, he treats you to long, dribblesome, luv fests, which are very very determined. He's 5.

What did the Celts eat?

The short answer is that we don't really know. From archaeological evidence and law codes, we know that pigs and shellfish were a large source of food, along with dairy products and grains, and, presumably nuts, fruits and some root vegetables. There are no surviving recipes or similar things, and feasts in prose tales tend to emphasise meat -- usually pig -- and alcohol (mead, beer, imported wine) -- all of which are the trappings of the very rich and the legendary.

Interesting. I hadn't realised there were so few domesticated animals at that point (Or were cattle kept mainly for milk?). Interesting that things like deer don't seem to be high on the list either.

Cattle were an economic unit in Ireland -- dairy, yes, but many would have to be slaughtered before winter. Venison is not much mentioned anywhere.

Who are the Celts, anyway? ;-) And if the Irish and the Welsh frequently portray themselves as Celts, why do the English very seldom think of themselves as Germans?

Well, John Hines says we *are* the Celts -- that the British Celts were imitative and took on the culture of successive invaders. I tend to the Simon James' view of the 'Celts' as disparate and regional peoples with varied cultures and overlaps, and to the belief that the current perception of Celts is an artefact of 18th and 19th century romanticism and antiquarianism. And, of course, there was similar romanticism around the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse in the later 19th c. (Tolkien and his 'northern-ness', W Morris' translating sagas and all those long, lush histories by the likes of J R Green). I guess two world wars may have killed that.
What do you think, Oh Professor?

what is your favorite film? (i hope i haven't asked that before.)

Oh, that's a tricky one. Number one is probably the 1989 Hong Kong film The Iceman Cometh, which is a mix of time travel, swordplay, romance and kung fu. Other favourites include the Indian film Rangeela, Jackie Chan's Twin Dragons, an Indian romance called Aaina. In terms of western films, Richard Lester's two Musketeers films (1973 & 1974); Green Card and an old, old British movie called Elizabeth of Ladymead.

What benefits do you get - as a writer - by attending conventions?

Being talked to by other writers. The rest is just scary.

Playing ketchup here a bit...Ok, bit of a leading question, but what do you think of 'The White Goddess' by Robert Graves? (this ties in with Celts a bit as I think he was trying to explain the language of the trees (Caed Goddau?).

It's not a book I recommend: it's very much part of a late nineteenth/early twentieth century trend to look for pan-human themes and explanations in mythology and to shake texts for 'authentic' and ancient pagan trace without any real attention or care paid to context or transmission or to the differences between cultures. And writers in this mode often relied on translations or summaries for things written in languages they didn't know, and picked and chose amongst texts and variants for the one that fitted their theory, regardless of whether or not that version was the oldest/most reliable etc. Graves and his ilk -- Fraser, Weston, Campbell, Markale -- can be delightful sources for fantasy but they are not good history or anthropology.

Sorry for the late reply but things have been slightly pear-shaped :/ What you say is fascinating and it reminds me of the pseudo-history that features in 'Holy Blood and Holy Grail' - which I love (on the understanding that it is probably 99% hokum). I did read (some) of The White Goddess a long time ago - I could never digest the whole thing - and it made a considerable impression on me! Since then I am a bit sadder and wiser on the subject of myth, but I do regard TWG as a source of inspiration (up to a point). I bought Jean Markale's book about Mary Magdalene but haven't read it yet. But I did read Susan Haskins's book which I suspect is a more scholarly survey of the texts.
Which leads to another question - what would you recommend? (It bugs me that 'The Waste Land' by TS Eliot is all based on that Jessie L Weston thing which is similar to Fraser. I've never actually read 'The Golden Bough' as (a) it is a vasty tome and (b) someone did tell me it was a load of old socks!

I'm not sure there's anything I'd really recommend on so-called Celtic paganism. There's a short book called War, Women and Druids, but Philip Freeman, which is a collection in translation of all the extant writings on the pre-Christian Celts from Roman eyewitnesses (and those are really the only sources we have -- the archaeology is thin and very very hard to interpret usefully). On Irish texts, there's Kin MacCone, Pagan Past and Christian Present, which is excellent, but very very academic and quite hard going (it explodes the myth of pagan underlay in extant Irish law texts). More generally, there's Ronald Hutton's Witches, Druids and King Arthur, which looks at how we created our modern versions of these and is very sharp on bad history. Miranda Aldhouse Green's various books on Celtic religion are pretty and quite interesting, but are only one interpretation of the archaeology, and aren't really a safe guide to the whole thing. On anthropology, I'm afraid I don't know. I studied it a long time ago and I haven't really kept up with new work on myth.

Thanks, Kari, that sounds fascinating - I may go after the Ronald Hutton.

He's an excellent writer: all his books are interesting and they should be available from libraries, as they're all still in print.

I'm sorry to hear about the pear-shaped-ness. Hope things are okay.

Thanks Kari - sympathies about the car! I tried to comment on the post but LJ was very slow.

Oh, hi! Just discovered your LJ after I finished re-reading Living With Ghosts. _{(You know how I judge how awesome books are? It's when re-reading them is even better than reading them!)}

Anyways, the question at the front of my mind, is there a sequel? And a close second, will both Thierry and Graelis be on it? Please and thank you?

-Merry

Hi, Merry, nice to meet you. I'm so glad you liked LWG enough to read it twice.
There will be a sequel, yes -- I'm working on it at the moment, it's set about 4 years later and both Thierry and Graelis are front and centre in it. The working title is 'The Gods Must Not Be Broken'. It won't be my next book, though -- that one is written and is set in the same world but with new characters (it's about Marcellan and his books, which are mentioned in LWG, and it called The Grass King's Concubine).

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