Medieval Histories, Inc.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Tonight I came across the website of an organization called Medieval Histories, Inc.  Their homepage can be found here. 

Medieval Histories, Inc. is clearly interested in circulating information about new discoveries concerning the Middle Ages with more accuracy than the mass media. To that end, they have created free-for-download publications called "Medieval News" (formerly "Medieval Histories") and "Minor Medieval News."  The articles in Medieval News in particular include wonderful, clear color photographs of finds and articles that list sources of the information provided, and short reviews of scholarly books related to period issues.  They are not written with the wealth of detail commonly found in the archaeological academic literature, but they are fun for general readers and historical costuming enthusiasts.   As Medieval Histories, Inc. is based in Denmark, it's not surprising that a significant proportion of the articles in question involve the Viking period.

Some of the more interesting articles include:

• Skiing in the Viking Age  (January 2016, No. 1).  Discusses the archaeological find of a sixth-century ski with the bindings intact, which has permitted a reconstruction of the ski to be made.
• Byzantine Textiles in German Collections (April 2016, No. 4).  Describes the categories of items present, with color photographs.
• Odin at Leire?  Or Freya? Or a Völva? (May 2016, No. 5). Discusses the seated Leire figure that some have claimed depicts Odin in women's clothing.   Most of the sources cited at the end are academic in nature and worth checking out.

Medieval Histories, Inc. has not been around long enough to have a large body of material on line yet, but what they have is interesting and potentially useful enough to be worth a bit of a costume researcher's time.

EDIT:  (12/20/2017)  Added links to the issues of Medieval News I referenced in this post.