iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

ID in rundata is Vr NOR1994;27.

030

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

The stone, dating to the 6th century, was only discovered 30 years ago in an archeological excavation.

130

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Today, I visited Gunnarskog and saw a runestone with the early runes. Apparently, the incomplete text has not yet been interpreted, at least notin rundata.info. The local museum café sold excellent waffles.

1190

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

I am deeply honoured to have been elected a fellow by the British Academy.

1150

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

My long held desire to go to Iona has finally been fulfilled. The weather is amazing, with no need for the warm and rain-resistant clothes we like, not even on the seavoyage today to Fingal's Cave.

3192

Reposted by Anders Winroth

Justine Firnhaber-Baker @medievalrevolt.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

The legendary medievalist Caroline Walker Bynum (Left) received an honorary doctorate at the University of St Andrews yesterday and I (Right) gave the laureation. #medievalsky

1542

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

I have accepted the position as director of the Centre for medieval studies at Stockholm University combined with a chair in medieval history from January. I did my undergraduate studies in Stockholm and the founding director Göran Dahlbäck was my advisor. Back to beginning www.su.se/english/divi...

su.se

Centre for Medieval Studies - Stockholms universitet

7362

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Here is a somewhat more in-depth analysis in writing. I cannot get over how Fridtjof Nansen was the model for the illustrations of King Olav Tryggvasson in the famous Norwegian translation of Heimskringla from 1899 (compare the two images a bit down in the article!). www.nb.no/historier-fr...

nb.no

Så vikingene egentlig slik ut?

Våre dagers idé om viking-estetikk stammer fra fantasy og TV-serier, sier forsker. Hun forklarer hvordan vikingene egentlig så ut.

011

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

My wife analyses (in Norwegian) that (in)famous photo of the Norwegian football team as Vikings. www.youtube.com/shorts/ILqpN...

youtube.com

Hvordan ser en autentisk viking ut?

YouTube video by Nasjonalbiblioteket

242

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

I would be eager to hear more about this. Have also thought about doing it.

121

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 29/11/2025

Why don't you? Just not me, please.

130

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 29/11/2025

It was with great sadness and shock I found out that my former student Torrence N. Thomas, Yale PhD 2009, passed away, all too young. He was a wonderful man and scholar of enormous abilities. www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/w...

dignitymemorial.com

Torrence Thomas Obituary - Washington, DC

Celebrate the life of Torrence Thomas, leave a kind word or memory and get funeral service information care of Joseph Gawler's Sons, LLC.

060

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 22/11/2025

If you are in Paris, come and listen to me lecture about Gratian! Tuesday 2 December at 18.00 in the College de Ste Barbe, close to the Panthéon.

1102

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

I once put a boom box on my shoulder because I had seen it done by people who seemed happy. I thought it was exceedingly silly and never did it again. So: 0. CDs? I did LPs! I still play CDs (and use the Britannica in my book case).

260

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

Good to know! But Hamlet was first published in 1603. I know you do not have that edition, but still...

030

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

PS. First page of the article, to give due credit to my co-conspirators Torsten Berglund och Stefan Jernberg. If you are interested in reading it (in Swedish), either buy the issue from www.genealogi.net/produkter-oc... or message me with an email address. 13/12

051

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

We published this in a Swedish genealogical journal Släkt och Hävd, which honored us with including one of our photos on the cover. Jöns Svinshuvud was among the people who exploited the rich copper veins at modern Falun in Sweden, and who made a fortune on mining and refining the metal. 12/12

181

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Clearly several men who issued the discarded letter. Those names include: "Jønis Swinshuwud", very clearly written. Turns out that our guess from 2008 must have been correct. Or at least, here is very good evidence of what his name in fact was. Removes any doubts that he was the first ancestor. 11/

141

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Did you notice that the parchment strips holding the seals contain scribbles? Here is a clearer image. "...en som thetta breff høra elle se..." (...who hear or see this letter...), clearly the beginning of a discarded letter, reused as strips for the seals. The other strips contain several names.

131

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

We have always worried that we were wrong about our guess that the letter of 1386 originally read Swinshuvoth, but new evidence has now turned up in an unexpected place, the local library in Linköping Sweden. A parchment letter from 1382 stored there was recently edited in Diplomatarium Suecanum. 9/

131

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

The name "Svinhufvud", however spelled, is rather strange. It means "hog's head". Later family members used head of what must be a wild boar in their coat of arms. Here it is in a stained glass window from the local church in Torsång (now in the Historical museum, Stockholm). 8/

141

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Which would mean that the name as originally written in the letter from 1386 would be "Swinshwoth". The second w then records a vocalic u followed by a consonant v: "Swinshuvoth", which makes sense as a medieval Swedish spelling of Svinhufvud. We published this idea in 2008. 7/

131

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

In fact, if we go back to the second w on the UV image, that hook is less clear and seems to be a little to the right. Now compare that to the combination "th" in this "bwrith" (also using w for vocalic u!). And note that there is something very unclear under the second w on the UV. Perhaps "th"? 6/

121

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Comparing to letters elsewhere, here are the words "skoghom watnom" ("forests, waters" in dative, describing appurtenances to the manor). We see that hook or bow above the w! So this suggests that the w's in the "improved" texts might in fact be w's. But look at the h to the left! Same hook! 5/

131

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

The letter from 1386 is still in private ownership, so a group of genealogists were able to borrow it from the Stora Enso archives and have it photographed with various tools. Here is the mysterious passage under ultraviolet light. We can just see two bows to the left over the w's. 4/

131

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

The most famous member of the Svinhufvud families is probably Pehr Evind (Pekka) Svinhufvud, who was the president of Finland 1931-1937. As a young local judge when Finland was governed by tsarist Russia, he was sent to Sibera for two years because he refused to follow an unlawful order. 3/

131

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

"Swinshwow" does not work in 14th-century Swedish and cannot be correct. If we zoom in on that corner, it is quite clear that the letters of the buyer's name have been filled in afterwards and not correctly. We also notice how surrounding letters that have not been filled in are quite pale. 2/

151

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

A parchment letter from 1386 was until recently the oldest evidence for the earliest ancestor of the Swedish-Finnish noble families Svinhufvud. The letter is a deed of sale through which a man called "Jønis Swinshwow" buys the manor Höjen with an adjacent farm. The upper right corner is damaged. 1/

1407

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

You would, alas, not be first:https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Raming. (Her dissertation is really good, btw.)

020

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

The railroad bridge over the mighty Glomma river disappearing into the late morning mist. When I take the train between Oslo and Stockholm, I cross on that bridgem

060

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

Isn't it in Västmanland, on the king's way to Uppland? It is a remarkable place with a huge runestone (where the name Anund appears), several smaller mounds, ship settings, prehistoric roads.

030

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

Read the interview with Sven Meeder, who has published the latest volume in the series Monumenta iuris canonici. He talks about early medieval canon law and especially about the misnamed Collectio CCCC capitulorum (in reality 404 chapters!). www.cuapress.org/2025/09/10/i...

cuapress.org

Interview with Sven Meeder on Collectio CCCC capitulorum, The Collection in 400 Chapters - Catholic University of America Press

Interview with Sven Meeder for the CUA Press Blog on his new canon law book.

130

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 20/09/2025

Started to read and seems very important.

0154

Reposted by Anders Winroth

John Gallagher @earlymodernjohn.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

A huge moment -- Melvyn Bragg steps down from In Our Time after over a quarter of a century. What a programme and what a legacy! Just a model for how to make great, clever, engaging radio, and a twenty-seven-year experiment that proves there's a huge global audience for smart, scholarly programming.

bbc.co.uk

Melvyn Bragg decides to step down from presenting In Our Time

After 26 years on the programme, the legendary presenter bids farewell to the series

36694193

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

You know Norwegian postal services no longer deliver packages to the US? But I'll get you a pdf.

110

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

I am exploring that second gloss layer, which seems to throw light at the teaching of canon law in c.1205 somewhere that is either Paris or influenced by it.

000

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

I saw every leaf preserved in Sweden in the original (thanks to kind permission of the staff of the National Archives). The most unexpected thing was this note (c.1800?) warning me off trying to read this kind of text: "Si quis hunc legere vult, monacus esse debet." I guess that is me told! 12/12

180

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

I started to research this manuscript a few years ago and have no published a first account of it in the Festschrift Salutacione sincera for my old Latin teacher and now friend Claes Gejrot. I identify the exact contents of what has been preserved, and discuss the glosses. 11/

270

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

For over 100 years, people have worked on cataloguing the fragments, producing this database. The cataloguers were able to identify no less than 78 leaves (plus a few snippets) of this Gratian manuscript, which would have had about 300 leaves, so more than a quarter. sok.riksarkivet.se/mpo 10/

140

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

So the first layer contains the apparatus Ordinaturus magister, created by people around the famous Huguccio, professor of canon law in Bologna until he became bishop of Ferrara in 1190. This is the first "real" apparatus of glosses created for Gratian's Decretum. 9/

130

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

We can barely make out a gloss in the first layer: Ordinaturus magister Gratianus decreta ipsa altius ingreditur a diuisione iuris, quod in duo diuidit, primo in ius uidelicet naturale et consuetudinis. Inde multiplices diuisiones supponit, quarum singulas exequatur dicens “Humanum genus”, etc. 8/

140

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

After the 1809 peace treaty between Sweden and Russia, the tax records of Finland (then lost to Russia) were sent to Helsinki. The Finnish records had been among those worst affected by the 1802 fire, so they are much harder to read. Here is the first page of the manuscript. @ahokas.bsky.social 7/

250

Anders Winroth @winroth.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

This is how surprised Claes was. One of the editors, Sara Risberg to the left.

020