Good times, and a fantastic audience!

#Medieval #football #Norway

Maria Danielsen, Knut Ørke og Holger Pötzsch har skrevet et opprop om KI i høyere utdanning som jeg nettopp har signert. Signér du også om du ønsker en mer faglig og kritisk diskusjon av innføring av KI på universiteter og høgskoler! Oppropet skal sendes til Khrono. nettskjema.no/a/602234#/pa...

The Final Viking Ship on the Move - Museum of the Viking Age 23 February will be the starting point for the relocation of the third and final Viking ship, as the Tune Ship sets out on its journey from the former Viking Ship Museum and into the Museum of the Vik...

The Tune ship gets moved this week www.vikingtidsmuseet.no/english/news... #viking #ships

Games and stories are imitations of life, ways of playing at life, sometimes ways of learning how to live. Some of the rules may appear both cruel and arbitrary. But if you want to play the game, or live the life, you have to follow them.

A rather beautiful view of the Ullandhaug tower upon returning to the office. Hopefully marking the beginning of a significantly better 2026!

Boromir from THE LORD OF THE RINGS, holding The One Ring. He thought he could use it for good, but everything done with the ring turns to evil. He was one of the mightiest warriors of middle earth, and he could not resist its powers. Others even mightier fell to the ring. Do you think you are stronger than them? The One Ring is generative AI.

Techbros seem to love Tolkien, so here's an analogy to help you understand what genAI is.

GenAI is The One Ring. You think your use is justified, b/c you don't have evil in your heart.

But it came from evil, it is intended for evil purpose, & anything you do with it will be twisted to that end.

I do find it interesting trying to explain to people that historians deal in arguments, not in facts. History isn’t a catalogue of dates and names, but what happened around those things, and how we now and those who were alive at the time perceived and responded to those events.

Another beer post for the evening: In 1241, Pope Gregory IX informed Archbishop Sigurd Eindridesson (r.1231-52) that children who are baptised in beer can not be considered to have been properly baptised.

He could not force himself to understand how banks functioned and so forth, because all the operations of capitalism were as meaningless to him as the rites of a primitive religion, as barbaric, as elaborate, and as unnecessary.

Trick or treat? 😈
#Halloween
BL Stowe MS 17, f.200r

Poster for Masters in Public Environmental Humanities. Our 2-year masters program in beautiful Stavanger, Norway, invites you to study today's environmental challenges as deeply rooted in culture and history. Key aspects: • Combine critical thinking with hands-on engagement • Work across humanities fields • Put learning into action through an internship • Taught entirely in English • Free tuition for students from EU/EEA/Switzerland and affordable for others If you believe community-engaged humanities can help build a more sustainable future, this is the place to start. GET MORE INFO & APPLY FOR FALL 2026 Questions? Email PEH@uis.no

The Greenhouse @unistavanger.bsky.social is launching an international Masters Program in Public Environmental Humanities from fall 2026! Taught in English.

Please share with all your students, #envhist #envhum colleagues!

Learn more about the program here: www.uis.no/en/studies/t...

What HE managers fail to understand is that in the context of the Humanities, ‘employability’ isn’t teaching coding or carpentry, but skills around writing, presenting, reasoning, evaluation, analysis, research etc. In an 80% service economy, these are the skills that fundamentally matter.

There is a certain bleakness in finding hope where one expected certainty.

📅 Save the date!

The University of Stavanger, invites you to a symposium entitled:

Freedom of Expression in Times of Genocide

🗓 Wed. Nov 12, 5–7:30 pm | Sølvberget, Stavanger & online

Speakers include: Sindre Bangstad, Raz Segal, Zoé Samudzi, Maha Abdallah & Martin Shaw

More details to follow.

The Rise of Poetry Therapy in Eleventh Century China How did literati manage their mental health in middle period China? Melancholy, depression, and down moods were as common among them as among us today. In the absence of antidepressants and therapists...

Medieval techniques to preserve mental health? Sage advice here (and a wonderfully written post).

"Tao seemed forever struggling with the dilemma between living freely but poorly and working in the government but unhappily. Besides resorting to alcohol, Tao dealt with such struggles with poetry."

Flyttar Osebergskipet for første gong på 100 år Noregs mest kjende vikingskip skal no løftast frå det gamle til det nye vikingmuseet. Flyttninga er venta å koste over en halv milliard kroner.

The best slow TV ever. www.nrk.no/kultur/flytt...

Man standing on stage talking

Powerpoint slide with Norwegian text, kvinner og makt i sagalitteraturen, and picture of a woman with a sword

At my good colleague @markusmindrebo.bsky.social’s book launch at the @unistavanger.bsky.social Library today. Women, Politics, and Social Networks in the Sagas of Norwegian Kings. Congratulations on the book, Markus!

Thanks, Finn Arne! 😁

Scholars, musicians, historians all stand in front of a night sky overlooking Baghdad. Underneath a phone rest. In the center text reads: "Discovery Tour app. A Ubisoft Original. Medieval Baghdad."

Step into the heart of Medieval Baghdad—right from your phone.

📜 Uncover rich, immersive history
🦅 Explore 9th century Baghdad
📱 Experience it all for free, anytime, anywhere

Launching today for free: the Discovery Tour App – Medieval Baghdad

#AssassinsCreed

We have a cover for Ancient Egypt in Video Games! Out either late 2025 or early 2026 - will post a link with contents once it’s up on the DeGruyter website.
I’m very excited that this is soon out in the world!

29th August is the feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist. Here Salome is depicted doing a spectacular sword dance! ⚔️

Bodleian Library MS. Auct. D. 2. 6; 'The Littlemore Anselm'; f.166v @bodleian.ox.ac.uk

"This book is a must-read for both medievalists and gamers." - @medievalists.bsky.social The Middle Ages in Computer Games by @robehoughton.bsky.social offers the most comprehensive analysis and discussion of medievalist computer games to date. Learn more 👉 buff.ly/XnzZx0z #medievalsky

It’s an unimaginable amount of money. He could have bought two - maybe even three - Warhammer armies.

a university is not for generating profit, it provides cultural enrichment via weird little gremlin people who love visigoths or haikus, and very occasionally a scientist who figures out faster than light travel

So does that mean it’ll develop crippling depression and a bunch of debt

Gode poenger her. Synes også det ligger en viss risiko i den typen kritikk mot ChatGPT som først og fremst er flisespikkeri mot bagateller (slik som du nevner her) - da bidrar man såvidt jeg kan se til å ta brodden av all (mye viktigere) kritikk så fort språkmodellene får fikset disse bagatellene.

There's another very kind review of The Middle Ages in Computer Games out on @gamevironments.bsky.social from @markusmindrebo.bsky.social. There's also a bunch of important articles on peripheral religions in games in this issue which are well worth a look. doi.org/10.48783/gam...

Look even *if* AI could do the job of a historian, I still wouldn’t trust it.

My research is on how elites used the past as a political tool and tried to control historic narratives.

I wouldn’t trust tech companies and their connections to right wing governments to not rewrite the past.