Dr Ruth Johnson

speaker

128 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 25 Jun

Dr Ruth Johnson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan · Medieval Dublin · 25 Jun 2026 podcast

But you have to question these ideas just because it seems to fit, you know, you have to really look carefully at every bit of evidence.

So I started to look at things like the the way the the face was drawn.

it wasn't very typical of Viking art and it wasn't very typical of insular art, like that's the art of the Irish Sea area in the early medieval period.

Um and then when you look at the sword and the shield that he's carrying

The shield is a little triangular shaped shield and it's got like little squiggles on it that look like heraldic devices.

A Viking shield would be round.

The sword could fit in either milieu Scandinavian or European.

um I suppose Norman of the period.

It's it's not very diagnostic.

So lots and lots and lots of questions in my mind about this.

So I started looking at things like the bio tapestry from 1075 that um for for European parallels.

I looked at um Irish High Crosses, I looked at Scandinavian um stone carving, I looked at

Manuscript art, I looked at the art of the graffiti in European churches, and I finally came to settle on the composition being most comparable to the seal matrices that were used by the aristocracy in the Anglo-Norman aristocracy.

um and the Normans um in the medieval period.

And these seals were used as kind of authenticate documents and they were quite um formulaic in their the way that they were depicting equestrian subjects, warriors.

So that's one possibility.

So that's the art and what was really special about this piece though is that it's a

combination of art and lettering.

So whoever made this object was living in a secular mediew on um a suburban street.

round about the cusp of the Anglo-Norman invasion.

Showing 81–100 of 128 · page 5 of 7