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Martin Rundkvist's blog. Archaeology, skepticism, Sweden. And books and music and stuff.
Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, chairman of the Swedish Skeptics Society, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, and father of two.
Category: Travel
25-26 February. Blankaholm, Swedish East Coast archaeology conference, speaking about picture stones 7-9 March. Danish Viborg, Bronze Age burial conference 15-17 March. Paris, European Archaeological Council, Annual Meeting 21 March. Stockholm, Senioruniversitetet / ABF, speaking about pseudoarchaeology 24 March. Eskilstuna...
Posted by Martin R at 4:03 AM • 5 Comments •
Category: Language
When I was 16 in 1988 I spent a couple of days in Paris with a language school. I brought the address for a game store, one that advertised in White Dwarf magazine. It was on Rue Poirier de Narcay,...
Posted by Martin R at 4:58 PM • 5 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Placing the runestone in the airport terminal ensures its protection from the rain and freeze-thaw cycle, and also makes it maximally accessible to the public.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 7 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Last time I passed through Oslo airport I discovered this Kon Tiki-themed restaurant with a faux Ecuadorian stele.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 7 Comments •
Category: Tech
The rear undercarriage sits in bulky pods on the fuselage, right below the wings. Makes the plane look like it's got a beer gut.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Travel
Dear Reader, it's raining in Hangzhou and I am not well. I have had the shits since Wednesday evening, some headache, and last night I seem to have had a fever. Both of the latter problems are kept at bay...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 11 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
My mother-in-law grew up in the mountains near Fushan in the prefecture of Qingtian (pronounced CHING-tien), inland Zhejiang province. Though the prefecture's name means "Green Field", it's pretty poor and has been a major emigration area for decades. The...
Posted by Martin R at 11:47 AM • 7 Comments •
Category: China
On the flight from Amsterdam to Hangzhou Saturday, I observed some interesting behaviour on the part of my Chinese co-travellers. After the main meal, the stewardesses went around hawking tax-free goods. At this time, a bunch of people stood up...
Posted by Martin R at 8:03 PM • 6 Comments •
Category: Travel
I gave two talks and one radio interview this past weekend and just generally had a blast.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 14 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
I was appalled to see how much recently looted archaeology the Minneapolis Institute of Arts shows.
Posted by Martin R at 3:52 AM • 14 Comments •
Category: Travel
Three years ago I visited the US. Security at Newark was a little slow, but I just showed them my Swedish passport and sailed in. You see, there was a visa waiver agreement back then. And I thought there still...
Posted by Martin R at 6:35 AM • 7 Comments •
Category: Travel
Less than a month now! Dear Aard readers Heather Flowers and Erin Emmerich of the University of Minnesota have invited me to speak there in April. My wife will accompany me and interpret whenever we run into someone who speaks...
Posted by Martin R at 5:09 PM • 20 Comments •
Category: Children
As my friend David the physiotherapist commented, if you must break a bone, break your radius.
Posted by Martin R at 5:12 PM • 19 Comments •
Category: Travel
I was at a Viking Period workshop in Birmingham until Wednesday noon. A sudden, major and sustained snow dump on the area south of London meant that I couldn't go home the way I had planned: train to London, train...
Posted by Martin R at 11:40 AM • 10 Comments •
Category: Travel
In the preceding entry I gave a list of good stuff about a Gambian vacation. Here's the flip side. My first trip to Africa, a week in Agadir, Morocco in the mid-1990s, was marred (but not ruined) by the locals'...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 9 Comments •
Category: Travel
Gambia is Africa's smallest country, with 15 million people living on a flat stretch of river plain carved out of central Senegal. Besides peanut cultivation, tourism is an important source of revenue, and indeed coastal Gambia is one of the...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: Travel
Any Dear Readers in Birmingham? I'm going to be there from Monday to Wednesday for a Viking studies workshop. Email me your cell phone numbaz and maybe we can meet up!...
Posted by Martin R at 6:46 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: Humour
A Gambian moment. We're in an extremely dilapidated taxi that has stalled at the roadside, just a stone's throw from Tanji village's main taxi hub. Before getting into the car, my wife and I had to haggle for ten minutes...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 9 Comments •
Category: Tech
The movements of EU bureaucrats has created a market for short plane hops anchored in Brussels, and so the cheapest way for the rest of us to move about by air in Western Europe is often to join the briefcase carriers and change planes in Belgium.
Posted by Martin R at 10:35 AM • 5 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
I recently had the pleasure of receiving my first invitation to an interview for a UK academic job. Though in the end I didn't actually get the job, it was overall a very friendly and pleasant experience.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 17 Comments •
Category: Travel
Does a pro-science critical-thinking approach automatically lead to liberal humanism? Maybe.
Posted by Martin R at 12:37 PM • 14 Comments •
Category: Travel
The first day of the James Randi Educational Foundation's second London conference was jam-packed.
Posted by Martin R at 4:00 AM • 3 Comments •
Category: Travel
I'll be travelling a lot in October and November and giving some talks. Aard readers in the afflicted cities, drop me a line and maybe we can meet up!16-18 Oct, TAM London. 29-31 Oct, Oslo, Kritisk Masse: speaking about Thor...
Posted by Martin R at 4:35 PM • 10 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
The Department of History and Archaeology in Chester is moving from their lovely but run-down Georgian building at the north city gate to the main campus. So I spent most of today helping with the move: shifting finds from...
Posted by Martin R at 3:56 PM • 6 Comments •
Category: Tech
Facebook has turned up security a notch and effectively locked me out when I'm on the road. I have hundreds of Fb contacts that I don't actually know and wouldn't recognise if I met them in the street. Mention their...
Posted by Martin R at 3:03 AM • 10 Comments •
Category: Tech
It's been more than four years since the first time I blogged about how cool it is to have broadband on a train. But I still haven't gotten over it. Trainblogging again! The sun is shining and Södermanland zips past...
Posted by Martin R at 6:51 AM • 12 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Today I had the rare pleasure of teaching undergrads.
Posted by Martin R at 4:02 PM • 15 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
I'm at the 11th Nordic Bronze Age symposium, which for the first time includes a bunch of Baltic colleagues as wall. Everybody's very friendly and the atmosphere is informal.
Posted by Martin R at 4:31 PM • 7 Comments •
Category: Travel
Next week, 29-31 October, I'll be in Helsinki for the Nordic Bronze Age symposium. The organisers have been kind enough to ask me to chair one of the sessions, but I'd love to meet up with some Aard readers too....
Posted by Martin R at 12:08 PM • 8 Comments •
Category: Children
We spent Friday afternoon and evening walking in the sunshine, eating like kings, listening to some pretty far-out and eclectic music and playing the Swedish 70s board game Marinattack.
Posted by Martin R at 10:12 AM • 5 Comments •
Category: Skepticism
The Amazing Meeting London 1 was a top-quality event. The only way it could have been even better is if they'd included a few more interactive bits, workshops & stuff.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 6 Comments •
Category: Skepticism
I'm at The Amazing Meeting London, an Old World instance of the skeptical conferences organised by the James Randi Educational Foundation. (Or more correctly, I am waiting for breakfast at my threadbare Bayswater hotel, where I sleep in a...
Posted by Martin R at 3:00 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: Travel
I've been called in to help my friend Arne, retired art historian, whack a manuscript into shape. So the other day I drove down to the manor on Vikbolandet and spent 24 enjoyable hours there, writing and chatting and...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: Travel
I type this in the hotel lobby while waiting for the train just across the street that will take me to Brussels. The conference closed at 13, I had sandwiches with my colleagues and then set out again for...
Posted by Martin R at 10:44 AM • 8 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Sculpture fragment from the Cathedral of St. Lambert in Liège. Today's bus excursion took us up the river Maas/Meuse into Wallonia, Belgium's Francophone part, where our first stop was Liège. The city looks pretty crummy, I'm afraid, with a...
Posted by Martin R at 1:48 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Travel
Yesterday's paper sessions offered eleven presentations. I almost fell asleep several times. This was not mainly because four of the papers were in German and French which I have a hard time understanding when spoken quickly. The main reason...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 11 Comments •
Category: Travel
A funny intermezzo caught me Saturday on the train from Brussels to Liège. Across the aisle, two young pretty lesbian couples were seated. And they spent most of the ride necking furiously. I suppose that as a het male I...
Posted by Martin R at 2:42 AM • 5 Comments •
Category: Travel
I like to travel light. My luggage for a five-day conference stay in the Netherlands barely fills a small back pack. Apart from what I wear and carry in my pockets, I've got:Netbook computer + charger Smartphone charger Camera +...
Posted by Martin R at 12:30 PM • 10 Comments •
Category: Travel
Dear Reader, if you are in the Netherlands, in England or in Finland and you either a) want to meet me, or b) want to avoid meeting me, I have some important information for you. I am planning to visit...
Posted by Martin R at 5:02 AM • 7 Comments •
Category: Travel
Greetings from Chester, founded in AD 79, whither I'm come to accept a position as Visiting Research Fellow with the university's archaeology department. Inclement weather delayed my flight, but the taxi driver who took me into town was a clement...
Posted by Martin R at 12:11 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: Travel
Next week I'm going to Chester in England to visit the archaeology department there and accept a position as Visiting Research Fellow. I'll be in town from 2 to 6 February. Any Dear Readers in that neck of the woods...
Posted by Martin R at 1:27 PM • 8 Comments •
Category: Travel
Paddy K is hiking in Scotland without any portable internet connection. He just texted me a request for the coordinates of the Bridge of Orchy. He's currently in Inverardran, about 20 km SSE of the bridge. People in the...
Posted by Martin R at 1:52 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Photography
Got up early this morning, six thirty, and slipped out for an hour's walk. The sun was already pretty high but still veiled in mist. I walked past vineyards and olive groves toward a farmhouse until yapping guard dogs made...
Posted by Martin R at 4:58 PM • 8 Comments •
Category: Photography
74 snaps from my recent visit to Orkney.
Posted by Martin R at 3:24 PM • 5 Comments •
Category: Travel
I'm in Kirkwall on the Orkney islands for a conference on maritime societies in the Viking and Medieval periods. It's a lovely sunny evening, which is apparently a rare and precious occurrence around these parts. The dialect is also something...
Posted by Martin R at 4:29 PM • 9 Comments •
Category: Travel
Took a walk around the local geocaches, ended up trapped for half an hour in a nightmarish retirement community. Endless identical white single-story houses with garages and immaculate lawns, the streets deserted in the baking January afternoon. I was...
Posted by Martin R at 4:51 PM • 16 Comments •
Category: Travel
Descending toward Ft Lauderdale airport this morning, I was shocked by the expanse of suburban sprawl stretching to the horizon below me. A huge drained swamp, all flat, covered by an intricate pattern of canals and streets and plots...
Posted by Martin R at 1:21 PM • 3 Comments •
Category: Travel
I just popped out for a burger at Arbee's, and I chose a seat with a good view of the full moon riding high over a Shell gas station. On the wall of the station was a large luminescent...
Posted by Martin R at 6:53 PM • 9 Comments •
Category: Travel
Above is a candid pic by Nathan L. Walls, showing yours truly at Saturday's hum & soc sci session. The teeshirt is from the Swedish Skeptics and reads "I am skeptical" in an obscure North-European language. Yesterday's highlights wereAn...
Posted by Martin R at 8:54 AM • 6 Comments •
Category: Travel
A good thing about jet lag is that it gets you up in the morning. I awoke at five, played around with the computer, showered, breakfasted and was outside at half past seven. It's a brisk, cold sunny morning...
Posted by Martin R at 8:30 AM • 3 Comments •
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