Martin Rundkvist
Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, chairman of the Swedish Skeptics Society, atheist, lefty liberal, board gamer, bookworm, and father of two.
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Posts by this author
May 13, 2013
Role-playing games of the Dungeons & Dragons variety come in the form of books that are functionally analogous to computer software. You get your operating system (core rule book) and then you can buy update packages (rule expansions), programming libraries (campaign settings) and application…
May 12, 2013
Junior and I went for two days to LinCon, the annual gaming convention in Linköping (est. 1984). There was a fine crowd of geeks, all ages and with a good gender balance, many in steampunk finery. I said to Junior, "Look at them closely, son. These are your people."
Here's what I played. All good…
May 9, 2013
The other day somebody hid a geocache a short bike ride from my house at a spot where, I now know, an orienteering-themed fraternal order was founded in 1930. Today I rode out and became the second person to log the cache. And coming home I realised it was my 800th find since I started 8 years ago…
May 4, 2013
Current World Archaeology #58 (April/May) has a seven-page feature on the 8th century mass graves in ships at Salme on Saaremaa in Estonia. This astonishing find interests me greatly as the ships and the dead men's equipment are Scandinavian, and so I mentioned it here back in 2008. One of the…
May 1, 2013
I'm not very bothered by archaeological interpretations that are proven wrong. I'm afraid of those ideas that have become accepted even though there is no way they can ever be tested.
"... it was common knowledge that local witches had killed old Mayor Niels Iversen Scribe by means of performing…
April 30, 2013
In your room
Where time stands still
Or moves at your will
Will you let the morning come soon
As we dance to the Masochism Tango
I ache for the touch of your lips, dear
But much more for the touch of your whips, dear
There'll be times
When my crimes
Will seem almost unforgivable
I give in to sin…
April 23, 2013
I've got a lot on my mind.
Bronze Age deposition book: visiting some sites on Friday, data collection almost done, have started doing stat analysis and writing interpretations, need to write gazetteer entries while I remember details of how I've managed to pinpoint find spots.
Also time to decide…
April 22, 2013
A few years ago I did some fieldwork at Djurhamn, a peripheral naval harbour of the 15th through the 17th centuries (and blogged much about it: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H, and published a paper on it in an anthology). Now maritime archaeologist Jonas Wiklund has published a paper on the sad fate…
April 21, 2013
As part of my duties as chairman of the Swedish Skeptics, earlier tonight I took part in a studio discussion on Swedish TV4 about Gardasil, the vaccine against human papilloma virus that is offered to all 12-y-o Swedish girls. It was a pretty silly affair. The TV people had decided on the angle…
April 17, 2013
2009. University of Lund publishes the PhD thesis Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning in Created Agricultural Wetlands, dealing with biological diversity and ecosystem services in ponds in the agricultural landscape (and commented on here).
2013: Same department advertises a post-doc in the…
April 8, 2013
I found something pretty wild in an essay by J.L. Borges this morning. There's a 13th century Norse saga about the Buddha. And the story has other fine twists as well. This all revolves around a legendary tale of the Buddha's early life.
In the 6th century BC a son was born to a petty king in what…
April 4, 2013
The Swedish Church lost 54,000 members last year. That's more than half a percent of the country's population.
Yay! Eight years after submission, a star-crossed paper of mine has finally appeared in print! I was at this provincial museum in 2004, looking at finds, and the staff asked me for a…
March 28, 2013
I used to be kind of angry and disappointed with Kraftwerk. The only album they put out after I started listening to them was 1986's Electric Café which is OK but not great, and after that, no new material. But now I look at their catalogue and think, hey, from 1974 and for seven years on, they…
March 25, 2013
In this well-written, painstakingly annotated and beautifully designed book, physicist Baruch Sterman (with contributor Judy Taubes Sterman) traces the history and prehistory of a certain blue pigment, along with its cultural and religious significance through the ages. It's what the Torah and…
March 22, 2013
Kay Glans used to edit the literary pages of Svenska Dagbladet, Sweden's main conservative* newspaper, and Axess Magasin, a conservative Swedish arts & social sciences mag that also has a TV channel. The latter's standard is high, and I've been particularly pleased to find repeated staunch…
March 21, 2013
Registration has opened for the 15th European Skeptics Conference. Hie thee there and register NOW, because there's only 400 tickets!
Here's the confirmed (still evolving) line-up:
Anna Bäsén (Sweden): Undercover Health Journalism
Chris French (UK): Psychological Perspectives on Paranormal Belief…
March 18, 2013
After only one day of my teaching, one of my Kalmar students has already twigged that there's a funny discrepancy between the course's post-modernist meta-archaeological syllabus and the opinions voiced by his main teacher from the lectern and elsewhere. Fearlessly he goes for my jugular on the…
March 16, 2013
The Grey Mouser, along with Fafhrd the Northerner hero of Fritz Leiber's genre-defining sword & sorcery story cycle, is the archetype of the Dungeons & Dragons thief. He began his career however, Leiber informs us, as apprentice to a "hedge-wizard" who taught him some simple magical…
March 15, 2013
Juniorette's best buddy Betty looks a lot like Juniorette and is almost like a second daughter to me. Her mom is Korean and her dad is Turkmen, great people both. The other day Betty got into a fight at school with another girl who started calling her names. (Betty, by the way, is a very well put…
March 12, 2013
Some Facebook updates.
Bolsängen: an Uppland smallhold whose name (thanks to the Swedish method of making compund nouns) means "the sexual intercourse bed".
The Poupon mustard brand got its name from the firm's coprophiliac founder, who liked to encourage his staff with a friendly "Poop on, guys!…
March 7, 2013
Sweden used to have its own version of Irish Coffee: kaffekask. It was big in the 19th century and I believe it dropped from favour during our 1917-55 period of liquor rationing. Nobody seems to drink kaffekask anymore.
A kask is a type of helmet like the ones worn by English bobbies. But that's…
March 6, 2013
In my career (such as it is), I keep running into a hurdle having to do with the great value placed in the arts/humanities on the novelty of interpretations. Time and again, reviewers will say that my work tackles interesting questions in a methodologically competent manner using solid data – but…
March 5, 2013
Here's a guest entry from my friend Professor Howard Williams of the University of Chester. He was my charming guide on an antiquarian road trip Sunday.
I met Martin at his luxurious guest accommodation on the main campus of the University of Chester and we got into my trusty VW. We left Chester,…
March 2, 2013
My Linnaeus University colleague and trätobroder (debate adversary) of many years, Cornelius Holtorf, published a book in 2007 under the title Archaeology is a Brand. That is certainly a possible way of looking at it. But preparing a talk on internet archaeology, I made a little discovery. Look at…
February 18, 2013
My paper on the re-use of Late Iron Age picture stones during that same period (mainly in late male graves) has been published in English and Swedish parallel versions of Gotländskt Arkiv 2012. That's the annual of the Gotland County Museum. Have a look! Questions and comments are most welcome.
February 16, 2013
Current Archaeology #276 (March) has a feature on excavations for a new container port that's being built at Stanford Wharf near the mouth of the Thames. The Iron Age and Roman Period archaeology proved quite lovely, with waterlogged salt-making sites, remains of a boat house, loads of pottery,…
February 14, 2013
The Midgardsenteret visitors' centre at Borre invited me to give a talk about my Östergötland elite settlement project. This went well, with a sizeable and appreciative audience last night. One gentleman explained that they had all learned Swedish from watching kids' TV when they were little. Today…
February 12, 2013
Karl Olausson has just submitted his Bachelor's thesis in history: a study of the post-WW2 Swedish boardgame market. The material he's used is largely interviews with people in our country's boardgame business. Karl has kindly given me permission to put the work on-line (in Swedish). Here's the…
February 4, 2013
It’s time we had a de-lurk around this here blog! The last one was over a year ago. If you keep returning to this blog but rarely or never comment, you are a lurker, Dear Reader, and a most welcome one too.
Please comment on this entry and tell us something about yourself – like where you are, what…
February 2, 2013
I'm happy to note that Aard's traffic is now back at its pre-Wordpress level: 880 daily uniques in January. I believe this is due to three factors: more frequent entries, a small traffic peak thanks to the Hårby valkyrie, and above all my return to tagging.
I don't know why I quit tagging. Just…