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
March 3, 2011
Sweden is shaped like a ski, and people live mainly in the southern quarter, but in the other three-quarters there are many skiing resorts. I've been going there every few years since I was three. I'm not a competitive or particularly elegant down-hill skier, but I enjoy it and I can get down all…
March 1, 2011
Jack Chick is an insane Christian cartoonist. Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an atheist horror writer who wrote about people being driven insane. In Fred Van Lente and Steve Ellis's brilliant 2000 tract, Chick and Lovecraft are made one.
Thanks to Kalle Bäcklander for the tip-off.
February 28, 2011
I spent most of last weekend in Blankaholm, a small village on the Baltic coast of Sweden between Kalmar and Västervik. My colleague Michael Dahlin (who keeps the Misterhultaren blog) lives there, and this weekend was the fourth time that he headed the annual Blankaholm conference on Swedish east…
February 26, 2011
A citizen in the island province of Gotland has submitted a Roman cavalry-officer's helmet mask to the County Archaeologist. It is said to have been in the family for some time. The state of the piece shows that it can't be from a ploughed field, which makes it unlikely to be a recent metal-…
February 22, 2011
My detectorist friend Svante Tibell pointed me to an extremely interesting term paper by Ingrid Ulst, one of Marge Konsa's students at the university of Tartu in Estonia. The title says it all: The Regulation of Metal Detectors and Responsible Metal-Detecting: the Examples of the UK, Sweden and…
February 21, 2011
Here's another artisan taking inspiration from archaeology: Ted Bouck made the above arm ring out of brass sheet, punch-decorated and silver-plated it. Ted comments, "I left the perimeter wave from stamping because I liked the organic look. The diamond with dot inside is a period stamp, though not…
February 18, 2011
Being a prehistorian, I tend to see Stockholm as a cancerous growth. It has expanded for the past seven or eight centuries from small beginnings on an island right where Lake Mälaren debouches into the Baltic. In this process, the city and its suburbs have ruined or covered up great swaths of a…
February 16, 2011
When skeptical darling George Hrab released his latest album, Trebuchet, he placed a golden ticket in the sleeve of one copy that went into regular distribution. On the ticket was Hrab's phone number and a promise to come and play a gig for free at the venue of the recipient's choice. When the…
February 16, 2011
[More about archaeology, reenactment, darkages, shields; arkeologi, vendeltiden, Uppsala, sköld.]
David Huggins is a member of the Wulfheodenas Dark Ages re-enactment group. Among mid-1st millennium Scandies, a wulfheoden was a kind of berserker warrior, only one who identified with wolves rather…
February 15, 2011
Recently my mind has been blown twice. First by listening to the first four songs on Funkadelic's acid-drenched 1970 album Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow. Then by studying the above picture.
It's comet Tempel 1. Up close in interplanetary space. And it's been visited twice by different…
February 14, 2011
I once wrote about a miniature køkkenmødding shell midden that accreted in our kitchen sink when we had oysters (image below). Another type of archaeological assemblage that occurs far more commonly in our house is the chicken or pork bone dump. The chicken bones usually don't look very…
February 10, 2011
Here's something Leif Häggström sent me on Facebook, originally apparently written by one Abby Smith.
Have you noticed that you are only seeing updates in your newsfeed from the same people lately? Have you also noticed that when you post things like status messages, photos and links, the same…
February 9, 2011
Spent most of the day in Stockholm County Council's building in town, where our new County Archaeologist Maria Malmlöf had convened a seminar for the region's excavation units. The agenda was for everybody to present some highlights from last contract archaeology season in Stockholm County. These…
February 7, 2011
Celebrated 100th birthday of my mom's aunt, a sprightly and clear-minded lady who likes conversation and hugs and has no problem recognising her niece's kids who rarely visit.
Attended concert with six kids' choirs (including Juniorette's). One of the choirs had five boys, the others <=1.…
February 4, 2011
Before modern hygiene and housing standards, children died in droves of infections in the West. Now few do, but instead they are increasingly bothered by allergies, which are immune-system malfunctions. The current view among researchers is that there is a connection here. Live in dirt, and you…
February 3, 2011
Utskrift is a book-format archaeological research journal put out roughly biannually by Kulturmiljö Halland, the heritage management section and excavation unit of the Halland County Museum in Halmstad. The language is Swedish, with English abstracts and summaries. The first issue appeared in 1991…
February 1, 2011
This time of year I've repeatedly been taking part in the Global Population Speak-Out, reminding my Dear Readers that a lot of humanity's main problems could (and will) be solved by shrinking the planet's human population drastically. It's up to us: either we quit having enough children to replace…
January 31, 2011
Mount Everest: named after Colonel Sir George Everest (1790-1866), British Surveyor General of India.
K2: an early land-surveyor's shorthand notation, used because nobody lived near enough to the mountain for it to have a local name.
Himmelbjerget: "Mount Heaven", 147 meters above sea level.…
January 29, 2011
Dismember a chicken and boil it in pan #1 until tender.
Boil it with onion + carrot + garlic clove, all split, and bay leaf + salt.
In pan #2, melt a few tablespoons of butter and whisk 0.4 dl of wheat flour into it.
Add 5 dl of the chicken broth from pan #1, strained, a little at a time, while…
January 27, 2011
I'm very pleased to have made it back onto the courtesy subscription list of Current Archaeology, which is a popular zine about UK archaeology. Not only does it offer good writing and photography, but it covers an area whose archaeology is actually relevant to what I do. Not too many millennia…
January 25, 2011
Upon hearing that I'm going to Minnesota, my excellent detectorist buddy Kenth Lärk sent me some scans of postcards from Duluth that his emigrant uncle sent home to Sweden in the early 1910s. I particularly like this image of the 1892 Union Depot, as the architecture is similar to that of the…
January 22, 2011
I don't know about you, Dear Reader, but I think these lilac-coloured concrete hogbacks outside of the Nacka Forum mall's rear entrance look extremely gay. As Azar Habib put it in his hit "Hatten Ãr Din", Det tycker vi blir bögigt.
January 20, 2011
Dungeon Crawl as Subway Punk-Gang Standoff
Everybody knows what a dungeon game is. There's this underground complex of rooms and corridors, stocked with traps and secret doors, treasures and meanies to guard them. And you are a member (or all of the members) of a Tolkienesque band of vagabonds who…
January 19, 2011
It's been almost a year since the last de-lurk. Aard has hundreds of regulars, thousands if we adopt a generous definition of "regular", and most of you are lurkers -- quiet readers who don't say much. So, everybody, please comment away, as briefly or verbosely as you like, and do consider telling…
January 18, 2011
The current issue of Vanity Fair (#606, February 2011) has an interesting piece on the collaboration between Wikileaks, the Guardian and other old media. On page 110 we're told that Wikileaks is "partly hosted on a server in Sweden that is lodged in a former nuclear bunker drilled deep inside the…
January 18, 2011
Fornvännen's summer issue (2010:2) is now on-line and available to anyone who wants to read it. Check it out!
Kalle Sognnes looks in commendable detail at a rock art site in wooded central Sweden and demonstrates that contrary to previously voiced opinions, it does not much resemble Norwegian…
January 17, 2011
Noted skeptical author and podcaster CJ Ãkerberg takes a look at one of the most active and visible anti-vaccine cranks in Sweden, Sanna Ehdin, and at the history of vaccination. The entry was originally published in Swedish on the Tankebrott blog, and I asked CJ to translate it for Aard.
In…
January 10, 2011
East Asian child rearing is notorious for the heavy pressure put on children, but also famous for the great feats of technical brilliance and hard work many people who grow up under these conditions perform. Kids are sent to evening classes, weekend lessons, hardly have any free time. And then many…