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
August 22, 2009
The Department of Archaeology at the University of Lund is organising a panel debate about creationism on 30 August under the heading "Archaeology, the Bible and Charles Darwin -- a debate about evolution, creationism and archaeological evidence". On the panel are Neolithic scholar Kristina…
August 20, 2009
In Nazi Germany and its occupied territories there were many ways to get thrown into an extermination camp. But Friedrich Marby broke some kind of record: he was sent to Dachau for publishing too silly ideas about runes. He survived.
The Nazis themselves were no strangers to occultism, particularly…
August 19, 2009
Daryl Gregory has published a number of very good short stories over the past few years, notably a few science fiction pieces based on neuropsychiatry. So I was very keen to read his first novel, Pandemonium (Ballantine/Del Ray 2008). Genrewise it's modern fantasy in the sense that it takes place…
August 18, 2009
My dear friend and fellow archaeo-blogger Ãsa M. Larsson of Ting & Tankar has sent her PhD thesis off to the printers! This she has done with her supervisor's blessing, which in Sweden means that she is for all practical purposes a PhD now. The viva is just a ritual and your committee can't…
August 17, 2009
Sean B. Carroll's latest book has been sitting on my reading shelf (and been read by my wife) for over four months, but now I've finally read it. Remarkable Creatures is a collection of mini-biographies of people who have made important discoveries in evolutionary biology.
I won't mention names,…
August 16, 2009
My son just got back from a happy week on Hallands Väderö, a small island nature reserve off the southwestern coast of Sweden. It reminds me of my own visit there at about his age and the bird ring I found.
We were staying in BÃ¥stad on the mainland for a week, and I remember having a lot of fun…
August 14, 2009
I love black tea, and by that I mean brews from leaves of Camellia sinensis and C. s. assamica, nothing else, milk and sugar please.
Earl Grey is basically Assam flavoured with oil of bergamot, a citrus fruit. It's OK if there's no plain tea. But many café employees believe that Earl Grey is plain…
August 13, 2009
The seventy-third Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Greg Laden's blog. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology!
Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to me. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. The next…
August 13, 2009
Did you notice something funny about the Google logo yesterday? It was full of falling stars. This marked the maximum of this year's Perseid meteor shower. Every year about this time, Earth moves through the exhaust cloud left behind by the comet Swift-Tuttle. When gravel and sand from the comet…
August 11, 2009
One of my pastimes is writing on Wikipedia. It's almost unavoidable since I use the encyclopedia daily and keep running into stuff to correct -- facts, spelling, stylistic mishaps. In the past, though, I've been really discouraged when trying to improve the articles about Falun Gong (a.k.a. Chinese…
August 10, 2009
I was brought up to believe that I am special. I was told that I am unusually smart and gifted. Whether or not this is true, it has given me a deep-seated expectation of myself to do great(ish) things, to achieve a bit more than the average Joe, to stand out from the crowd, to gain recognition.…
August 8, 2009
[More blog entries about sweden, nature, photography; skärgård, foto, stockholm, natur.]
Tärnskär ("Tern Island") is a low seal-like grey cliff on the outer margin of the Stockholm archipelago. My buddy Dendro-Ãke only goes there when an eastern wind is blowing, because if your engine dies…
August 7, 2009
As pointed out here many times before, archaeology is a bad career choice as the labour market is tiny and ridiculously overpopulated. I mainly keep tabs on the academic subset of this labour market. But via Alun I've received news that UK contract archaeology, the business where you remove and…
August 6, 2009
From Birmingham art students Tanya Mircheva and Mihaela Calin, a clip about office-job boredom.
August 6, 2009
Illerup Ãdal in Jutland is known for one of Denmark's largest and most well-excavated war booty sacrifices, most of it dating from the early 3rd century AD. (See my recent entry about the similar Swedish site Finnestorp.) As I've learned from my friend Tim Olsson's new book about such sites, there…
August 5, 2009
[More blog entries about mining, Norway, abandonedbuildings, photography; gruvor, Norge, övergivnahus, foto.]
From my buddy Claes Pettersson, pix he took in July at the abandoned Christian VI mine of Røros, Norway, at 62°N. It's a copper mine that was worked from 1723 until shortly after 1945.…
August 4, 2009
From Aard regular Christina Reid (she started commenting less than a week after the blog opened, bless her heart!), a few pictures from Mid-summer Eve at the Scandinavian Cultural Centre in Burnaby, British Columbia. Tina and her hubby are active in the Reik Félag reenactment group. And her…
August 2, 2009
I just finished reading Nils Ahnlund's 1953 history of Stockholm up to 1523, which marks the end of the Middle Ages in Swedish historiography. Its 538 pages of text offer less concrete detail than an archaeologist might wish for, and I soon lost track of everybody named Anders Jönsson and Jöns…
July 31, 2009
This picture is not from a film. It is something you would see back in the 17th century: a burning real tall ship. At the Djurö bridge, not far from Djurhamn where I have done fieldwork, is Point Brännskeppet, "the burnt ship", which commemorates the wreck of the Rikswasa ("Sheaf of the Realm")…
July 30, 2009
A woman in New Hampshire allegedly bludgeons her eight-months pregnant friend to death. Then she performs an amateur C-section on her victim, delivers the baby and assumes maternal responsibilities for it. After a week she and the baby girl, who is in fairly good health, are apprehended by the…
July 29, 2009
The seventy-second Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at A Hot Cup of Joe. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology!
Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to me. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. The next…
July 29, 2009
My recent talk in Trävattna parish hall, Västergötland, was covered by two regional papers. Rune Torstenson has kindly scanned the items for me. The headlines read "Power once originated in the mead-hall" and "Searching for ancient power-wielders". To read the articles, click on the images.
July 28, 2009
Dear Reader, if you are a wasp, do not attempt to nest in my house. You will only Release the Fucking Fury, said with a bad Swedish accent. I will plug your nest's entries and vacuum your workers as they return from foraging. Do not sting my chin, the only bit protruding from my raincoat. Do not…
July 27, 2009
Inspired yet again by the Carlquist & Järv anthology of library history I mentioned recently, I decided to write something about the libraries of my life. I'm fortunate in that I have always been able to take libraries for granted. I feel at home in them.
Learning to read at age four or five,…
July 26, 2009
The 72nd Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at A Hot Cup of Joe on Wednesday. Submit your best recent stuff to Carl before Tuesday evening. Anything anthro or archaeo goes!
July 25, 2009
Yesterday saw the season's first mushroom expedition. A bit early for real diversity, with only four edible species collected, but on the other hand we found quite a lot of chanterelles.
Chanterelle, Kantarell, Cantharellus cibarius
Birch bolete, Björksopp, Leccinum scabrum
Orange Birch Bolete,…
July 24, 2009
One of the major influences that combined to form Western psychedelic rock was traditional Asian music. But musicians in Asia picked up the vibe pretty quickly and started to play their own versions of it. Lately I've been listening to a great compilation of the stuff, and I'm particularly struck…
July 23, 2009
Sven Gunnar Broström, known as Stone Gunnar.
In June of last year I reported on my visit to a small research excavation directed by my Fornvännen boss Lars Larsson at Botkyrka golf club south of Stockholm. The Stensborg site is highly unusual by the standards of this part of the country: a…
July 21, 2009
Sösdala style silver sheet fittings. Image from the Finnestorp project's web site.
Among the many things Swedish archaeologists envy our Danish neighbours are their splendid war booty sacrifices mainly of the 3rd, 4th and 5th centuries AD. These are silted-up lakes whose anaerobic peat deposits…
July 19, 2009
I'm reading Eric Carlquist's and Harry Järv's massive new anthology of library history, Mänsklighetens minne. For an idea about what the anthology is like, consider that all the contributors are male and that the youngest of them was born in 1947. For an idea about me, consider that I would…