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
January 4, 2009
Dear Reader, remember the remote-controlled Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity? How long is it since the last time you thought of them? Spirit landed on Mars five Earth years ago today, Opportunity on 25 January -- and both are still going strong! These machines were originally meant to work for…
January 3, 2009
The fifty-seventh Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Testimony of the Spade. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology!
Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to me. The next open hosting slot is on 28 January, weeks from now. All bloggers with an interest in…
January 2, 2009
The houses in our new neighbourhood are clones of one basic design: an L-shaped single-story structure with a fenced yard inside the angle of the L. The main entrance (1) is on one of the L's outer long walls. The grubby-boots entrance (2) is on the gable adjoining the wall with entrance 1. Finally…
December 31, 2008
I have made peace with the passing of the 70s. I no longer feel that the 80s is the default present decade during which everything still happens. But let me tell you, Dear Reader, in my mind the 90s still lie mostly in the future. Windows 98 is a very new operating system. Nobody born in the 90s is…
December 30, 2008
A house I have been asked to check in on over the holiday season was burgled last night along with two neighbouring houses. I've been on the phone to the police and the window repairman, and then I've been showing them around. My acquaintances had a burglary alarm system with motion detectors -- on…
December 29, 2008
Today marks Aard's second anniversary. I'm still having fun and hope you are too! Looking at October and November, the blog had about 950 unique readers daily and was ranked #24 out of 74 blogs on Sb. I recently updated the Best of Aard page for those of you who want to check out some past goodies…
December 28, 2008
John Ajvide Lindqvist's 2004 debut novel LÃ¥t den rätte komma in came as a pleasant surprise. From a stand-up comedian of respectable but unremarkable standing, suddenly we had this excellent vampire novel set in a staid Stockholm suburb in 1982 -- a time and a place I personally know quite well.…
December 24, 2008
Merry Christmas, Dear Reader! I am in a good mood, checking my mail while most of the celebrants at my dad's house watch the annual Disney special, just having dropped my kids off for dinner at my mom's place where my son's mom will join them. This, you understand, can only be Scandinavia, where:…
December 22, 2008
Blogging's been low what with many boxes to unpack and no broadband connection. But things are getting into shape at home. Hope I find the electric drill tonight so I can get some of the paintings up off the floor.
Archaeology Magazine is a publication of the Archaeological Institute of America and…
December 21, 2008
The fifty-sixth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at The Greenbelt. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology!
Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to me. The next open hosting slot is on 28 January, a bit more than a month from now. All bloggers with an…
December 18, 2008
Very timely, a friend told me that his ex-employer is getting rid of furniture. We have enough for about 90 sqm, which leaves us with 24 sqm to furnish in the new house. So, I took the opportunity to grab a 1940s mahogany laminate table with six matching chairs and a 1990s Gärsnäs solid-birch…
December 16, 2008
Here are two snaps of my new home, taken just after breakfast today (the first bread I've baked in the house!). Both are taken toward the north: one from the kitchen door toward the dining room, the other standing just west of the dining room and looking down the length of the living room.
Note…
December 15, 2008
I'm typing this on my smartphone while digesting an evening meal of ramen noodles, egg and Chinese Sauerkraut from the tin. I'm in our new house. It's a mess, boxes everywhere. My wife is having a foot bath. Juniorette is playing with legos in her room. Both are singing in Mandarin.
Yesterday a…
December 12, 2008
After a bit more than seven and a half years, we're leaving our apartment on Burbot Street and moving to a 114 sqm house on Shroud Street. Fisksätra's four main housing areas have street names themed for fish, fishing gear, boat details and sea birds respectively. I've lived on Carp Bream Street…
December 10, 2008
The Swedish language has produced three truly great fantasists. Two are internationally reknowned: Astrid Lindgren (with Pippi Longstocking) and Tove Jansson (with Moomin). The third, Erik Granström, is almost exclusively known among Swedish gaming nerds like myself. From 1987 to 1994 he published…
December 10, 2008
Gold disc brooch from King's Field, early 7th century. This cloisonné ornament has lost all the garnets that originally filled its gold-walled cells. BM 1028.a.'70.
From my buddy Barry Ager at the British Museum comes big news: the museum has launched a state-of-the-art on-line catalogue. Search…
December 9, 2008
Two weeks ago I left my pocket calendar on my desk at the Academy of Letters where I only work one day a week. This was inconvenient as I rely entirely on the calendar to remember what I'm supposed to do apart from my weekly routine. When I finally got my hands on it again last Thursday, it calmly…
December 9, 2008
Another career whine.
Applying for academic jobs that are invariably given to people who are much older than me, I've come across a frustrating conundrum.
In Scandyland, it takes about seven months from the application deadline to decide who gets an academic job. This is because the selection…
December 8, 2008
Working with the Gothenburg Historical Society's metal detector group at Sättuna near Linköping in the spring of 2007, I was fortunate enough to be on site when Niklas Krantz found the thirteenth gold foil figure die known to scholarship. These dies were used in the 6th, 7th and 8th centuries to…
December 6, 2008
My friend of twenty years, retired broadcaster Lars Erik Ãström, died the other day of cancer at age 69. Too soon by far: he has young grandchildren and he was a very good man without whom the world is worse. MaðR harða goðr. I will think of him every time I read of caves and flottholmar,…
December 4, 2008
Here's something neat. Annika and Bengtowe Angare are photographers and digital retouch artists (check out their site and hover your cursor over each picture!). They've photographed the early-16th century sword I found at Djurhamn in 2007 and stuck it point first into the find spot on a vintage…
December 4, 2008
Kai reports from an on-going exhibition at the Stockholm Museum of Natural History on homosexuality among non-humans. It is based on Bruce Bagemihl's research.
I am impressed by the gay dolphins' invention of nasal intercourse. To pull that off, one human would have to be hugely endowed in the…
December 3, 2008
The fifty-fifth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Cognition and Culture. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology!
Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to me. The next open hosting slot is on 31 December, less than a month from now. All bloggers with an…
December 2, 2008
Conversing with a friend recently, I mused, what could be the background to the expression "batshit insane"? My friend suggested that it might have something to do with having bats in the belfry. I then wondered what the Swedish equivalent of this expression would be.
In Swedish, you don't have…
December 1, 2008
"In the morning I left voice mail messages to call me on my mother's and sister's numbers. As I came in to work I saw S still logged in to his Skype account, where he'd left it going for his final exercise round. More subdued phone calls during the day, there would be a viewing at the hospital the…
December 1, 2008
Four of my favourite authors were born in the 1890s and wrote mainly from the inter-war years onward.
H.P. Lovecraft 1890-1937
J.R.R. Tolkien 1892-1973
F.G. Bengtsson 1894-1954
F. Nilsson Piraten 1895-1972
There seems to be something about that generation's idiom, taste and experience that…
November 30, 2008
Dear Reader Michael Merren of the Religion, Philosophy and Other Oddities blog is a married man and a father of three. He also used to be a Catholic priest. Learning this, I asked Michael to write a guest entry on his personal history. And now I know whom to turn to with any theological question…
November 29, 2008
Driving home from our auto mechanic shop (notable not only for its brisk service, but also for being run entirely by first-generation immigrants, which is rare in that business) yesterday, I heard two new songs on the radio that made a big impression on me. More exactly, the two singers amazed me…
November 28, 2008
Here's something pretty damn cool: Ossington airbase in Nottinghamshire, England. From 1942 to 1946 it was an RAF bomber airfield, and then it reverted to farmland. Just look at the big X on the aerial photograph from Google Maps. Six decades of abandonment, and it's an archaeological landscape!…
November 26, 2008
Chris, the most highly allocthonous of the SciBlings, just did something neat over at his place that immediately called for emulation. He's a geologist, and he's graphed what periods of Earth's history he's been studying when. So, Dear Reader, here's my graph: not as pretty as Chris's, but…