Steffen Hope
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hopesteffen.bsky.social
Steffen Hope
@hopesteffen.bsky.social
2.8K followers 770 following 5.4K posts
Norwegian medievalist, bibliophile, music lover and art enthusiast.

[Header: Valenciennes - BM - ms. 0320, f.120v]
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hopesteffen.bsky.social
Steffen Hope @hopesteffen.bsky.social · Dec 16
Some months ago, a collection of articles edited by Grzegorz Pac, myself, &Jón Viðar Sigurðsson was published by Brepols. The book is in open access, & can be found here: www.brepols.net/products/IS-....
Cover of the book, which features a medieval illumination. The illumination depicts King Wenceslas carrying a bowl to some nobles seated at a table. Behind the king, the archangel Michael appears, holding a spear in his left hand, and placing his right hand on Wenceslas' head in benediction. Wenceslas points backwards to the angel.
Reposted by Steffen Hope
manuelmunoz.bsky.social
What is a Book of Hours? How to read a calendar? What is an Atlantic Bible? And a Paris Bible?...

If you've ever wondered any of the above (who hasn't?) join my latest online course for @imems.bsky.social: 'Books of Devotion: Medieval Bibles & Books of Hours'

imemsdurhamlearn.com/books-of-dev...
Books of Devotion: Medieval Bibles and Books of Hours
Immerse yourself in the gilded world of biblical manuscripts and Books of Hours. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Amiatino 1, 5r. A fully online course This one-week online course, supp…
imemsdurhamlearn.com
November 28, 2025 at 10:22 AM
hopesteffen.bsky.social
I was just reminded of a two-part blogpost I wrote on the methodological challenges when analysing calendar fragments: blogg.lnu.se/mapping-sain...; blogg.lnu.se/mapping-sain....

My favourite illustration of these challenges is the fragment below.

[Sveriges Riksarkiv Fr. 25608]
Fragment of a twelfth-century calendar fragment cut vertically so that the names of the saints celebrated on each day are almost completely lost.
November 28, 2025 at 10:13 AM
Reposted by Steffen Hope
rachelschine.bsky.social
My annual traveling turkeys post! What do you do when a New World bird visits the Mughal court? Paint it in miniature, of course! This essay by Neha Vermani follows the Muslim reception of our feathered friends.
www.folger.edu/blogs/shakes...
The turkey's journey from the Atlantic to the early modern Islamic world | Folger Shakespeare Library
Folger Shakespeare Library is the world's largest Shakespeare collection, the ultimate resource for exploring Shakespeare and his world. Shakespeare belongs to you. His world is vast. Come explore. Jo...
www.folger.edu
November 27, 2025 at 2:23 PM
Reposted by Steffen Hope
liber-ray.bsky.social
Full description and link to the digitised manuscript here:
www.ria.ie/collections/...
Book of Ballymote - Royal Irish Academy
RIA MS 23 P 12 (Cat. No. 536) A.D. 1391
www.ria.ie
November 27, 2025 at 6:20 PM
Reposted by Steffen Hope
liber-ray.bsky.social
The @rialibrary.bsky.social Book of Ballymote (MS 23 P 12) is a fantastic 14th-century compilation of biblical texts, saints’ lives, topographical works, and even a table of the Ogham alphabet! Love the fun initials and illustration possibly depicting Noah’s ark 📜🎉
November 27, 2025 at 6:19 PM
hopesteffen.bsky.social
Reading Einarr Skúlason's poem on Saint Olaf (known as Geisli), I'm inordinately pleased to note that stanza 26 is essentially an extended pun, since it recounts how the healing of a cut-off tongue caused Olaf's fame to be spread by the Danish tongue, i.e. Old Norse.
November 27, 2025 at 1:04 PM
Reposted by Steffen Hope
ccooijmans.bsky.social
This afternoon! Come along, or tune in online, to hear about a deeply peculiar late medieval imagining of a local viking past!
ccooijmans.bsky.social Christian Cooijmans @ccooijmans.bsky.social · 10d
I'll be giving a talk at Aberdeen Uni next week on the 'Dane saga' of Breda - easily one of the most unique, offbeat sources of imagined viking activity from the later medieval period. Both in person and online, so do tune in to hear me wax lyrical about this text!

www.facebook.com/events/22080...
A Past that Never Was: Examining Vikings in the Medieval ‘Dane saga’ of Breda - Christian Cooijmans
Event in Aberdeen, United Kingdom by Scandinavian Studies at Aberdeen on Thursday, November 27 2025
www.facebook.com
November 27, 2025 at 9:31 AM
hopesteffen.bsky.social
For two hours, as twilight shifted into night, the dog stood by a campfire in a pine holt, barking at distant deers in the dark, unable to pursue them.

Now, in her dreams, she is pursuing the living daylights out of those beasts.
November 26, 2025 at 11:42 PM
hopesteffen.bsky.social
it is circumstance, after all, that makes saints or savages, monsters or martyrs of us all!

- Henry William Herbert, The Silent Rifleman (chapter 11)
November 26, 2025 at 9:18 PM
hopesteffen.bsky.social
This is slanderous. I do not have too many books.
jowolff.bsky.social Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 4d
Twitter accounts are based in Russia. BlueSky accounts are based in homes with, frankly, too many books, plants, obsolete cables, and pieces of rustic pottery, that could do with a bit of a tidying up, to be honest.
November 26, 2025 at 10:16 AM
hopesteffen.bsky.social
Yesterday, I spent a solid chunk of the day felling trees for firewood, & today I'm trying to write something coherent about skaldic poetry. Somehow, these topics do not feel as unrelated as one might expect.
November 26, 2025 at 10:00 AM
Reposted by Steffen Hope
calthalas.bsky.social
For what is worth my first book is going into paperback now, so you can actually have it for less than 40 euros. (Or even better: recommend it to your librarian!)

www.routledge.com/Roman-Infras...
Roman Infrastructure in Early Medieval Britain: The Adaptations of the Past in Text and Stone
Early Medieval Britain was more Roman than we think. The Roman Empire left vast infrastructural resources on the island. These resources lay buried not only in dirt and soil, but also in texts, laws, ...
www.routledge.com
November 26, 2025 at 9:46 AM
Reposted by Steffen Hope
lauropea.bsky.social
A bilingual Dano-Norwegian/northern Sámi catechism from 1728, afaik the first printed book in Northern Sámi
book title page in gothic print, dano-norwegian and sami facing one another
November 25, 2025 at 10:01 AM
hopesteffen.bsky.social
interlarded, it is most probable, with no slight strains of self-glorification

- Henry William Herbert, The Silent Rifleman (chapter 10)

#epigraphsfor2025
November 25, 2025 at 11:47 PM
hopesteffen.bsky.social
At around half past three this afternoon, I captured this almost sombre idyll in the village centre. There is an air of the timelessness of fjords here, even though this scene is very much a modern view.
View of the shoreline from a village situated at the innermost end of a fjord. In the foreground is a small green lawn with clumps of snow, two boathouses and a couple of boats taken on shore for the season. Beyond the boathouses are a couple of other wooden buildings. Beyond the houses, the blue-gray shore stretched outward, hemmed by a range of mountains tinged in snow and with their tops hidden by low but not dense grey clouds. In a gap between two clouds, the snowy top of one mountain is seen, coloured pink by the light of the setting sun.
November 25, 2025 at 8:39 PM
hopesteffen.bsky.social
For the feast of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, a fifteenth-century depiction from the Church of Saint Mary in Bergen, Norway. This was the main church of the Hanseatic merchant sin the city, & the altarpiece was made in Lübeck.
Detail from a fifteenth-century altarpiece with a central field and two wings. The photograph is focused on a niche in the upper right-hand corner of the central field. In the niche, Catherine of Alexandria is shown in a red and blue dress with a golden cape draped around herself. She is crowned. Her left hand is resting on a wheel, which represent the torture device that was broken when the Romans attempted to use it on her. Her right hand is resting on the sword by which she was martyred. The niche is and the rest of the altarpiece are painted in gold, blue and read.
November 25, 2025 at 2:09 PM
hopesteffen.bsky.social
Related to this: A favourite point of mine to make when I'm teaching source criticism to students is that we have had newspapers for the better part of five centuries, & this is a media technology that we as a society still do not properly understand.
hopesteffen.bsky.social Steffen Hope @hopesteffen.bsky.social · 3d
Frankly, I'm not sure people have the brains to manage the technology they've got

- Hobbes, Calvin & Hobbes 28.12.89
November 25, 2025 at 1:05 AM
hopesteffen.bsky.social
Frankly, I'm not sure people have the brains to manage the technology they've got

- Hobbes, Calvin & Hobbes 28.12.89
November 25, 2025 at 12:30 AM
Reposted by Steffen Hope
downham.bsky.social
Today's knowledge commons free download "Vikings' Settlements in Ireland Before 1014" (2014) #ireland #vikings #medievalsky #history #archaeology
works.hcommons.org/records/4ae7...
November 24, 2025 at 10:28 PM
hopesteffen.bsky.social
This summarises my attitude to this & other LLMs. I remain deeply unconvinced about its usefulness, while its ethical problems are both well-documented & too extensive to justify a technology that produces a poorer version of things humans have done well for ages.
hollynielsen.bsky.social Dr Holly Nielsen @hollynielsen.bsky.social · 3d
I’ve never used Ch*tGPT. I’ve never wanted to or had a single moment when I thought it would be helpful. I realise my work is very specific, but whenever I see people talk about using it or ‘needing’ it ngl in my head I’m just thinking ‘skill issue’.
November 24, 2025 at 10:39 PM
Reposted by Steffen Hope
carinr.bsky.social
"...we are also aiming to launch an interim version of our Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue...In addition, more than 3,000 digitised manuscripts are now available through our new website, with more to be added in the coming months." Post links to the PDF MSS list at www.bl.uk/collection/d...
November 24, 2025 at 2:29 PM
Reposted by Steffen Hope
sonjadrimmer.bsky.social
This is not the way, and @cnygren.bsky.social and I lay out in detail why it isn’t in this essay here. static1.squarespace.com/static/55577...
How We are Not Using Al in the Classroom By Sonja Drimmer & Christopher J. Nygren Premise Prompt engineering is a term that has become commonplace since the widespread availability of generative AI applications like ChatGPT. The idea is that the outputs of the large language models (LLMs) on which these applications are based are only as good as the prompts that are input: vague prompts result in equally vague outputs. And thus was born the race to train for careers in prompt engineering. Unfortunately, the bubble seems to have burst before even the first generation of students was trained for this career outcome. We were given a prompt as an invitation to participate in this newsletter: "How are you using Al in the classroom?" While we have accepted this invitation, we are engaging in the most humanistic act we can imagine-refusing the prompt.
November 24, 2025 at 1:16 PM
Reposted by Steffen Hope
carolinepennock.bsky.social
Eek! My episode doesn't technically air until 8 December, but the whole series of the new BBC Arts Civilisations series is out now on iPlayer, including this episode on the Aztecs with me and friends @amyfuller.bsky.social & @restall.bsky.social (& others not on the Sky). Airs Mondays at 9pm, BBC2.
Civilisations: Rise and Fall - Series 1: 3. Aztecs
The Aztecs battle to save their civilisation from Spanish invaders – but is the real threat from the enemy within?
www.bbc.co.uk
November 24, 2025 at 11:01 AM
hopesteffen.bsky.social
I find it very pleasing that sometime around 1040, an Icelandic skald addressed the king of the Norwegians as "sinjórr", showing that already at this early stage the French vocabulary for lordship had entered the Nordic world.
November 24, 2025 at 10:50 AM
hopesteffen.bsky.social
Today is the feast of Saint Clement, who was martyrised by being thrown into the ocean with an anchor tied around his neck. Consequently, he was one of the most widely popular saints to invoke against dangers at sea.

[Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA M 15, f.269r]
Woodcut vignette from the 1492 edition of the Lübeck Passionael, printed by Steffen Arndes, a collection of saints' legends. The woodcut shows Saint Clement in papal garb, mitre and cross staff, holding a largre anchor in his left hand. He is standing in a landscape of low hillocks, with a city in the far background, seen against the sky.
November 23, 2025 at 9:25 PM