Anniina Jokinen

Stonehenge, a megalithic structure of ancient standing stones, with fluffy clouds on a bright blue sky.

A beautiful day on Salisbury Plain:

#Stonehenge

The Radcliffe Camera, the famed circular building at the heart of Oxford.

Christ Church, a beautiful, ivied edifice evoking the days of grand country houses.

Christ Church War Memorial Garden, with lavender and other plants in shades of purple, with an occasional sprinkling of yellow.

Oxford yesterday: as magical as one would expect or hope. 💜

Today’s book haul from Waterstones Covent Garden. Mostly picture books for K-2; will do Middle Grade shopping another day. Oh, English bookshops!😍 📚

Southwark Cathedral (St. Mary Overies / St. Saviour’s, Southwark)

Got very animated, talking about Gower to my non-Medievalist sister, who told me I scared away a pair of tourists with my impassioned narrative 😂

Monument to John Gower, English author, friend and contemporary of Chaucer in Southwark Cathedral. An effigy of Gower, resting on three volumes of his works.

Visited my boy Gower yesterday at Southwark Cathedral (St. Mary Overies):

My favorites are when the parents email me, saying perhaps their child didn’t even take the book out, and then I respond with, well, regardless, we’ll have to charge you for it, and the book mysteriously appears in the book return overnight 😂

I’m feeling attacked 😂

My 14yo just now: “POP QUIZ: What’s the first word of BEOWULF.”
I: “Hwæt!”
14yo: “And what does it mean?”
I: *Long, pregnant sigh* “Well…”
14yo: *laughing, because he knows he just played a great joke on me* 😂
#proudmama

Today, for the start of Read Across America Week, we had a Free Book Fair for our elementary students. Everyone got 1 book ticket to start and an additional ticket for any old book they turned in, up to 5 extra tickets. The kids were thrilled! Everyone walked away with at least one new-to-them book📚

Images of three manuscript leaves stitched together in photoshop. The leftmost image, is a recto, and is blank, but some ruling and bleed-through of border decorations and a central image of a cross in a circle. In the middle is a mostly blank page with a clearer image transfer of the circle-with-cross. On the right is a page of brown text in a small gothic hand. There is no trace of the source of the transferred borders or cross image. From Houghton Library 2020HEM-79

Sometimes the absent is still quite visible. This is the recto and verso of the same leaf, and the recto from the following, from #Houghton 2020HEM-79, showing traces of what was once clearly a lovely miniature of the Host, entirely missing from the MS as seen today
#MedievalSky

How Medieval Peasants Survived the Winter — Tasting History How to survive a medieval winter, and a 14th century recipe for rich and hearty wheat berry porridge

A wonderful episode of Tasting History, in which Max Miller covers frumenty, a Medieval porridge:

www.tastinghistory.com/episodes/fru...

I have a little plea and it's this: please keep posting about things that aren't The Horrors. I am not saying to not look at or be informed about The Horrors. What I am saying—what I am genuinely kind of begging you to do—is keep posting about books and movies and sunsets and pets and joy. Please.

[Image: Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek, NKS 901]

Booking is now open for our first 'Unfolding Time' exhibition lecture:

Megan McNamee, 'Light and Labour in Late Medieval Concertina-Fold Almanacs'

🕓 5.30pm, 19 February

For booking info, see www.lambethpalacelibrary.info/events

#UnfoldingTime #LambethPalaceLibrary

Vatican Manuscripts Added Week 3 of 2025 A total of thrty-two manuscripts were added in the past week to the Vatican repositories. The largest contributor was the Vat.lat collection, with thirteen, followed with Capp.Sist.Diari with nine an...

32 #Manuscripts were digitized this past week by the #Vatican www.wiglaf.org/vatican/2025...
Includes several Boethius, a nice Sallust, more Sistine Diari volumes, an early Russian Gospel, Augustinian liturgy... and more!
#Medievalsky

W. B. Yeats

Thank you!😍 The kids loved it, and we raffled off Aslan the Lion between all the kids in the school. The winner doesn’t know yet, but they will certainly have happy holidays with Aslan in the house!

Large faux-wood doors, through which shows a snowy landscape with lamp post and Aslan, the Lion.

Our school book fair is in full swing. We went with a Narnia theme, and it has been a huge success with kids & parents alike! 😍

I made the cupboard doors out of pink insulation foam:

I’m sorry your day was crappy! Happy to hear your husband took such good care of you.💛

Apologies for the late response, instead of spending three minutes answering your email I ignored it and felt anxious for two weeks

Illustrated image divided into four panels, each showing a head of a bat with a text label. Top left: little guy, a regular looking back with a dark face and light colored fur, top right: little guy deluxe, a bat with a mask and large ears alongside a bat with a leaf shaped nose, bottom left: what is even going on here, a visored bat with a large forehead next to a bat with a large, wrinkly nose, bottom right: o hi doggie, a fruit bat with its tongue sticking out.

Contrary to popular belief, there are only four kinds of bats.

Oh, the sweet days when the elite wanted to immortalize themselves by building colleges, museums, and libraries.

A fluffy brown owl in a round green base, his eyes wide and his feathers puffed out. Behind him is ornate floral line art in blue and red.

Today’s #medievalmood is this owl, who has seen things.

I feel you, friend. I feel you.

From a Book of Hours at Trinity College, 15th C, B 1.46

I think I can still recite all the Dark is Rising prophecies by heart!

“When the dark comes rising,
Six shall turn it back….”

Greenwitch was perhaps my favorite (apart from the Dark is Rising), but I was also passionate about The Grey King.

I read Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones so many times, I don’t know if any other kids in my library got to read it! 😍 The Chrestomanci books and Eva Ibbotson’s Which Witch were among the first books I bought for our school library!

I created this meme to commemorate the death of Twitter

Never forget: READING FOR PLEASURE has the biggest positive impact of any factor on children's life chances. So never stop sharing books with kids. Never stop reading to them, and helping them to read. Never stop changing lives. #literacy #kidlit #books

I got 50 of them for our school library and introed them to our fourth grade, then to our two 5th grades. Instant addiction. Tomorrow, third grade. These kids are going to read, read, read!

7ft polar bear stande; a gorgeous fella, the strong, silent type.

Our school’s book fair is coming up. Parents can ignore emails, flyers sent home in backpacks, social media posts, &c., but nobody’s going to be able to say they didn’t know about the book fair coming, when my 7ft. friend here stands at the front of the car pickup line!😁📚

I open my Bluesky feed and it is full of really cool people saying really smart things and being really passionate about really interesting stuff.

I like this version of social media, and the world.

Thanks, folks.

Autumnal sights at Castlerigg Stone Circle, UK 🤩 🍂
(c. 3200 BC)
#archaeology #photography