Christian Cooijmans

Low stone walls of round houses on a hill against a cloudy backdrop

The stone rampart of a hillfort against a cloudy backdrop

Low stone walls of round houses on a hill against a cloudy backdrop

It's a bit of a climb up to the Iron Age hillfort of Tre'r Ceiri ('Town of the Giants') on the Llŷn Peninsula, but so very worth it to walk along its intact ramparts and round houses.

Someone on here compared AI produced material as "digital asbestos " which in a few decades' time we will have to work out how to eradicate from the fabric of research.

The fifteenth/sixteenth-century Eglwys Beuno Sant or St Beuno's Church in Clynnog Fawr, Gwynedd, with surrounding graveyard.

Figurative decorations on woodwork benches in Bueno's church.

The wooden ceiling in the nave of Bueno's church

An early stone sundial of C10/C12-century date

A picturesque little stopover at Eglwys Beuno Sant or St Beuno's Church in Clynnog Fawr, Gwynedd. Current building C15/16 (much tinkered with since), standing atop an earlier (C7) ecclesiastical foundation, which was allegedly attacked by Hywel ap Ieuaf in 978 (with either English or viking aid).

Admittedly it took us a few tries as well 😅

A Border Terrier hiding in purple heather, staring at the camera with head tilted.

He certainly seems to think so!

A small Border Terrier in front of the tenth/eleventh-century wheel cross of Maen Achwyfan, standing at 3.4 metres tall in a field in Flintshire, Wales (presumably its original location).

Tato managed to spot some Viking Age sculptured stones in northern Wales last week, and Maen Achwyfan might be his favourite!

Korean language poster for the NOHI (Nordic History) Media Fest in Seoul, whose design features a viking with a horned helmet.

A page from the NOHI (Nordic History) Media Fest booklet, containing reflections on vikings and the Nordic world: 'The vikings and their world have long captured the public’s interest, enjoying a firm familiarity and appreciation with audiences all over the globe. In academic circles, too, many decades of dedicated research have unearthed the many kaleidoscopic ways in which these iconic mariners travelled and encountered other peoples across boundaries of community, culture, and continent. Gone are the days in which vikings were typecast for their rampant pillaging and plundering, with a much more nuanced picture having since emerged. Today, most scholars would frame the Viking Age as a ‘global’ phenomenon, reflecting not only the distant shores that these groups were able to reach themselves, but the much wider-reaching networks of communication and cultural exchange that they accessed as a result. This was an age in which Frankish steel, Arctic ivory, and Persian silk could all pass through the same Scandinavian hands, connecting peoples, places, and perceptions in an intricate web of interaction. Vikings were much more than warriors here – they were merchants, envoys, explorers, and settlers. Theirs was a world of untold diversity and opportunity. These days, in many ways, the legacy of the viking world remains a global one. Through every medium imaginable – film, literature, digital content, and well beyond – people around the world continue to discover, explore, and reinterpret this vibrant history. In this way, NOHI Media Fest is exemplary of the influence that the vikings, and the Nordic past more broadly, continue to hold on our collective imagination. - Dr Christian Cooijmans, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway'

Brilliant to see so much engagement with the viking and Nordic past by students at Hankuk University (HUFS) in Seoul, South Korea, and glad to have been able to contribute to the event in a small way.

nissi0.wordpress.com/hankuk-unive...

Contextualizing ancient texts with generative neural networks - Nature Aeneas, a generative neural network trained on ancient texts, helps historians contextualize inscriptions and perform epigraphic tasks, offering an improved starting point for historical research.

Source (Aeneas research paper in Nature):

Possibly worth pointing out, as per the authors, that the rel. scarcity of data means the model may struggle with 'rarer epigraphic phenomena or under-represented regions or periods'. Survivorship bias also 'potentially skew[s] the data towards certain materials, locations, or historical contexts'.

Case in point:

This is far more common than you'd think, with various details being effectively invented at the point of translation. It's why I'd always argue for parallel texts in publication, adding a degree of transparency and accountability, and preventing chains of misinterpretation that can last decades.

Glad it reached you okay!

Annales Fontanellenses translated by Christian Cooijmans

Very happy to have received this handsome little volume in the post today. Thanks so much to @ccooijmans.bsky.social for sending me a copy!

WeTransfer TOS says they can use all your uploaded content for genAI

Bye forever, WeTransfer.

From last week's IMC paper, here is my handy general formula on the effects of vikings moving cattle by ship across long distances:

After several rounds of proofing, this 80-page behemoth of an article - including edition and translation - is now ready and set to be published very soon (OA). It's been a long time coming, and I can't wait to finally share it! 😊

Trash Ouroboros

There is: @kcommons.bsky.social

Session description for International Medieval Congress Leeds 2025 Session 1647 - Early Medieval Flanders and the Vikings Organiser: David Defries, Kansas State University Moderator: Niall O'Súilleabháin, Université de Poitiers Paper 1: The Vikings as the Rod of God's Wrath in Early Medieval Flanders - David deFries, Kansas State University Paper 2: Labour and Authority in the Construction of Anti-Viking Defences in Early Medieval Flanders - David Bachrach, University of New Hampshire Paper 3: Stepping Stone or Cornerstone?: Redetermining the Role of Flanders in the Viking World - Christian Cooijmans, Universitetet i Oslo

Title slide for a PowerPoint presentation, featuring a viking-style boat on a wooden dock in a forested coastal environment. The paper is called 'Stepping Stone or Cornerstone?: Redetermining the Role of Flanders in the Viking World'. The speaker is Christian Cooijmans (University of Oslo).

Oh hey, it's almost #IMC2025 time! Why not saunter over to our Thursday morning session on early medieval Flanders (organised by @ddefries.bsky.social), and hear me discuss/plead why we should pay more attention to the region in broader Viking Age scholarship?

Session description for International Medieval Congress Leeds 2025 Session 1647 - Early Medieval Flanders and the Vikings Organiser: David Defries, Kansas State University Moderator: Niall O'Súilleabháin, Université de Poitiers Paper 1: The Vikings as the Rod of God's Wrath in Early Medieval Flanders - David deFries, Kansas State University Paper 2: Labour and Authority in the Construction of Anti-Viking Defences in Early Medieval Flanders - David Bachrach, University of New Hampshire Paper 3: Stepping Stone or Cornerstone?: Redetermining the Role of Flanders in the Viking World - Christian Cooijmans, Universitetet i Oslo

Title slide for a PowerPoint presentation, featuring a viking-style boat on a wooden dock in a forested coastal environment. The paper is called 'Stepping Stone or Cornerstone?: Redetermining the Role of Flanders in the Viking World'. The speaker is Christian Cooijmans (University of Oslo).

Oh hey, it's almost #IMC2025 time! Why not saunter over to our Thursday morning session on early medieval Flanders (organised by @ddefries.bsky.social), and hear me discuss/plead why we should pay more attention to the region in broader Viking Age scholarship?

YouTube video by JORVIK Viking Centre JORVIK Viking Centre at 40

Great to see the film marking JORVIK’s 40th anniversary available on YouTube - featuring various interviews with the original project team. I was fortunate to be at the premiere back in February, and can wholeheartedly recommend. Congrats to @christuckley.bsky.social and
@jorvikviking.bsky.social!

Extract from ResearchGate terms and conditions: '3.2 Your content If you are a Member, you can add Member Submissions to the Service. You retain all ownership rights in your Member Submissions. However, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sub-licensable license to use your Member Submissions (including to host, reproduce, distribute, modify, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your Member Submissions for the sole purpose of making available and improving our Service.'

ResearchGate is equally for-profit, and has very similarly worded T&Cs (see below). I can't speak much to it being useful, but they don't seem to have gone down the AI bin chute (yet).

Finally hit the kill switch on my academia-edu account. Looks like they let folks opt out of the AI slop. But it's becoming clearer that we just need or resist commercial ed-tech grifters whenever, wherever, however we can.

YouTube video by JORVIK Viking Centre JORVIK Viking Centre at 40

Great to see the film marking JORVIK’s 40th anniversary available on YouTube - featuring various interviews with the original project team. I was fortunate to be at the premiere back in February, and can wholeheartedly recommend. Congrats to @christuckley.bsky.social and
@jorvikviking.bsky.social!

@kcommons.bsky.social

Knowledge Commons is a free, non-profit alternative to Academia and Researchgate: hcommons.org. Those in STEM and economics can also use ArXiv: arxiv.org. Institutional repositories are also an option. All of these are generally indexed by Google Scholar and other databases.

Part of the Terms and Conditions from Academia.edu, reading: 'License granted by Member We may, in our sole discretion, permit Members to post, upload, publish, submit or transmit Member Content. By making any Member Content available through the Site or Services, you hereby grant to Academia.edu a worldwide, revocable, non-exclusive, transferable license to exercise any and all rights under copyright, in any medium, and to authorize others to do the same, in connection with operating and providing the Services and Content to you and to other Members, provided that the Member Content is not sold for a profit. '

Note that if you have an Academia·edu account, you've signed an agreement with a commercial entity that profits off your personal research. This includes trawling and regurgitating your uploaded work as derivative AI slop (which they are doing at scale now). Time to leave.

Part of the Terms and Conditions from Academia.edu, reading: 'License granted by Member We may, in our sole discretion, permit Members to post, upload, publish, submit or transmit Member Content. By making any Member Content available through the Site or Services, you hereby grant to Academia.edu a worldwide, revocable, non-exclusive, transferable license to exercise any and all rights under copyright, in any medium, and to authorize others to do the same, in connection with operating and providing the Services and Content to you and to other Members, provided that the Member Content is not sold for a profit. '

Note that if you have an Academia·edu account, you've signed an agreement with a commercial entity that profits off your personal research. This includes trawling and regurgitating your uploaded work as derivative AI slop (which they are doing at scale now). Time to leave.

Brilliant! Do consider putting it on Knowledge Commons as well. It's free, the work gets assigned a DOI, and databases like Google Scholar pick up on it (with citations listed). ProQuest seems worse on all accounts.

Within five years, it will make little sense for scholars of history to keep producing monographs in the traditional mold — nobody will read them, and systems such as these will be able to generate them, endlessly, at the push of a button.

in a crowded field this has to be one of the stupidest things ive read about LLMs and it astonishes me that this quote is from a humanist, a historian! by definition, what these tools cannot do is original novel research of the kind we do in monographs!
www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...