Thursday, January 15, 2015

History of the earcnanstan


Now this is how historians should get together

Howcumzit that so often the best history bloggers are medievalists?  Probably for the same reason that many of the best historians are medievalists, but that's just the same mystery.

Which is by way of saying that I read The Hobbit with my daughter when she was quite young, and since she and her sister grew up to be huge fans of the Lord of the Rings films, we made a point of seeing the Hobbit films together, even though she is all grown up now. I kinda hated how they turned that little fable into another LoTR franchise. But we carried through on the tradition.

After the third and final instalment recently, I picked up the book again -- to cleanse my palate, more or less, but also because I wanted to check if the jewel called the "Arkenstone" that figures prominently at the end of the movie is also in the book. Yes, it was there, playing more or less the same role in the plot, but with less hysteria about it, natch.

But now I know a great deal more about the Arkenstone -- Old English, earcnanstan, 'precious stone'  --  because of this remarkable blog post from A Clerk of Oxford.  And I know about the Clerk of Oxford because Eleanor Parker, the clerk herself, yesterday won the Digital History Prize at the History Today History Prize ceremonies.

Must say, from the photos they post, that I have not been to a history event in Canada half so swish since the early days of the Dominion Institute, when they used to par-tay.
 
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