Dr Matt Firth

@mattfirth.bsky.social

2174 Followers 891 Following

Research Fellow @ Flinders Uni. Early English Queens, 850-1000 (https://t.ly/Q395d); Remembering England: Cultural Memory in the Sagas of Icelanders (https://t.ly/So2-E); & Pre-Conquest History and its Medieval Reception (https://t.ly/jeqql) all out now.

Presentation slide: King Ecgberht and the Founding of England in Late Medieval Roll Chronicles
Article: the tenth century as a locus for institutional queenship in England
CFP for the conference of the Australian Early Medieval Association conference. The CFP closes at the end of July. Proposals can be sent to aemaconference2026@gmail.com.
The cover of Pre-Conquest History and its Medieval Reception: Writing England's Past with a depiction of the 7th c. Mercian king, Offa, by Matthew Paris in the 13th c.
Cover of Remembering England: Cultural Memory in the Sagas of Icelanders. Generic design.
Cover of Parergon 42.2 with the feature image: Reed MS10. Book of Hours, Latin with additions in Middle English; the Raising of Souls to God preceding the Commendation of Souls.
A handsome tabby cat named Nüss - a venerable old gentleman at 17 years of age who has, sadly, reached the end of his life.
Abstract for a forthcoming article: Vikings commonly feature in the Íslendingasögur (Sagas of Icelanders). The words víking (the act of raiding) or víkingr (a raider) appear over 180 times across the forty-some texts of the corpus. Here, they are a ubiquitous part of the cultural landscape of the late ninth- to mid-twelfth-century North Atlantic. The Íslendingasögur are not contemporary sources such as those from England and Francia that report experiences of viking raids. The sagas do, however, represent stories of the societies from which the vikings came. Here there are nuances to the depictions of the raiders that contrast with the accounts of their victims. This article examines the intersection of viking activity and the Icelandic conversion in the year 1000 (kristnitaka) in the Íslendingasögur. It posits that while, in the saga worldview, víking could be lauded prior to kristnitaka, with the coming of Christianity, Icelandic heroes could no longer easily pursue víking without censure.
Cover of the book Early English Queens, 850-1000 by Matthew Firth. Depicts a late-medieval miniature of Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, enthroned as a queen.
Queen's College Oxford
Page from Peter of Ickham's Chronicle with amateurish or incomplete attempts at genealogical roundels.
An illuminated letter N inside which is a monk, writing, with a mildly bemused look on his face.
Open page of William's Gesta pontificum - neat script, some rubrication and signs of corrections
Page from the Prose Brut with two creatures (peacocks) doodled on the bottom margin, another started in the right margin, and some practice letters.
Rubric introducing Alfred's reign with a diagramatic representation of his family in the left column and a more detailed version in the bottom margin in a later hand. Oxford MS Laud Misc 730.
An illustration of the lineage of William the Conqueror (here named the Bastard).
A copy of my book Early English Queens, 850-1000 at Waterstones Gower St.
Folio 1 v of a 12th c., Canterbury copy of Osbern's Vita Dunstani, with a modern red 'Museum Britanicum' stamp smack in the middle of the medieval text.
Lisbon skyline looking towards Castelo de São Jorge
Charter S221 issued for the church of Much Wenlock in 901.
Remnant of the witness list from charter S221 in which Æthelred and Æthelflæd's names appear.
Header from the Flinders University website: Dr Matthew Firth, Research Fellow in Medieval History
Bodl. MS 316 - page one of an edition of Polychronicon made for Norwich cathedral
Me in a bookshop, with my daughter, holding a copy of Early English Queens, 850-1000
Book: Pre-Conquest History and its Medieval Reception - pre-order through Boydell & Brewer/York Medieval Press https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781914049194/pre-conquest-history-and-its-medieval-reception/