Essays on the brief but tumultuous reign of Harold II, and one of our most important sources of knowledge of the time - the Bayeux Tapestry. Harold II is chiefly remembered today, perhaps unfairly, for the brevity of his reign and his death at the Battle of Hastings. The papers collected here seek to shed new light on the man and his milieu before and after that climax. They explore the long career and the dynastic network behind Harold Godwinesson's accession on the death of King Edward the Confessor in January 1066, looking in particular at the important questions as to whether Harold's kingship was opportunist or long-planned; a usurpation or a legitimate succession in terms of his Anglo-Scandinavian kinships? They also examine the posthumous legends that Harold survived Hastings and lived on as a religious recluse.The essays in the second part of the volume focus on the Bayeux Tapestry, bringing out the small details which would have resonated significantly for contemporary audiences, both Norman and English, to suggest how they judged Harold and the other players in the succession drama of 1066. Other aspects of the Tapestry are also covered: the possible patron and locations the Tapestry was produced for; where and how it was designed; and the various sources - artistic and real - employed by the artist. Contributors: H.E.J. Cowdrey, Nicholas J. Higham, Ian Howard, Gillian Fellows-Jensen, Stephen Matthews, S.L. Keefer, Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Chris Henige, Catherine Karkov, Shirley Ann Brown, C.R. Hart, Michael Lewis. GALE OWEN-CROCKER is Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture at the University of Manchester.

An exploration of the landscape of Anglo-Saxon England, particularly through the prism of place-names and what they can reveal. The landscape of modern England still bears the imprint of its Anglo-Saxon past. Villages and towns, fields, woods and forests, parishes and shires, all shed light on the enduring impact of the Anglo-Saxons. The essays in this volume explore the richness of the interactions between the Anglo-Saxons and their landscape: how they understood, described, and exploited the environments of which they were a part. Ranging from the earliest settlement period through to the urban expansion of late Anglo-Saxon England, this book draws on evidence from place-names, written sources, and the landscape itself to provide fresh insights into the topic. Subjects explored include the history of thestudy of place-names and the Anglo-Saxon landscape; landscapes of particular regions and the exploitation of particular landscape types; the mechanisms of the transmission and survival of written sources; and the problems and potentials of interdisciplinary research into the Anglo-Saxon landscape. Nicholas J. Higham is Professor of Early Medieval and Landscape History at the University of Manchester; Martin Ryan lectures in Medieval History at the University of Manchester. Contributors: Ann Cole, Linda M. Corrigan, Dorn Van Dommelen, Simon Draper, Gillian Fellows-Jensen, Della Hooke, Duncan Probert, Alexander R. Rumble, Martin J. Ryan, Peter A. Stokes, Richard Watson.

Much work is required to ensure the well-being of the manuscripts in the care of libraries, archives and other collections. The international seminars held in Copenhagen provide a good opportunity for conservators, archivists, librarians and those who work with manuscripts to meet and discuss their problems. Care and Conservation of Manuscripts 8 examines wooden bindings, the manufacture of parchment, the conservation of embroidered bindings, the study of paint layers, the restoration of heat-damage parchment, binding decoration and hand tools for Ottoman period manuscripts, biomonitoring of rare books and documents, German stamped bindings, new recipes for the conservation of leather and parchment, as well as codicology and palography. The book is well illustrated and contains references and a list of manuscripts.

Care & Conservation of Manuscripts 4 - Proceedings of the fourth international seminar held at the University of Copenhagen 13th-14th October 1997

Text in English & German. This volume contains articles of relevance for books, manuscripts and libraries, for example new acquisitions in the National and University Library of Iceland, Icelandic manuscripts in the British Library, types of medieval bindings in the University Library of Uppsala and marks of previous ownership on books in the Royal Library in Copenhagen, a digital exhibition resulting from the great theft of books from the library that has been described in Care and conservation 9, on the binding structures of medieval Armenian manuscripts, and on a method employed for the examination of the tools used in the cover decoration of Byzantine manuscripts. There are also articles on plaited silk strings found on medieval documents, on vegetable dyes in English medieval manuscripts, on paper manufacture in Denmark in the 17th century, and on traditional methods of paper production in Nepal. In connection with storage conditions there are presentations of an investigation of the air quality in the new archive at the Arnamagnaean Collection in Copenhagen with passive climate control, of considerations in connection with the planning of new book stores in the Royal Library there, and a report of a Russian-Dutch project on methods for assessing damage in large collections. On conservation in general there are accounts of developments in the conservation of parchment in Hungary, of the treatment of damage to paper manuscripts caused by iron-gall ink corrosion and of the use of synthetic polymers and various types of glue in paper conservation. On the conservation of individual manuscripts there are accounts of the conservation of the section of the 4th-century bible manuscript Codex Sinaiticus that is kept in the British Library, of the 16th-century paper manuscript known as the Fish Book which is kept in the Royal Library in the Hague, and of a group of Turkish Quran-manuscripts kept in the Mevlana Musum in Konya. Finally there are descriptions of the procedures involved in the digital registration of the manuscript collection in St Catherine's monastery in Mount Sinai, and of a considerate method for photographing medieval manuscripts prior to digitisation.