In 11th-century England, a Dutch-speaking scribe wrote down a short poem: ‘Hebban olla vogala’, the oldest known poem in Dutch. But I now argue it deliberately blends Dutch and English – revealing unsuspected Dutch influences on medieval English literature:

The programme for the workshop on ‘Poetry, Power, Literacy, and the Emergence of Vernacular Literatures’, organised by @UgoMondini and me, is now online!.

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RT @PoetryMedieval: 📣 We are excited to announce the Network's event for this Term, a workshop organised by @ugomondini and @M_L_Angerer. P….

Five months ago, I had the most beautiful day of my life (so far)

Just under a week left now – send us your abstracts on the worlds of the Brut by 20 September!.

Just under two weeks left to submit!.

Call for Papers: The Worlds of the Brut.(@IMC_Leeds , 7–10 July 2025). @Eli_RMagnanti and I are putting together sessions on the Brut tradition for next year's IMC, sponsored by the Society for International Brut Studies – send us your abstracts by 20 September 2024!

RT @hapyresearchers:

Link to the NRC article, sadly paywalled:

Somehow, my findings on the 11th-century poem ‘Hebban olla vogala’ have ended up in the Dutch national press!

RT @OxMedStud: The most exciting announcement of them all: the Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays will return to @StEdmundHall on 26 April 2025….

RT @ObserveIR: Trending in #Literature:. 1) Afropolitanism & Zukiswa Wanner’s London, Cape Town, Joburg (@Routledge….

This highlights the ease of Dutch-English literary exchanges – especially after the Norman Conquest, when many Flemings settled in England. It's perhaps no coincidence that the rhyming form of ‘Hebban olla vogala’ resembles the Old English Chronicle poem on William the Conqueror.

But thanks to multispectral imaging by @Kate_Fulcher at the @bodleianlibs, I was able to reconstruct the text with a high degree of certainty. This reveals a carefully formed poem that exploits the similarity between Old Dutch and Old English – and is understandable in both!

‘Hebban olla vogala’ only survives as a pen trial, scribbled down to try out a new pen at the back of an Old English manuscript then kept at Rochester Cathedral Priory in Kent. As a result, it's badly faded and partly unreadable…

I cite dictionaries a lot, so it's nice to see @ANDictionary returning the favour:.

My newest article is out in New Medieval Literatures! I argue that the Round Table was a key worldbuilding device for the earliest Arthurian romances in French and German – allowing them to create Arthurian (fan)fictions detached from Arthurian history:

A short piece, now out in Notes & Queries! It's all about a mysterious word, badly mangled by a scribe, in the epilogue to Geffrei Gaimar's 12th-century history of the English – I propose a reading that sheds some new light on Gaimar's history as a whole:

RT @phil_lol_ogist: Hwæt ðe helle

Posting a bit late, but my newest article is now out in Saga-Book! I show how the translation of the Prophecies of Merlin into Old Norse verse makes for a powerful cultural and political tool in early 13th-century Iceland. (Just some light holiday reading)