Monday 19 June 2023

No News on the Toki Spoon, but Toki Runestone is Found

Steadily viewing Last Kingdom Season 4. Complex, brutal Viking drama seeing Saxon-born Uhtred, a Danish warrior, getting ever closer to reclaiming his ancestral homelands. Still a challenge for my feeble brain though. What is going on in it?!  

Historic England got back to me about family Viking ancestry – that’s not their field. Fair enough. 

Sarah from St Paul’s Cathedral replied, explaining that they don’t have the teaspoon I’m looking for, but her team also knew of the Toki Runestone mentioned by a couple of other places. Described as “an Anglo-Scandinavian grave-marker in the Ringerike style of the second quarter of the 11th century,” it “was found in 1852 during the construction of a warehouse in St Paul’s churchyard. On one side of the stone a runic inscription reads: ‘Ginna and Toki had this stone laid’. The original is now held at the Museum of London.” 

Toki Runestone

Open to suggestions. I took this week off so I could email a ton of places, but I seem to have exhausted them all already. Netflix Viking shows it is! Insomnia? Drop off with some Viking ASMR:

Fancy some lectures on Old Norse from an expert and Wyoming resident? See Jackson Crawford’s YouTube. Fascinating discussions on the origins of the English language, with added roaming wildlife.

No real plans for the week now I've made these enquiries. More Last Kingdom and chinups. Which suits me.

No comments: