This blog archive is a memorial to content originally curated on the main Ryan Setliff Online page under the Medievalist section from 2020 through December 16th, 2021; it captures the culture, life, and history of the ancient Celts of the British Isles (i.e., England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales) as well as continental Europe:
Ancient Celtic History
This blog archive is a memorial to content originally curated on the main Ryan Setliff Online page under the Celtophile section from 2020 through December 16th, 2021; it captures the culture, life, and history of the ancient Celts of the British Isles (i.e., England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales) as well as continental Europe:
A new power emerged in the wild north of Britain after the Roman withdrawal in the Fifth Century AD. It’s name was Dál Riata and it occupied the many islands and archipelagos on both sides of the wild sea between Ireland and Scotland. For a time during the late Sixth and early Seventh Centuries this sea kingdom prospered under the rule of it’s king, Áedán mac Gabráin, who sent his war fleets and trading vessels far and wide throughout the waterways of Northern Britain. Eventually over the centuries the Gaelic inhabitants of Dál Riata merged to a certain extent with the neighboring Picts to eventually develop into the Kingdom of Scotland
The early Scots came first from Ireland and established an early kingdom on the western seaboard of Alba, known as the Sea Kingdom of Dál Riata.
“The Celts living in the middle of Europe were the fearsome opponents of the Greeks and Romans and in c. 390 B.C. they actually besieged Rome. The classical writers have much to say about their warlike activities but where did they come from? Until recently it used to be thought that they emerged in Eastern France and Southern Germany and spread westwards to Spain, Brittany, Britain and Ireland taking their distinctive language with them which survives today as Breton, Welsh, Gaelic and Irish. But recent work is suggesting that the Celtic language may have developed in the Atlantic zone of Europe at a very early date, and DNA studies offer some support to this. So who were the Celts? We will explore the evidence and try to offer an answer.”
Author, historian and researcher Barry Cunliffe discusses his new book Britain Begins and the new ideas on the origins of the Celts. His new book covers the early history of the British Isles, a period of nearly 10,000 years – from the time the first men settled while glaciers receded all the way to the Northern Conquest.
Viking History
This blog archive is a memorial to content originally curated on the main Ryan Setliff Online page under the Scandophile section from 2020 through December 15th, 2021; it captures the culture, life, and history of the Vikings, Danes, and Norse of medieval Scandinavia:
The Story of Vlad Impaler
This blog archive page is a memorial to content originally curated on the main Ryan Setliff Online page under the Historian section from 2020 through December 15th, 2021.
Russian History
This blog archive is a memorial to content originally curated on the main Ryan Setliff Online page under the Historian section from 2020 through December 15th, 2021:
Bronze Age Vikings | Prehistoric Scandinavian Rock Art
Dan Davis offers a video exposition on Bronze Age Scandinavia: “Prehistoric Scandinavian rock art displays scenes of warriors and long, narrow boats. Are these figures showing some kind of Bronze Age Vikings? The world famous ancient petroglyphs in Sweden, dating to the Nordic Bronze Age, portray a world of sword-wielding warriors and their ships. But these figures — holding aloft axes and spears and shields — are usually said to be carrying out rituals, not warfare. Is that true? Are there any scenes of violence here amongst the thousands of weapon-bearers? If this is about ritual then what were the rituals for? And what can all this tell us about the lives of these seaborne Nordic warriors who lived 3500 years ago?”
Fealty
“The promise, made when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love. A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way. He might as well promise to never have a headache or always to feel hungry.”
—C.S. Lewis
Artist Credit: The Meeting on the Turret Stairs by Frederick Burton
The First Warriors of Europe | Bronze Age Warfare
Dan Davis Author has put together this informative documentary on “The First Warriors of Europe”: “In the late Neolithic and Copper Age, clans from the Yamnaya, Corded Ware, and Bell Beaker cultures raided others. They were armed with bows, copper daggers, and battle axes but the extent to which these men were ‘warriors’ is debated. By the time of the Late Bronze Age, warriors served chiefs and kings from Mycenaean Greece to Nordic Bronze Age Sweden and Denmark. They guarded trade routes like the so-called Amber Road and fought pitched battles like at the Tollense Valley battlefield. So when and where did a class of dedicated warriors emerge? What weapons did they use? And how and why did they fight?”
Byzantine Reconquista – Siege of Chandax 960-961
“Kings and Generals historical animated documentary series on the history of the Eastern Roman Empire continues with a video on the beginning of the Byzantine Reconquista against the Muslim conquered lands in the X century AD, as the emperor from the Macedonian dynasty Nikephoros II Phokas begins his reconquest with Crete, leading to the siege of Chandax of 960-961.”
How the pandemic shutdown upended the American economy.
One of the things that have become incredibly confusing is the mixed signals regarding the health and vitality of the American labor market, and the overall economic health of the United States. We’re told again and again the labor market is hot by know-nothing scribblers online from Business Insider to Time. We’re told by establishment media employers are finding it difficult to find workers. The reality is the labor market participation rate is the lowest it has been since 1977. It’s not an employee’s job market regardless of all of the confusing articles posted by writers who draw far-reaching conclusions because they drove past a few restaurants with signs declaring NOW HIRING and SIGNING BONUS. For Americans that formerly had health insurance and decent benefits for years, the plethora of entry-level jobs is unappealing and not truly a sign of economic recovery.
There are many other reasons to reject the misplaced optimism of journalists and politicians that boast of an economic recovery. For starters, the pandemic up-ended the stability of many metroplexes associated with a high cost of living. In all reality, many workers regardless of familial ties may simply not be coming back to these areas. Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New York City, the San Francisco Bay Area, Saint Louis, and many mid-sized cities in the Rust Belt are all shrinking and have suffered a net exodus of people for many months. Why? When these urbanites lived in their former urban homes and were actively employed, they were already flying out of the seat of their pants, coping with an exorbitantly high cost of living, and diminished credit rating as their debt-to-income ratio climbed precipitously. They were despondent with stress from sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic to office politics to rising grocery prices. Politicians and busybody city councils greeted them with ever-increasing taxes. Resultantly amid the pandemic labor market recession, urbanites fled to rural and small-town America seeking to downsize their costly metroplex lifestyles, nevertheless remaining insecure in some temporary vocation afterward. They are now introverted to family life. Some working spouses even opted to take off and embrace childrearing and homeschooling as public schools continued to shutter their doors. Countless others opted for remote work making their relocation more tenable given that rural and small-town America aren’t awash in locally-sourced jobs.
In rural tranquility, these urban emigres have embraced frugality, penny-pinching, and a simple calculus of a lower monthly rent or mortgage payment. Many Americans from Gen X-ers to Millennials are opting out of urban life. What this doesn’t mean is that their new lives are necessarily one of prosperity, but supposed “higher wages” and “signing bonuses” are unlikely to attract them back to the big costly metroplexes.
After years of struggle, stress, and hardship, urban emigres have come to value the simplicity of life, and the little things like their domestic life and family relationships. Given the current labor troubles, many industries in urban areas are on the cusp of being upended, facing closure, and it’s a portent of a coming economic recession, regardless of the inflationary paper ledgermein games that Uncle Sam plays with stimulus spending and subsidizing idleness. The major urban hubs have been disrupted in America’s longstanding trend towards disruptive innovation, and they’ve proven themselves inhospitable to an ideal quality of life.
The other thing is regardless of how dissimilar Americans are on politics, collectively everyone is sick of the neoliberal policies of the elites and political class. Urban industries too face higher taxes and a higher cost of labor, so their already fragile urban ecosystems desperately need to sustain beneficial economies of scale related to their labor inputs and outputs, and interim if they cannot obtain enough workers to stay profitable, failure of these enterprises is inevitable. Labor market recession thus is a genuine prospect.*
Related Articles:
“Job Openings Are at Record Highs. Why Aren’t Unemployed Americans Filling Them?” – Wall Street Journal
“Urban Emigration: A Worrisome Outlook for American Cities” – Epoch Times