Culture

Middle Ages · Daily life & culture

Medieval words that we still use today (without realising it)

Words such as ‘debt’, ‘school’ or ‘bill’ sound familiar – yet they date back to the Middle Ages. How many such terms are still part of our everyday language?

10 November 202630 min

Middle Ages · Daily life & culture

The strangest laws of the Middle Ages – prohibitions that sound absurd today

Who was allowed to wear fur? Why were board games banned? The Middle Ages had some astonishing rules – some of which sound almost unbelievable today.

27 October 202614 min

Middle Ages · Daily life & culture

Medieval advertising – how traders used to attract customers back then

Market criers, colourful signs, guild emblems: traders in the Middle Ages used creative methods to attract customers. Here, we show you how they did it.

22 October 202617 min

Middle Ages · Daily life & culture

This is how people swore in the Middle Ages – the worst insults of the time

How did people actually insult each other in the Middle Ages? We take a look at the crude, witty and surprisingly creative insults of centuries past.

17 September 202618 min

Middle Ages · Daily life & culture

Bizarre professions of the Middle Ages – from the lice-picker to the executioner

Lice removers, executioners, night watchmen – some medieval professions sound strange to us today, but were indispensable. Who were the people behind these forgotten occupations?

10 September 202618 min

Middle Ages · Daily life & culture

Druids in the Middle Ages - myth, history and literary heritage

Druids – mystical bearers of wisdom or a product of the Romantic era? We examine what is historically certain and how the image of the Druids has shaped literature.

2 July 20269 min

Middle Ages · Daily life & culture

Beowulf - The oldest heroic epic in English literature

Imagine a world where the flickering of torches is the only source of light in vast wooden halls, where warriors drink their mead and singers recount the deeds of long- — and where monsters crawl out of the marshes to devour people. This is the world of Beowulf, one of the most fascinating literary…

27 June 202618 min

Middle Ages · Daily life & culture

Music of the Middle Ages

Gregorian chant, troubadours, minnesang: medieval music is more diverse than many people realise. Discover how this musical world came into being and continues to influence us today.

4 June 202610 min

Middle Ages · Daily life & culture

Life in the castle: everyday life, people and spaces in the Middle Ages

Life behind castle walls was no fairy tale: find out how knights, squires and ladies of the castle coped with their daily lives, caught between duty, the cold and the hierarchy.

28 May 202617 min

Middle Ages · Daily life & culture

Dance in the Middle Ages: folk dances, court dances and the music to go with them

Folk dance, courtly dance, distrust of the Church: dance in the Middle Ages was far more than mere entertainment. What the movements revealed about social class, society and faith.

7 April 20269 min