This virtual museum has been jointly curated by Professor Judith Jesch and Dr Roderick Dale of the Centre for Study of the Viking Age, with the assistance of PhD students Cassidy Croci and William Pidzamecky.
Click on the links below to meet the curators.
Team member biographies
Judith Jesch
About Me I was educated at the Universities of Pennsylvania (USA), Durham (UK, BA in English Language and Medieval Literature), Oslo (Norway, Leverhulme Study Abroad Studentship) and London (PhD in Scandinavian Studies, UCL). Before coming to Nottingham in 1985, I worked as a Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main (Germany). During my time at Nottingham I have been Head of the School of English Studies (2001-4), and was promoted to Professor of Viking Studies in 2002. My Research I have been working on Old Norse language and literature since 1977 and the Viking Age since 1985. During that time I have followed in the footsteps of the Vikings around the world, from Russia to Newfoundland. I have published books and articles on lost sagas, Scandinavian ballads, women in the Viking Age, runic inscriptions from both Scandinavia and the British Isles, ships, skaldic poetry, Orkneyinga saga, the Viking Age as a diaspora, and much more. To read more about my research interests and publications, please visit my university home page.
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Roderick Dale
I graduated from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne with a BA(Hons) in Scandinavian Studies (Norwegian) in 1985 before beginning a career as an archaeologist. While working as an archaeologist I completed an MA in Viking and Anglo-Saxon Studies (2001) and a PhD in Viking Studies (2014) at the University of Nottingham. My doctoral thesis, entitled Berserkir: A re-examination of the phenomenon in literature and life, reassessed research into Viking berserkir and studied how that research had been shaped by modern, popular culture depictions of berserkir. While at Nottingham I taught Old English in the ‘Beginnings of English’ and ‘Medieval Englishes’ modules and Norse mythology on the module ‘Ice and Fire: Myths and Heroes of the North’. From 2016-17 I worked at University College Cork as post-doctoral researcher on The World-Tree Project (www.worldtreeproject.org), a large-scale community collection database in the field of Old Norse-Icelandic and Viking Studies, funded by an IRC ‘New-Horizons’ Starter Grant. I joined the University of Nottingham in February 2017 as Cultural Engagement Fellow for the Bringing Vikings back to the East Midlands project. In March 2020, I joined the University of Stavanger as project coordinator for the environmental humanities team, working mainly on the Horizon 2020 project ‘EnviroCitizen: Citizen Science for Environmental Citizenship’. Expertise Summary Old Norse language and literature, interdisciplinary Viking studies, reception of the Vikings in popular culture, public engagement. Recent Publications STERN, M and DALE, R, 2014. The Viking Experience London : Carlton Books. BIRKETT, T and DALE, R, (eds) 2019. The Vikings Reimagined: Reception, Recovery, Engagement Kalamazoo : Medieval Institute Publications. DALE, R, 2019, ‘From Barbarian to Brand: The Vikings as a marketing tool’, in The Vikings Reimagined: Reception, Recovery, Engagement, edited by Tom Birkett and Roderick Dale Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications.
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Cassidy Croci
About Me I graduated from the University of New Hampshire (USA) with a BSc (Hons) in Business Administration option in Entrepreneurial Studies with a dual minor in History and International Affairs in 2016 before transitioning to Viking Studies. I came to Nottingham in 2016 for my MA in Viking and Anglo-Saxon Studies (2017). During this time, I worked as the Events Organiser for the AHRC-funded Danelaw Saga: Bringing Vikings Back to the East Midlands project. In 2018, I began my PhD at Nottingham entitled Visualising the Social Networks of the Sturlubók and Melabók Redactions of Landnámabók. This thesis investigates multiple familial, spatial and social networks in Landnámabók ‘The Book of Settlements’ with social network analysis to uncover emerging patterns of diaspora, settlement, migration and place by visualising individuals and their relationships within the text. During this time I have taught on the second-year module Ice and Fire: Myths and Heroes of the North. Currently I serve as the Student Coordinator for Vikings for Schools, a Centre for the Study of the Viking Age volunteering program. I am also a Museum Outreach Facilitator for The University of Nottingham Museum.
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William Pidzamecky
I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of Ottawa in 2015 with a dual major in History and Classical Studies. I completed my Master of Arts degree in History at Brock University in 2017 during which I wrote my thesis on Viking ships in Icelandic saga literature and how these descriptions compare to our archaeological record. I came to the University of Nottingham in 2017 with a passion for history, archaeology, and Vikings, and am currently working on my thesis titled Wintersetl, Longphuirt, and Gorodishche: A comparative study of Viking settlement in England, Ireland, Russia, and Ukraine from the 8th to 10th centuries. This research involves an interdisciplinary approach and covers a wide range of subjects pertaining to the settlements and their inhabitants such as geographic location, layout, social interactions, ethnicity, and commerce. I have supplemented my research by organizing archaeological expeditions to Ukraine in July 2018 and 2019 with future excavations being planned. I have also aided with excavations at the Viking winter camp at Repton in 2018. In addition, since 2018, I have been working with the Digital Transformations Hub at the University of Nottingham as a research assistant in charge of a variety of projects related to Digital Humanities such as the digitization of textual artefacts.