BBC News – ‘Witch’s cottage’ unearthed near Pendle Hill, Lancashire

Engineers have said they were “stunned” to unearth a 17th Century cottage, complete with a mummified cat, during a construction project in Lancashire.

The cottage was discovered near Lower Black Moss reservoir in the village of Barley, in the shadow of Pendle Hill.

Archaeologists brought in by United Utilities to survey the area found the building under a grass mound.

Historians are now speculating that the well-preserved cottage could have belonged to one of the Pendle witches.The building contained a sealed room, with a mummified cat bricked into the wall.

It is believed the cat was buried alive to protect the cottage’s inhabitants from evil spirits.

Lancaster witch trials

Held at Lancaster Castle in August 1612

Eleven Pendle people charged with murder by witchcraft

Additional alleged Pendle witch tried at York Castle

Ten found guilty and hanged, one died while awaiting trial, one found not guilty

Trials made famous by publication of The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster by clerk of the court Thomas Potts

via BBC News – ‘Witch’s cottage’ unearthed near Pendle Hill, Lancashire.

Strange Random Witch Quote:

“Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft were written by men.” ― Neil Gaiman

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It’s a new Viking invasion of Britain – but this time it’s cultural | Television & radio | The Observer

Cover of The Vikings

Longboats, funeral pyres, glinting helmets and drinking horns: the discovery of a buried Viking boat in the west Highlands a few days ago has given an extra fillip to a burgeoning cultural fascination with all things Norse.

A succession of Viking literary sagas, films and television series, pieces of poetry and avant-garde art, not to mention preparations for a major British Museum show, are now all on the slipway.

More than 50 years after actors Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis donned their woollen tunics for Hollywood blockbuster The Vikings, a television series of the same name and a TV version of British writer Neil Gaiman‘s Nordic gods-inspired bestseller, American Gods, are both in development. The Vikings, which picks up on interest aroused by Kenneth Branagh‘s recent action film Thor, is being produced and written by the team behind BBC2 series The Tudors, and will tell the story of Ragnar, the great Viking leader and his two wives and four sons, who travelled to Ireland, England and France. The semi-mythological figures of Ragnar and his sons were also at the centre of the Curtis and Douglas epic, but this 10-part drama will chart their conquests while aiming to correct misconceptions about Viking society.

via It’s a new Viking invasion of Britain – but this time it’s cultural | Television & radio | The Observer.

Strange Random Viking Quote:

Wake early if you want
another man’s life or land.
No lamb for the lazy wolf.
No battle’s won in bed.

- The Havamal (Book of Viking Wisdom)

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• Ancient Artifacts…Call yer self a Viking do you? (meshtime.com)
• Review: Sworn Brother (speesh.wordpress.com)
• Viking burial site discovered in Scotland (inquisitr.com)