Medieval Britain and Ireland; the Viking Age and the Viking World; the North Atlantic; the Normans; medieval Irish literature; Old Norse literature; conversion and ecclesiastical history; kingship; networks; global history.
Biography
Caitlin Ellis is an early and central medieval historian. Her research into maritime networks and cultural contacts focuses on the Vikings and Normans in Britain, Ireland and the North Atlantic. She uses textual and material evidence to analyse identity, trading connections, religious change, and the expression of power.
Dr Ellis studied in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge. Her PhD thesis concentrated on eleventh-century Orkney and Dublin. In 2018 she won the Scottish Society for Northern Studies’ Magnus Magnusson Essay Prize for her article on Somerled. Dr Ellis previously held a Bernadotte scholarship from the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy, based in the Centre for Medieval Studies, Stockholm University. She has taught at the universities of Durham, Oxford, Cambridge and East Anglia.
Publications
Peer-reviewed articles
‘Go west: Contextualising Scandinavian royal naval expeditions into the Insular world, 1013–1103’, Historical Research (2022) [https://doi.org/10.1093/hisres/htac012]
‘The Development of the Cult of Magnús: The Interplay between Saints, Bishops and Earls of Orkney’, in The Cult of Saints in Nidaros Archbishopric: Manuscripts, Miracles, Objects, ed. Ragnhild M. Bø and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson (Brepols, 2022), pp. 111–41 [https://www.brepolsonline.net/doi/abs/10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.124880]
‘Cnut’s ecclesiastical policy of Cnut in the context of his English and Danish Predecessors’, in Anglo-Danish Empire: A Companion to the Reign of King Cnut the Great ed. Richard North, Erin Goeres and Alison Finlay and (Kalamazoo, 2022), pp. 355-78 [https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781501513336-017/html]
‘Remembering the Vikings: Violence, Institutional Memory, and the Instruments of History’, History Compass 19.1 (2021), 1–14 [https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12644]
‘Remembering the Vikings: Ancestry, Cultural Memory, and Geographical Variation’, History Compass 19.4 (2021), 1–15 [https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12652]
‘Teaching & Learning Guide for: Remembering the Vikings: Violence, Institutional Memory and the Instruments of History + Remembering the Vikings: Ancestry, Cultural Memory and Geographical Variation’, History Compass 19.4 (2021),1–6 [https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12653]
‘Degrees of Separation: Icelandic perceptions of other Scandinavian settlements in the Faroes, Orkney, Ireland and the Hebrides’, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 16(2020), 1–26 [https://doi.org/10.1484/J.VMS.5.121517]
‘Impressions of a twelfth-century maritime ruler—Somerled: viking warrior, clan chieftain or traitor to the Scottish king?’, Northern Studies 51 (2020), 1–14
‘Reassessing the career of Óláfr Tryggvason in the Insular world’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society for Northern Research 43 (2019), 59–82
‘Perceptions of the Slave Trade in Britain and Ireland: “Celtic” and “Viking” Stereotypes’, Quaestio Insularis 19 (2018), 127–57
‘So near and yet so far: Political geographies in the time of Knut and St Olaf’, in The Sixteenth International Saga Conference: Sagas and Space, 9th–15th August 2015, University of Zürich and University of Basel, Switzerland, ed. Jürg Glauser, Klaus Müller-Wille, Anna Katharina Richter, and Lukas Rösli (Universität Zürich, 2015), 92–3.
In collaboration
Sara Ann Knutson and Caitlin Ellis, ‘“Conversion” to Islam in Early Medieval Europe: Historical and Archaeological Perspectives on Arab and Northern Eurasian Interactions’, Religions 12: 544 (2021) [https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12070544]
Jonathan Y. H. Hui, Caitlin Ellis, James McIntosh and Katherine Olley, ‘Álaflekks saga: A Snow White Variant from Late Medieval Iceland’, Leeds Studies in English (2018), 45–64. [http://digital.library.leeds.ac.uk/id/eprint/26317]
Jonathan Y. H. Hui, Caitlin Ellis, James McIntosh, Katherine Olley, William Norman and Kimberly Anderson, ‘Ála flekks saga: An Introduction, Text and Translation’, Leeds Studies in English (2018) 1–43. [http://digital.library.leeds.ac.uk/id/eprint/26316]
Book reviews
Review of Saint Patrick Retold: The Legend and History of Ireland’s Patron Saintby Roy Flechner, English Historical Review 135:577 (2020), 1558–9 [ https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/ceaa278]
Review of King Cnut and the Viking Conquest of England 1016 by W. B. Bartlett, Saga-Book of the Viking Society for Northern Research 43 (2019), 147–9.
Extended review of Clerics, Kings and Vikings: Essays on medieval Ireland in honour of Donnchadh Ó Corráin, Peritia 28 (2017), 300–303.
Public engagement / In the media
History Extra podcast on ‘Return of the Viking Raiders’ to 11th-century Britain and Ireland [https://www.historyextra.com/period/viking/viking-raiders-podcast-caitlin-ellis/]
‘Alfred vs. the Viking Great Army’, The Historian 139 (autumn 2018), 16–22
History Matters article ‘The Other Invasion: The Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland’, History Today (September 2017, Vol. 67, Issue 9), 12–14 [https://www.historytoday.com/other-invasion]
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Dr Caitlin Ellis
Email: caitlin@celt.dias.ie
Research Interests
Medieval Britain and Ireland; the Viking Age and the Viking World; the North Atlantic; the Normans; medieval Irish literature; Old Norse literature; conversion and ecclesiastical history; kingship; networks; global history.
Biography
Caitlin Ellis is an early and central medieval historian. Her research into maritime networks and cultural contacts focuses on the Vikings and Normans in Britain, Ireland and the North Atlantic. She uses textual and material evidence to analyse identity, trading connections, religious change, and the expression of power.
Dr Ellis studied in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge. Her PhD thesis concentrated on eleventh-century Orkney and Dublin. In 2018 she won the Scottish Society for Northern Studies’ Magnus Magnusson Essay Prize for her article on Somerled. Dr Ellis previously held a Bernadotte scholarship from the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy, based in the Centre for Medieval Studies, Stockholm University. She has taught at the universities of Durham, Oxford, Cambridge and East Anglia.
Publications
Peer-reviewed articles
In collaboration
Book reviews
Public engagement / In the media
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