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I am series four of #TheLastKingdom on Netflix 
. It's...not bad, and provides a broadly authentic flavour of life in 8th/ 9th Century England, but historians will find plenty of details to quibble with of course, as with any historical drama I guess. That sort of
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. It's...not bad, and provides a broadly authentic flavour of life in 8th/ 9th Century England, but historians will find plenty of details to quibble with of course, as with any historical drama I guess. That sort of/1
...me because this was my period at university. For one thing I doubt Ælfred cyning (King Alfred) was quite as uptight and pious as he portrayed in the show: he is, for example, recorded as having fought on the front lines alongside his brother Æthelred against the invading /2
... 'mycel hæþen here' (great heathen army) led by Viking chieftain Ivarr hinn Beinlausi (Ivarr the One with No Bones - or the One with No Legs) in 1868, before he became King of Wessex. For another, the Vikings had combs people - we've found loads! /3
...I highly doubt they went around sporting the heavy metal roadie mane we see here, although I suppose that provides a convenient visual clue for casual viewers. Another thing I noticed - because I'm a nerd, I guess - was the frequent mispronunciation of names containing the /4
... letter 'æ'. This occurs in a lot of names from the period, particularly in the element'æðel' (noble). Understandably, perhaps, (some of) the actors seem tohave assumed this is just the letters 'a' and 'e' next to each other in a stylised way, so Æðelstan ("Noble Stone") is /5
...referred to as 'Ethel Stan': like an old lady or something ! In fact Æ was a separate letter altogether, with its own name ('æsc', meaning ash tree) and it was pronounced like the vowel in modern English 'cat' /6
...I sprinkled a little Old English and Old Norse over this thread because...I just like doing that kinda stuff. It gives you another flavour of the time I think
