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Showing posts from August, 2020

Burial Mounds, Churches and Patronage

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Eleanor Parker sums up the significance of burial mounds (and supposed burial mounds ) on page 91 of her "Dragon Lords - The History and Legends of Viking England" ( I.R. Tauris 2018. ISBN 978 1 78453 786 9).  In Norse literature, they are "the location of encounters with the otherworld, with supernatural beings and with the dead. For Anglo-Saxons, they were seen "as meeting places and as landmarks, as the home of dragons and demons and the site of hidden treasure." "Dragon Lords" and Austin Mason and Tom Williamson's  Ritual Landscape in Pagan and Early Christian England   have been in the background of my thinking as I creep towards Walsingham, developing layers of interpretation for the   Walsingham Way  website .   Making a pilgrim journey at a snails' pace gives time to see what has been under ones nose for ever. Among the things that have caught my eye on the way from Burgh Castle to Norwich, the Norfolk Saints Way  and then on to Walsi