Martin Rundkvist
Created | Updated May 15, 2008
Martin Rundkvist (1972-) is a Swedish archaeologist and increasingly notorious blogger. He is an editor for Fornvännen, Sweden's leading journal on prehistoric and medieval archaeology, and Scandinavian correspondent for Antiquity, the world's top archaeology journal. Additionally his weblog is read in such numbers that it led one archaeological commentator to compare his importance to that of a Pokémon character. This is high praise for an archaeologist.
Archaeology
Rundkvist gained his PhD from the University of Stockholm in 2003, for his work on the Bardshaldar graveyard, the largest collection of prehistoric burials on the island of Gotland. His work on this site is freely accessible as a collection of PDFs.1 Additonally some other works of his may be downloaded from his website, which lists Martin Rundkvist's Bibliography.
He is extraordinarily prolific, currently he has in excess of 100 publications. His first edited book, Swedish Seminar papers in Archaeology 1991-1996,2 was produced while he was a PhD student. His second edited volume in the BAR International series, Grave Matters. Eight studies of First Millennium AD burials in Crimea, England and southern Scandinavia, appeared the following year.
More recently he has been appointed an editor of Fornvännen, a leading journal for Scandinavian archaeology published by the Royal Academy of Letters in Stockholm. He frequently publishes reviews and articles with this journal. He also haunts the Project Gallery of Antiquity, where he is a correspondent. The correspondents' list reads like a Who's Who of archaeology - and there's Martin's name there too.
Last year, he appeared on websites around the world as discoverer of the Djurhamn Sword. This is a sword dating from the 16th century and is around three feet long. It was particularly newsworthy in Sweden where the media clamoured for photos of Martin Rundkvist holding his mighty weapon.
He continues to fight what he sees as the spectre of post-modern relativism in Archaeology. One recent example is the ongoing support for Bob Lind's eccentric ideas from the media and the Swedish heritage board, the latter being post-modernists in his opinion. The relativists for their part are reluctant to accept his point of view.
Scepticism and Blogging
Martin Rundkvist became a sceptic after deciding that that Zecariah Sitchin's claims that aliens from the 12th planet came and interfered with humanity were over-stated. He edits Folkvett, a sceptical quarterly in Sweden. He is a critic of others in the sceptical movement. His blog entry, Stuffy Inquirer described Skeptical Inquirer, magazine of the sceptical organisation CSICOP as "written by old men for old men." His claims were vigourously rebutted by Daniel Loxton editor of Junior Skeptic, in the podcast Skepticality (MP3). Loxton argued the Skeptical movement was very forward looking and that anyone who disagreed should look at the way they tackled the Iron Pillar of India, which was very big in the 1970s, in a forthcoming edition of Junior Skeptic.
His chosen venue for blogging is Aardvarchaeology, which is hosted by the ScienceBlogs collective. Web metrics being what they are it's hard to give definitive measures, but it is certainly one of the major archaeological weblogs.
More Martin
, if you wish to see more of Martin Rundkvist, he has a homepage. Alternatively you can buy the 2009 Skepchic calendar where he will be wearing a smile, but possibly not much else.
- Barshalder. 1, A cemetery in Grötlingbo and Fide parishes, Gotland, Sweden, c. AD 1-1100 : excavations and finds 1826-1971, Stockholm (2003)
- Barshalder. 2, Studies of Late Iron Age Gotland, Stockholm (2003)
- Barshalder. 3, Rojrhage in Grötlingbo : a multi-component Neolithic shore site on Gotland, with Christian Lindqvist and Karl Thorsberg, Stockholm (2004)
