The Cover of My Upcoming Book

Ever since I started blogging in 2005 I’ve been talking about my Östergötland project, where I’ve been chasing the elite of the mid-to-late 1st millennium in one of Sweden’s richest agricultural provinces. This project has produced a number of journal papers, talks, radio appearances, archive reports and additions to museum collections. But there hasn’t been a book (though Dear Readers John Massey and Deborah Sabo have helped copy-edit a manuscript).

Soon there will be one.

I’m very pleased to be able to show you its cover, designed by Tina Hedh-Gallant (who is also laying out the contents) around a photograph by James P. Wilby.

The title is Mead-halls of the Eastern Geats, the ISBN 978-91-7402-405-0, and the book will be published by the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters in its venerable Proceedings series. It is a considerable source of pride to me that I get to share a billing with the people who have put out books in that series since 1789.

I finished correcting the first set of PDF proofs today. We’re printing 400 copies, due out for the Göteborg Book Fair on 22-25 September where I’ll be on stage, and six months later the Academy will also publish the whole thing for free on the web as an Open Access book.

My doctoral thesis treated a similar theme, powerful people in the mid-to-late 1st millennium. But since those lived on the island of Gotland, most colleagues working with similar issues on the mainland have not had reason to use that pair of volumes. I believe the new book will have a considerably wider appeal both within and without the archaeological profession.