Caitlin Megan Ellis

Academic interests

I am a historian of the early and central Middle Ages, focusing on Scandinavia, Britain, Ireland and the North Atlantic. In particular, my research has examined cross-cultural relations and maritime networks. I use textual and material evidence to analyse identity, trading connections, religious change, and the expression of power. The majority of this textual material is in Old Norse, medieval Irish, Latin, Old English, and medieval Welsh and work is also informed by literary approaches. My interests span the Viking and Norman worlds.

Courses taught

• HIS2125/4125: Power, Violence and Politics during the Viking Raids and the Hundred Years’ War
• HIS3090: Advanced Thesis in History
• NFI2501: North Sea cultural encounters in the Middle Ages

Background

Before coming to Oslo, I held research scholarships at the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies, Reykjavík and at the School of Celtic Studies, the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Previously, I received a Bernadotte scholarship from the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy, based in the Centre for Medieval Studies, Stockholm University. I have taught broadly across medieval history at Maynooth University in Ireland and at the universities of Durham, Oxford, East Anglia and Cambridge in Britain.

Education

• PhD in Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, University of Cambridge (UK)
• MPhil in Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, University of Cambridge (UK)
• BA in Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, University of Cambridge (UK)

Awards

• Snorri Sturluson Icelandic Fellowship, 2023

• Dorothea Coke Memorial Fund award for publication costs, 2022

• O’Donovan Scholarship, Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies, 2021

• Bernadotte Award from Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademien för svensk folkkultur, 2019

• Magnus Magnusson Memorial Prize, 2019

• Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK), 2018

Affiliations

• MIDDAK: Middelalderdidaktikk, NTNU
• Viking Society for Northern Research
• Scottish Society for Northern Studies
• Royal Historical Society (UK)

Publications

Books

• Philippa Byrne and Caitlin Ellis, ed., Maritime Exchange and the Making of Norman Worlds (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023)

Articles

• ‘“Brian’s sword” and the “standard of the king of the Saxons” in the Irish annals: the Godwinsons, Hastings and Leinster–Munster relations’, Ériu 73 (2023), 43–62
• ‘Ireland and the Anglo-Normans within the Irish Sea World: Rebels, Mercenaries, Allies 1066–1169’, Borders and the Norman World, ed. Daniel Armstrong, Áron Kecskés with Charlie Rozier and Leonie Hicks (Boydell & Brewer, 2023), 17–42
• ‘Go west: Contextualising Scandinavian royal naval expeditions into the Insular world, 1013–1103’, Historical Research 95:270 (November 2022), 481–505 [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
• ‘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
• ‘Good Neighbours? Representations of the Britons, Welsh, Picts and Scots in Pre-Conquest English Texts’, in From East to West: The Idea of the World in Early Medieval England, ed. Francis Leneghan, Mark Atherton and Kazutomo Karasawa (Brepols, 2022), 335–64
• ‘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
  • Winner of the Magnus Magnusson Memorial Prize
• ‘A plausible eleventh-century Welsh-Orcadian alliance’, Notes & Queries 67:3 (September 2020), 336–8 [https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjaa079]
• ‘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

In collaboration:

• Philippa Byrne and Caitlin Ellis, ‘Introduction: Normans at Sea, or a Transcultural Maritime Approach to the Middle Ages’ to Maritime Exchange and the Making of Norman Worlds
• 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, ‘Ála flekks saga: A Snow White Variant from Late Medieval Iceland’, Leeds Studies in English (2018), 45–64
• 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

Book Reviews

• Review of The Kings of Aileach and the Vikings AD 800-1060 by Darren McGettigan, Speculum 93/8 (2023), 910–11 [https://doi.org/10.1086/725562]
• Review of Monarchs and Hydrarchs: The Conceptual Development of Viking Activity Across the Frankish Realm (c. 750–940) by Christian Cooijmans, The Mediaeval Journal 10.2 (2020), 146–8 [https://doi.org/10.1484/J.TMJ.5.128329]
• Review of Saint Patrick Retold: The Legend and History of Ireland’s Patron Saint by 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