Niamh’s Reads: Hwæt! The 2000s of the Middle Ages

Niamh McGonnell-Hall sends us back to the ye old nostalgia and reveals how our 2000s medieval fantasies are only one layer of reminiscing. 

I come bearing yet more gifts for my dear readers, courtesy of my Medieval Literature studies. (Shoutout to Beowulf). Did you ever wonder why a big portion of your childhood was filled with fantastical things? Medieval knights, ladies in towers, dragons, witches, the unbridled spirit of Medieval England perhaps? (at least that's what my Arthurian-riddled brain was conjuring up at the ripe age of twelve). And why, when you think back to your simple years of youth, that you can’t help but remember those medieval adventures that made you wish to step through the wardrobe?

The term Medievalism, in simple definition, is looking at the past through the lens of the present. In even simpler terms, we YEARN for that 5th century shit (500 AD - 1500 AD if we’re being specific). Or, we don’t yearn for it, seeing the modern period as a welcome advancement. I shall be concentrating on the yearning side of the coin for this article, and will be ignoring the high mortality rates, disease and lack of sanitation that would only cast a shadow over the romanticised medieval world I am about to show you.    

Now, a slight amendment. I am not going to be introducing you to Medieval texts. I am going to be introducing you to Medievalist tests. And there is a difference. 

Take Thomas Malory’s 1485 novel Le Morte d'Arthur, for example. (Yes, this was towards the end of the Medieval period, I know). A 2000s Medievalist exploration of this would be: Merlin, the 2008 BBC series that constituted most of my childhood (more on this gem later).

So below, I have curated a small list to get those 2000s x Middle Ages yearnings going and a throwback to their possible Medieval mother texts. 

Merlin 

We all know the story of King Arthur, and tracing the literature of this particular legend is a wild but highly recommended ride. I am most familiar with the aforementioned Le Morte d'Arthur, said to be the first novel in English prose. The 2008 BBC series Merlin captures the world of Arthurian legend, along with some good old 2000s humour and CGI, giving us a giant dose of nostalgia wrapped in a DVD box set. Nostalgia in nostalgia, if you will. We yearn for this favourite childhood show the same way it yearns for the time it is set in. So next time you’re watching Eoin Macken as Gawain in Merlin, and reminiscing on your childhood dream of marrying a knight, be sure to check out his hot-headed 15th-century doppleganger. 

Narnia

My childhood was filled with awful drawings of Mr Tumnus and an insatiable crush on Prince Caspian. This story—specifically the 2005-2010 films—had us cracked up on nostalgia for the Middle Ages right from when we were old enough to watch Aslan get stabbed by an evil witch. The film in itself has the characters travel from their World War II Britain to the medieval land of Narnia, and eventually become Arthurian legend-esque Kings and Queens. So whilst you seep into the nostalgia of dressing up as Susan Pevensie like you did when you were twelve years old, C.S. Lewis was dressing up himself, but he was writing it down. My intense nostalgia for a simpler time, where I could dream up my next drawing of a Fawn or Minotaur, was just one rung in the big old ladder of reminiscing. Besides the world of Narnia as a massive allegory for Christianity, it is our 2000s version of Pre-Raphaelitism (those 1800s bastards defined medieval yearning) that imbued our childhoods with its signature medieval magic aesthetic.  

The Last Kingdom 

A little bit more recent than some of the childhood classics, this series exists in the liminal space I like to call: Very Hot Vikings. Starting in 2015, so a decade ago (yikes!), this series oozes Anglo-Saxon nostalgia, with a more modern layer of 2010s intro graphics. It not only captures the straight-up debauchery of the Danes that may (definitely) have been edited out of the Christian manuscript of Beowulf, but it also gives watchers a taste of the nostalgia of Comitatus. A big word, rooted in Germanic warrior culture, that essentially means the deep bond of loyalty between soldiers a their leader, i.e. Uthred in The Last Kingdom AND Beowulf in Beowulf.  So open up your DVD case and dig out your favourite childhood Viking film. That childhood nostalgia of yearning for brothers in arms slaying monsters, your dramatic reenactment of holding a shampoo bottle in the air as a sword, or concocting potions playing pretend sorceress, all come winding back to the year 600 AD - 1025 AD. (Sorry, the Middle Ages doesn’t deal in hard dates).  

So now you see that our nostalgia for these films, some twenty years later, is actually a continuation of centuries of yearning for the past. This little pocket of history, with its limited amount of manuscripts and lines of poetry (30,000 lines is not a lot for five centuries!), has defined our childhoods more than we think, and whilst we may reminisce now on our childhood fantasies, we are actually reminiscing on a time long, long before that.