Cambridge Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic Interview Questions and Mock Interviews

Imagine the floor plan of a long timber hall, about twice as long as it is wide. A single hearth runs down the middle of the floor. Wide benches line both long walls. At one end stands a raised platform with one large chair on it. At the other end are two doors facing each other across the floor and a small storeroom. What does this layout suggest about who sat where, how people moved and spoke in the room, and who held power? How might knowing this change the way you read a poem that is set in a hall like it?

Some readers admire the hero of a heroic poem for risking everything to protect his people. Others call him reckless, because his death leaves them exposed. Pick a hero from any epic or heroic story you know, or invent one with a short outline, and defend one of these views. What is the strongest objection to your reading, and how would you answer it?

When Roman rule in Britain ended, people who spoke Germanic languages came to live in many parts of the island. Historians have described this as an invasion, a migration, a settlement or a takeover. Choose the word you think fits best and defend it. What does your chosen word lead a reader to assume, and what does it hide?

Early medieval rulers sometimes adopted a new religion, and their subjects were encouraged or expected to follow. Does a ruler's change of religion tell us what ordinary people believed? Argue for one answer, whatever your own views, and say what evidence would test your case.

In many heroic stories a warrior must avenge a killed kinsman, even when the killer is a friend or a relative by marriage. Some readers see this duty as a strength of such societies, because it protects the weak. Others see it as a weakness, because it keeps violence going. Which view is stronger? Use a story you know, or a family feud you invent, to support your answer.

Most people read early medieval poems in modern English translation. Is a translation the poem itself, or one person's interpretation of it? Give an example of a choice a translator has to make, such as keeping the rhythm or keeping the exact meaning of each word, and argue for what you would put first.

Films, games and television often show early medieval northern Europe as a world of constant fighting and endless feasts. Is it a problem if popular culture simplifies the past in this way, or can simplification do useful work? Argue a position, and say what a historian might add to make the picture more accurate.

Many English place-names end in ‘-by’, a word that meant a farm or village in the Scandinavian languages, and many of them lie in the north and east of England. A student claims that this proves large numbers of Scandinavian people settled there. What can a place-name show, and what can it not show? What other evidence would you want before accepting the claim?

Excavators find the remains of a timber hall in a northern valley. The posts are charred, and under the burnt floor lie broken cups, an iron knife and a few silver ornaments. A newspaper headline says the hall was destroyed in a raid. What other explanations could there be for the burning? What further evidence would help you choose between them, and what would convince you of a raid?

Imagine a manuscript page of a long text copied neatly in black ink. In the margin, in a different and smaller hand, someone has added a note: “My fingers are cold and the ink is thin.” What can this note tell us, and what can it not tell us? How might you work out who wrote it, and when?

A saga about the settlement of a distant island was written down several generations after the events it describes. A historian wants to use it to learn what the first settlers actually did. What might make a detail in the saga more trustworthy, and what might make it less so? Say what other kinds of evidence you would set beside it.

In modern English we write the ‘k’ in ‘knight’ and the ‘gh’ in ‘night’ and ‘light’, though we no longer pronounce them. A student says that spelling is a fossil of older pronunciation. Is that a fair claim? How would you test it, and what are its limits as evidence?

English today contains everyday words that came from the Scandinavian languages of Viking Age settlers, such as ‘egg’, ‘sky’ and ‘window’. Suppose those settlers had never come to Britain. How might English be different today, and what do you think would have stayed much the same? Say what you are using as evidence for each guess.

Some poems from the early medieval period survive in only one manuscript copy. Suppose a fire had destroyed one such manuscript before anyone had copied or transcribed it. How would our picture of the literature of the time be different? What does this suggest about how far we can call the surviving texts typical?

Suppose the many small kingdoms of early medieval Britain had never merged into larger ones. How might the languages, laws and stories of the island look different? What evidence about how these kingdoms actually behaved would you use to support your guess?

Many of our earliest accounts of Viking raids on monasteries come from chronicles written by monks, who were the people being raided. Suppose instead that the chroniclers had been on friendly terms with the raiders and wrote of them as allies. How might the records read differently, and how might that change what people today think about the Vikings? What does the exercise suggest about how far we should trust the sources we have?

Tell me about something from the past, or a story, place or object from long ago, that you have read, seen or visited, in a book, a museum, a film or anywhere else. What did you expect before you met it, and what changed in your mind? What would you like to find out next?

Choose a text in translation that you have enjoyed, from any period or place. Describe or read out a short part of it and show me how you would read it closely. What do the word choices, the order of events or the tone do to you as a reader?

Think of another subject you study or enjoy, such as maths, a science, a modern language or music. What is one habit of thinking from it that might help you read old texts or weigh evidence about the past, and how might it mislead you if used carelessly?

Think of a piece of written work you have produced, for school or on your own. Pick one claim you made in it. What is the strongest argument against that claim, and would you change anything now?