Medieval Resources

Whether your interest is medieval manuscripts, languages, or animal lore, there’s something here for you.

Old English

Bosworth-Toller Dictionary – Look up Old English words.
Toronto Dictionary of Old English – Much more thorough (think Oxford English Dictionary for Old English), only includes words beginning with A-I so far. Get 20 free logins per year, or if you’re affiliated with a university, check to see if the library has a subscription. You can see the Word of the Week without paying for a subscription, and you can sign up to get this in email form.
Old English Poetry in Facsimile / Digital Mappa – Explore Old English poetry through digital manuscript images, transcriptions, editorial annotations and translations.
A Thesaurus of Old English – Search for Old English words by subject rather than alphabetically.
Old English Translator – Translate an Old English word to modern English or vice versa.
Þæt Eald-Ænglisce Blog – Great post on Old English alphabet and pronunciation.
Old English Poetry – Database of poetry written in Old English, glossed but not translated.
The Riddle Ages – Provides texts, translations, and commentary of the Old English riddles in the Exeter Book.
Beowulf Translations – Compare over 100 different translations of Beowulf, from the beginning of the 19th century to the present.
Wikipǣdia – Wikipedia in Old English. Why not.

British Library Digitised Manuscripts – Search the British Library’s collection of digitised manuscripts.
The Walters Art Museum – Manuscripts digitised by The Walters Art Museum, as well as photos of metalwork, sculpture, paintings, and stained glass.
Digital Bodleian – Digitised medieval and renaissance manuscripts at the Bodleian Library.
J. Paul Getty Museum – A beautiful collection of medieval manuscripts online.
Wren Digital Library – Digitised collections from the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Open Marginalis – A selection of digitized medieval manuscripts working to guide new users to open collections for casual and scholarly use.

Dēor-hord: a medieval and modern bestiary (mine) – What do you get when you ask a modern illustrator to draw animals based on descriptions from medieval manuscripts?
Medieval Comics: how to be human in the Middle Ages (mine) – A blog about the medieval, comics, and medieval comics, exploring what it means to be human in the Middle Ages.
The Medieval Bestiary – An amazing database of medieval animals.
British Library Medieval Manuscripts Blog – Fun, user-friendly blog posts about medieval stuff, illustrated with beautiful images from the British Library’s collection.
Medievalists.net – Articles and links to papers on everything medieval.
Discarding Images – Probably my favourite medieval Tumblr, amusing medieval images that are very well cited.
Sexy Codicology – Making codicology (the study of books as physical objects, especially manuscripts) sexy one post at a time.
Erik Kwakkel – A medieval book historian’s Tumblr of medieval book eye candy.
A Clerk of Oxford – A blog about the literature and history of medieval England, as well as about saints, churches, folklore, Vikings, etc.

The Medieval Podcast – On everything medieval. Hosted by Danièle Cybulskie from Medievalists.net.
The Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast – Hear about the oft-unsung reality of the Middle Ages as a diverse historical and cultural period.
Saga Thing – Discover what Vikings did when they were at home in this podcast about the Icelandic sagas.