Boxing clever: decoding the Franks Casket

Looking in detail at the Franks Casket this lecture unlocks this enigmatic box, considering its mysteries and riddles and asking what it might mean. Looking at the carvings, the runes and the stories on the box, thinking about the whale at its core and asking questions about who might have used this incredible object, we will examine the casket closely for its symbols and significance.

Lecturer: Meg Boulton – Meg Boulton completed her AHRC funded PhD at the University of York in 2013, specialising in the Art and Architecture of the Anglo-Saxon World. Her doctoral research looked at the conceptualisation, construction and depiction of sacred space in the early medieval period but wider interests span the Medieval to the Post-Modern, with an emphasis on space and surface – from Anglo-Saxon stone, to Inuit Sculpture, to television adaptations of Agatha Christie’s novels. She is currently a Teaching Fellow at the University of Edinburgh; with recent positions at Leeds, York and Oxford in the areas of Art and Architectural History, Visual Culture and Museum Studies.

Image source: By John W. Schulze – Flickr: Franks Casket front, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24268847