End of the year update, news, and yearly recap.

Dec 31, 2022

You guys have been great. My Substack has grown so much over the past year, and it’s all thanks to you all. I am so grateful for the follows, likes, shares, and support over the year. I am especially grateful for my paid subscribers, as I do not paywall any content, it really means a lot that folks want to support me that way.

Book Update

Work on the nonfiction book has been coming along. I have roughly 30-40 more biographies to finish (sounds daunting, but it’s really not that bad), and about half of the Narrative. Once these are done it’s just editing and self publishing.

I also have a children’s version of my fictional narrative that I am likely going to release for free. This is a labor of love for my daughter who has picked up the spark for all things Arthurian. Preview of that below with the text intentionally blurred.

The third book I am working on is of course my fictional Arthurian novel. I am working currently with Tristan Rapp to write a multi-part series beginning with Hengist and Horsa and ending with the death of Arthuis ap Mar, so keep an eye out for updates on that. Tristan knows everything there is to know about what these Germanic folks were up to before and after their migrations to Britain.

Articles, Articles, Articles

With this year I have put out close to 30000 words worth of articles through Substack alone. I have been working on getting this categorized through subletters within Substack, however it is a relatively convoluted process, and have only migrated a few that way. Figured I might as well go ahead and just categorize them for you all here.

The Brythonic Heroic Age: Biographies

Aurochs, Arthur, and the Anvil

The Search for the Historical King Arthur 2nd-4th Centuries.

Looking at my original compilation of my earlier Twitter threads on important figures from the Brythonic Heroic Age, it became clear that it was just too long for even Substack. I figured I would over the next few days/weeks or so release edited versions of them, with new information, as well as being broken up into a semi-generational format, starting …

2 years ago · 5 likes · Aurochs

Aurochs, Arthur, and the Anvil

The Search for the Historical King Arthur The First Post-Roman Generation

Setting the Stage for the Rise of ‘Big Men’ “In 410 Britannia rejected Rome.” Max Adams succintly claims in his recent book “The First Kingdom”, but of course it’s more complicated than that. Prior to 410 there seems to have been quite a bit of civil strife between pro-Roman factions, and pro-British factions, with this conflict likely lasting until the …

2 years ago · 4 likes · Aurochs

Aurochs, Arthur, and the Anvil

The Search for the Historical King Arthur: Vortigern and Ambrosius

Most of the men within this entry have a floruit starting sometime roughly between 430 and 460 and some of the figures from my last piece are still around during this era, such as Cunedda, who kind of straddles the gap between this generation and Coel’s, but because of his interactions with figures like Coel, I included him in the last generation, it al…

2 years ago · 6 likes · Aurochs

Aurochs, Arthur, and the Anvil

The Search for the Historical King Arthur: Coel's Sons, Cunedda's sons and Amlawdd Wledig

I’ll keep the intro short here as the first part of this article pretty well explains most of it, and can be found here. I will however add a little bit here, with some notes to chew on a while reading this. There is some contention as to whether some of these pedigrees are actually instead regnal lists misconstrued as pedigrees, assuming Primogeniture, …

2 years ago · 4 likes · Aurochs

Aurochs, Arthur, and the Anvil

The Search for the Historical King Arthur: Excalibur

Excalibur, or Caledfwlch and it’s first appearance. Excalibur, the sword of Arthur, a weapon more legend than history at this point. Where does this famed sword first appear? The answer comes in the Welsh story Culhwch and Olwen. In this story Culhwch with his cousin Arthur's help (King Arthur himself) sets off to find his bride…

2 years ago · 8 likes · Aurochs

Aurochs, Arthur, and the Anvil

The Search for the Historical King Arthur: Vortigern's Sons

Hazy figures from a misty island This group is surprisingly less rooted in real history than any of the last generation, but they are still present in less reliable sources, and as they are the foundation for Arthur’s generation, they are worth touching on. Most of these men have a floruit starting sometime between 450-470, and as such are active in roug…

2 years ago · 5 likes · Aurochs

Aurochs, Arthur, and the Anvil

The Search for the Historical King Arthur: Third generation Coelings.

Kings of the North With Vortigern’s children out of the way it makes sense to touch on the Coelings, who controlled Northern Britain. At this point Coel’s territory had been split among his descendants, Mar ap Ceneu, Pabo ap Ceneu, Gwrwst ap Ceneu, and Dyfnwal ap…

2 years ago · 4 likes · Aurochs

Aurochs, Arthur, and the Anvil

Riothamus is one of the few 100% historically rooted Brythonic figures from the 5th century. While we can generally trust that many of the figures I’ve discussed here were historic, Riothamus is definitely historical. He has become ever present in the discussion of Arthuriana as part of the inspiration for the later composite Arthur, so naturally I woul…

2 years ago · 4 likes · 3 comments · Aurochs

Narratives

Aurochs, Arthur, and the Anvil

The Coelings: A Speculative Narrative.

Through analysis of the scant historical sources, poetry, tradition, geography, and some puzzle-solving conjecture I think it is possible to recreate a fairly satisfying narrative of the Coelings and their dealings in the 5th and 6th centuries AD. I will of course not be touching on everything that possibly could have happened, but I feel the high point…

2 years ago · 8 likes · 3 comments · Aurochs

Aurochs, Arthur, and the Anvil

A Fleshed out Campaign Narrative for Arthwys ap Mar

Do not take this as fact, this is more or less a fun exercise in trying to rebuild what may have happened from a handful of sources. With some speculation from finding the sites of Arthur’s twelve battles from Nennius, combined with the regnal list that Geoffrey of Monmouth was drawing upon for his Archgallo narrative, we can maybe reconstruct something…

2 years ago · 6 likes · Aurochs

The first entry in my Arthurian Tropes series

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Arthurian Tropes: The Sword in the Stone

With the mild success of my recent twitter thread on the Sword in the Stone I thought it would be worth it to extend it a little here, and even start a new series. With the depth of Arthurian Canon it can be hard to figure out what traditions are part of the original Pre-Galfridian folkloric tradition and what were the clever inventions of later writers…

2 years ago · 14 likes · Aurochs

A couple of Blacksmithing Oriented Posts

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Sword Construction and Blade Geometry

Many of you have subscribed to this Substack because of my articles looking at the historical origins for King Arthur. This has generally been my focus on here for the last few months especially, but I have also been an amateur blacksmith for some years now, and I occasionally like to write on it here as well. I have a few projects lined up that had to …

2 years ago · 10 likes · 5 comments · Aurochs

Aurochs, Arthur, and the Anvil

Short Post on Inlaying for Doctor Hammer

Inlaying on a knife or spear or any other medium to high carbon implement is tricky, and requires very hard gravers. After a short conversation with Doc (Who you can find hereDoctor Hammer ) I figured I could cook up a few images to explain the idea and process a little better…

2 years ago · 8 likes · 2 comments · Aurochs

One off on Ivar the Boneless

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Ivar, Ingvar, and Ímar.

Many of you are familiar with my work on searching for the historical King Arthur, but there are a number of other historical figures that are steeped in varying amounts of myth. One of these is the famed Viking Warlord Ivar the Boneless. We have every reason to believe that Ivar was a real person, but the most detailed account of Ivar is by far the mos…

2 years ago · 7 likes · Aurochs

Arthur’s 12 battles analyzed.

Aurochs, Arthur, and the Anvil

The Twelve Battles of King Arthur, Part 1, The Sites.

Finding the sites of Arthur’s twelve battles listed in Nennius’ Historia Brittonum is absurdly well-trodden ground. Many smarter men than I have been here before, and have tried to map out where they may have been. I will give it an attempt anyway, and maybe bring some new things to the table. Here is Nennius’ writing on Arthur’s battles in it’s entiret…

2 years ago · 7 likes · Aurochs

Aurochs, Arthur, and the Anvil

The Twelve Battles of King Arthur Part 2: The Possible Campaigns

Here we are going to map out some potential campaigns from possible sites for Arthur's twelve battles listed in Nennius. You can find the full list of sites for the twelve battles here If Arthur existed, he would have started his campaigns at the earliest it would seem around the mid 480's, culminating in a generation spanning peace brought on by a victo…

2 years ago · 7 likes · Aurochs

Aurochs, Arthur, and the Anvil

The Twelve Battles of King Arthur Part 3: Camlann

In the conclusion to this series on Arthur’s battles we will finally visit Camlann, a battle not included in Nennius, but still rather famous. The entry for Camlann in the Welsh Annals features not only an early reference to Arthur, but also to Medraut (Mordred) and while detail there is sparse it is nonetheless a major thread in our tapestry of the his…

2 years ago · 5 likes · Aurochs

Article published in Man’s World issue 7.

Aurochs, Arthur, and the Anvil

Who Is the Real Arthur?

Originally published in Man’s World 7 and reprinted with permission of the editor. To get the full experience with @babygravy9’s amazing layout and graphics you can find issue 7 here, Download, Flipbook, as well as a prodigious amount of other fantastic articles…

2 years ago · 7 likes · 6 comments · Aurochs

Arthuis ap Mar. Part of my research regarding the shadowy Arthuis ap Mar, and his role in the Arthur legend.

Aurochs, Arthur, and the Anvil

Arthgallo, Arthwys ap Mar, and Arthur

This is going to be a small expansion upon the last part of my article in Issue 7 of Raw Egg Nationalist’s wonderful Man’s World Issue 7. In that article I put the spotlight on three figures I think play some part in Arthur’s creation. One of these was Arthwys ap Mar. I will eventually do a longer piece focusing exclusively on him, and what we can glean…

2 years ago · 3 likes · Aurochs

Aurochs, Arthur, and the Anvil

The Northern Arthur

When the Celtic peoples of Northern Britain are brought up, most will think of the Scots, while others will think of the Picts. Some will bring up the Gododdin. The Gododdin are but one of the numerous Brythonic derived tribes in Northern Britain. Other lesser known Northern British tribes like the Brigantes may have had far reaching influence that we s…

2 years ago · 14 likes · 7 comments · Aurochs

What’s next? I’ll be continuing the work on the biographies of important figures from the Brythonic Heroic Age, finishing up the third post-Roman generation, and getting to the fourth (Arthur’s generation) very soon. Expect more smithing content, as a new forge is in the works, including completion of an inlaid Seax, and the Kutuluk club. I am aiming for the non-fiction book to be finished by summer of 2023, and for the children’s book to be done in the next few months. I will probably be releasing a PDF of it for free, If I do sell print versions of it they will be limited. I also post most of my research in smaller more digestible segments on twitter, so be sure to follow me there.

Once again, I am so appreciative for the opportunities I have been given here, and look forward to continuing my work.

Discussion about this post

Brennan MacDowell

Dec 31, 2022Liked by Aurochs

Great news! Looking forward to the books for certain! Will buy all mentioned. Would love to upgrade to paid. Will put that on list of aspirations for this year. This has been a place for good healthy food for the heart. Thank you!

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