Water  is everywhere; it is all around us and inside of us. It is omnipresent and omnipotent. It transgresses human history and permeates the world’s history, from Biblical flooding to the overflowing Post-Anthropocene. For medieval Cistercians, ‘monastic hydrology’ was a liquid source of both material and spiritual wealth, their cloistered gardens evoking an Eden of abundantly flowing treasures (Smith: Water in Medieval Intellectual Culture). For Andalucian landscapers, town planners and palace architects, irrigation canals and waterways were conduits leading to paradise on earth. For hydraulic engineers, water in motion was the driving force in mills, organs, instruments, automated saws, artilleries, animations and clockwork. For citizens of Aarhus, the aquatic saints Clement and Nicholas were protectors against infernal dangers at land and the ‘draco maris’ in the dark abyss at sea (Stolz et al.: Wasser in der mittelalterlichen Kultur, accessible online).

And yet, to paraphrase Tim Ingold, water is ineffable. It cannot be pinned down in terms of established concepts or categories. To describe water is to pose a riddle, whose answer can be discovered only through observation and engagement with the material substance itself. To know water, we have to follow it (Ingold: Toward an Ecology of Materials). The annual Christmas Seminar at Center for Vikingetid og Middelalder seeks to uncover the ineffability and fluidity of water by taking a dip in its multifarious properties and variable physical states. We will investigate the multiple forms and functions of ‘medieval water’ in social, cultural and religious contexts. We will dive into the humid mediality and materiality of water that resonates with ‘our bodies’ wet constitution’ (Neimanis: Bodies of Water). By soaking the Middle Ages, may we encounter a common fluidity across the centuries – or may we channel historically specific waters of the past? Was medieval water contained, physically and mentally – or was it just as unruly, chaotic and threatening as today? Was liquid a source of crisis and anxiety – or of bliss and communion?

For more info about the program see the poster for the event.