Martin Rundkvist (born 4 April 1972) is a Swedish archaeologist and associate professor at the University of Łódź in Poland. His research focuses on the Bronze, Iron, and Middle Ages of Scandinavia, and includes significant excavations in the province of Östergötland.
Rundkvist has studied and excavated various sites in Sweden, particularly in the country's south. In 2003 and 2004, he published a three-volume work which doubled as his PhD dissertation, cataloguing the finds from Barshalder, the largest prehistoric cemetery on the Swedish island of Gotland. A subsequent book identified nine possible regional power centres in Östergötland, and attempted to determine where the "Beowulfian mead halls" of the day once stood.[R 1] Excavating years later at one of these sites, Aska, Rundkvist uncovered the foundations of a large mead hall, and 22 ornate gold figures that may have represented gods or royals. In other works, Rundkvist has excavated a Viking boat grave, and analysed both the placement of deposited artefacts in the landscape and the lifestyles of the Scandinavian élite during the Middle Ages.
Rundkvist has worked in archaeology since 1992, including research and lecture posts at the universities of Exeter, Chester, Linnaeus, and Tallinn. He spent two decades as managing editor of Fornvännen, a journal on archaeology and medieval art, and authors the blog Aardvarchaeology, which the James Randi Educational Foundation termed "the most-read archaeology blog on the Internet".[1] Rundkvist served as chair for the Swedish Skeptics' Association for four years, and edited its quarterly journal Folkvett.
Martin Rundkvist was born on 4 April 1972 in Stockholm, Sweden,[R 2][R 3] to Åsa Leander and Pelle Rundkvist.[R 4] Other than two early years spent in Connecticut, Rundkvist has lived in Stockholm his entire life.[R 5] As a teenager in the 1980s, he played role-playing games and spent time on online bulletin board systems.[R 5] Rundkvist graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Stockholm University in 1992,[R 3][R 6] and received his PhD from the same institution in 2003.[R 2] In 2001, Rundkvist won several games on the Swedish version of the television show Jeopardy!.[2] That same year, he gave a public talk on J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth and its connection to archaeology.[3]
Rundkvist has held archaeological positions since 1992; these were primarily research-related, but included contract work.[R 7] Among these were positions as an honorary researcher at the University of Exeter from 2005 to 2008, as a project leader, field archaeologist, and artefact specialist for Värmdö Municipality from 2007 to 2008, and as a visiting researcher at the University of Chester from 2008 to 2015.[R 3][R 2] Howard Williams, an archaeologist at Chester, said that Rundkvist's appointment "augments our international research expertise in early medieval archaeology, and we foresee a range of advantages for collaborative research and fieldwork opportunities for students in Viking Age archaeology".[4] Rundkvist was a senior lecturer at Linnaeus University starting in 2012,[R 7] and at Umeå University, starting in autumn 2013.[R 8] In 2014 he began working as a collaborator at Tallinn University's Institute of History.[R 2] He joined the faculty at the University of Łódź's Institute of Archaeology in January 2020, and as of 2021 is an associate professor there.[R 3]
Rundkvist has held a variety of positions with academic journals. From April 1999 to November 2018, he was the managing editor of the quarterly Fornvännen—the Journal of Swedish Antiquarian Research—published by the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities.[R 9] Rundkvist wrote that he joined partly to gain "a better platform in academic archaeology than the shaky one I had as a PhD student", and stayed in part because "the Royal Academy of Letters is a very good employer and takes care of its people".[R 9]