Dr Christopher Callow

Chris Callow is an Associate Professor in Medieval History at the University of Birmingham in England. His teaching and research center on medieval Iceland. He first studied in Iceland in the mid 1990s and has been coming back regularly ever since. He followed his BA degree in Medieval Studies with a year studying Modern Icelandic in Iceland and then completing a PhD on medieval Icelandic history. The PhD contributed to his book, Landscape, Tradition and Power in Medieval Iceland (Brill). He has since written numerous articles on topics related to early Iceland including stories about female settlers, children and childhood, and the Black Death. He is currently writing a book on the way people in Iceland have thought about slavery over the centuries. Dr Callow’s research reflects his interdisciplinary interests. He has used sagas, laws, varied forms of archaeology, and place-names to try to understand both the realities of early Icelandic society and the way people thought and wrote about the past. 

Dr Callow has been invited to speak to public audiences at several branches of the UK’s Historical Association and various local historical and archaeological societies. He has also been invited to speak to the Viking Society for Northern Research twice, most recently talking about his work on slavery. In 2014 he had the pleasure of curating the film series that accompanied the British Museum’s major exhibition, Vikings: Life and Legend.