Farolfus is a Langobard gasindus (retainer in a lord’s household) in what is now northern Italy, c.600 CE. Although I was raised in a warrior society, now that my people have settled on the Italian peninsula, politics, power, and bureaucracy are more complicated than before.
My primary interest is decorative stamped pottery from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, and I have reconstructed nearly 200 stamp dies and rouletting tools based on extant examples from the Roman provinces (mainly Brittania and Pannonia) as well as many parts of continental Europe, Britain, and Scandinavia in the Migration Period and Vendel/Merovingian Period (roughly 400 to 750 CE). Other interests include leatherwork, shoes, and Migration-Era material culture more generally.
Past/current classes taught
- Norwegian Iron Age Bucket Pottery [hands-on; instructional videos are available at https://farolfus.com/iron-age-norwegian-bucket-shaped-pottery/]
- Meet the Langobards: 568-774 CE [history]
- Intro to ‘Early Period’ Stamped Pottery: Decorated Wares of Britain, Scandinavia, and Western Europe, 5th-7th Centuries CE [history]
- Anglian & Saxon Decorated Wares in Britain, 450-650 CE [history]
- Learn to Make ‘Early Period’ Stamped Pottery [hands-on]
- As the Wheel Turns: Imported Pottery in Early Medieval Britain and Scandinavia [history]
- Before They Wore Turnshoes: European Footwear before 800 CE [history]
- Patterning a Germanic One-Piece Shoe [hands-on or virtual]
- Intro to Early Medieval Leather Tooling [hands-on or virtual]
Since folks have asked, a note on my name and its pronunciation: In person, I answer to Faraulf or Farolfus and it doesn't matter to me. In the Langobardic language, it would likely have been written using the Elder Futhark as ᚠᚨᚱᚨᚢᛚᚠ(Faraulf or something fairly close). Most of the Langobards' written records are in Latin, so my name had to be registered that way. For most bureaucratic/written purposes, I usually use the Latin form [pronounced fa-RAWL-fuss FILLY-uss ri-CAR-dee], but conversationally would have been called Faraulf son of Rīkahard [FARR-a-oolf son of REEK-a-hard], or in Langobardic, probably something like Faraulf Rīkahard sunu, similar to the way it would have been handled by the Saxons.