This evening the Folklore Society hosted the Katharine Briggs Lecture and Katharine Briggs Award at Conway Hall in London, where the judges pick the best book about folklore published in Britain and Ireland in 2021-2 from a shortlist of seven. That shortlist included my book Pagans in the Early Modern Baltic.
This year’s Katharine Briggs Lecture was given by Katherine Langrish, entitled ‘Fenrir’s Fetter and the Power of Stories’. Afterwards, Folklore Society President Prof. Owen Davies read out the judges’ comments on the seven shortlisted books. The judges described Pagans in the Early Modern Baltic as:
A thoughtfully curated collection on a hitherto little-covered topic, amounting to an impressive academic study. It is a beautiful example of how scholarship–expert, dedicated and precise scholarship–speaks to bigger historical and geo-political themes.
The runners up for the prize included Simon Young’s The Boggart, a book for which I wrote the index.
This year’s winner was Prof. Marina Montesano with her book Folklore, Magic and Witchcraft: Cultural Exchanges from the Twelfth to Eighteenth Century.
This was the third time one of my books has been shortlisted for the Katharine Briggs Award, having been shortlisted for Peterborough Folklore in 2018 and Suffolk Fairylore in 2019. My book Magic in Merlin’s Realm also featured in the display at this year’s Katharine Briggs Award, as it was one of the books submitted but not shortlisted.
As always, it was wonderful to meet fellow members of the Folklore Society in person!
Francis Young 