{"id":1010,"date":"2026-07-06T19:05:50","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T14:05:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=1010"},"modified":"2026-07-06T19:05:50","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T14:05:50","slug":"this-tumblr-girl-got-the-internet-obsessed-with-medieval-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=1010","title":{"rendered":"This Tumblr girl got the internet obsessed with medieval art"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-adroot=\"true\">\n<p>Olivia Swarthout has brought medieval art to the masses (460K <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WeirdMedieval\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">Twitter<\/a> followers and counting) but she\u2019s not formally trained in medieval history or art. <\/p>\n<p>A self-described \u201cproprietress of weird medieval guys,\u201d she shares little 15th-century <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WeirdMedieval\/status\/1525125919022653442\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">snail cats<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WeirdMedieval\/status\/1558573068196450305\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">gun-carrying demons<\/a>, and other oddly charming scenes from centuries-old art along with her not-so-serious modern-day commentary. <\/p>\n<p>Swarthout (who <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WeirdMedieval\/status\/1548051775520772096?s=20&amp;t=rhmCDx0kr48khubqHKUqOg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">recently asked<\/a> followers for a fancam of 12th-century polymath<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hildegard_of_Bingen\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\"> Hildegard von Bingen<\/a>, \u201cfor a friend\u201d) is framing medieval art through a meme-y lens, making the Classics palatable and funny: medieval guys \u2014 they\u2019re just like us! They <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WeirdMedieval\/status\/1561340671587491841\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">examine things<\/a>. They <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WeirdMedieval\/status\/1560597584829288449\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">hug their friends<\/a>. They <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WeirdMedieval\/status\/1558523909766627329\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">hold eggs<\/a>. They <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WeirdMedieval\/status\/1525928629099712513\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">gamble in sunglasses<\/a>. They <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WeirdMedieval\/status\/1559202941441122306\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">eat poultry with pals<\/a>. They even had \u2018this isn\u2019t what it looks like!\u2019 moments, like one post showing a king peeking into a room to see the queen (crown still on) in bed with a dragon, which Swarthout captioned, &#8220;really? with the dragon?&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>And her genuine passion for medieval history is infectious. Perhaps a <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WeirdMedieval\/status\/1526926589459562500\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">doctor dog treating a sick cat<\/a> <em>is<\/em> what we need in these trying times.<\/p>\n<p>By day, Olivia Swarthout is a data scientist in London with an interest in environmental topics. But in her free time, she\u2019s the queen of Middle Ages memes, and she spends a few hours a week perusing digital archives to find them. She likes the British Library\u2019s collections because you can search by keyword, but she also uses resources from the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Morgan Library in New York, the National Library of France, and a slew of others. \u201cI\u2019ll look through whole manuscripts online and get totally lost in them. There are all these really cool bits of art,\u201d she told me over the phone.<\/p>\n<p>Swarthout, 22, grew up in Montana until her parents packed up and moved to Germany when she was 10, after receiving German citizenship that her Jewish ancestors lost before WW2. She went to Scotland to study statistics at the University of Glasgow, graduating in 2022 with a thesis examining the statistical prevalence of frogs and toads of the U.K. \u2014 a natural extension of her long-running fixation on frogs. \u201cThere\u2019s something inherently appealing about creatures that are ugly in a charming or cute way. I look at medieval art in the same way.\u201d She speaks English and German and is \u201cthinking about learning Medieval Latin\u201d (of course she is).<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019s maintained similar types of gimmick accounts in the past, but none captured the internet like @WeirdMedieval, which she started in April while sitting in the city of Glasgow\u2019s Mitchell Library deriving equations before her final exams. (\u201cI go there because I love the funky carpets,\u201d she says.)<\/p>\n<blockquote data-md-text-align=\"center\" class=\"rs0 Dhu\"><p>\u201cThere\u2019s <strong>something<\/strong> inherently appealing about <strong>creatures<\/strong> that are <strong>ugly<\/strong> in a <strong>charming or cute <\/strong>way.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\u201cI was looking for an escape from the technical and mathematical work that was piled on me, so I decided to take a break, and I flip through some medieval manuscripts as a mental cleanse. I didn\u2019t have the intention of doing anything with them, but I got lost in the art. I was like, \u2018Oh, these people were really funny.\u2019\u201d Like they always say, nothing takes your mind off work like a thousand-year-old <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WeirdMedieval\/status\/1560381977961922560\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">painting of a bird with two dozen eyes<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Within four months and a few hundred medieval guys, she\u2019s become one of the internet\u2019s most conspicuous medieval scholars. \u201cIt gives me pause when posting to know that the president of Chile, a recent follower, will see this weird medieval guy,\u201d she says. And she was particularly starstruck when the lead singer of the Mountain Goats, her favorite band since high school, professed himself a weird medieval guys fan.<\/p>\n<p>Her identity isn\u2019t exactly a secret, but she\u2019s also not particularly forthcoming online about who she is. She just prefers to focus her content on the medieval guys, though people have long <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/emilyisfrankie\/status\/1554924590215970818\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">wondered<\/a> who procures the startling scenes. \u201cI think people expect someone male, in his mid-thirties, who wears a tweed jacket with elbow patches,\u201d Swarthout told me over the phone. Instead, she\u2019s a Tumblr girl. \u201cI was there for the heyday, from like 2012 to 2016, when it was absolutely insane \u2014 no adults, no brands, just a bunch of teens bonding over our obsessions to an unhealthy extent. That was a big part of my upbringing and sense of humor,\u201d she says. Her weird medieval guys curation is born of nostalgia for an escapist internet, the \u201conline corners that used to feel more isolated and self-contained.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019s happy to join Twitter\u2019s class of relatively wholesome gimmick accounts \u2014 like <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/weirdlilguys\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">Cats being weird little guys<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.inputmag.com\/culture\/viral-twitter-meme-account-gators-daily-seth-kaplan\" class=\"T3D\">Gators Daily<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ampol_moment\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">Crazy ass moments in American politics<\/a> (and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CrazyItalianPol\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">Italian<\/a> politics too) \u2014 which eschew viral trends for long-running, hyperspecific content.<\/p>\n<p>Swarthout is adamant that the medieval period isn\u2019t boring. She\u2019s also passionate about boosting middle ages PR. \u201cThey weren\u2019t stupid back then!\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s a pretty well-established movement among medieval scholars to push back against terms like \u2018Dark Ages\u2019 which falsely imply the Middle Ages had less knowledge and study compared to before. After the Middle Ages, there was a big revival of Roman and Greek  aesthetics that went along with a trend toward global empires, which came at the expense of the Middle Ages\u2019 reputation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Even without sweeping empires, the Middle Ages had impressive art and culture and literacy. And now, a generation centuries younger can appreciate it in a whole new way.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI didn\u2019t know very much about the Middle Ages before, but collecting pictures of the weird guys as if they\u2019re Pok\u00e9mon has led me to all the history that\u2019s behind them,\u201d said Anna, a high schooler from California who follows @WeirdMedieval.<\/p>\n<p>Swarthout also sells<a href=\"https:\/\/weirdmedievalguys.bigcartel.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\"> weird medieval stickers<\/a>, like a fish with feet or a  \u201cmischief radish man,\u201d and says she\u2019s cooking up a few plans that she can\u2019t announce yet. \u201cI\u2019m very excited.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Olivia Swarthout has brought medieval art to the masses (460K Twitter followers and counting) but she\u2019s not formally trained in medieval history or art. A self-described \u201cproprietress of weird medieval guys,\u201d she shares little 15th-century snail cats, gun-carrying demons, and other oddly charming scenes from centuries-old art along with her not-so-serious modern-day commentary. Swarthout (who&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1011,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/imgix.bustle.com\/uploads\/image\/2022\/9\/15\/d06a19d4-3748-4b8d-b8b9-4eb5c4c20369-untitled-design-45.jpeg?w=1200&h=630&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fm=jpg&fp-x=0.5427&fp-y=0.7067","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsweek-trending"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}