NEWS

Great Falls’ Rostad headed to jolly old England

Richard Ecke

England has its good points — William Shakespeare; the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Coldplay; James Bond and Harry Potter — but it’s also thousands of miles away from Montana.

Not everyone would expect a student from Great Falls to immerse himself in studying the end of the Middle Ages in Britain.

Yet Sam Rostad of Great Falls has tossed aside convention and excelled at scholarship involving the onetime mother country. He recently garnered a $30,000 grant that will enable him to study medieval Benedictine monasteries for a doctoral degree.

Rostad has been fascinated by England and the Middle Ages since he was a boy. He was thrilled by the film “Braveheart,” a 1995 Best Picture film about conflict between England and Scotland; and along with his mom, a murder-mystery buff, he enjoyed a mid-1990s British TV series about an English Crusader-turned-monk named Brother Cadfael, who also was a detective.

“I just kind of liked medieval stuff as a kid,” Rostad said Sunday in a telephone interview from Indiana. “I guess I never really outgrew it.”

He draws the line, though, at attending costumed renaissance fairs.

“I don’t have a foam sword and fake armor,” he quipped.

The fanciful part of medieval times seems to be what the public enjoys, though. Rostad taught a course in medieval civilization at Indiana University-South Bend while pursuing advanced degrees.

“Some of my students were a little disappointed that it wasn’t all head-chopping and knights,” Rostad said with a chuckle.

In the British Isles, Rostad said some Brits are “just kind of shocked” an American scholar is pursuing the history of late medieval England so aggressively, but they don’t seem to mind.

“They’re a pretty welcoming bunch,” he said. Plus, even Britons might not be keen on doing Rostad’s kind of scholarship.

For his research coming up, Rostad will read original, old Benedictine hand-written sermons in Latin. In addition to English and Latin, he also knows German and French, knowledge that helps him read old writings.

“It is interesting that a kid from Montana is interested in something so foreign,” said his mother, Nancy Luth of Great Falls. On family outings, he’s not happy unless the trip includes historical stops.

“He just is a historian — first, foremost and always,” Luth said.

Rostad, who turned 28 Sunday, has been awarded a 2015 Schallek Fellowship from the Medieval Academy of America, in collaboration with the Richard III Society, American Branch. Richard III, by the way, is the oft-reviled English king whose bones were dug up and given a place of honor in London in March.

The 2006 Great Falls High School graduate received a one-year grant of $30,000 to support a doctoral dissertation in any discipline dealing with late-medieval Britain, circa 1350 to 1500. At the start of that period, bubonic plague swept through Europe, wiping out nearly a third of Europe’s population.

But the period wasn’t all disease and horror.

“The late Middle Ages always kind of gets a bad rap,” Rostad said.

Rostad, who grew up in Great Falls, knows a lot about Great Britain already. He received the 2010 University of Montana Outstanding Senior in History Award; a master’s of philosophy degree from Cambridge University in England in 2012; and a master of arts degree from Notre Dame in 2014.

Now Rostad, a PhD candidate in history at Notre Dame, will use his fellowship to work on his dissertation in England during the coming academic year. His parents are Carl Rostad and Luth, the retired municipal judge.

Sam Rostad’s dissertation will focus on the Bendictines, a cloistered monastic order whose devotional obligations usually required both silence and segregation from the outside world. However, the Benedictine monks also played a significant role, both vocal and interactive, in the religious life of Britons in the medieval period.

“I never wanted to be a monk, no,” Sam said. But he finds monks fascinating.

His ultimate goal is to become a professor of history.

Sam expects to spend August through May in Great Britain, adding food in England isn’t as bad as some skeptics say.

“The Indian food is fantastic in Britain,” he pointed out. “I enjoy eating over there. I think they (Britons) have kind of gotten over boiling everything.”

School days

Here’s a chance to offer your recollections about going to school in Great Falls.

The Tribune in Wednesday’s newspaper will run a large graphic showing present and past public school buildings in Great Falls, as the school board decides whether to close any of the schools or whether to fix them. It’s a big deal, with millions of dollars in improvements expected. Closing a school also could have major effects on a neighborhood. It’s touchy and important.

Please send me your memories about a particular Great Falls public school you attended. I need your comments by 3 p.m. Tuesday to put them in a story that runs in the Tribune’s print edition Wednesday. Email your story to recke@greatfallstribune.com, or fax it to 406-791-1431. Be sure to provide your name, where you live now and a way to contact you if we have any questions.

If you have any tales of interest, including especially inspiring or unusual teachers, administrators, staff or fellow students at a particular school, be sure to let us know. Also, let me know if you were part of that huge class of 1965 that endured triple shifts at Great Falls High School just before C.M. Russell High School opened. That must have been a crazy time to go to school.

Richard Ecke writes a weekly column on city life. Reach him at 406-791-1465, recke@greatfallstribune.com, or follow him @GFTrib_REcke on Twitter.