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FRIHUMSAM-Fri prosj.st. hum og sam

Flanders, Norway, and Denmark: Relations and Intertextual Exchanges in the High Middle Ages (ca. 1080-1383)

Alternative title: Flandern, Noreg og Danmark: relasjonar og intertekstuell utveksling i høgmellomalderen (ca. 1080-1383)

Awarded: NOK 3.4 mill.

Books came to Scandinavia with Christianity. As baptism and church-building progressed, Northmen learned how to write books on parchment, in Latin and in the vernacular, using the Latin alphabet. The models of these books came from various regions and countries, reflecting the rich contacts between Scandinavia and the world. The project FLANDRIA (Flanders, Norway, and Denmark: Relations and Intertextual Exchanges in the High Middle Ages (ca. 1080-1383)) examines the contact between Flanders, Norway, and Denmark in the High Middle Ages, and how this contact influenced Scandinavian manuscript culture. Flanders was a hub for trade and sea travel, where Scandinavians would disembark to continue their journey over land when having errands on the continent. We know that Scandinavians visited Bruges and its surrounding areas; however, there have been few studies of this contact, and even fewer of how it shaped the development of writing and book culture in Scandinavia. A main goal for the project has therefore been to examine to what extent, and how, this contact with medieval Flanders or the Low Countries (corresponding to today’s Belgium and parts of Northern France) has left traces in Norwegian and Danish manuscripts. The project has studied both intact manuscripts and manuscript fragments, as most books from medieval Norway and Denmark only survive in a fragmentary state, “recycled” as binding material in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Danish fragments have been little examined thus far, and one of the project's goals has been to get a better overview of which texts and books are represented in this material. An important part of this work has consisted of identifying fragments which once belonged to the same book. Another goal has been to determine the extent to which the Danish material is similar to, or overlaps with, the Norwegian fragments. One of the project's most important findings is that Flemish saints, many of them little venerated outside the Low Countries, are present in the manuscript material to a far greater and more systematic extent than has been noted in earlier scholarship. The general belief amongst researchers is that Scandinavian veneration of saints was first and foremost influenced by England and Germany, but the project has shown how saints from the medieval Low Countries were included in Norwegian and Danish manuscript, for instance in the well-known Næstved Calendar from ca. 1225-1250 (Copenhagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, E don. var. 52 fol.). This calendar has no English saints, but instead contains a high representation of saints whose heartlands lie in today's Northern France and Belgium; many of these saints are not well known outside their heartlands. Since the Calendar was produced in the Benedictine monastery of Næstved in Sjælland, the saints' presence indicates a direct link with Flanders and Flemish institutions during the early thirteenth century. The project has also shown how concrete texts and works arrived in Scandinavia from the Low Countries. For instance, a manuscript from the Cistercian abbey of Esrum (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat.lat. 636) contains excerpts from the compilation Liber Polypticus, a work from Rome in the early 1140s. The most complete witness of this work is a manuscript from Northern France copied in the second half of the twelfth century, whilst the Esrum manuscript dates to c. 1200. The scribe of the Liber Polypticus in the Danish manuscript has also included the hymn Lux Orientalis, which is otherwise attested in a group of manuscripts which all stem from today's Northern France and Belgium. It is therefore likely that both Liber Polypticus and Lux Orientalis found their way to Denmark from this area. Additionally, the project has led to new findings in the Danish fragment material, for instance new identifications of cases where fragments stem from the same manuscript(s), as well as identifications of works that have so far not been known to have circulated in medieval Denmark. This includes a text about the rebellion against the English King Henry II in the aftermath of the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket (d. 1170), and the King's subsequent pilgrimage to Canterbury. This text is included in a legendary from ca. 1200 of which 29 fragments survive, dispersed amongst the fragment collections of the Royal Library and the Danish National Archives. This is an important finding, as the text in question is otherwise only known from two other twelfth-century manuscripts, of which one hails from Winchester and the other from the French Cistercian monastery of Clairvaux. Not least, the project has also led to the "rediscovery" of a manuscript from the early thirteenth century, which belonged to the Danish Cistercians of Løgum and which is now in the University Library of Halle in Germany. This manuscript is not known amongst Danish or Scandinavian researchers, and it will be examined further in a forthcoming publication.

FLANDRIA has documented the role of medieval Flanders/the Low Countries as a hub for Scandinavians; the entwined nature of commercial, religious, and textual networks; and how these networks left traces in Norwegian and Danish manuscript material. One of the most striking findings is the extent to which Flemish saints, or saints mainly venerated in the Low Countries, appear in Scandinavian manuscripts, for instance in the thirteenth-century Danish calendar from the Benedictines of Næstved (Copenhagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, E don. var 52 fol). The inclusion of such saints points towards the Low Countries playing an important role in the introduction and dissemination of saints' cults to Norway and Denmark, yet this role has been overlooked by existing scholarship, which has tended to focus on England and Germany (and to a lesser extent Paris) as the regions which impacted the cult of saints in Scandinavia. FLANDRIA has thus had a direct impact on the study of Scandinavian ecclesiastical history by deepening our understanding of the veneration of holy men and women in the North. The project has also moved forward the field of Scandinavian manuscript studies by documenting and bringing attention to the understudied Danish fragment material, including by identifying several cases of fragments stemming from the same manuscript, and discovering new texts and works (some of which were transmitted from the Low Countries). Last but not least, FLANDRIA has served to highlight medieval Flemish-Scandinavian contacts as an important and promising field of study, including by bringing together scholars working on different aspects of these contacts for an international workshop in October 2022. This workshop is the basis for a special issue of the scholarly journal "The Medieval Low Countries", which will serve to make the project's topic, questions, and findings known to a wider academic audience.

Through an innovative combination of approaches, the present project, “Flanders, Norway, and Denmark: Relations and Intertextual Exchanges in the High Middle Ages” (FLANDRIA), will for the first time shift the focus to Flanders in the context of medieval Nordic book culture. It will simultaneously explore the links between Scandinavian and Flemish manuscript material and the interpersonal and institutional links between Denmark, Norway, and Flanders in the High Middle Ages (12th-14th centuries). By investigating the hitherto-neglected collections of medieval manuscript fragments in the Danish National Archives and the Royal Library in Copenhagen, and by tracing the connections between this material and the medieval manuscript fragments in Norwegian collections, the project will make a significant contribution towards the understanding of medieval Scandinavian manuscript culture. Furthermore, by comparing the Danish and Norwegian material to Flemish manuscripts, the project will investigate the textual and palaeographical/codicological connections between Scandinavian and Flemish book culture, connections which have already been hinted at through my preliminary research. The project will furthermore contextualise the manuscript material by investigating the networks - political, religious, and commercial - that developed between Flanders and Scandinavia in the High Middle Ages and the roles played by these networks in the circulation of manuscripts and texts. The investigation of the Danish and Flemish material will be combined with research stays at the Centre of Medieval Literature in Odense (18 months) and Ghent University (6 months), contributing towards developing my international networks and letting me benefit from the interdisciplinary nature of these institutions. The last year of the project will be spent at the University of Bergen, where I will be part of an equally interdisciplinary research environment, exemplified by the new Medieval Cluster.

Publications from Cristin

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FRIHUMSAM-Fri prosj.st. hum og sam