Grant opens the door to major new detective work into medieval culture in the Nordic countries

By Caroline Zoffmann Jessen, czj@sdu.dk, 11/5/2024

Book fragments hold a lot of new information – texts, production methods and networks

Most of the medieval manuscripts from the Nordic countries were destroyed or disappeared during the Reformation and its aftermath. But since the parchment that medieval books were made from was very expensive, pages of medieval manuscripts were often reused as binding material for other documents. Fragments of thousands of medieval books, mainly written in Latin, survive in this way, and it is these surviving fragments that will be examined in the project.

Parchment was made from animal skins, but the extent to which book production was a local or imported industry has not yet been established. The project examines around 50,000 Latin fragments of books that are preserved in Nordic libraries and archives, including in the Royal Library and the National Archives.

Medieval books helped shape European history and brought rituals, stories and ideas with them when they were read, copied and spread from one region to another. Today, they provide researchers with insight into past trade and crafts and the religious, social and scientific networks that bound Europe together.

Interdisciplinary collaboration between the humanities and the natural sciences

Under 10% of Europe's medieval manuscripts have been preserved, and an even smaller proportion survive in the Nordic countries. Being able to examine large quantities of fragments with the help of natural scientific methods therefore opens up promising new avenues for research. DNA and protein information from fragments of animal skins will be used to investigate where the animals originated and how the manuscripts were produced.

The project stands out by using modern techniques to trace the origin of the manuscript materials and to identify previously unknown connections between religious, commercial and intellectual centres. The content of the fragments is primarily related to the church service (liturgical books), but also to theology, law, history writing and other literature. 

SDU's part of the project under Prof. Lars Boje Mortensen focuses on how the fragments can help us write a broader and more European literary history of the Nordic countries in the period c. 1050-1500.

The overall goal of the project is to elevate fragment studies to a new level and gain more knowledge about medieval books and how the Nordic countries became part of a common European book culture.

Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Simon Møberg Torp, is delighted with the grant to the University of Southern Denmark:
-It is incredibly wonderful that Professor Lars Boje Mortensen and the other partners have managed to land this prestigious ERC Synergy Grant. CODICUM is a groundbreaking international and interdisciplinary project with excellent researchers within the various research areas. The project will be able to shed a whole new light on the role of books in the development of the Nordic region and the relations from here to the rest of Europe. CODICUM will undoubtedly contribute valuable knowledge to both the research areas and the surrounding society. I am very much looking forward to following it.

The CODICUM project is led by:
• Professor of Medieval Literature Lars Boje Mortensen, University of Southern Denmark
• Professor of Paleography Åslaug Ommundsen, University of Bergen -
• Professor of History, Tuomas Heikkilä University of Helsinki
• Professor of Bio-Codicology Matthew Collins, University of Copenhagen

Paleography is the study of ancient and medieval scripts.
Codicology is the study of physical books transmitted from Antiquity and the Middle Ages, including production techniques.

The National Archives in Stockholm and the Royal Library in Copenhagen are also partners in the project.