About the presentation
The art of writing and the medieval book were essential in the shaping of Europe. Nordic countries hold c. 50,000 medieval book fragments in different archives and libraries, constituting vital source material for the study of medieval book culture and its networks. In 2024, four scholars and six institutions got an ERC Synergy grant in order to approach these sources from four different perspectives: palaeography, literature, history, and bio-codicology. How was Scandinavia included in different intellectual networks, and how did these networks evolve and overlap? How was book production adapted to the limited resources of the north? These are some of the questions to be explored in the next six years. The presentation will give a brief introduction to the project and show some examples of networks and fragments to be investigated more closely.
About the speaker
Åslaug Ommundsen is Professor in Medieval Latin philology at the University of Bergen where she is part of the management group of the Medieval Research Cluster. Ommundsen has studied fragments from medieval manuscripts in Latin, focusing on the development of book production in Norway in light of impulses from European centres and international collaboration in the Middle Ages. In addition to medieval book and scribal culture her academic interests include liturgy and liturgical practice, saints’ cults and hagiography, and monastic and ecclesiastical history.
Ommundsen is the leader of the Research Group for Medieval Philology which is a broadly organized research group, open to academics with an interest in medieval texts and manuscripts primarily in Latin and Old Norse but also other medieval languages.
Professor Ommundsen made the decision to travel to Rome to study medieval manuscripts 20 years ago, and we are proud to state that this was the start of her impressive research career.