Nordic Latin Manuscript Fragments: The Destruction and Reconstruction of Medieval Books. Ed. by Åslaug Ommundsen and Tuomasä Heikkil

Abstract

National collections of medieval manuscripts are, at their best, spurious accounts of the history of European book production. The collections of manuscripts they now preserve, and the state in which those manuscripts survive, are nearly always born out of the characteristic vagaries of antiquarian interest, ideological bias, historical catastrophe, and random chance. Perhaps nowhere is this fact more apparent than in the national collections of the five Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. These nations share closely linked histories which have affected the survival of their medieval manuscripts in such a peculiar way that their situation may in fact be unique. Following the end of the Swedish War of Liberation in 152.3, the whole of the Nordic region was divided into two realms, the Danish Realm (including modern Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and the southern tip of Sweden), and the Swedish Realm (including modern Sweden and Finland). Both realms were enthusiastic participants in the Reformation, and Latin church manuscripts—now considered obsolete and reflecting poor ideology—were quickly and efficiently repurposed into a nearly inexhaustible source of binding materials for state documents. Government officials in both realms developed a practice of cutting out folios from these old books to cover and bind the unprecedented number of accounts they were now required to keep, rather than paying for fresh parchment to do the job. The practice was all-encompassing, lasting for over 150 years and reducing virtually all of the Nordic Latin manuscripts to mere fragments.