Sub-Title: The Cultural Entrance of Norway and Denmark into the Medieval ‘European-Union’. The coming of European books and learning to Scandinavia, ca. 1000-1400.
This course will discuss many of the political and religious changes which occurred as Norway and Denmark adopted aspects of mainland European culture. In particular we will be using the introduction of book culture to study the societies of Norway and Denmark as they went through religious transformation, becoming Christian, and as they went through political transformation, through the prolonged civil wars and eventual formation of nation-states. These years of bible-study and bloodshed were crucial and important ones for Scandinavian history, and saw the first real impact of European culture on Norway and Denmark – an impact which fundamentally changed those societies and greatly extended the borders of medieval ‘Christendom’. The course aims to view these developments through the eyes of the political historian, art-historian, religious historian and numismatist. Archaeology provides valuable insights into the structures of religious foundations, and adds much to our understanding of the connection between structures and functions, and this discipline will also form a large part of our consideration. Great weight will be placed on visual presentation during lectures, and on supervised handling of some medieval manuscripts (see below).
General Literature
K. Gjerset, History of the Norwegian People (1932), pp. 269-455, especially pp. chapter 57 & 70: ‘Inner Organisation of the Church of Norway’ and ‘Literature and Culture in the Age of Haakon Haakonsson’ [K Gje]. For those of you who can read norsk, then compliment this with Per Sveas Anderson, Samlingen av Norge og Kristningen av Landet 800-1130, ch. 25: ‘Kirken og dens Integrering i det Norske Samfunnet’, pp. 301-38 [K And]
I. J. Kirby, Bible Translation in Old Norse (1986), chapter 2: ‘History of Christianity and Religious Literature in Norway and Iceland’, pp. 17-47 [E Kir]
T. Nyberg, ‘Early Monasticism in Scandinavia’ in Scandinavia and Europe 800-1350 (2004), pp. 197-208 [P Jon]
E. Nyborg, ‘Church and Cloister’ in Digging into the Past: 25 years of archaeology in Denmark (1993), pp. 242-7 [in photocopy as J Dig and in full in Uoldsak’s collection] See also the introduction (Liebgott, ‘The Middel Ages and more recent times’) in this collection.
The Archbishop’s Palace Museum (1997), especially pp. 6-47 [J Arc]
T. Spurkland, ‘Literacy and ‘Runacy’ in Medieval Scandinavia’ in Scandinavia and Europe 800-1350 (2004), pp. 333-44 [P Jon]
B. Fidjest?l, ‘Romantic reading at the court of H?kon H?konarson’ in Bjarne Fidjest?l Selected Papers (1997), pp. 351-65 [E Fid]