There are more reasons for exploring the connection between Flemish, Norwegian, and Danish medieval manuscript material than the study of the contacts between these two Scandinavian kingdoms and the area of current Flanders and Northern France. Due to historical circumstances, there is significant overlap between fragment collections in Norway and Denmark, as well as a fundamental similarity: after the Protestant Reformation of 1536/1537, medieval books, often liturgical in nature, were collected on a grand scale, dismembered and reused for other purposes, often as binding material on tax accounts. Administrators and governors would use parchment from medieval books to bind their accounts, whether these accounts were from Danish or Norwegian fiefs and bailiwicks.

When we find fragments from the same manuscript scattered between Danish and Norwegian collections, it can be hard to tell whether the book was in Denmark or Norway in the Middle Ages. A governor might bring parchment with him when he moved countries, or he might reuse parchment he’d received from elsewhere. In many cases, historical context or clues contained in the fragments themselves might solve the problem: for instance, a book was probably of Norwegian origin and most likely used in Norway if it was copied by a scribe whose hand has identified in other manuscripts written in the Norwegian vernacular. Conversely, fragments from Cistercian books copied in France might be more likely to have been used in Denmark, where the Cistercian houses belonged to the Clairvaux line – in Norway, on the other hand, the Cistercian Order was introduced from England. But what if historical context could point in either direction?

A psalter written around 1200, known as “the Smiling Dragon Psalter” due to the smiling dragon in one of the initials, serves as an illustration. Twenty-eight fragments from twenty-two leaves of this striking manuscript have been identified in the Norwegian National Archives (Oslo, NRA, lat. frag. 96, 2-27 and 97, 1-2). Most of these were used as binding material from bailiwicks in Eastern Norway during the period 1627-1634, but two of them were used as binding support in accounts from Nordlandene in Northern Norway (no dates supplied). The latter can be explained by familial relations: Eiler Urne, who was governor of Bratsberg in Eastern Norway from 1620 to 1640, could have donated some parchment to his brother-in-law Preben von Ahnen, who was governor in Nordlandene from 1646 to 1669. As for the origin of the psalter, various possibilities have been suggested, on either side of the English Channel. Traits such as the brown ink and the green frame could point to England, but also to a region receptive to English impulses, such as the Low Countries or Scandinavia.

In a conference paper from 2015, Patricia Stirnemann of the Institut de recherche et d’histoire des texts (IRHT) settled the matter by pointing to the rinceaux and leaf forms, as well as the head and wing of the dragon, as traits characteristic of manuscripts from Bruges and Ghent at the time. A Flemish origin made perfect sense given the patterns of travel at the time: Norwegians travelling south would disembark on the coast of Flanders and Northern France before continuing over land, where they might easily be tempted to acquire a psalter of this kind. Perfectly sensible, nothing to see here… Or so I thought when I discussed the psalter in my own Ph.D. thesis, blissfully unaware that the Royal Library might have a surprise in store for me.

In late summer 2020, as I was about to embark on the current project, Professor Åslaug Ommundsen (University of Bergen) tipped me off that she’d had a look at the newly-digitised fragment collection of the Royal Library in Copenhagen, and that she’d spotted a fragment from the Smiling Dragon Psalter there. Sure enough, a rummage of my own revealed that fragment 1305 in the Royal Library was undoubtedly from the same book (unless we want to entertain the notion that two psalters of the same size, copied by the same person, both found their way to Scandinavia during the Middle Ages). The question, then, posed itself: had I been wrong to consider the psalter a Flemish souvenir brought to Norway by medieval travellers? Could the book have found its way to Denmark instead? After all, Eiler Urne could have brought it with him to Norway much later, perhaps after its initial dismemberment, and there is certainly evidence pointing to contact between Flanders and Denmark around the time when the psalter was written (but that is the subject of another blogpost).

In this case, however, the size of the manuscript – a small-format psalter measuring ca. 265 x 185 mm. – points to the book being found and dismembered in Norway. Fragments of Danish provenance are usually from larger books, which again can be explained by historical context: Denmark was a richer country, with larger stocks of parchment supplies both before and after the Reformation, and thus the administrators seem not to have bothered with dismembering and reusing small books. Moreover, there are a total of 28 fragments from this manuscript in Oslo, but only one so far identified in Copenhagen, and the latter fragment does not even have a known provenance. The evidence thus tips the scales in favour of the book’s dismemberment in Norway, after which the Copenhagen fragment may have ended up in Denmark more or less randomly: perhaps it was used for some other purpose than the binding of accounts?

What is certain is that if one does not take both Denmark and Norway into account when studying the medieval Flemish connection and its impact on manuscript culture, one risks missing important pieces of the puzzle – quite literally, in the case of these fragments. As the work of examining and identifying fragments is still ongoing, we will certainly have other surprises in store for years to come.

Literature

Myking, S.M. 2017. The French Connection. Norwegian Manuscript Fragments of French Origin and their Historical Context. Ph.D. thesis, University of Bergen

Ommundsen, Å. 2013. “Psalms Interrupted: the Psalter Fragments in the NRA in Oslo”. In Latin Manuscripts of Medieval Norway: Studies in Memory of Lilli Gjerløw, ed. E. Karlsen, 279–305. Oslo: Novus Press, 2013

Stirnemann, P. 2015. “Some Highlights from the Norwegian Fragment Collection”. Conference Paper, Exploring the Middle Ages (Bergen, November 2015)

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