Ommundsen, Åslaug

Åslaug Ommundsen Foto: UiB

Phone: (+47) 55 58 80 89
E-mail:  aslaug.ommundsen@cms.uib.no

My main field of interest is the medieval book and scribal culture in the North, with an emphasis on books in Norway 1100-1300. In the spring of 2007 I finished my doctoral thesis Books, scribes and sequences in medieval Norway, which included a number of case studies on fragments from liturgical manuscripts, and a catalogue of ca 70 manuscript fragments containing the liturgical “sequence” genre. The study showed that Norway was influenced by several European centres in the twelfth century, both through the presence of imported books and through the different styles of local book production.

Project title:
Psalters in medieval Norway

Project Summary:
The perhaps most widely used book in the Middle Ages was the Psalter. The Psalter, with its core of the 150 Psalms from the Bible, was used all over Europe, in the liturgy, in education and for private worship. Most people with an education had been acquainted with the Psalter and its contents, and people of the nobility could even possess their own copy. In addition to five psalters which have survived as bound books, the fragment collection in the National Archives in Oslo contains fragments from ca 55 psalters which were most likely used in Norway in the Middle Ages. The remaining fragments and books reveal that the psalters which were used in Norway range from very simple books to spectacular works of art. As in my doctoral project the imported books are seen as material evidence of contact between Norway and other parts of Europe, while the locally produced books can contribute to the knowledge about book production in Norway in the Middle Ages.

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