CODICUM
CODICUM is a six year, ERC-funded project that investigates how books and literary networks shaped Northern Europe between 1000 and 1500 CE. Professor Åslaug Ommundsen is the principal investigator alongside three Nordic research partners. The project began in 2025.
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About the project
CODICUM is a multi-disciplinary research project funded by the ERC Synergy grant.
The project will investigate the significance of the medieval manuscript book in shaping Northern Europe between c. 1000 and 1500, focusing on a unique collection of over 50,000 parchment book fragments found in five Nordic countries.
These often overlooked pieces of parchment offer an unparalleled window into the literary culture, craftsmanship, and interconnected knowledge networks that shaped the region and linked it to Europe. Through a combination of traditional manuscript studies, cutting-edge scientific analysis, and innovative digital techniques, CODICUM aims to reconstruct lost books, chart the flow of ideas, and reveal the hidden histories of this era.
Research questions
CODICUM focuses on a unique collection of over 50,000 parchment book fragments found in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland. These fragments represent a remarkable survival of what once were complete books, and offer a unique insight into everyday literary culture, lost to most of Europe.
The project's work seeks to understand how the texts within these books disseminated across the region, how they were used, and how they reflected the different communities and networks involved in their production and consumption.
The researchers will look at three central questions:
How were the northernmost areas of Europe included in different intellectual and educational networks extending across Europe, and how did these networks evolve, interact, and overlap, geographically and chronologically? In the making of a new book culture, how were the practical and the intellectual requirements organized and coordinated?
How does incorporating the Nordic region in the ‘map’ of medieval parchment change conventional understandings of medieval book production? To what extent do books produced in the northernmost parts of Europe show adaptations of techniques, materials, format or other features owing to climatic conditions and/or limiting resources (e.g. lime, salt)?
How can this unique, cross-national archive help us put to the test the new category of ‘textual heritage’ in the unoccupied space between tangible and intangible heritage? What impact could we have on both literary history and on heritage thinking in general, if we can show that ‘textual heritage’ will redefine – in contrast to national and institutional curating practice – who ‘owns’ the texts transmitted by the fragments?
Read more on the project website.
Key Facts
Full project title: The Medieval Book and Networks of Northern Europe c. 1000–1500: Texts, Crafts, Fragments.
Funding: EU/ERC Synergy Grant
Principal Investigators:
- Professor Åslaug Ommundsen, University of Bergen - Palaeography
- Professor Tuomas Heikkilä, University of Helsinki - History
- Professor Lars Boje Mortensen, University of Southern Denmark - Literature
- Professor Matthew Collins, University of Copenhagen - Bio-codicology
Partner institutions:
- The National Archives in Stockholm
- The Royal Library in Copenhagen
Project period: 2025 - 2030.
