Legal Annotations Within Scandinavia

The Legal Annotations Within Scandinavia (LAWS) research project will examine medieval legal manuscripts for notes left in the margins by readers; these additions include evidence for the changing understanding of the law across the medieval and post-medieval periods.

The marginalia in these texts include reader reflections and erasures and I will examine these marginal annotations for insights into the ongoing reception and interpretation of the laws, including the circumstances of its evolution.

This is particularly important because unlike the rest of Continental Europe, medieval Scandinavian legal manuscripts were less influenced by the Bolognian and Parisian law models, and similarly the reader annotations do not follow the customary glossing patterns.

This provides an opportunity to examine a unique reading and legal culture that existed literally in the margins, some of which will only be visible and legible now after centuries due my use of the multi-spectral imaging scanner at the Arnamagnan Institute.

The main objectives of my research project are therefore to: 1) To examine the medieval legal texts in the Arnamagnan Manuscript Collection for evidence of use by medieval and post-medieval readers; 2) To develop a detailed record of the marginalia, both standard and nonstandard, present in the legal texts in order to track the changing understanding of medieval legal terminology; 3) To consider the broader questions of literacy and the Nordic legal cultures as seen through two important 18th-century manuscript collections, which serve as a representative sample of the time; and 4) To produce an exhibition comparing the patterns of use on these medieval Scandinavian manuscripts to those used, read, and annotated in medieval England and Continental Europe.

My research will be divided into two distinct Work Packages, corresponding to Year 1 and Year 2; in the course of this, I will submit two articles for publication and curate a major exhibition.