About Old Norwegian charters and seals

The charter collection at the University of Bergen Library (UBB) was started by the founders of Bergens Museum, who from 1825 actively collected older written witnesses from Western Norway. These were later transferred to UBB, and the original focus still characterizes the collection at ManLib today. The charter collection at UBB contains both the oldest charters and several deeds from the period after 1570, which is the limit set by the editors of the Diplomatarium Norvegicum (DN), and extends to the end of the 19th century. 264 documents in the collection date from 1293-1570, and 17 of these are still unprinted in DN.

The charters catalogue mentioned above is the most complete overview of the charter collection at ManLib. It was prepared by Bjørn-Arvid Bagge (section manager, Special Collections) in 2013. Furthermore, Pedro Vasquez (staff engineer) has dedicated a lot of time to the storage and digitization of the charter collection, while Marianne Paasche (digital archivist) has led the work on updating the charter collection's display on the Special Collections' platform Marcus. Work on optimizing the display continues in collaboration with developers at Digital Development (UBB) and with a focus on the most unknown part of the charter collection, namely manuscripts from the period after 1570.

Among the charter material there is not only original material at ManLib, but also black-and-white photographs that the National Archives sent to the Universities of Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim and Tromsø, while they were photographing their enormous collection, as well as photographs from Norwegian charters located in Copenhagen. The photographs have since 2003 been kept in drawers in the magazines in the HF building, and in May 2019 the material came into focus for research during the collaboration between ManLib and LLE/Norse philology. Juliane Tiemann has come in as a professional with knowledge of charters, Old Norse material, and the language of Old Norwegian, while Pedro Vasquez (among other things responsible for storage, collection care and digitization of original material) handled the physical material at ManLib and has digitized charters from ManLib's collection. These are available through Marcus.

The black-and-white photographs as well as some copies are available in physical form directly at ManLib. Here is also the filing cabinet with basic information about these photographs, as well as e.g. topographical and secondary literature.

Photo:

Alexandros Tsakos/Special Collections at the University of Bergen

Since this cataloguing work, Juliane Tiemann has had a leading role for several projects focusing on the charter material at UiB/UBB and is a contact person both for students, researchers and other national and international partners when it comes to work within medieval diplomacy.

In 2020, Juliane Tiemann together with Alexandros Tsakos has prepared a course with a new concept design that gives students practical experience and the opportunity to learn practice-oriented skills with a focus on charter studies. The course has not only made it possible for students to get an introduction to material they had not otherwise worked with during their studies, but also to come into contact with professionals from various areas. In addition, for the first time, the students were given the opportunity to create publications and to contribute actively to further research. The students collected important metadata for the charters they worked on during the course and were thus able to add information to this material that is not found in either Diplomatarium Norvegicum (DN) or Regestra Norvegica (RN). This data was published on Marcus.

Photo:

Alexandros Tsakos/Spesialsamlingene ved Universitetet i Bergen

Alongside the opportunity to deepen and expand their knowledge of Old Norwegian material, the students also received training in xml-coding to be able to work further digitally with the charters. They transcribed a selection of charter texts at facsimile level (i.e. an exact copy of the texts showing the special characters found in the handwriting, i.e. the peculiar letter forms and abbreviations of the Middle Ages), using the MenotaBlitz standard. Such an exact transcription is not found in either DN or RN. For the transcriptions during the course we used an xml editor, but now MenotaBlitz is also available as an online tool (see also the manual). This tool was developed by Robert Paulsen (engineer, former PhD candidate in Old Norse Philology). Furthermore, the students have prepared a translation of charter texts into Modern Norwegian and have written a separate seummary, inspired by the summary found in DN.

The resources that the students created contribute to new work within the studies of charters in Norway and are useful both for palaeographic and linguistic, but also for local and legal history research (see "Publication channels for Old Norwegian charters" on this page for more information about the course results).

The course program also provided inspiration for later courses in Old Norse Philology at UiB, which took over this useful and fruitful concept and involve the students more closely in actual research work in the same way. A follow-up course based on this structure is e.g. a course on encoding runes, held by Odd Einar Haugen oine semester after the charter course.

The course in charter studies also resulted in further voluntary work of students who have contributed to further cataloging of charters at ManLib under the supervision of Juliane Tiemann. The students were later also included in project work on medieval seals.

During the coding work carried out in the context of the university course, the students have used MenotaBlitz for high quality transcriptions on a facsimile level. The basis that was created here is used both in local projects and large databases such as Menota. MenotaBlitz is a digital tool for shorthand transcriptions of primarily Old Norse source material and can be used for easy production of Menota-compatible xml editions. The tool offers an export to menotic TEI-xml and is easy to use in teaching - also for students who have not worked with xml before.

The xml-structure is relatively simple so that one transcribes in a continuous text with marking of page (recto/verso) and line numbers. There follows information about special characters in the particular diploma being transcribed - according to specific rules - which are marked in the transcription text itself. The structure then consists of

• <text>
•   <div type="text">   
•     <div type="chapter">     
•        <p> ... </p>   
•     </div> 
•    </div>
• </text>

What is missing in this type of transcription is a TEI-header that contains meta-level information about the text itself, its source, its encoding, and documented revisions. When exporting to Menota-xml, such a header must be added, and the participants of the course, together with Juliane Tiemann and Odd Einar Haugen, joined in a short collaboration after the charter course in 2020 to create a header so that the transcription could also be uploaded to Menota's charter catalog. The basis for the header is the tag-library of the Charters Encoding Initiative.

In addition to general information about the people involved, the project, and the tools used for the transcription, the work from the charter course has provided a list of metadata that should be included in such a TEI-header, creating a standard for digital editions. It includes, among other things:

• A title that refers to identification in the Diplomatarium Norvegicum, along with the date, for example: <title>DN 3:153: 1329-11-25: [Bergen]: a digital edition</title> (ideally with a reference to Regesta Norvegica).
• The length of the text, for example: <extent n="200">200 words</extent>
• Collection information of the original and identifier information, information about text type; physical description including material base, size, attached seals, etc. Some of the information regarding the physical description is missing in both DN and RN. For example:
  • <physDesc>                         
  •   <objectDesc>                           
  •      <supportDesc>                                 
  •         <support><p><material>Parchment</material></p></support>  
  •         <extent>1 leaf; ca 92 mm (height) by 287 mm (width).</extent>                             
  •      </supportDesc>                         
  •   </objectDesc>                        
  •  ...
  •   <sealDesc>                             
  •       <seal>                                 
  •          <p>Two partially remaining seals.</p>                             
  •       </seal>                         
  •    </sealDesc>                  
  • </physDesc>                 

Additionally, we have decided to include further information from DN and RN, which includes summaries directly taken from the digital editions. The students themselves have also provided their own summaries during the course, which are added to the xml-file. An example of a complete TEI-header created during this work is the transcription of the charter DN 3:153 (1329-11-25: Bergen) in Menota's charter catalog.

Focus: Palaeography

During 2024, Tonje H. Waldersnes, a master's student in Old Norse Philology, will submit her thesis on various patterns in a selection of charters from the 14th to 16th centuries in the western region. The corpus consists of a minimum of 20 unique charters that are preserved and part of ManLib's collections. The thesis focuses on the paleographic features of the charter scripts, aided by the high quality of the photographs published on Marcus. The thesis advisors are Prof. Åslaug Ommundsen and Dr. Juliane Tiemann.

The Old Norwegian charter material at ManLib (along with a catalog of the charter collection) is published on the Special Collections platform Marcus. Here are also the results from the charter course from 2020, which show transcriptions of charter texts at a facsimile level, along with metadata information (see, for example, the charter dated 1362, September 4, Bergen).

On Marcus, we also publish results from ongoing projects related to the Old Norwegian charter material, such as digitized seals (see, for instance, Seal 2 on the charter dated 1457, February 25, Berge). These are outcomes from the seal project that started in 2021 (refer to the "Project Work" section on this page for more information about this project).

Photo:

Spesialsamlingene ved Universitetet i Bergen

The transcription work from the charter course is also published on emroon.no, available on three levels (facsimile, diplomatic, normalized) and with full morphological annotation.

Photo:

emroon.no

After the completion of the charter course, the students' xml-files were also prepared for an import to menota.org. Through MenotaBlitz, it is possible to automatically generate Menota-xml, with only the addition of a header remaining (see "Encoding Work for Old Norse Charters" on this page for more information about the header). Please note that the charter transcriptions from the 2020 course are displayed at all three levels (facsimile, diplomatic, normalized) on Menota. The charter catalog also includes other charter texts imported from Språksamlingene, available on a diplomatic level, and with morphological annotation partially carried out by Gammalnorsk Ordboksverk.

Photo:

menota.org

Furthermore, ManLib publishes information about a selected charter in the charter calendar every month.

Several articles have been published since the work of the new charter projects started in 2019, focusing on specific charters, activities related to the material, or describing ongoing projects.

Norrønt på Shetland - This article focuses on the so-called Shetland charter, which documents the Norwegian language in Shetland.

Diplomer i fokus – oppstart til ny forskning - This article describes the student work carried out during the charter course in 2020.

Informational video about charters (example: charter from 1314)

Informational video about charters (example: charter from 1465)

Spor av kvinner i middelalderskrift - This article highlights findings related to the Abbess of Munkeliv Monastery as a result of the work on seals in the seal project at ManLib.

17. mai før 17.mai - This article discusses events described in a charter that took place on May 17th before it became Norway's National Day.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Das Schicksal der Handschrift Bergen, UB, MS 1550.5 - This article sheds light on a palimpsest where the original text on the verso side was scraped away to make room for a charter text.

Diplomets vitner – underskrift i strek og voks - This article highlights the seal material and the seal project at UBB.

National work - summarized

• Work with black-and-white photographs (2019/2020)
• Collaborative lecture at Bryggens Museum with an exhibition of the charter/Nordfjord Missal-fragment at Bryggens Museum (2020)

Photo:

Special Collections at the University of Bergen

• Encoding of charter texts (since 2020)
  • New high-quality transcriptions at the facsimile level (automatically generated: diplomatic and normalized levels)
  • Implemented using MenotaBlitz and published on emroon.no with an export to menota.org and marcus.uib.no
  • Development of a TEI-header for the xml-files
  • Student presentation of the results of the charter course at Bryggens Museum

Photo:

Juliane Tiemann/UBB

• Further work with transcriptions
  • Additional transcription work on a facsimile level (with automatically generated diplomatic and normalized levels) (since 2021)
• Metadata collection (since 2020)
  • Definition of relevant metadata and creation of a dataset for Old Norwegian charters
  • Work with the physical original material
• Grant writing related to different aspects of charters
• Digitization and building of a database for seals (since 2021)
  • Photographing of seals preserved at ManLib, see an example for Seal 3 on the charter dated 1314, February 21, Bergen
  • Definition of relevant metadata and creation of a dataset for seals
  • Further work on the header created after the charter course (integration of seal information)
• Presentation of the Seal project at the University library's Medieval Day in October 2021, as well as a city walk in Bergen "In the Footsteps of the Charters" with Knut Høiaas
• Presentation of the Charter projects at the University library's Medieval Day in October 2022, as well as a city walk in Bergen "In the Footsteps of the Charters" with Knut Høiaas
• Conference contribution at the Norske historiedager 2022 by Juliane Tiemann and Jo Rune Ugulen Kristiansen
• Collaboration with Helge Pedersen from Sunnhordaland Museum regarding seals from the Augustinian Monastery on Halsnøy, together with the Research Group in Medieval Philology (initiated in 2023)

International collaboration

• Exchange with Copenhagen and Lund regarding sigillography and digitization of objects with the possibility of 3D viewing (since 2021)
  • Digital discussion at UB's Medieval Day with Juliane Tiemann (UBB), Marianne Paasche (ManLib), Anne Mette Hansen (University of Copenhagen/The Arnamagnæan Collection), and Nicoló Dell'Unto (Laboratory for Digital Archaeology at Lund University) about the future of studies and dissemination of charter seals
  • Further exchange regarding charter/seal databases and future international collaboration between Copenhagen and Bergen
• Exchange with the SSRQ project in Switzerland (since 2022)
  • Collaboration on the TEI-standard for seal description
• Exchange with Guðrún Harðardóttir in Iceland, who works on seal descriptions (since 2022)
• Exchange with the Adam Mickiewicz university in Poznań (Workshop meeting in november 2023) 

Seal project

Diplomatarium Norvegicum

Regesta Norvegica

Charter collection in Marcus

emroon

MenotaBlitz 

Menota's charter catalogue

Charter catalogue of the National Archives

SSRQ project