Scandinavia and the Vatican archives

The present volume is the result of a conference in 2016 dealing with the medieval contacts between the Nordic countries and the papacy. The book combines research articles based on conference papers with chapters intended to introduce and describe source editions and collections of material from the Vatican Apostolic Archives in Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish archives.

A first contribution investigates the efforts made in connection with the joint Scandinavian research expeditions to Rome - especially in the first half of the 20th century - which led to a multitude of transcriptions and copies. This article is followed by a series of texts providing useful inventories of the Nordic collections and a sort of handbook for students, university scholars, and others interested in these often overlooked sources. This section concludes with a thorough presentation of the medieval papal source material.

The subsequent conference articles are all based on papal archival material and give examples of what kind of research can be done and what results can be achieved using the Vatican sources. The content of these chapters ranges from crusading bulls and high-level legal cases in the Curia to documents dealing with clerical violence and career appointments within the church. A final chapter deals with the handling of the many incoming cases.