Corpus

The corpus consists of Latin texts, which, in one way or another, are connected with Norway. However, ‘connected’ does not necessarily mean ‘produced in Norway’. The corpus also includes writings addressed to Norway from other nations.

The corpus intends to include all Latin texts until the Reformation in Norway in 1537. We have begun our work on the dictionary by digitising and lemmatising all known and published Norwegian texts in Latin with the support of the National Library, which has included this in its work towards digitisation of Norway’s textual heritage. The resulting corpus is intended primarily to be used as the basis for the dictionary of Norwegian medieval Latin, but is, naturally, also a useful research-tool in its own right.

The corpus consists principally of Latin texts, which, in one way or another, are connected with Norway and therefore merit inclusion in the dictionary. Nevertheless, ‘connected’ does not necessarily mean ‘produced in Norway’. The corpus also includes writings addressed to Norway from other nations, and even some documents whose connection to Norway is, in fact, quite tenuous. The main reason for this very broad approach lies in the material itself. The most wide-ranging, by far, is the vast Diplomatarium Norvegicum (DN), which is a collection of all known medieval letters and other documents which relate to Norway. DN includes a few documents later than 1537, from the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Also these documents are included in the corpus and in the dictionary.

The publication of DN began in 1847 and is still ongoing, the latest volume to date, volume 23, having been published in 2011. Its scope is wide, to say the least, including not only documents written in or addressed to Norway or Norwegian individuals, but also writings which are completely unrelated to Norway, but happen to mention Norway or Norwegians in passing. We have decided, however, to include those documents: to select only those texts from DN that have a direct link to Norway would have been unfair to the user of the dictionary, who would naturally expect us to cover all of DN. Moreover, the selection would have been arbitrary, as it is exceedingly difficult, and hardly worth the effort, to draw a clear line between documents that concern Norway and those that do not.

Not all the texts in the corpus are in Latin: several works, DN in particular, contain documents in other languages, chiefly Old Norse, but also Danish, German, English, French, Italian, and Dutch. With the exception of DN, however, the non-Latin texts in the corpus are not proofread and, therefore, should be used with caution. It is also necessary to be cautious with certain Latin texts from DN, especially from volumes 17, 19 and part of volume 20 (though a new and updated version will replace volume 20); due to expedited publication those texts were not properly collated or proofread and consequently, there are numerous transcription mistakes and misprints¹. The same applies to the printed edition of the register of Archbishop Henrik Kalteisen (1452–1458). For the dictionary we will use Oluf Kolsrud’s extensive set of corrections to DN, which the National Archives at Oslo preserves, as well as Skånland’s notes. Kalteisen’s text will be corrected from the list of errata provided in K.H. Karlsson’s review², and from the manuscript itself.

The texts of older publications included in the corpus, whose copyright has expired, are available in their entirety to all users, and we are happy to have secured access rights to most of those texts, which are still under copyright. One important recent edition, Passio Olavi (edited by Jiroušková, 2014), is restricted and with full access only possible from within the National Library³. When accessed from other locations, the search results will only show snippets from the text. Users who wish to carry out further research on the text will need to consult the respective publication by other means.

¹On the errors in DN, see the exchange between Wilhelm Munthe and Oluf Kolsrud (in Norwegian) in Aftenposten, 3 August and 2 and 5 September 1913: (https://www.nb.no/items/d7b54d2320667d9d997161579b4b3b4f?page=0, https://www.nb.no/items/62f31870590a7d3bfad9d887a09ecf8e?page=3, https://www.nb.no/items/9578eaeee384cc706cdbe292cca7b378?page=1).

²See K.H. Karlsson’s review of Bugge’s edition of the register of Henrik Kalteisen (1897) (https://www.nb.no/items/URN:NBN:no-nb_digitidsskrift_2015071481004_001?page=357 ).

³We are grateful to the publisher E. J. Brill for allowing us to use the critical edition of this text in the corpus.

Read more about the corpus

Texts included in the corpus