Amazon.com description: Product Description: The book investigates the nature of intellectual activity in the Middle Ages from the perspective of the Scandinavian periphery. Starting with a discussion of the translatio of intellectual culture from Paris to Scandinavia, the book illustrates how the multimodal and multilingual Scandinavian culture emerged through dynamic reciprocations of foreign and local impulses. The essays focus on various visual and textual artifacts: Church art and sculptures, manuscript fragments, texts of various languages (Latin and Old Norse), genres (sagas, poetry and grammatical treatises, laws, liturgical explanations and Biblical interpretations), and scripts (Latin alphabet and runes). Through the specific ductus of these artifacts we can identify certain theological and philosophical concerns, such as education and pedagogy, conflict between ecclesiastical and secular powers, or the translatability of Holiness, and thus we can show how they echo corresponding trends in intellectual environments on the continent.



The common theoretical discussion of the translatability of intellectual culture, the structure of the book, and the interrelatedness between the individual essays ensure that the collection conveys a holistic picture of the ideational climate in medieval Scandinavia. The book contributes a deeper insight into both medieval Scandinavian culture and the development of intellectual culture in medieval Europe.