Multilingual landscapes of medieval Scandinavia (completed)

About the project

The use of different languages and scripts is at the core of the development of literate societies in medieval Europe.

In this context, Scandinavia represents a unique case where the Latin written culture, introduced gradually from the end of the 11th century, encountered an 800-year-old native tradition based on the local vernacular and the runic script.

The adoption of the Latin language and the Roman alphabet revolutionised literacy practices in the North. From a basically monolingual and monoscriptal written culture, the Scandinavian societies, or at least parts of their strata, became multilingual and multiscriptal.

This led to a centuries-long coexistence of the two traditions, to the contemporaneous use of two languages and scripts in the textual sources and to their mutual influence.

Purpose

The project "Language switching and script mixing: Multilingual landscapes of medieval Scandinavia" (LangMix) focused on the encounter between the runic and Latin written traditions, and on phenomena of language and script mixing.

On the basis of inscriptions where both Latin and the Scandinavian vernaculars, Roman letters and runes are used together, the project investigated:

1. the language and script proficiency of the producers and readers of these bilingual and biscriptal texts
2. the symbolic and indexical values connected to different languages and alphabets
3. the status of the runic and the Latin epigraphic traditions.

Sources

The project focused on epigraphic sources from medieval Scandinavia where such a meeting of written traditions is attested.

In these inscriptions, one can observe how the agents involved in their production made different choices regarding which languages and scripts to use, which orthographic and palaeographic conventions to employ and how to arrange the languages and scripts visually.

On the one hand, these choices say something about the language and script proficiency of the producers of the texts, and of their intended receivers. On the other hand, they also have important sociolinguistic and cultural implications.

In fact, the choices made by medieval Scandinavian writers also bear witness to the mutual status of the languages and scripts involved. Moreover, they can be explained with different ideological presuppositions and purposes, or with different ways of presenting the self or the community identity.

Approach

In order to survey and interpret this variance, the project employed an interdisciplinary approach which combines analytical tools from epigraphy, sociolinguistics and linguistic landscape studies.

This approach aimed to yield new insights in both the multilingual and multiscriptal proficiency of the medieval Scandinavian carvers, and in the cultural and ideological processes behind the emerging of new writing practices.

Moreover, the project also seeked to explain the significance of the Scandinavian case in a broader European context, by investigating how multilingual and multiscriptal writing in the North relate to similar phenomena in the rest of medieval Europe.

Duration

2020-2023.

Financing

 
This project receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 839290.

Publications

• Palumbo, Alessandro (in press): From the Vernacular to Latin: Social Functions and Indexicalities in Bilingual and Biscriptal Epitaphs of Medieval Scandinavia. Speculum.
• Palumbo, Alessandro & Harjula, Janne (in press): Material and Written Culture in Medieval Turku: Runic Inscriptions from an Urban Environment. In Kendra Willson (ed.), Runes in Finland. Helsinki: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland.
• Palumbo, Alessandro (2023): Analysing bilingualism and biscriptality in medieval Scandinavian epigraphic sources: a sociolinguistic approach. Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics. ISSN 2199-2908. 9(1), s. 69–96. doi: 10.1515/jhsl-2022-0006.
• Palumbo, Alessandro (2022). How Latin is runic Latin? Thoughts on the influence of Latin writing on medieval runic orthography. I Marold, Edith & Zimmermann, Christiane (Red.), Studien zur runischen Graphematik: Methodische Ansätze und digitale Umsetzung. Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för nordiska språk. ISSN 978-91-986950-2-1. s. 177–218. doi: 10.33063/diva-462705.
• Blennow, Anna & Palumbo, Alessandro (2022). Epigrafiska områden i medeltidens Västergötland: ett samspel mellan latinsk och runsk skriftkultur. Fornvännen. ISSN 0015-7813. 117(3), s. 181–197.
• Blennow, Anna & Palumbo, Alessandro (2021): At the Crossroads between Script Cultures: The Runic and Latin Epigraphic Areas of Västergötland. In Anna Catharina Horn & Karl G. Johansson (ed.), The Meaning of Media. Text and Materiality in Medieval Scandinavian. (Modes of Modification 1.) Berlin: de Gruyter. https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110695366-003/html