Den Arnamagnæanske Samling - The Arnamagnæan Institute

28/08/2026

Den Arnamagnæanske Samling sender sine kondolencer til Det Norske Kongehus og Norges Befolkning.

26/07/2026

Árni Magnússon, Arne Magnusson or Arnas Magnæus? In Copenhagen not far from Central Station and Tivoli Gardens you can find a street named after the famous manuscript collector using a mixed form of his name: Arni Magnussons Gade.

05/06/2026

God Grundlovsdag til både store og små! 🇩🇰

Den 5. juni fejrer Danmark, at Grundloven blev underskrevet af Kong Frederik 7. i 1849. Seks hundrede år tidligere, i 1241, underskrev Kong Valdemar Sejr en anden lovgivning, nemlig Jyske Lov men sin berømte indledning "Med lov skal land bygges".

I Den Arnamagnæanske Samling findes der flere end 50 kopier af Jyske Lov i forskellige størrelser. Det største håndskrift, AM 286 fol., måler ca 42 x 28 cm, mens et af de mindste, AM 442 12mo, er kun 10 x 8 cm!

11/05/2026

📢Call for Abstracts📢

The 21st international conference on the Care and Conservation of Manuscripts will take place in Copenhagen 7-9 April 2027, and we are now accepting abstracts! In addition to the traditional 20-minute presentation, we are also accepting abstracts for panel sessions (45 or 90 minutes) as well as posters! Deadline 15 August 2026.

See you in Copenhagen next year?

15/04/2026

Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork — life is full of it! But are piles of paperwork anything new?

In the Middle Ages transactions and other agreements were written down in charters. In this month's installment of you can read about how digital tools can be applied to analyze the scripts of hundreds of charters in Old Norwegian and Latin that were issued during the reign of Hákon Magnússon.

Latin and vernacular charters in medieval Norway emerged from overlapping writing centres with similar script types, but the responsible scribes remain obscure. New AI‑driven approaches in digital palaeography now make it possible to trace these milieus and attribute individual hands more reliably...

12/04/2026

Happy Easter… again?

While in the Western Church (Catholic and Protestant) Easter Sunday was last week, today is Easter Sunday for the Eastern Orthodox Church. So why can’t everyone agree when Easter is?

Calculating Easter has a long and complex history, and medieval Europeans were especially obsessed with getting it right. Many manuscripts contain so-called Easter Tables to help one figure out the complex mathematics behind Easter, such as this one from AM 784 4to. It shows the calculation from Candlemas (February 2) until Quintagesima (the last Sunday before Lent) for the years 1520-1539!

You can read more about the manuscript in an earlier installment of here: https://manuscript.ku.dk/motm/a-prayer-book-for-the-entire-year/

23/01/2026

Si hei til Tom - vår "nesten" nye kollega, som har byttet ut Trondheim med Bergen igjen!❤

Tom har doktorgrad i språkvitskap fra NTNU og solid erfaring fra forskningsprosjekter om nordiske og tyske middelalderhåndskrifter. Etter fem år i Trondheim er han nå tilbake der det hele begynte, nemlig på Det Hanseatiske Museum, hvor han også har jobbet tidligere.

Hos oss skal Tom jobbe med det historiske kildematerialet fra det hanseatiske kontoret. Det betyr håndskrevne dokumenter på mellomnedertysk, høgtysk og latin (ja, vi er imponert 😅), som han skal transkribere og oversette slik at innholdet kan brukes i utstillingene og gjøres tilgjengelig for museumsgjestene våre.

Og når han ikke sitter dypt ned i middelalderens dokumenter?
Da finner du ham gjerne på løpetur med et tydelig mål om å løpe opp alle de sju fjellene!

Vi er veldig glade for å ha deg med på laget, Tom - velkommen (tilbake)! ❤

13/01/2026

Old Norse and Early Germanic Poetics and Metrics

Summer Course in Reykjavík, Iceland, June 1–5, 2026

University of Iceland — University of Oslo — The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies

— Application deadline: March 1, 2026 —

See https://english.hi.is/old-norse-and-early-germanic-poetics-and-metrics

07/01/2026

Deadline for applications 15 January!

Opið er fyrir umsóknir í sumarskóla í handritafræðum sem haldinn verður 15.–25. júní 2026 í Reykjavík. Umsóknarfrestur er til og með 15. janúar.

Frekari upplýsingar má finna á ensku á síðu sumarskólans: https://arnastofnun.is/en/summer-school-manuscript-studies

13/12/2025

The Feast of St. Lucia is celebrated in Scandinavia on 13 December with the so-called Lucia procession. But why should a third-century Roman martyr saint be so popular in the far north? Before the switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, St. Lucia's day coincided with the winter solstice. A procession with candlelight functions as a reminder that the darkness of winter does not last forever.

The Lucia procession in Denmark is in reality a recent import from Sweden. In the Middle Ages, Lucia was one among many saints who were venerated. In the manuscript AM 782 4to, which contains a series of prayers to saints in Danish, we find "En bøn aff then hellige jomfrw sancta lucia oc er hendiss daw fierde daw effter Sancte Anne daw" (A good prayer for the holy virgin St. Lucia, and her day is the fourth day after St. Anne's Day).