Epigraphic centres of medieval Scandinavia: Latinization and re-vernacularization of the linguistic landscape 1050–1550

forthcoming

EpiCentres investigates the development of written culture in medieval Scandinavia (1050–1550), a context uniquely characterized by centuries of interactions between different languages and alphabets. While the evolving relationship between Latin and the vernacular influenced the development of all western European literate societies, in Scandinavia, Latin and the Latin alphabet were introduced in the 11th century into a pre-existing 900-year-old written tradition comprising thousands of inscriptions in the local vernacular languages and in the runic alphabet. Rather than replacing this native tradition, the Latin one coexisted with it for 400 years, resulting in a written culture shaped by overlapping processes of spread of Latin alongside the runic tradition, increased Latinization and decline of the runes, and ‘re-vernacularization’, the increasing use of the Scandinavian languages but written in the Latin alphabet. EpiCentres will analyse these processes by studying an almost entirely overlooked body of texts comprising approximately 1500 Latin-alphabet inscriptions, together with 2500 runic inscriptions from the same period. The project pursues three aims: 1) Mapping the evolving production of inscriptions in different languages and alphabets through geospatial analyses and making the vast corpus of Latin-alphabet inscriptions publicly and digitally available for the first time; 2) Developing a holistic methodology for studying Scandinavian epigraphy, focusing on the intersections of textual, orthographic, palaeographic, and visual practices of epigraphic traditions in different languages and scripts, uniting previously compartmentalized disciplines of runic, Old Norse, and Latin studies; 3) Proposing a new explanatory model for the use of Latin and the vernacular, reinterpreting their relationship within a sociolinguistic and social semiotic framework to understand the sociocultural premises and implications of evolving language and script choices.