Changeis the unfolding of difference, manifested as, for instance, emergence, alteration, replacement, modification, exchange, decline, growth, or erosion. It is a fundamental aspect of our experience of time and the world,“so pervasive in our lives that it almost defeats description and analysis”(Mortenson 2020). In philosophical discourse, the concept has posed a challenge from pre-Socratic times to the present day, sometimes expressed in intricate paradoxes that contest the possibility of change. However, for the historical sciences, it becomes natural to accept change as atemporal process, as time and chronology are indispensable categories for this field of knowledge.

Change is a matter of central concern and interest in the study of history, and it has been approached with various methodological and theoretical means in different historical disciplines. The concept is, however, rarely addressed per se, despite its fundamental role for historical insight. This book addresses different kinds of change in medieval textual culture as examples or models of change. A model can take different forms: it consists of abstract representations, like a flowchart or a series of stages within a development, it might be a concept, like paradigm shift, or a single, but telling historical example. In their different forms, models serve as conceptual tools to enlighten historical instances of change.

The contributions of this volume gather cases from a series of aspects of medieval textual culture which are subject to change: physical books, the acoustics of performed text, textualized worlds, scribes and authorship, genre, the choice of language in texts, and paleographic variance. The book also addresses problems of thinking in models and metaphors of change, as they also – as idols of the market – have the power to lead us astray if not carefully meditated.

Change is a wellspring of fear and hope, dreams and disappointment, a source of zeal, mixed feelings, and nostalgia. The lexicon of change is surrounded by emotive connota-tions: birth, rise, fall, development, renaissance, disappearance, and death. Some of these concepts are imbued with feelings in themselves; others may be charged by the context. In political discourse, change is key for creating a sense of a shared purpose. For the sto-ryteller, changes serve as foundational elements in crafting the plot and manipulating readers’reactions. Undoubtedly, historians, too, have found it tempting to employ changes for similar rhetorical purposes, when history is formed into a great narrative.

The choice of language for a text or utterance serves practical, communicative pur-poses, but it is not merely a functional consideration. Language choice is intertwinedwith identities and power structures, manifesting aspects such as inclusion and exclu-sion, high and low status, and authority and challenges to the established authority–a potential expressed in the notion of language as a“non-neutral medium”(Duranti2013). Individuals proficient in several languages may have the opportunity to choose,but access to languages typically varies within a population. A society with multiplelanguages serving distinct functions is commonly characterised by the concept ofdiglossia(Ferguson 1959), with one variety or language reserved for official and high-prestige domains, typically involving writing, and another variety or language usedfor private communication that is primarily spoken and holds lower prestige. The order of languages is generally considered stable over time, but attitudes mayundergo change leading to a language shift (Fishman 1964). Typically, research on lan-guage shifts concerns spoken languages, but the case which will be discussed here is ashift in the language of writing.

An Old Swedish translation of Acts of the Apostles is preserved in MS Stockholm, Kungliga biblioteket, A 110, which was written the year 1385 or some years afterin the newly established birgittine Vadstena monastery. One part of Chapter 9, in which Saul is struck to the ground by God on his way to Damascus, also appears in two fifteenthcentury manuscripts in a collection of legends, most of them derived from Legenda aurea. This legend text has been believed to have been copied from the Acts translation (Ståhle1940),  but a close study reveals that the legend text likely predated the Acts translation and was incorporated in it. The time and place of of the Acts translation is discussed from various perspectives and it is suggested, in line with Anderssons’s (2001) interpretation of the MS A 110, that it was carried out for the use within the Vadstena monastery, inaugurated in 1384.

An Old Swedish translation of Acts of the Apostles is preserved in MS Stockholm, Kungliga biblioteket, A 110, which was written the year 1385 or some years after in the newly established birgittine Vadstena monastery. One part of Chapter 9, in which Saul is struck to the ground by God on his way to Damascus, also appears in two fifteenth century manuscripts in a collection of legends, most of them derived from Legenda aurea. This legend text has been believed to have been copied from the Acts translation (Stähle 1940), but a close study reveals that the legend text likely predated the Acts translation and was incorporated in it. The time and place of of the Acts translation is discussed from various perspectives and it is suggested, in line with Anderssons's (2001) interpretation of the MS A 110, that it was carried out for the use within the Vadstena monastery, inaugurated in 1384.

De konferensbidrag som publiceras i Från Skånske lov till Vasabrev visar på den bredd som är östnordisk filologi. Artiklarna är baserade på föredrag vid Sällskap för östnordisk filologis femte konferens som hölls 2021, och de spänner tidsmässigt över en period från det tidiga 1200-talets Skånske lov och Jyske lov fram till tidigmodern tid med Vasakvinnornas brev och Johannes Bureus marginalanteckningar. Undersökningarna omfattar handskriftsnära analyser, stemmatologiska utredningar, texthistoriska undersökningar, olika slags språkhistoriska analyser och sociolingvistiska och historiska kontextualiseringar. Författarnas bakgrunder speglar samma bredd, från Oslo till Osaka. 

Bidragen är skrivna på svenska, danska och engelska.

The conference contributions published in "Från Skånske lov till Vasabrev" ('From the Scanian Law to the Vasa letters') showcase the breadth of East Nordic philology. The articles are based on lectures given at the Society for East Nordic Philology's fifth conference held in 2021, spanning temporally from the early 1200s Scanian Law and Jutlandic Law to the Early Modern period with the Vasa women letters and Johannes Bureus' marginal notes. The investigations include manuscript-based analyses, stemmatological inquiries, textual historical investigations, various types of language historical analyses, and sociolinguistic and historical contextualizations. The authors' backgrounds reflect the same breadth, from Oslo to Osaka.

The contributions are written in Swedish, Danish, and English.

Artikeln behandlar den fornsvenska översättningen av Moseböckerna med ett särskilt fokus på de kommentarer som löpande är inflikade i översättningen i syfte att klarlägga egenskaper hos textens förväntade läsare, modelläsaren. Analysen visar att det finns exempel på kommentarer som ansluter till alla de fyra nivåerna av bibelutläggning (historisk, moralisk, typologisk och anagogisk), men att det också finns andra som snarare är inriktade på att ta ansvar för vilka slutsatser som läsaren kan komma att dra av olika händelser. Den förväntade läsaren kan sägas vara en ganska självständig läsare som skulle kunna göra en självständig och kritisk läsning moraliskt och juridiskt problematiska ställen i bibeltexten. Avslutningsvis förs resonemang om var de verkliga, empiriska läsarna skulle kunna stå att finna, och det argumenteras för att adelskretsarna kring kung Magnus Eriksson är en sannolik tilltänkt mottagargrupp.

The article discusses the Old Swedish translation of the Pentateuch, with a specific focus on the comments that appear throughout the translation in order to clarify characteristics of the intended audience of the text, its model reader. The analysis demonstrates that there are examples of comments aligning with all four levels of biblical exegesis (historical, moral, typological, and anagogical), but there are also others that are oriented towards taking responsibility for the conclusions the reader may draw from various events. The anticipated reader could be described as a fairly independent reader who could undertake an independent and critical reading of morally and legally problematic passages in the biblical text. In conclusion, deliberations are made about where the actual, empirical readers might have been found, and it is argued that the nobility around King Magnus Eriksson is a likely intended recipient group.

The Danish verse tale Flores og Blanseflor was printed in Copenhagen twice by the printer Gotfred of Ghemen in the first decade of the fifteenth century. One edition (LN 66) is not dated and only fragmentarily preserved, while the other (LN 67) was printed 1509 and remains in one complete copy. It has been suggested that the 1509 edition was based on the text of the fragment edition. In the article the relation between the two is investigated in detail, and the conclusion is that it is very unlikely that the 1509 edition was a reprint based on the fragment. Instead, both seem to be independently worked out from the same manuscript source. The redactional work in each edition seems to have a different character: the redactor of the fragment edition has exchanged some words in the original for others that are closely related semantically, while the 1509 edition redactor has made changes that affect how characters’ perspectives are expressed and to some extent soften the conflicts between the protagonists.