Gripla - 2023, Síða 92

90 GRIPLA
Relations between Flanders and Norway
between the Twelfth and the Thirteenth Century
Relations between Flanders and Norway began as early as the twelfth
century, as demonstrated by Lars Boje Mortensen, who highlighted a
substantial Norwegian influence in France, primarily due to the spread
of the cult of Óláfr Haraldsson the Saint (995–1030).51 With regard
to the oldest surviving witness of Passio Olavi, the so-called Anchin
Manuscript—Douai, Bibliothèque Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (olim
Bibliothèque municipale), 295—Mortensen demonstrated that the codex
must have been produced in twelfth-century Flanders and highlighted
the preservation of Norse proper names and toponyms in their original
graphic form (while all other names are regularly Latinized), as well a more
sound knowledge of Norwegian geography.52 Furthermore, after a careful
analysis of the cult of St Óláfr in Northern France, Mortensen proposed
the codex’s transmission from Flanders to Paris (and not vice versa) and
highlighted how the passage from the North Sea to Paris was favoured
by the geographical features of both the Anchin area and Flanders, which
facilitated the arrival in Paris by ship through the ascent of the Scarpe
River.53
The presence of French texts in western Scandinavia around 1150 is
further attested by an English palimpsest preserved today in Copenhagen,
Den Arnamagnæanske Samling, AM 618 4to (Britain–Iceland, 1150–
1599), which originally contained the bilingual Latin-French Psalterium
Davidis (fols. 1r–116r) and Hymni et cantica ex testamento veteri (fols.116r–
118v). In the early modern period, the French text had been subsequently
scraped off and replaced with an early modern Icelandic translation of the
Latin text.54
Further evidence of a Norwegian interest in northern French manu-
script production is attested by two French codices, recently surveyed
51 Lars Boje Mortensen, “The Anchin Manuscript of Passio Olavi (Douai 295), William of
Jumièges, and Theodoricus Monachus,” Symbolae Osloenses 75 (2000): 165–89, at 169–74.
52 Mortensen, “Anchin Manuscript,” 169.
53 Mortensen, “Anchin Manuscript,” 169–73.
54 For a summary description of the manuscript, see “AM 618 4to,” Skráningarfærsla handrits,
handrit.is, accessed 17 February 2023, https://handrit.is/manuscript/view/da/AM04-
0618/0#mode/2up.