Gripla - 2023, Blaðsíða 96
94 GRIPLA
In the following decades, the close relations between Flanders and
Norway were evident in the presence of a Flemish cleric known as Jón
flæmingi (c. 1260–1320), in the service of Bishop Jǫrundr in Niðaróss.69
Jón, clearly of Flemish origin, is mentioned as a student of canon law at the
University of Paris and Orléans. He was fluent in both Latin and French,
yet he had inadequate oral skills in the Norse language, as attested by the
Þ-manuscript of Lárentíus saga byskups preserved in Reykjavík, Stofnun
Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum, AM 404 4to (c. 1650). It is highly
likely that at the time of the composition of N, other Flemish intellectuals
were residing in some of the most prominent cities of Norway. During the
second half of the thirteenth century, the close contacts between Flanders
and Norway are further testified by the presence of Torfinn, bishop of
Hamar, at the monastery of Ter Doest (Bruges), where he had been in exile
since 1282. Torfinn’s journey to Ter Doest is narrated in a Latin poem by
Walter de Muda (fl. c. 1250–1300). Torfinn died in 1285 and was buried
at that monastery;70 however, he is not an isolated figure but falls within
a circle of clerics closely connected to Ter Doest for economic reasons.
Archbishop Jón Rauði of Niðaróss (d. 1282) instructed his trusted men
to deposit or withdraw money from Ter Doest Abbey around the years
1281–1301.71 Flanders thus proves to be not only a transit location for
Norwegians travelling south but also a factual Norwegian outpost on the
Continent.
From the evidence discussed, it emerges that the contacts between
Flanders and Norway were active as early as the twelfth century. These
were maintained for at least three centuries through the reciprocal ex-
change of material goods and the transit of Norwegian nobles in Flanders,
as well as through the settlement of some Norwegian prelates and their
retinues. The acquisition of a specific Flemish Vorlage of Desputisun in
Norway may therefore have been aided by Norwegians passing through
Materials and Techniques in a European Context,” Zeitschrift für Kunsttechnologie und
Konservierung 28 (2014): 298–332, at 309–10.
69 Fulvio Ferrari, “Lárentíuss saga byskups: Between History and Historiography,” in Saints and
their Legacies in Medieval Iceland, ed. Dario Bullitta and Kirsten Wolf, Studies in Old Norse
Literature 9 (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2021), 168.
70 Synnøve Midtbø Myking, “Money Deposits and Shipwrecked Saints: The Norwegian
Presence in Medieval Bruges,” in Ad Brudgias portum: Bruges’ Medieval Port System as a
Maritime Cultural Landscape, ed. W. De Clercq et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming).
71 Myking, “Money Deposits.”