The main objective of this project is to establish a data base of medieval Swedish manuscript texts. The data base will be open to use for Swedish and international research and is expected to vitalize research into the medieval texts. The printed editions of these texts that are available today do not correspond to the demands of modern international research. Here the established data base will fill a gap.
The extent of the medieval manuscript material is limited, but it is still not realistic to expect that it could be made digitally available within the limits set by the project. Therefore the extent of the material that is to be encoded has been limited. The production of manuscripts in the Vadstena monastery was extensive. A large part of this production is lost today, but there are still about sixty manuscripts preserved. It is difficult, however, to give the exact number of extant pages. It is therefore of great importance that the project will provide an inventory of the material.
In the near future it will be possible to link the text archive to the data bases of images of the manuscripts that are being created today. This linking of text and manuscript images facilitates e.g. the study of relations between text and illustrations. It will also limit the use of the original manuscripts which of course is important considering the vulnerability of this material.