2011-2016

The purpose of the project was to develop methods for and prepare a critical edition of Book One of the Old Swedish version of the Revelations of St Birgitta of Sweden. This should be a complete and homogeneous edition of the most wide-spread, though perhaps not the most original, version. The Revelations are preserved in both Latin and Old Swedish. The Latin text is now available in a critical edition. The Old Swedish version was edited in the nineteenth century. Even if two modern editions of smaller parts of the material have been published in diplomatic editions in recent years, the urgent need for a modern critical edition of the entire collection has been emphasized repeatedly for many years, an edition which can live up to modern standards for availability and editorial methodologies. The old edition is based on a limited and partly arbitrary selection of manuscripts and has not the capacity to make account for the dynamics of the textual tradition. In addition, a number of fragments have been brought to light during the last century, fragments that might be of importance for the constitution of the text. The purpose was also that these methods in the future could be applied to all Old Swedish writings of St Birgitta. The philological aims also include clear principles for textual emendations in order to eliminate purely scribal errors or misunderstandings.


Three important results

1. The most important is if course the publication of Book One of the Revelations, since this was the overall aim.

2. A second important result is related to methodology, given the complicated and partly unsolved relations between different phases in the genesis of the text and its development over time and in different contexts. The main part of the text is a translation from the Latin. This translation exists in one more original and in another more elaborate version. Besides, there are smaller portions that are believed to pre-date the Latin version, most important the Birgitta autographs, but also texts contained in a peculiar language mixture in one manuscript. These are of high interest since they may have the potential of saying something about Birgitta's own language. The differences between these three different phases or versions cannot always be made account for in a traditional critical apparatus. The last phase involves a stylistic adaptation aiming at removing some heavy Latin influenced constructions. It also often adds short glosses or explanations. This was probably done consciously in order to adapt the text to an audience outside Vadstena abbey.
Thus, the methodological challenge is to produce a critical edition of a text with such amount of textual variation between both different versions and different manuscripts. The results show however that this is possible. The critical apparatuses can be manageable if you exclude insignificant variants, and if you allow for the separate publication of deviant versions. The choice of edited text must also be solidly founded in the manuscript tradition if the edition should be complete and homogeneous.

3. A third result is more theoretical. The strictly diplomatic (monotypic) and the traditional critical edition, often called either the "Lachmannian", "synthetic" or "stemmatic" method have often been regarded as opposite approaches to textual editing. The relation between them has been the object of much scholarly debate, not the least as far as vernacular texts are concerned. To some extent, the stemmatic method has been used within Scandinavian (West and East Norse) philology, but is normal in Latin criticism. In Scandinavian philology more focus has been on the individual manuscript, which is the reason why there have appeared a good number of diplomatic editions, often without any clear ambition to make emendations or to increase legibility. Instead full account is made of scribal interventions such as additions and cancellations and comments on individual palaeographical features. This orientation is sometimes called "nyfilologi" ("new philology") or "material philology". An important result from the project is thus that these two seemingly opposite approaches should instead preferably be regarded as complementing each other. Both are necessary, depending on aims and context. The published first volume of Birgitta's Revelations should ideally be followed up by digitally published diplomatic editions of every individual manuscript (see below).

The project has been presented in a number of conferences, also international:

"Gammal och ny filologi. Om konsten att ge ut historiska källor". Key note speech at the conference Dies medievales 2012 in Turku 26-27 October 2012.

"Localism and Internationalism: Vadstena and the Production of St. Birgitta's Revelations". Medieval Academy of America. 88th Annual Meeting, Knoxville, Tennessee 4-6 April 2013.

"Ny utgåva av Heliga Birgittas Uppenbarelser på fornsvenska". The symposium Heliga Birgitta och Birgittinorden. Forskningsläge och nya ansatser at the Centrum för teologi och religionsvetenskap, University of Lund, 6 May 2013.

"Medveten revidering eller naturlig variation? Om uppenbarelsernas fornsvenska texttradition." The conference Østnordisk filologi - Nu og i fremtiden, Uppsala University 20-21 September 2013.

"En nyutgåva av Birgittas uppenbarelser på fornsvenska. Problem och möjligheter." The conference Birgittalaisuus ja Suomi (The Birgittines and Finland), arranged by the city of Nådendal (Naantali) and the Finska kyrkohistoriska samfundet, Helsinki 17 Decmber 2013.

"Heliga Birgittas texter på fornsvenska. Presentation av ett utgåveprojekt och dess första volym." Annual meeting of the Svenska Fornskriftsällskapet, Uppsala 16 April 2015.


New research questions

As has already been pointed out, the critical (or semi-critical) edition needs to be complemented by diplomatic transcriptions of each textual witness, encoded according to one of the several standards for digital publishing that have been developed during the last couple of decades. Therefore it is logical that a new infrastructural project now has been launched as a direct result of the work in this project, namely "Digitala Birgitta" under the direction of Prof. Henrik Williams in Uppsala and funded by RJ.

On a more specific level, the notion about clear-cut boundaries between the different phases in the development of the text must be questioned. It may not be a matter of a program for linguistic revision, something which has been assumed in previous research. In future research therefore, it will be necessary to include the entire Birgittine corpus in a more thorough analysis than has hitherto been made. In a broader context many other vernacular texts should ideally be studied from this particular point of view, namely that variation forms an inherent part of both textual production and textual transmission in the manuscript culture of the Middle Ages.


The project in an international setting

The methods and results of the projects have been presented at several conferences, also international (see above). In addition, Roger Andersson has been invited to participate in a panel discussion on textual editing in an international perspective at the conference "The Arts of Editing: Past, Present and Future", arranged by the scholarly network Ars edendi at Stockholm University, in August 2016.

The project work has been supervised by a reference group with the following members: Professors Olle Ferm (Stockholm), Henrik Williams (Uppsala), Lars Wollin (Åbo/Uppsala), Karl G. Johansson (Oslo), Odd Einar Haugen (Bergen), Cecilia Falk (The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities) and Thomas Riad (Swedish Academy), and also including Dr. Bridget Morris (York) and assistant professor Sara Risberg (National Archives).


Information outside academia

The edition was presented by Andersson at a release event in Tensta church, Uppland in March 2015. A few shorter lectures on St Birgitta and the Birgittines were also given by invited scholars. In addition, Andersson has made the following popular presentations:

"Heliga Birgitta och slaskvattnet i Gamla stan. Om heliga Birgitta och hennes fantastiska uppenbarelser". Stockholms Stadsarkiv, 25 March 2015.

"Heliga Birgittas uppenbarelser på fornsvenska. Ett projekt för framtiden." Annual meeting of the Birgittastiftelsen, Vadstena 9 May 2015.


The two most important publications

The most important publication is of course the edition itself, which was the overall aim of the project. Besides, I would like to mention Andersson's article "A Modern Edition of the Old Swedish Text of the Revelations", where the author discusses the methodological and theoretical considerations behind the choice of editorial principles and text presentation.


Strategy of publication

The main edition has been published by Sällskapet Runica et Mediaevalia, in the subseries Editiones. A digital version of this text will be made available at the Litteraturbanken at the University of Gothenburg. As has already been mentioned a digital version of all transcriptions of all manuscripts (including of course those for Book One) together with colour images will be published in the new project "Digitala Birgitta". This edition will be hosted by Menota (Medieval Nordic Text Archive; se www.menota.org), a scholarly network which has been developed into the leading Scandinavian portal for electronic publishing of medieval texts.

If possible the articles mentioned in the publication list are uploaded in DiVA, which is the publication database for Stockholm University. In those cases where the question of open access is beyond the author's control this has not been done.

Publications

Heliga Birgittas texter på fornsvenska. Birgittas Uppenbarelser. Bok I. Runica et Mediævalia. Editiones 6. Stockholm 2014.

“A Modern Edition of the Old Swedish Text of the Revelations”. I: The Birgittine Experience. Papers from the Birgitta Conference in Stockholm 2011. Utg. Claes Gejrot, Mia Åkestam och Roger Andersson. KVHAA. Konferenser, 82. Stockholm 2013, s. 332–350.

”Stemmatologi och textförändring”. I:  Østnordisk filologi – nu og i fremtiden. Red. Jonathan Adams. Selskab for østnordisk filologi, nr. 1; Universitets-Jubilæets danske Samfund, nr. 587. Odense & København 2015, s. 123–144. http://su.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:841326/FULLTEXT01.pdf

”Heliga Birgittas texter på fornsvenska i ny utgåva”, Signum 2015:6, s. 37–41.

“Vadstena”. I: Europe: a Literary History, 1348-1418. Vol. I–II. Red. David Wallace. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2016. Vol I, s. 611–626 (utkommer mars 2016).