Between 14th and 17th of November three members of the TRANS.SCRIPT Centre – Adinel Dincă, Iulian Damian and Paula Cotoi – were present in Norway, initiating a dialogue regarding the study of medieval manuscript fragments with scholars of the University of Bergen.
During our stay, we attended meetings with students, with the team of the University Library and with the research group who was already involved in a successful project on fragmentology. Adinel Dincă gave a lecture concerning book culture in medieval Transylvania for the Medieval Latin course of Åslaug Ommundsen. The visit at the Department of Manuscript and Rare Books of the University Library offered the chance to discus technical solutions for digitizing manuscript fragments and conservation issues involved by such endeavors, based on the experience of the Norwegian specialists in the project From Manuscript Fragments to Book History. The last meeting was organised within the autumn program of the Research Group for Medieval Philology, having two main objectives: 1.) familiarizing the Norwegian team with the situation of medieval manuscript fragments from Romanian collections and 2.) discussing a possible collaboration meant to fructify the research potential of these sources.
All the discussions lead to the conclusion that our common research interests, the nature of the sources addressed by each of the two teams as well as the similar historical features of the two border European regions they represent are ideal premises for a long term cooperation. The idea of a first common initiative will materialize in drafting and submitting a project proposal in a grant competition.
