De antiquitate regum Norwagiensium

Omtale

The short history of Norway by Theodoricus, a pioneering work, was written about the year 1180 by a Norwegian cleric during the distressing struggles between the 'birkebeiner' and the 'bagler'. Much points towards the theory that the author is identical with the later archbishop Tore Gudmundsson (1205-1214), the fourth in the row after the Norwegian archdiocese had been established in 1152/53. Since 1903, when the best witness to the text came to light in Copenhagen, a new edition of the Latin text has been a desideratum and even more so when the medieval Latinist Paul Lehmann found another copy of the vanished medieval ms in Berlin in the 1930ies. Professor Egil Kraggerud, now emeritus, who for a long time has been interested in the challenges of the text has in this book published his text with a full critical apparatus. He is the first to divide the 34 chapters into sections, a system to oust the old way of referring to the text by page and line in Storm's edition. Moreover, Kraggerud has added a parallel English translation on the basis of the preliminary translation of Peter Fisher (Cambridge). As an appendix he has also a Norwegian translation to serve Norwegian historians. Kraggerud's commentary serves a double purpose: the first part being directed towards the contents of each chapter, whereas the second part deals with text-critical, grammatical and lexical issues. In the introductory part of the book Kraggerud deals with the issues attached to Theodoricus' name, his sources and his views on the place of the Norwegian church within the Ecclesia Romana.