Scholars in mediaeval history bagged a unique €13 million EU research funding

Scholars in mediaeval history bagged a unique €13 million EU research funding

Research project led by Professor Tuomas Heikkilä from the University of Helsinki and other Nordic scholars uses the methods of humanities and natural sciences to investigate how literature helped Northern Europe join Western Europe in the Middle Ages.

The CODICUM research project investigates how in the Middle Ages Northern Europe was integrated into Western Europe with the help of the supreme information technology of the time, books. Contrary to what you might think, mediaeval Europe was thoroughly networked.

The dataset comprises tens of thousands of remnants of mediaeval books and fragments. The project, which has received funding for six years, combines traditional humanities approaches with cutting-edge biomolecular analysis.

Writing, books and the Latin alphabet - instead of the Cyrillic letters of the East - landed in Finland in the 12th century.

"One could even think that Finland's NATO membership was decided many centuries ago when Finland was conjoined to the west instead of Eastern Europe with literary culture," says Professor of Church History at the University of Helsinki Tuomas Heikkilä.

Heikkilä is the principal investigator responsible for the work of Finnish and Swedish scholars in the project with ten researchers in his team.

Recognition of European top scholars to Finnish humanities research

The European Research Council (ERC) is an independent research council operating under the auspices of the European Commission. It awards Synergy Grant funding to groups of two to four researchers or teams within research groups who solve particularly ambitious research problems.

Finnish researchers have received corresponding funding for joint research conducted by groups working at different universities only three times before - always in 'hard' sciences. According to Heikkilä, the funding is proof that Finnish humanities research is among the very best in the world.

An exceptional amount of medieval written material has been preserved in Finland and the Nordic countries that cannot be found elsewhere in Europe. Therefore, project results will be important on a European scale.

The project combines research methods of humanities and natural sciences. Methods of biosciences will be utilised to take DNA, protein and isotope samples from parchment made of animal skin. Computational methods, such as artificial intelligence, will be used by researchers to trace with algorithms how texts hand-copied elsewhere spread and transformed in Northern Europe.

It is often thought that Finnish literary culture originated with Mikael Agricola in the 16th century. In reality, it is hundreds of years older. In the 2020s Finland continues to be culturally, politically and militarily committed to the same connections that literary culture built already centuries ago.

"The results will help us better understand ourselves and the surrounding world. The period of time from the 12th century to the beginning of the 16th century is the earliest beginning and foundation of our modern culture."