Roger Andersson, Ingela Hedström och Dag Retsö. Nya studier i outgivna fornsvenska handskrifter. Uppsala 2021. Samlingar utgivna av Svenska fornskriftsällskapet, Serie 1, Svenska skrifter 103. 148 pp. ISBN 978-91-979881-7-9
This volume contains three essays presenting investigations on various aspects of previously unedited texts or text fragments in Old Swedish. In the first contribution, Ingela Hedström presents a medieval manuscript kept in the library of Vasaskolan in Gävle. The manuscript contains a large number of prayers and has perhaps been in the possession of a guild devoted to the cult of Our Lady’s Psalter. As well as an edition of the text, Hedström gives a historical introduction to this particular type of devotion. The second essay presents a previously very little known manuscript, containing accounts for the province of Uppsala in the year 1433. Dag Retsö provides the historical and political context while Ingela Hedström gives a critical edition of the text. Thirdly, Roger Andersson studies the coexistence of, and language change between, Latin and Old Swedish in a number of unedited religious manuscripts from the fifteenth century. Andersson discusses the causes for the language change and the discussion actualizes questions about the varying status of the vernacular in relation to the omnipresent Latin, and about to what extent the texts were communicated orally or in writing.
Keywords: Old Swedish, manuscripts, philology, medieval prayers, medieval accounts, medieval sermons, bilingualism.