The fragments found in Norwegian collections come from both imported and locally made books. Many books were brought in from medieval England, but some were also imported from France, Germany and other Nordic countries, such as Denmark or Iceland. The indicated origin is not always certain, and sometimes more than one option has been suggested.
England Flanders France NorwayOrigin:
England or France, late 13th century
This missal, named after its post-medieval provenance, was written in England or France at the end of the thirteenth century. The surviving fragments contain chants, prayers and Bible readings for use in the time from Sexagesima Sunday (the eighth Sunday before Easter) to the Holy Week. Several of the reconstructed leaves follow one another directly. This is especially clear in the case of the epistle “Libenter suffertis”, which starts on the bottom of page 6 (folio 2v) and continues directly onto the next leaf (folio 3r, or page 7).
The reconstructed missal is about 28 cm tall and 18 cm wide, the writing distributed in two columns on each page. The initials alternate between blue with red flourishes and red with blue flourishes, while red is used for the rubrics, the foliations (“paginations”), the line-fillers, and the musical staves, as well as to highlight capitals within the text. The script, at least in the running text, seems to be the work of a single scribe, writing in an elegant Gothic hand.
The fragments from this missal were taken from four different account books, all from the same area in Northern Norway (Nordland and Vesterålen), the dates of the accounts following each other directly: 1626, 1627, 1628, and 1629. This suggests that the missal, or a dismantled part of it, was kept in the same place and used there as binding material over several years.
Origin:
England, mid twelfth century
There are 23 fragments left from this missal which was probably written in England around the middle of the twelfth century. The book was originally ca. 35 x 26,5 cm, in two columns, with simple, but fine initials in red, blue and green.
The missal has received most attention for its Good Friday liturgy. According to the liturgist Lilli Gjerløw, who named the missal Mi 12, its content is a combination of the older directions for English monasteries (the Regularis Concordia from ca. 970) and the Decreta Lanfranci, issued a century later by Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury (1070-1089). Lanfranc’s instructions were primarily designed for Christ Church, Canterbury, but were also taken up in other, associated monasteries. Our missal essentially follows Lanfranc, but has retained the Good Friday prayers and the burial of the Cross from the older liturgical practice (see fol. 8).
Another Norwegian missal fragment, MS 1549,2 in the University of Bergen Library, also contains the Good Friday liturgy.
