''Diplomatarium Norvegicum'' is a series of books containing the texts of documents and letters from

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of ...

older than 1590, verbatim and in the original language. The series consists of 22 volumes, containing the texts of approximately 20,000 documents. The first volume was published in 1848 at the initiative of historian Christian C. A. Lange (1810–1861), who served as the

national archivist of Norway The national archivist ( no, Riksarkivar) of Norway is the professional and administrative manager of the National Archives of Norway and the National Archival Services of Norway. In addition, the national archivist bears direct responsibility wi ...

(''Riksarkivar''). The work of transcribing the sources continued for over a hundred years until 1972. The oldest document is from approximately 1050, but the great mass of documents are from after 1300. The language in most of the letters is

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlement ...

Old Norwegian nn, gamalnorsk , region = Kingdom of Norway (872–1397) , era = 11th–14th century , familycolor = Indo-European , fam2 = Germanic , fam3 = North Germanic , fam4 = West Scandinavian , fam5 ...

, or

Old Danish The Danish language developed during the Middle Ages out of Old East Norse, the common predecessor of Danish and Swedish. It was a late form of common Old Norse. The Danish philologist Johannes Brøndum-Nielsen divided the history of Danish int ...

. Some letters, particularly connected with the

Church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * Chri ...

or international correspondence are in

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

. ''Diplomatarium Norvegicum'' (commonly abbreviated DN) is an indispensable source for historians of Norwegian medieval history from approximately 1300. The series has also been published as a searchable database on the internet.

References

{{reflist

External links

Volume 1-21 in searchable form
Norwegian manuscripts Medieval documents of Norway

See also

References

External links