Our first network meeting took place in St John’s College in the beautiful city of Durham over the weekend of the 2-3 July 2016. Over the course of the two days, network members presented and discussed some of their own research, other relevant research in their disciplines more generally, the challenges and opportunities of multidisciplinary scholarship, and future directions for the project. Inevitably, post-Brexit debates about the relative claims of the ‘national’ and the ‘international’ gave a very topical impetus to our discussions.

DAY 1 – 2nd July 2016
The meeting kicked off with an overview of the project and key questions for the weekend. This was followed by presentations on insular romance traditions by Venetia Bridges (Leeds) and Aisling Byrne (Reading). Both looked at romance material relating to figures of international significance – Alexander the Great and Charlemagne. Venetia outlined the patterns of circulation of Alexander material in England, in Latin, French and English. She stressed the importance of pan-European Latin literary culture to any account of medieval cultural contact. Aisling gave an overview of the transmission of Charlemagne narratives, particularly the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle, in Norse, Welsh and Irish. The similar treatments of this material across far removed spaces and times raises questions about methodological approaches in comparative multidisciplinary work.
Our second session was on ‘Scientific Literature in Transmission’. Mark Williams (Oxford) presented some of his work on astrological material in the two main Celtic vernaculars. He stressed the overlap between this sort of writing and medical texts and also outlined how much work still remains to be done on editing and classifying this material. Sarah Baccianti (Lausanne) presented on Latin and Old Norse texts of the prognostic text, Revelatio Esdrae. Sarah’s presentation and the ensuing discussion illuminated some very interesting lines of transmission between England and Scandinavia. Finally, Eric Lacey (Winchester) considered how we might define encyclopedic writing in the Middle Ages, with particular reference to the Bartholomaeus Anglicus’ De Proprietatibus Rerum – a text which circulated particularly widely in both Latin and in vernacular translation.
Our third session saw, Victoria Flood (Durham) and Elena Parina (Marburg) presenting aspects of their work on prophecies and hagiography respectively. Victoria focused on the linguistic, political and cultural interface of the Welsh-English border. She stressed how identities were constructed and challenged through the various prophecy texts which moved across that border in the Middle Ages. Elena then explored the medieval Welsh translations of the popular apocryphal account of the Virgin Mary’s dormition, Transitus Mariae. She considered the relationship of these translations to their Latin source material and placed them within a wider insular context.
Our first day concluded with hearty meal at Leboneat and an in-depth exploration of one of Durham’s many excellent pubs!
DAY 2 – 3rd July 2016
We reconvened on Sunday for our final session on ‘Insular Perceptions’ and some general discussions about the project as a whole. Dale Kedwards (Zurich) considered how the insular world is represented on medieval maps and how such maps may help us understand medieval insular self-perception. He stressed how many medieval maps were produced in this region and how often they present this zone as a coherent space. Our final presentation was from Eleanor Parker (Oxford) who considered Anglo-Scandinavian literary contacts, focusing, in particular, on some fourteenth-century Icelandic texts that treat earlier Viking activity in Anglo-Saxon England. These texts are interesting not only for what they can tell us about the transmission of historical material between the Norse-speaking world and England, but also for what they can tell us about the former’s perceptions of the latter.
The meeting concluded with a session drawing some of the key themes that emerged in the workshop together. We also considered future directions for our work, collecting and refining ideas for the format and content of the digital resource we are building, and exploring ideas for future meetings and potential public engagement.