Book idea
During the Arnamagnæan Summer School, I was a helping teacher at several workshops. My job was it to sit with a single manuscript while the participants were examining it – basically to help them if they had questions, and to make sure the manuscript was alright. I was surprised that although the participants had had training before (especially on advanced level) and had been listening to a number of lectures on codicology and paleography, the way they approached the manuscripts varied a lot from person to person, and some struggled to find a good routine. I therefore got the idea that one should have a workshop and/or lecture that teaches students how to actually work with manuscripts. Out of this developed the idea to actually write a book, which addresses questions of how to prepare for the reading room, what to expect, and how to make most of the time available with the manuscript. The book will be rather colloquial and based on personal experience, but it will also contain reliable up-to-date information and plans to work from. I entitled it “BOOK 2” in my personal notes and have now started to write about 1,000 words per day. When this post goes online, I will have written 12,000 words of what I hope will be around 50,000 in the end.