Healing Across Borders: Medical Manuscripts and the Circulation of Knowledge in Medieval Scandinavia

Lecture by Lara Harris, Cambridge University

It is perhaps no coincidence that one of Denmark’s major exports today is pharmaceuticals. For centuries, Denmark has been a nexus for medical knowledge in the North. Around the turn of the thirteenth century, Henrik Harpestreng—personal physician to Erik Plovpenning and canon of Roskilde—composed his Danske urtebog, a pharmacological text based on Salernitan teachings but adapted to a Nordic audience. The work went on to become a foundational text for medical practice in medieval and early modern Scandinavia, surviving in at least thirteen medieval copies found across Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland.

With major ecclesiastical centres and manuscript collections in places such as Roskilde and Lund, Denmark became a site not only of reception but also of production and adaptation. Latin and vernacular medical texts were copied, excerpted, translated, and recontextualised in a Scandinavian setting. From the late fifteenth century, the flow of knowledge expanded further, as German medical texts—both in the original and in translation—began to appear in Danish manuscripts, reflecting increased scholarly exchange between Denmark and the German-speaking lands.

This lecture examines the extant corpus of Scandinavian medical manuscripts, with a focus on gynaecological texts, in order to trace the transmission and transformation of medical knowledge across the North. In doing so, it considers Denmark’s role as an intellectual centre, connecting the medical traditions of continental Europe with local Scandinavian medical and gynaecological practices.