History was written on the skin of dead calves

The very medium on which history was written tells a story of its own. For centuries, the primary material for preserving knowledge was parchment, meticulously crafted from the skin of young calves. The process was laborious: a calf was slaughtered, its skin soaked, treated with lime, scraped clean of hair and fat, re-soaked, stretched, and dried before being carefully thinned. The result was a durable sheet, ready to receive ink from a quill pen.

This material was not just a passive carrier of words; it was the foundation of written culture. Nearly all surviving texts from the Nordic Middle Ages, dating before approximately 1400, were inscribed on parchment. These documents, ranging from property deeds and royal decrees to saints' legends and legal judgments, have long been the focus of historical study.

However, a new wave of research is delving deeper, examining the very substance of these historical records. Lena Strid's thesis in historical archaeology exemplifies this shift. It moves beyond the content of the texts to investigate the material itself, the parchment, and its use by the people who created and interacted with it. This focus on the tangible, the "things" and their significance, marks a growing trend within the humanities, often referred to as the "material turn."