The 'Gospel of Nicodemus' in the North : The Old Danish translation

Over the last few decades an increasing number of studies have widened and enriched our knowledge of the reception and circulation of 'Evangelium Nicodemi' (EN) in western Europe. If cognate texts in the Nordic area have been investigated in detail in the Old Norse and Old Swedish literary systems, a thorough study of the Old Danish version is still a desideratum. A fragment of an Old Danish poem based on EN, dated to the beginning of the 14th century, is preserved in the manuscript Stockholm, Kungliga Biblioteket, A 115 (from around 1325), now consisting of two leaves, once the middle sheet of a quire. The poem in knittelvers is written in the Scanian dialect. The fragment preserves 103 lines which contain a portion of the text corresponding to the conclusion of 'Acta Pilati' and the beginning of 'Descensus Christi ad inferos' (EN XIV.3-XVII.3). Brøndum-Nielsen’s 1955 edition offers a detailed investigation of the codex and its linguistic traits, as well as some stylistic features of the text. Therefore, later scholarship has traditionally relied on the results of his extensive and accurate analysis. However, the data made available by investigations of other, especially adjacent, areas offer now a richer context in which to reconsider the history and characteristics of the Old Danish text. On the backdrop of this updated framework, the aim of this paper is to investigate possible relations of the Old Danish text with other traditions, with particular reference to the German area, whose literary system had a very influential role on Scandinavian literature. Low German versions deserve a special focus because they also include poetic renderings. In this context, Brøndum-Nielsen’s hypothesis of a Low German source for the Old Danish text, based on internal criteria, could be checked and verified with what we now know of the actual Low German tradition. In this way, it should be possible to better outline the specific role of the Old Danish contribution to the wide circulation of such an influential work in the European Middle Ages