The hidden networks of medieval Europe: An interview with Tuomas Heikkilä#
In this interview, Professor Heikkilä MAE explores the CODICUM project’s innovative use of DNA analysis and AI to trace the medieval book fragments that shaped Europe’s cultural and intellectual history.
About Tuomas Heikkilä#
Professor Tuomas Heikkilä is a Finnish historian and Professor at the University of Helsinki
specialising in medieval studies, with a particular focus on the literary, religious, and cultural history of the Nordic region. His work has been instrumental in uncovering Finland’s earliest literary heritage, shedding light on the country’s integration into Western European culture.
Currently, Heikkilä – together with his colleagues Åslaug Ommundsen (University of Bergen), Matthew Collins (University of Copenhagen), and Lars Boje Mortensen (University of Southern Denmark) – leads CODICUM, an international research project that seeks to reconstruct Europe’s medieval intellectual networks using a combination of historical scholarship, artificial intelligence, and biotechnological analysis. Awarded a €13 million Synergy Grant by the European Research Council (ERC), CODICUM will analyse tens of thousands of medieval book fragments preserved in Nordic archives. By applying cutting-edge DNA and protein analysis to parchment manuscripts, the project aims to reveal the hidden trade routes and knowledge exchanges that shaped Europe long before the digital age.
Prof. Heikkilä was elected as member of the History and Archaeology section of Academia Europaea in 2022.
Read the interview#
Congratulations on securing the ERC Synergy Grant for the CODICUM project. What is your main aspiration for the project over the next six years? How might the findings from the CODICUM project reshape our understanding of Europe’s shared heritage and medieval intellectual networks?It was not swords or spears, but letters and books that connected the Nordics to the Western cultural sphere, creating a shared set of values, beliefs, and ideals. We seek to reconstruct the intellectual and practical networks that facilitated the import, production and export of books across the North, bringing to light the world’s largest collection of medieval book fragments preserved across the Nordic countries.
We like to think this is a field of medieval history as it has never been studied before: a multidisciplinary approach combining traditional humanities with scientific methods to reveal the knowledge networks that shaped Europe. We hope to embed such approaches more firmly into medieval studies. Our project, its sources and methods will not only expand medieval book and intellectual history, but also enhance our understanding of how medieval religion, economy, and politics intertwined.
The findings from CODICUM will profoundly reshape our conception of Europe’s shared heritage, recovering lost texts, broadening the geographical scope of book history, and revealing the deep interconnectedness of medieval intellectual networks.”
CODICUM applies some of the most advanced scientific tools available today to books created in the pre-modern world. Do you see AI and DNA analysis as complementing or challenging traditional historical methods?
We are using some of the most powerful methods and practical tools from across the humanities and sciences to gain fresh insights into age-old questions and sources. For example, biocodicological analysis of medieval parchment book leaves, or computer-assisted reconstructions of how different texts developed and spread, offer new additions to a historian’s traditional toolkit. Alongside these, we also use various imaging techniques to study ink pigments and colourants, and even electron microscopy to measure how intensively certain books and texts were used.
All of this helps us uncover the hidden networks of know-how, materials, and resources behind the overwhelming ’information technology’ of the Middle Ages: that of written culture. These networks we are studying had, and still have, huge societal, economic, and intellectual impact. Without our new methods, tracing them in detail would simply not be possible.”
Your research spans various aspects of medieval history, including the study of monasteries, the cult of saints, and early literary culture in Finland. What initially drew you to these specific areas of study?
When I began examining the sources more closely, it quickly became clear that the inadequate state of research was not due to all manuscript materials having been lost. Quite the contrary: much survives, but in an extremely fragmentary condition. In fact, the lion’s share of medieval books produced, used, or imported into Finland remain today only as fragmentary leaves, largely because of early modern ’recycling’. After the Reformation in the early sixteenth century, most parchment books were torn apart and the leaves repurposed as covers for administrative accounts of the Crown.
The situation is much the same across all the Nordic countries. Indeed, the CODICUM project draws upon a source base of more than 50,000 fragments of medieval book leaves. In short, we are faced with solving a gigantic jigsaw puzzle – to reconstruct the book culture that integrated the North into Western, Latin Europe. This challenge, in turn, has pushed us to develop new, innovative multidisciplinary methods wherever possible. Which brings me back to the desire to learn from as many scholarly directions as possible.”
As a pioneer in digital humanities and computer-assisted stemmatology, how do you see technology transforming the field of medieval studies more broadly?
Digital source databases, especially if illustrated with images, enable the study and integration of materials across vast geographical distances. A good example is the CODICUM project, which builds party on digital databases published years ago in Finland, Sweden, and Norway. After their publication, these databases generated a wealth of new scholarship and fostered international collaboration that now flourishes within our project.
Most excitingly, new technologies allow us to ask questions that would previously have been unimaginable. In CODICUM, biocodicology opens up unprecedented insights into medieval manuscripts: by analysing the DNA and proteins of parchment, we can trace the animals whose skins became book leaves. Another innovation is our method developed with electron microscopy experts, which enables us to identify which textual passages past readers found most engaging — an approach scarcely conceivable until recently.
Nevertheless, we must remember that while these technologies offer powerful tools, they remain just that: tools. The ultimate responsibility for interpretation and scholarly judgement lies with the researcher.”
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