"Testaments as Historical Documents". Claes Gejrot summarizes the congress. Standing on the left; Benoît-Michel Tock (Strasbourg university, Chair of Commission internationale de diplomatique ), Kurt Villads Jensen (Centre for Medieval Studies, Stockholm University). Photo: Private.

The international Society for Medieval Diplomatics, Commission internationale de diplomatique, was founded in 1970 and has since then organised annual meetings with international conferences on different aspects of medieval charters. In 2023, the meeting was held in Stockholm – the first in Scandinavia in 23 years – under the theme “Testaments as Historical Documents.”

Who were intended to inherit cups, clothes, cows? Who liberated their slaves?

29 papers were presented in five languages by scholars from 13 countries, stretching from Portugal to Norway, from Czechia to Wales. The papers touched on aspects ranging from the formalities of medieval testaments, e.g.  nomenclature, ordering, executors, etc., to the backgrounds for European testaments, e.g. legal, theological, historical, organisational, etc., and the concrete content of dispositions and donations. Who were intended to inherit cups, clothes, cows? Who liberated their slaves? Who donated money to liberate prisoners of war or to send soldiers on crusade?. One Spanish nobleman obliged his heirs to find the sons of the man he had killed years earlier and give them his apologies.

From a Scandinavian perspective, one can only envy the Southern European countries for the incredible richness of their extant medieval holdings.

The medieval testaments are highly interesting documents in and of themselves, but also for the potential they contain for comparative studies of gender, social history, economy and much else across Europe in the Middle Ages. Testaments possess the formal structures and backgrounds that facilitate comparisons, but also the exciting details of everyday life that reveal the commonalities and differences inherent to Europe across time and geography. From a Scandinavian perspective, one can only envy the Southern European countries for the incredible richness of their extant medieval holdings. But enough documents survive from Sweden and Denmark to make comparisons possible.

Attended by 60-70 persons, the congress was a great success, not least due to the splendid congress dinner at Kristinehovs Malmgård, where a short, but well-chosen selection of songs by Carl Michael Bellman performed by a local youth choir dazzled the international guests. The congress was arranged in collaboration by the National Archives of Sweden (Riksarkivet) and the Centre for Medieval Studies, with financing coming in full from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond and Riksarkivarien Ingvar Anderssons fond. Claes Gejrot, director of Diplomatarium Suecanum and active member of Commission internationale de diplomatique, was the main organizer of the event.