Abstract
This article demonstrates a transition in 14th-century Norway to the use of darker inks, visualized with low-cost digital photographs in 950 nm infrared light (IR). In these photographs, the transition manifests itself in increased contrast, on average, in 101 Norwegian dated documents (charters) written immediately after the year 1400, as compared to 56 charters written at the beginning of the 14th century. Similar results were obtained from Iceland by a more subjective method of visually inspecting IR pictures of 64 charters from the period 1300–1450. These results may assist in detecting incorrectly dated manuscripts in Norway and Iceland.
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Notes
- 1.
These are: AM Dipl. Isl. Fasc. I 1, I 3, I 4, LXIV 1, LXIV 2, LXIV 3, I 6, I 7, I 8, I 9, I 9 ad, I 11, I 12 (light, at the National Archives) and AM Dipl. Isl. Fasc. I 12 (light, at the Árni Magnússon Institute).
- 2.
These are: AM Dipl. Isl. Fasc. II 2, II 3, II 4, II 6 (light, at the National Archives) and AM Dipl. Isl. Fasc. II 8, II 13, II 19, III 1, III 13, III 10, IV 4, IV 5, IV 11, IV 14, IV 19, V 25, IV 18, V 1, V 3, V 12, V 14, V 11, V 22 (light, at the Árni Magnússon Institute) and AM Dipl. Isl. Fasc. V 5, V 20, V 21 (dark, at the Árni Magnússon Institute).
- 3.
These are (all at the Árni Magnússon Institute): AM Dipl. Isl. Fasc. V 28, VI 10, VI 26, VI 30, VII 4 a, VII 7, VII 20, VII 30 (light), AM Dipl. Isl. Fasc. VI 16, VII 5, VII 8, VII 11, VII 27 (ambiguous) and AM Dipl. Isl. Fasc. VI 2 a, VI 2 b, VI 4, VI 12, VI 11, VII 12, VII 18, VII 19, VII 28, VII 22, XI 19 (dark).
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Acknowledgements
We thank the institutes that enabled this work. These are: the Árni Magnússon Institute in Iceland, the Norwegian National Archives, and the Icelandic National Archives. We also thank ERCIM for providing a post-doc funding for Þorgeir Sigurðsson with NTNU in Gjøvik as a host institute.
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Sigurðsson, Þ., Weidling, T., Þorgeirsson, H., Hardeberg, J.Y. (2022). Darker Inks in 14th-Century Norway. In: Furferi, R., Governi, L., Volpe, Y., Seymour, K., Pelagotti, A., Gherardini, F. (eds) The Future of Heritage Science and Technologies: ICT and Digital Heritage. Florence Heri-Tech 2022. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1645. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20302-2_18
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