2023 has certainly been the year of the Ormulum. The final event of the season was a book launch for the critical edition held at the Centre for Medieval Studies at Stockholm University, in conjunction with the research seminar series at our English Department, on the 6^th of November.

I’ve been giving the same talk for about a year now, adding bits and pieces here and there, so it was nice to retire it. Since the talk was in Stockholm, I could also focus more on the Scandinavian aspects of the text.

One of the most satisfying parts of this event was the opportunity to show Nils-Lennart’s colleagues and family the results of the project which he had been telling them about for so many years. A generous contribution of copies of the edition with the compliments of the Early English Text Society allowed us to thank many of the people who helped the edition along the way and have been looking forward to its release for many years.

It might seem as though the completion of the critical edition means that the Ormulum Project’s goal is complete. In fact, I view it as a necessary stepping stone to returning the Ormulum to the canon of Middle English studies. Already in the pipeline are two volumes of collected essays, bringing a range of international scholarship into cooperation with the project. These will be released in the next few years. My hope is to expand the project into further editions, especially an online diplomatic edition, which we’ve been planning all along. Watch this space for updates.

Many thanks to Kurt Villads Jensen and Fraser Miller at the History Department for helping to organise the event.

-Andrew