Illlustration of humanists, intellectuals and poets discussing, among them the Italian Renaissance humanist Pietro Candido Decembrio who had over 120 publications to his name, among them a Latin translation of Plato’s Republic.

In the first half of the 1660s, correspondence flowed between Danish physician, antiquarian and polymath Ole Worm in Copenhagen and several of his colleagues, some of Northern Europe's most learned scholars, about preserving Scandinavia’s cultural heritage from the Norse world. At the time, runes were a great mystery, and Worm was working on a massive tome about runic inscriptions that were still extant in Scandinavia. Coincidentally, the Swedish scholar Johan Bureus had recently published the book Runa ABC, based on his self-studies among farmers in northern Sweden. This was also a period when some of the first saga publications were seen in print, such as Snorre’s Heimskringla, translated by the Norwegian Peder Claussøn Friis. We may call this era the dawn of nordic studies and saga research in Europe.

This Inter-European collaborative effort is documented in a published collection of Worm’s correspondence, and is profoundly inspirational reading for someone working in a similar field in the 21st Century. In fact, it ignited the spark which inspired the creation of a new scholarly forum that we in the Saga Heritage Foundation decided to call the Collegium Scholare Antiquitatis, the College of the Schools of Antiquity, or COSCAN. The forum will seek to bring together some of our foremost intellectuals and leading scholars of the literary, cultural and historical heritage coming out of the Norse and surrounding world, stretching back into antiquity.

Ole Worm (1588-1654) and his Magnus Opus, Danicorum Monumentorum from 1643.

The founding of COSCAN coincides with the 10th anniversary of The Saga Heritage Foundation, the only private foundation in the world that has worked continuously to promote awareness of Norse cultural heritage. To commemorate both, we will travel to Copenhagen to gather in the spirit of our predecessors: Ole Worm, Brynjólfur Sveinsson, Henry Spelmann, Peder Claussøn Friis, and their peers throughout the Nordic and European region.

We will visit The Black Diamond (the Royal Library), where we will study Tormod Torfæus’ 1669 translation of Flateyjarbok, a work carried out under royal mandate. We will also pay an honorary visit to King Frederick III's sarcophagus in Roskilde Cathedral to highlight the king’s significant role in bringing about the saga renaissance of the 16th and 17th centuries.

This will take place on January 27th and will mark a historic turning point, as the "cornerstone" is laid for a new, dynamic, and forward-looking organization, Collegium Scholare Antiquitatis, aiming to become a strong link between the past, present, and future.

The trip is made possible by generous support from Dan Odfjell.

- Baard Titlestad, co-founder and vice-chair of The Saga Heritage Foundation and President of COSCAN.

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