The crown jewel of manuscripts in Uppsala University Library is Codex argenteus, very often called the Silver Bible. It is a copy of the four Gospels, an evangeliarium, written in Gothic in the early 6th century. The paper gives: 1) a gen-eral presentation of the manuscript, its history, its material status, and its role in Swedish tradition (linguistics, national symbolism, and myth); 2) a synopsis of the Gothic tradition in Swedish great power historiography (Rudbeck, Stiern-hielm, and others); 3) a short presentation of the newly awakened interest in the Goths in today’s Bulgaria, a multi-disciplinary interest (philological, historical, archaeological, and so on), which has its focus upon Bishop Wulfila, who translated the Bible into Gothic in the 4th century.
Vad är vårt kulturarv? Ett ord att älska. Eller en luftpastejutan tuggmotstånd. Nu råder gallringsraseri. Bokbeståndetminskade med 270 000 vid Uppsala universitetsbibliotek 2001.
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