Scottish history specialist Prof Dauvit Broun at the
University of Otago, during his first visit to New Zealand.
Photo by Peter McIntosh.
For Dauvit Broun, there is nothing like touching and
reading a medieval document up to 1300 years old, or reading a
later reprint of something first produced that long ago.
Books, letters, charters and business papers enabled him to
see beyond historical facts and connect to the past, the
University of Glasgow history professor said yesterday.
"It is fantastic - awesome... When you are touching something
like that, you are actually in contact with people from the
past in a very direct way."
History had to be interpreted to mean something, he said.
"[Words] give you that contact with human beings - real
people - and that's what's history is ultimately all about.
"Touching and reading manuscripts gives you a buzz that
everyone can understand."
Prof Broun is on his first visit to New Zealand. He is one of
about 230 historians, literary academics and linguists
attending the Australian and New Zealand Association for
Medieval and Early Modern Studies conference being held this
week at the University of Otago.
Next week, he will be hosted by the university's Centre for
Irish and Scottish Studies.
Prof Broun's real name is David Brown. He uses the Gaelic
version to reinforce his family links and personal interest
in Scotland's Gaelic past.
The oldest known Scottish manuscripts were a biography and
another book about St Columba, the monk exiled from Ireland
to the island of Iona in AD563. Both dated from about AD710,
he said.
"Business literacy" - papers and letters and the like - first
appeared in Scotland among the elite in the 12th and 13th
century and was widely embraced by most people with property
and possessions within 100 years, Prof Broun said. Everything
was written in Latin.
The oldest letter he had seen was an instruction from King
Alexander I of Scotland to the prior of Durham, dating from
about 1115.
"It is tiny thing. It says something like: 'Don't take a
certain dispute over land forwards until I get down to see
you. And also there is something else I want to talk to you
about.' But he doesn't say what the something else is.
"It is very frustrating."
Perhaps Prof Broun will one day discover the "something
else"; until then, he will keep searching.
• Prof Broun will give a public lecture on a new approach to
the origins of medieval Scotland on Monday, in the Burns 5
lecture theatre, at 5.15pm.
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