It's a big day for Museum Lolland-Falster, and we're having a hard time keeping our arms down from just cheering. The joy is because the Ministry of Culture's prestigious research prize, the Julius Bomholt prize 2023, goes to deputy director at Museum Lolland-Falster, Anna Elisabeth Jensen. The award is given for innovative research of the highest quality and in recognition of an outstanding research effort. She receives the award for her book Dania Slavica, which deals with Danish-Vendian relations 1000 years ago.
Head of the Ministry of Culture's Research Council Sara Louise Muhr justifies the awarding of the Julius Bomholt prize with the fact that Anna-Elisabeth Jensen, with her extensive work, contributes to a unique understanding of Danish local history. The book carefully and meticulously examines the archaeological findings on both sides of the Baltic Sea, and together with studies of coasts, landscapes, roads, forests, fields, cities, farms, graves and harbor facilities, they become an important source for understanding the area's culture, wars and everyday life. Anna-Elisabeth Jensen's research shows how the area in the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages was a very central piece in the development and interweaving of West Slavic and Scandinavian culture.
Culture Minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt says about Dania Slavica, that it provides insight into how Scandinavians and Wends have lived side by side on Møn, Lolland and Falster in both coexistence and conflict. Anna-Elisabeth Jensen's research conveys completely new insights in relation to the understanding of the Baltic Sea area as a central border area that has shaped the culture of the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages. It is solid research and good dissemination that deserve recognition.
Proud award recipient
Anna-Elisabeth Jensen is happy and very proud to receive the Bomholt Prize 2023. It is a great recognition of the interdisciplinary collaboration that exists between researchers at museums in Denmark and on the other side of the border. At the same time, it is also a recognition that local museums can deliver qualified research at a high level.
She grew up in the Danish-German border country, and therefore she is also proud to have worked with the shared history across the border and in the book was able to reflect on highly topical issues such as migration, identity and border division from a historical point of view. The Bomholt prize is thus an acknowledgment that history is eternally relevant and provides relevant perspectives for our own time.
Guldborgsund Municipality's mayor Simon Hansen sets up the town hall and city council hall for the award ceremony. He finds it both fantastic and completely appropriate that Anna-Elisabeth Jensen is this year's recipient of the Bomholt prize. He says that, like so much else, the story is more nuanced than that, and she sheds an exemplary light on that. She shows how Lolland-Falster is at the center of that history, and that despite looting and conflicts, there were also close connections between Danish and Wendish princely families. It shows us what we are made of and that the world is rarely as black and white as we sometimes make it out to be. It is good for our understanding of both history and the present.
Dania Slavica originates from an archaeological research and dissemination project: 'Friends and enemies. The Danish-Vendian connections in the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages', which Storstrøm County's archaeological institutions launched as a finale to the Medieval Year in 1999.
The Julius Bomholt award will be presented in the city council chamber at Guldborgsund Town Hall on 17 January.
You can buy the book in our online store.
hear Podcast about Dania Slavica.
Read the museum's webdoc about Danes and Venders.
