ABSTRACT
One of the more intriguing legacies of the English Christian missions in Scandinavia is the survival of fragments of late Anglo-Saxon service-books in the bindings of sixteenth-and seventeenth-century volumes of administrative records. Presumably, the confiscation of ecclesiastical property at the Reformation in Scandinavia (15301536/7) placed books such as these in secular hands.1 Since they no longer had a liturgical function, a more practical use was made of the parchment as reinforcement strips in the bindings of post-Reformation registers and civil accounts.2 To date, fragments have been identified representing over 20 Anglo-Saxon service-books, which are datable on palaeographical grounds from c. 890 to the Conquest. These have been catalogued by Helmut Gneuss.3 The corpus is by no means complete; as more Reformation books are rebound for conservation purposes, the Anglo-Saxon finds continue to increase.4
