The editor of a medieval text is basically a mediator between the frequently anonymous author and his or her modern readers. In this process, the editor faces two basic challenges: How is it possible to be faithful to the original at the same time as the text is made accessible to its end users? It is difficult, often impossible, to cater for all needs in one edition. In practice, some editions are aimed at the general public, with a regularised orthography and sometimes a parallel translation, while others are of a scholarly nature, with a close transcription of the text and extensive apparatus with variants from other manuscripts.

In the last five centuries, the preferred format for editions has been the printed book. The book has a number of advantages: it is portable, independent of energy sources and does not require any instruction manuals. However, the two-dimensional page and the linear structure of the book impose a number of limitations on a paper-based edition. Today, new technology - the electronic processing of texts, the digitisation of manuscripts and communication via the internet - has opened up new avenues of presentation for editions. A new kind of edition, which is essentially hypertextual, is now emerging.

The traditional critical edition can in many ways be said to be the ancestor of the hypertext conception, since the former links the main text and its associated variants through a critical apparatus. In addition, there will be an introduction, usually an index and often a running commentary. The novelty of the electronic edition is that these elements can be linked dynamically and that they may be supplied with a number of new facilities, such as search routines, procedures for collating texts, and digitised images of the manuscripts themselves.
The use of new information technology will be of central importance to the project, but a critical attitude to its application within editorial work will be adopted throughout. Indeed, some of the visions for electronic editions may prove to be counter-productive, and the project will underline that the critical evaluation and sifting of the material is as important in an electronic edition as in a traditional one.

The project will build on the expertise already present in today's field of text editing, both with respect to medieval editorial philology and to the editing of modern texts. The focus of the project will be on Old Norse texts, particularly "Heimkringla", but other types of texts will also be studied with the aim of broadening the field of investigation.