Historian donates more than 9,000 books to Medieval Institute

This fall, the Medieval Institute is receiving the donation of a scholarly library from Michael H. Gelting, a medieval historian in Denmark, who was an avid book collector. Dr. Gelting bought widely and deeply in many areas of medieval scholarship. His library consists of some 9,000–10,000 books on medieval studies and Scandinavian studies across many disciplines — history, economics, society, politics, religion — and, especially, their linguistic, legal and biographical aspects. Once this donation is joined to the existing library of the Rawlinson Center, it will make the Medieval Institute one of the most important centers for studying Scandinavia in the United States. 

Gelting started building his library in the 1970s, acquiring classics in multiple languages: Latin, French, German, English, Italian and all the Scandinavian languages. His extensive work in Danish and Scandinavian history as an archivist in the Danish National Archives and a history instructor at the University of Copenhagen led to a massive collection of Scandinavian sources and publications of all kinds. It features a complete set of the Diplomatica Danorum, for example, which is the collection of all historical letters, charters and documents from medieval Denmark, from the earliest preserved sources up to the 15th century. The library also features an extraordinary collection of legal texts, especially from Scandinavia, but also from England and the continent. It includes runs of Scandinavian journals rarely found outside of Scandinavia. In 2000, he began amassing fundamental and newly published texts on Norman, Anglo-Norman and English history, before and after the Norman Conquest — building on his collections of Scandinavian explorations and settlements in England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Byzantium, the Baltic and Russia. The collection even includes many rare. 17th- and 18th-century volumes and first editions. In practice, Gelting always knew where every single book was located and could find any volume on his shelves, even though the books were scattered in every room of his historic home in the Copenhagen suburb of Valby. 

Michael Gelting was a frequent visitor to WMU for the International Congress on Medieval Studies, the annual meeting which has brought thousands of scholars from all over the world to campus for more than 70 years. He was well known to carry home a huge suitcase full of books, new and used, acquired from booksellers in the Congress Exhibits Hall — even if he had already mailed other books. Even more significantly, Gelting and his future wife, professor Sally Vaughn (emerita, University of Houston) met each other and fell in love at the Congress in Kalamazoo in the late 1990s.

In Spring 2026, Vaughn approached Robert Berkhofer, the director of the Medieval Institute, about donating the library. Once the donation was finalized in June of 2026 Jana Schulman, professor of English and director of the Rawlinson Center, and Susan Steuer, distinctive collections librarian, flew to Copenhagen for 10 days to visit Gelting’s home. There, they joined Sally Vaughn and Michael Gelting’s cousin, Natalie Moussin, in assessing the collection and making arrangements to send it to Kalamazoo. Both Vaughn and Moussin hope to come to Kalamazoo in May 2027 for sessions at the Congress honoring Gelting’s scholarship and mentoring of scholars in the field. Over the course of Fall 2026, the collection will arrive and be processed at the Rawlinson Center Library and at the Zhang Center for rare items or those in need of preservation. During this academic year, the Rawlinson Library collections assistant, Alex Bowman (BA Latin, 2021; MA Medieval Studies 2022), will catalog and process the collection for use by readers. 

Collecting his library was one of the joys of Gelting’s life. The Gelting Collection, as it will be known, will be housed in the Rawlinson Center library where it will complement the existing collection, which focuses on early medieval England and manuscript culture. Thus, the Gelting Collection will be available at the Medieval Institute for future generations of students and scholars seeking to research the Middle Ages.