From the active disinterest if not outright dislike of Latin that characterized Old Norse-Icelandic Studies in the 19th and during much of the 20th century, we find ourselves at the beginning of a new century in a scholarly phase transition, when the relevance of Latin literacy for the study of medieval Icelandic and Norwegian letters has been widely accepted, though without any discernible consequences for the manner in which we approach the texts and subjects that define our field.
The reason for this inertia, I suggest, is that we still don't have the necessary means and tools to access the Latin side of our Old Norse-Icelandic materials, apart from source criticism, which although a tried and tested method, subordinates Latin literacy to the vernacular and tends to maintain a disabling distance of at least two removes from its alleged Latin 'sources'.
After briefly outlining the current state of knowledge, and providing a few examples, I shall attempt to answer the question, what scholarly tools are needed to enable new studies into Latin literacy in the west-Nordic area, including a presentation of one current project to develop such an instrument in the form of the database ISLANDIA LATINA now under construction.