9th of December

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AM 666 b 4to shows us a different kind of reuse of manuscripts, as it was found by Árni Magnússon inside a bishop's mitre in Skálholt in Iceland. It's also a far-travelled manuscript, having been written in Norway in the late 13th century. It consists of four missing leaves from De la Gardie, 4-7, which is an otherwise complete manuscript in the Uppsala universitetsbibliotek, and contains Strengleikar 12th-century French profane tales of courtly love.

But how did four leaves from a Norwegian manuscript end up as the stiffening for an Icelandic bishop’s mitre? Until the Reformation, Iceland was under the archiepiscopal see of Nidaros (Trondheim), and so any newly elected bishop had to travel there to receive his insignia. It has thus been suggested that this mitre was sewn to measure in Nidaros, probably around the year 1500, but it has not been possible to identify the specific bishop for whom this was done.

In Nationalmuseet in Copenhagen there is another bishop’s mitre from Skálholt from the beginning of the sixteenth century, from which it is possible to get an idea of what it may have looked like.