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Manuscript of the Month

Due to campus closures Manuscript of the Month is currently taking a break. Previous instalments can always be read on this page, and potential authors are still encouraged to contact Seán Vrieland (sean.vrieland@hum.ku.dk).

Manuscript of the Month is a monthly publication presenting new research into the manuscripts held in the Arnamagnæan Collection. New articles appear on the 15th of every month in both English and Danish.

Editors: Seán D. Vrieland, Anne Mette Hansen and Katrín Þórdís Driscoll.

Interested in contributing to Manuscript of the Month? Write to head editor Seán Vrieland (sean.vrieland@hum.ku.dk) for more details.

Manuscript of the Month

Behold! A Funen Clog!

Humorous marginal drawings are not uncommon in medieval manuscripts. The wooden shoe from Funen found in the margin of AM 23 8vo, however, is more than just for laughs: it is a commentary on the surrounding legal text.

Manuscript of the Month

Revising Danish Royal Genealogies Anno 1664

Since the time of Saxo Grammaticus and his monumental Gesta Danorum, Danish royal lineage was traced back to the legendary ruler named Dan. This changed, however, in the middle of the seventeenth century, when Thormodus Torfæus, royal antiquarian at the court of Frederik III, composed his controversial treatise Series dynastarum et regum Daniæ and replaced Dan with Skjöld at the beginning of the dynasty.

Manuscript of the Month

Indulgences for nuns in the early days of print

A handwritten letter of indulgence given to the Poor Clares of Roskilde tells the story of Gutenberg's innovation, papal intervention and the Cypriot war against the Ottoman Turks.

Manuscript of the Month

A Low German fragment of St Birgitta's Heavenly Revelations

AM 79 8vo consists of a heterogeneous collection of medieval manuscript fragments in several languages: Danish, Low German, Dutch, High German and Latin. One of these fragments, AM 79 II α 8vo, contains a Low German translation of St Birgitta of Sweden's Heavenly Revelations.

Manuscript of the Month

Getting a fair share: an Icelandic letter of partition from 1673

Two small fragments found in the binding of an Icelandic manuscript tell the story of how a farmer divided the inheritance between his two sons.

Manuscript of the Month

A Reunited Law: AM 6 8vo

In 2020 Denmark will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the reunification with Southern Jutland. The Danish-German character of the region shines through in manuscripts such as AM 6 8vo, which contains the Danish Jyske Lov translated into Low German.

Manuscript of the Month

How to Count a Manuscript - The Faroese Collection in Accessoria 4

Accessoria 4 is a single shelfmark, but is it a single manuscript? This collection of Faroese papers is surprisingly more than the catalogue number suggests.

Manuscript of the Month

Naked Angels and Stolen Herring in AM 79 4to

AM 79 4to is a particularly beautiful part of the Arnamagnæan Manuscript Collection. The manuscript is lavishly decorated and written in a hand so neat, your English teacher would be jealous. Furthermore, AM 79 4to gives us a unique insight into medieval law and the use of law texts.

Manuscript of the Month

An English Saint in a Danish Manuscript

The story of an English saint is found in a Danish lawbook from the late 15th century. A study of the provenance of AM 28 4to shows how this is not the only religious connection.

Manuscript of the Month

A Medieval Love Story

Persenober og Konstantianobis is the title of a courtly romance in Danish from the fifteenth century. The fragment AM 151 b 8vo from around the year 1600 is one of five witnesses that contain the story.

Manuscript of the Month

Hernando Colón’s Book of Books: AM 377 fol.

One of the manuscripts in the Arnamagnæan Collection, AM 377 fol., has recently been identified as having belonged to Hernando Colón, son of the famous navigator Christopher Columbus.

Manuscript of the Month

Chronicle of the Slavs in the Arnamangæan Collection

While the twelfth century is generally associated with great social, political and economic transformations and cultural development in Western Europe, there was one area of Medieval Europe which did not fit the general scheme. This area, called Połabie was inhabited by Polabian tribes, who resisted influences from their neighbours and remained pagan well into the twelfth century. The area was an object of intense political interest for three powerful neighbours, which manifested itself in numerous attempts to Christianize the region. The Christianization of the Polabian tribes is described in, among other sources, the Chronica Slavonorum, which is preserved in AM 30 fol.

Manuscript of the Month

Rask 113: A Ballad Manuscript in Two Parts

A small 22-page manuscript, half Danish, half Faroese, tells the story of a common interest in Faroese literature.

Manuscript of the Month

AM 370 fol. Antiquities from the Bergen District

In the Arnamagnæan collection, there are six illustrated manuscripts, AM 366 fol.-AM 371 fol., all addressed to the King’s physician, natural historian and antiquarian, Ole Worm (1588-1654). What all these manuscripts have in common is that they contain some of the earliest written testimonies and illustrations of runic inscriptions and petroglyphs in the areas then under Danish rule.

Manuscript of the Month

Rasmus Rask's Investigation Turns 200 in 2018

Rasmus Rask's foundational text on the origin of Icelandic was originally written as a prize essay. The Arnamagnæan Collection holds a copy of the first printed edition, which turns 200 years old this year, with notes written in the author's own hand.

Manuscript of the Month

Notes from the Sixteenth Century: AM 828 4to

For the most part, AM 828 4to contains critical notes and commentaries about classical works by the sixteenth-century scholar Pedro Chacón.

Manuscript of the Month

AM 673 b 4to: The Oldest manuscript of medieval Scandinavia's most prolific poetic form

20 September is the feast of St. Eustace in the Western Christian calendar and this month’s manuscript commemorates the saint in poetic form, namely the so-called Plácitusdrápa (‘poem with refrains about Placidus (St. Eustace)’).

Manuscript of the Month

Modern technology casts new light on old manuscripts

One of the treasures of the Arnamagnaean Collection is the manuscript AM 468 4to, which dates from the beginning of the fourteenth century and is known by the nickname Reykjabók (‘the book of Reykir’). It contains the oldest complete (but for one leaf) copy of Njáls saga, one of the best known of the Icelandic family sagas (Íslendingasögur).

Manuscript of the Month

Sad remains of once proud books

Árni Magnússon made an effort to preserve every manuscript he could, even fragments. Among others AM 567 4to which is a collection of texts from medieval Icelandic romances called riddarasögur. Collections such as these remind us of just how fragile manuscript transmission can be, because even though most of the fragments comprise only a few leaves, they are still extremely valuable as witnesses to the early histories of the texts they preserve.

Manuscript of the Month

While we wait for Game of Thrones

Who needs Iron Thrones and dragon queens, when you have manuscripts from the 15^th century? Dwarf kings, crystal palaces, murderous dinner parties and an enchanting rose garden; this month’s manuscript, AM 32 fol., has it all!

Manuscript of the Month

A Scribe’s Favourite Exemplum?

AM 578 i 4to is an Icelandic paper manuscript, which among other things contains a copy of the story of Sníðúlfur and his unfaithful wife that the scribe Magnús Ketilsson has copied several times.

Manuscript of the Month

A hand-written copy of a printed book

Among the more recent acquisitions of the Arnamagnæan manuscript collection in Copenhagen is a group of mostly early-nineteenth century manuscripts containing mainly copies of Old Norse-Icelandic sagas. The institute received these manuscripts as a gift from the Cathedral School in Nykøbing Falster in 2007. One of the manuscripts in this collection, AM Acc. 61, is a modest book in quarto format, which contains four Legendary Sagas copied by a Danish author, Frederik Julius Schaldemose, around the year 1816.

Manuscript of the Month

The Law of Gotland in Danish Hands

The Arnamagnæan Collection contains a manuscript written in the medieval language of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. The manuscript is best known for being the younger of the two main manuscripts containing the law code of the Gotlanders, commonly known as Guta lag. But while the manuscript is younger, the text may well be older, and the language of the text shows signs of another version of the law text.

Manuscript of the Month

Early Modern Translations into Latin and Manuscripts as Scholarly Editions: The Case of AM 922 4to

When Latin rather than English was the lingua franca in Europe, scholarly versions of Icelandic sagas were made with parallel Latin translations in order to reach a wider audience. One of these is AM 922 4to written by Árni Magnússon himself.

Manuscript of the Month

A Grab Bag of Early Modern Poetry

Numerous poetical miscellanies, written and collected in Iceland in the 17th and 18th centuries, are preserved in various libraries, both in Iceland and abroad.

Manuscript of the Month

The Húsavík Letters - A Medieval Faroese Diploma

A diploma from the beginning of the fifteenth century is written in an early form of Faroese and tells of the island nation's richest woman.

Manuscript of the Month

Medieval romance in early modern Iceland

Manuscript of the month

Vermundar þáttur og Upsa (The Tale of Vermundur and Upsi) in AM 409 fol.

This short tale about a king and his heroic son, written on only two leaves of paper, is not only interesting due to its literary content. The transmission of the narrative and the several layers of translations which lie behind this text represent a fascinating case of cultural continuity and reinvigoration during the renaissance of manuscript production in seventeenth-century Iceland.

Medieval charters

Patronage and Memory in a Medieval Charter

A charter from 1259 issued by Archbishop Jakob Erlandsen charter situates him within a vast web of patronage, extending upward to the saints and downward to the nuns and poor people of Roskilde.

Manuscript of the Month, Easter

An Easter 'cheat sheet'

Calendars form one of the main categories of medieval manuscripts, owing to the important role they played in medieval liturgy, recording the basic structure of the liturgical year.

Manuscript of the Month

Medieval law with explanatory glosses

A legal text in a manuscript from the middle ages can be difficult for a present-day reader to understand, and the same seems to have been the case for people at the time, too. This problem has been solved in this manuscript with explanatory glosses, written by the bishop Knud Mikkelsen at the end of the 15^th century.

Manuscript of the Month, Reformation

Chronicon Skibyense - Contemporary history from the time of the Danish Reformation

The 2017 Reformation Anniversary has been kicked off and is celebrated worldwide. One of the treasures of the Arnamagnæan Manuscript Collection is an important source of early Reformation movement’s history in Denmark written down by the Carmelite monk Poul Helgesen.

Manuscript of the Month

Inside the binding of AM 779 c 4to

AM 779 c 4to is a seventeenth-century paper manuscript that mostly contains rhymed chronicles about Greenland. More specifically, it holds five handwritten copies of Claus Lyschander’s (1558-1623/24) The Greenland Chronicle in two different Icelandic translations. (The Danish original Den Grønlandske Chronica was published in 1608.) In addition, the manuscript contains a small text fragment of completely different nature and otherwise unknown contents.

Manuscript of the Month

A Dutch Book of Hours from the 15th Century

Private books of hours were the European bestseller of the 14^th-16^th centuries, especially among the aristocracy and urban élite. They typically began with a calendar, which listed saints’ days and other religious holidays, the most important of which were written in red – the so-called “red-letter days”.

Manuscript of the Month

Courtly Love under the Bishop's Mitre

How did leaves from a Norwegian 13th-century manuscrip containing French profane tales of fervent love end up as the stiffening for a 16th-centurty Icelandic bishop’s mitre?

Manuscript of the Month

A schoolteacher's handbook?

AM 76 8vo is a small and unprepossessing paper manuscript, the contents of which rarely rise above the mediocre. Among the Danish manuscripts in the Arnamagnæan Collection it is nevertheless one of those which have received the most attention.

A fragment of the younger redaction of the lost Skjöldunga saga

Title deeds from the St. Clara Convent archive

Among the many diplomas in the Arnamagnæan collection, there are three title deeds issued by the noblewoman Anna Pedersdatter, daughter of the Zealandic magnate Peder Nielsen of the Jernskæg family.

The Vatnsfjörður Psalter

The Vatnsfjörður Psalter, 241 a I fol., contains Psalms of David in an extended version, liturgical texts and not least a Latin Office of the Passion (Horae de passione domini) which is illuminated with a series of eight illustrations of Christ’s passion.

The labours of the month

Marine Jespersdatter's prayer book

The Arnamagnæan leechbook

A Spanish rarity.

AM 795 4to (12th century) contains the only extant copy of a sixth-century commentary on the Apocalypse of St John.

Codex Wormianus - Nordic mythology

AM 595 a-b 4to

Roman wars on Icelandic vellum. Rómverja saga (The saga of the Romans) is a compilation of Icelandic translations from the end of the twelfth century of three classical Latin works, Bellum Iugurthinum and Catilinae coniuratio by Sallust and Pharsalia by Lucan.

Manuscript of the Month

Reykjabók

Njáls saga’s many travels. The manuscript AM 468 4to, better known as Reykjabók (the book of Reykir), was written in Iceland around or shortly after the year 1300 by a single unknown scribe.