Search for hidden medieval stories on Saga Island

Iceland has a long and rich literary tradition. This country of 380,000 people has produced many great writers, and it is said that one in two Icelanders has written a book. This literary tradition dates back to the Middle Ages.

“Previous theories have been that Iceland was a land so dark and barren that Icelanders had to fill their lives with stories and poetry to compensate. But Icelanders certainly “It was part of Europe and had a lot of contact with countries like England, Germany and Denmark, especially Norway,” said Dr. Tom Lorenz. Researcher at NTNU Faculty of Languages ​​and Literatures. He seeks out hidden and forgotten parts of Icelandic sagas literary history and has published articles in the journal Gripla (in Icelandic).

“Icelanders are part of a common European culture and Iceland has long been a great knowledge society,” he said.

royal lineage

We are grateful to the Icelanders for a relatively good overview of the royal lineage here in Norway, from the early Viking Age to the death of Magnus V Erlingsson in 1184.

The Icelandic “skalds” were skilled and popular, and Norwegian kings contracted with them to ensure their stories and exploits were told and passed on.

In the Middle Ages, Icelanders wrote down these oral traditions in both Latin and Old Norse. Snorri Sturluson was the last and most important in a long line of storytellers who wrote stories of kings in the 13th century.

In this way, the stories of the kings have been preserved.

“In addition to sagas, epics and skaldic poetry, medieval Iceland also wrote scientific literature and political agreements,” Lorenz said.

precious parchment

Books and texts of this era were written on parchment. Parchment is animal skin that has been carefully treated to allow writing.

In Iceland, only high-grade calfskin was used to make parchment. Calf skin parchment was called parchment, and it took dozens of calves to make enough parchment for one book.

Parchment was an extremely valuable material. If the book became frayed or old, the parchment was reused. Some were used specifically to make tools, and one of the preserved fragments was fashioned into a miter, a type of ceremonial headdress worn by the Bishop of Skalholt in Iceland.

Many parchments were also reused as covers for new books.

unique to iceland

A common method of reusing old manuscript pages was to remove the original text by scraping or polishing so that the parchment could be used to create new books or manuscripts.

This is called a palimpsest.

“Palimpsests were common throughout Europe in the Middle Ages, and were especially widespread in Iceland. Although literary rich, Iceland was a poor country; supplies of expensive parchment were limited. But the demand was high because the Icelanders had a lot to say,” Lorenz said.

In Iceland, parchment was also reused to print books after Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 15th century.

“The fact that Iceland has not only handwritten palincest parchments, but also printed palincest books is unique in a European context and has never been studied before,” Lorenz emphasized.

abandon Latin in favor of vernacular languages

In Iceland, as in other parts of Europe, medieval documents and books, especially liturgical texts used in church contexts, were written in Latin. Latin was the main written language of Catholic Europe.

But then along came Martin Luther, a rebellious priest who started a mass protest movement against the powerful Catholic Church.

In the wake of Martin Luther and the Reformation of 1517, many northern European countries, including Iceland, converted to Protestantism between 1537 and 1550.

The Reformation put an end to church manuscripts and books being written in Latin. The language of the common people is now used.

Latin letters were scraped from existing parchment to become a palimpsest so that it could be used for new texts written in Icelandic.

old letters are visible

“In documents and books made with palimpsest parchment, fragments of the old original text can sometimes be found beneath the new text,” says Lorenz.

Although scratched-off letters and words can be read using modern technology such as infrared light, large portions of ancient writing can often be read with the naked eye.

And Lorenz is looking for a hidden and forgotten piece of history in the hidden remains of old Icelandic parchments written in Latin.

He examines preserved fragments of these ancient books and also studies the recycling and reuse of various forms of parchment.

“My goal is to virtually reconstruct some of the surviving ancient fragments and shed new light on the culture and society of previous eras,” Lorenz said.

However, this involves finding the remains of the palincest, and they are few and far between.

“Very few medieval Icelandic Latin books remain. Due to their rarity, recycled parchment from disassembled Latin books is one of the most important materials in the history of medieval Icelandic books,” said Lorenz. spoke.

Iceland is depleted of medieval literature

“I trace traces of Latin in Icelandic manuscripts, but the content written in Latin has been forgotten.My research to date has mainly focused on Old Norse texts contained in Icelandic manuscripts. “I was guessing,” he said.

From the 17th century onwards, Old Norse texts became important in the construction of identity, national pride, and power in the Nordic countries.

In Denmark, the Icelandic archivist Arni Magnusson (1663-1730) was tasked with collecting medieval documents from Iceland and other Nordic countries. At the time, Iceland was under Danish rule under the Danish-Norwegian absolute monarchy.

Arni Magnusson was particularly interested in texts about Icelandic history. He scoured the markets, almost draining Iceland of medieval literature and building the Arnamanian Collection, a large collection of handwritten books.

This collection is now part of UNESCO’s Memory of the World Program.

Track unknown text fragments

However, Arni Magnusson was most interested in books written in Old Norse rather than Latin. He used the parchment of a Latin book as the cover of an Old Norse book.

In the early 20th century, book covers were removed and stored separately, and to this day, few people pay much attention to book covers.

The covers of these ancient books are among the parchments that Lorenz studies in search of hidden and forgotten fragments of history.

Between 1971 and 1997, half of Arni Magnusson’s book collection was returned to Iceland from Denmark, and half of the original collection of 3,000 manuscripts is now repatriated.

However, some medieval manuscripts are still held in archives and museums in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. Lorenz’s search therefore took him on a journey through the nooks and crannies of many archives.

“I have identified several previously unidentified Latin fragments related to Iceland. These new discoveries will lead to a deeper knowledge of what theological and liturgical texts were in circulation in medieval Iceland. “These documents show that medieval Icelanders followed and participated in European intellectual culture,” Lorenz said. .

The fragments of texts he uncovered include hymns, prayers, sermons, hagiographies, and church music.

It started with the Vikings

Mr. Lorenz is from the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, which was once part of Denmark and Norway. He became interested in the Viking Age and saga literature from an early age, which led him to study Norse languages ​​in Kiel.

He is currently completing his Ph.D. Researcher at the Department of Languages ​​and Literatures, NTNU Medieval Research Center. He chose to learn Norwegian Nynorsk in addition to Norwegian Bokmål.

“I chose to study Nynorsk when I started my studies in Norway because I am fascinated by small phenomena.Perhaps it is in the small palimpsest that I have hidden and forgotten in history. That’s probably why I became fascinated and intrigued by pieces of history that may have remained unknown until now,” Lorenz said in fluent Nynorskian.