Árbók Hins íslenzka fornleifafélags - 01.01.1979, Qupperneq 88

HANNYKÐIR HELGU SIGURÐARDÓTTUR ?
93
SUMMAEY
Needlework by Helya Sigarðardóttir?
In the year 1863 the National Museum of Iceland acquired an embroidered
altar frontal (NMI 3924) from the church at Draflastaðir in Fnjóskadalur,
situated in the See of Hólar in northern Iiceland (Figure l).1
The frontal, which measures 100 X 117 cm, is of linen embroidered predomi-
nantly with colors of woollen yarn and a little white and blue linen thread.
Outlines are worked mostly in chain stitch, steypilylckja, while areas are filled in
with laid and couched work, refilsaumur. The design of the frontal shows ima-
ges of the Virgin and various saints enclosed in frames the shape of barbed quat-
refoils, with designs in the spandrels and borders on all four sides consisting of
stylized leaf and floral motifs.
Although the frontal is first found listed with certainty in an inventory
from 1631,2 it is somewhat older; not, however, from the fourteenth or fifteenth
centuries as believed earlier,3 but from the second quarter of the sixteenth
century,4 a dating arrived at by the present author, based among other on the
close relation evident between an illustration in Breviarmm Nidrosiense, printed
in Paris 1519, and the central motif, the Virgin enthroned, on the frontal
(Figures 2 and 3)8
Written sources reveal that in 1471 Draflastaðir church owned one frontal,
in 1631 two: one old and one with refilsaumurfi Nothing is knwon of the inven-
tory of the church during the sixteenth century, but a source from 1538 tells
of thíe chureh having been rebuilt by Ormur Jónsson to Draflastaðir and conse-
crated that year by Jón Arason, bishop to Hólar.9 At church consecrations dur-
ing the Middle Ages, at least one altar is said to have been consecrated as well,10
and it is not unlikely that Draflastaðir church could have acquired a new altar
frontal on this occasion, especially since the same source relates that Ormur
Jónsson had settled the accounts of the church with the bishop at the same time.
The frontal from Draflastaðir is, as far as material and execution are con-
cerned, very much like two other Icelandic laid and couched frontals, one from
the chunch at Mikligarður in northern Iceland (Nationalmuseet, Copenhagen,
Denmark, Inv. No. 15.379, 1856), the other from the cathedral church at Hólar
(NMI 4380 b). In fact the relation between these three frontals is so close that
it is difficult to imagine other than they were made at the same place and at
about the same time, even by the same person (Figures 4 and 5).11
Sources reveal that Jón Arason provided the cathedral church at Hólar with
six or seven laid and couched frontals during the time he was bishop (1526—•
1550)1 — among them then likely the frontal with the holy bishops — besides
a number of other ecclesiastical embroideries, some of which very likely were
of Icelandic make.18 It so happens that a contract, dated 1526, between bishop
Jón Arason and his mistress, Helga Sigurðardóttir, has survived, wherein
among otliér is stated that Helga was to sew for the amount of ten aurar each
year wliilc able. According to Búalög fi-om the second half of the fifteenth
century and later, the price of an Icelandic coverlet was ten aurar.15 In a con-
tract of the above mentioned kind, made about 1490 at a monastery in northern