Gripla - 01.01.1980, Page 331

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GRIPLA
treasured. He often wrote notes on his calendaria telling where he got
them and that he had separated them from old or ancient psalters. The
psalters, on the other hand, he left behind or used for bookcovers,
however beautifully they were illuminated. Because of this ill treat-
ment, Icelandic medieval art history lost an invaluable source of
information. Árni Magnússon himself used a part of our psalter for
bookcovers immediately after tearing the book apart. The vellum
leaves covering AM 707 4to, written by Árni Magnússon himself, and
AM 708 4to which was corrected by him,9 are still so clean that
they must have been taken right out of the psalter for that purpose.
Seemingly Árni Magnússon himself used more leaves out of the great
psalter for binding books which he had acquired in Iceland or abroad
(see AM Accessoria 7dV). However, a part of the psalter seems to have
been lost when the book came into his hands or it was left in Iceland
and was used by others for bookbinding.10
In Illumination in a Manuscript of Stjórn,11 I compared the illu-
minated pages from the Carrow Psalter in Iceland and illuminations of
the Tickhill Psalter group with three Icelandic manuscripts and took,
as a matter of course, the precaution that if M. R. James’ dating of the
writing ‘Istud psalterium .. .’ in the Baltimore psalter to the 15th
century was correct, if so, then another manuscript of the same school
must already have been in Iceland in the 14th century. Now I believe
that it has been fully proven that M. R. James was right in his dating
of the above mentioned inscription of the Baltimore Carrow Psalter to
the 15th century, and as the Skálholt Carrow Psalter bears the identical
inscription it must be of the same date.
The Skálholt Carrow Psalter cannot have arrived in Iceland before
1538 (see Francis Wormald and the 16th century scribbles on the
Calendarium) and therefore cannot have had any influence on Ice-
landic illumination of the 14th century. An English manuscript of the
Tickhill Psalter group must have already found its way to Iceland in
the first half of the 14th century and its illuminations had a profound
influence on Icelandic illumination of the same century.
I am indebted to the staff at the Amamagnæan Institute in Copenhagen
for their excellent assistance during my research, and to Derek H.
Turner, Deputy Keeper at the Department of Manuscripts in the British
Library in London and Janet M. Backhouse, Assistant Keeper at the