Gripla - 20.12.2009, Blaðsíða 194
GRIPLA194
this neglect has led to many editions presenting “works” of Old Norse
prose or poetry quite unconnected from their actual position with the
transmission process in Medieval manuscripts. However, this is about to
change and more attention is now being paid to the actual place given to
texts in their Medieval contexts.
The manuscripts studied by me in the context of the two genres men
tioned above, namely geographical and mythological knowledge, give no
indication that there was a distinction between a “popular” and a “learned”
culture in Iceland: cosmographical information was frequently used to
preface historical or pseudo-historical works, such as in Snorri’s writings,
but also in manuscripts like eirspennill (AM 47 fol)20 and AM 764 4to21
as well as Hauksbók.22 Hauksbók is also a good example of the merging of
native and “foreign” learned material within one manuscript: it uses many
native saga texts, as well as texts translated from the Latin, to create a very
personal encyclopedia along the lines of a Flemish model known to the
collector.23
As far as mythography is concerned, we only have to look at the manu
scripts of Snorra Edda to see what accompanied Snorri’s work. Despite the
fact that Snorri covered indigenous material only and took great pains to
preserve the mythographic, heroic, and poetic lore according to the skaldic
sources, of which he quotes 509 stanzas in Skáldskaparmál alone (not to
mention the skaldic 583 stanzas quoted in Heimskringla), the Edda is
always found in the company of learned works representing the “elite”
clerical culture: works like the Grammatical Treatises that deal with gram
mar and rhetoric, as well as distinctly native texts like poems of the Poetic
edda (see table).
20 the case of eirspennill is particularly interesting, as finnur jónsson in his 1916 edition
chose to ignore the cosmographical introduction on fol. 1r, cf. R. Simek, Altnordische
Kosmographie, 428.
21 Ibid., 436
22 Ibid., 449.
23 Cf. Rudolf Simek, “Warum sind Völuspá und Merlínuspá in der Hauksbók überliefert?”,
104–115; Sverrir Jakobsson, “Hauksbók and the construction of an Icelandic World View,”
SagaBook 31 (2007): 22–38, chooses to ignore this model, which leads to his assumption
of Hauksbók as merely the manifestation of a private “world view” (Ibid. 29).