Gripla - 20.12.2013, Blaðsíða 49

49
over the course of several centuries is certainly significant. However, while
late copies of earlier works and late texts that depend on early sources have
been well studied, few of the other homilies in the younger manuscripts
have been given any attention. As a result, we presently lack the evidence
to evaluate the scholarly assumption that the better known, more con-
servative texts are truly representative of the later old norse homilies as a
whole. the partial or full contents of about a dozen of the 33 manuscripts
identified as containing old norse homilies remain unpublished.13 Many
of these unedited homilies are fragmentary, and the manuscript pages on
which they survive are often damaged or faded. their mangled condition
and their relatively late dates — nearly all are from 1300 or later, and many
are from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries — do not make these texts
very attractive targets for many editors. However, the late homilies must
be studied if we are to determine whether the old norse homiletic corpus
remained as static in terms of sources and style throughout the Middle
Ages as has often been assumed. As an introduction and invitation to fur-
ther study of these overlooked texts, I here examine the major sources of
two pieces from a homiletic manuscript written ca. 1300.
2. An overview of AM 655 XXVII 4to
kristian kålund’s catalogue describes AM 655 XXVII 4to as a collection
of fragmentary Icelandic homilies from ca. 1300.14 the contents of the
13 the list in Hall, “old norse-Icelandic sermons,” 689–704 is the best and most complete
summary of these. to this list one must add the norwegian homiletic fragment surviving
in oslo, Riksarkivet, nor. fragm. 101 (ca. 1200), which Hall overlooked, cf. odd einar
Haugen and Åslaug ommundsen, “nye blikk på homilieboka,” in Vår eldste bok, 17.
At the same time, one could perhaps remove Hall’s item 24 (Linköping, stifts- och
landsbibliotek, Link. t. 180; ca. 1450), which contains dominican sermons in Brigittine
Middle norwegian and thus has more in common with late medieval swedish and danish
preaching traditions than with the rest of the published old West norse homiletic corpus.
However, the many unedited, late old West norse homilies must undergo further study
before we can be certain that the medieval West norse and east norse homiletic corpora
were really as unrelated to each other as scholars have assumed. for the Linköping col-
lection, see Svenska medeltidspostillor, delarna 6 och 7, ed. Bertil ejder, samlingar utgivna av
svenska fornskriftsällskapet, vol. 23, parts 6–7 (uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1974).
14 kristian kålund, Katalog over den Arnamagnæanske håndskriftsamling, vol. 2 (Copenhagen:
Gyldendal, 1894), 65 (item 1646); see also Hall, “old norse-Icelandic sermons,” 698 (item
10).
tWeLftH-CentuRy souRCes foR oLd noRse HoMILIes