Gripla - 20.12.2014, Blaðsíða 87
87
JÓ HAnnA KAtrÍ n frIÐrIKSDÓttIr
IDEoLogY AnD IDEntItY In
LAtE MEDIEVAL nortHWESt ICELAnD
A Study of AM 152 fol.1
the great saga codex AM 152 fol., one of the most impressive saga
manuscripts from the medieval period, was most likely made in northwest
Iceland in the first decades of the sixteenth century by a pair of half-broth-
ers belonging to the rich and powerful Skarðverjar dynasty. their book
must have been known and discussed in élite circles, and its contents were
medieval ‘best-sellers’, a collection of riveting sagas that captured medieval
audiences.2 Only one, Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar, is well-known today,
while the others are relatively obscure and under-studied texts traditionally
classified as fornaldarsögur or riddarasögur. Grettis saga is the first text in
the manuscript, and although the saga perhaps seems to have few things in
1 A short version of this article appeared as ‘AM 152 fol. Síðasta glæsta sagnahandritið,’
in Góssið hans Árna. Minningar heimsins í íslenskum handritum, ed. jóhanna katrín
friðriksdóttir (reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum, 2014), 170–
183. I am grateful to Carolyne Larrington and Marianne E. Kalinke for allowing me
to read their forthcoming publications in manuscript form, and for their long-standing
encouragement and support. I should also wish to thank Emily Lethbridge for many
thought-provoking and inspiring discussions about medieval sagas and manuscripts,
guðvarður Már gunnlaugsson, Marteinn Helgi Sigurðsson and ralph o’Connor for
discussions about AM 152 fol. and Dario Bullitta for giving me access to his master’s thesis.
the research leading to these results has received funding from RANNís – the Icelandic
Centre for research, and the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European
union’s Seventh framework Programme (fP7/2007–2013) under rEA grant agreement
n° 331947.
2 the sagas collected in AM 152 fol. were very popular in the medieval period, judging from
the number of vellum manuscripts in which they are preserved. Comments in the margins
of Grettis saga, probably in a sixteenth-century hand, praise Grettir and express contempt
for his enemies, Þorbjǫrn ǫngull and his foster-mother, see Kirsten Hastrup, ‘tracing
tradition – An Anthropological Perspective on Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar,’ in Structure
and Meaning in Old Norse Literature. New Approaches to Textual Analysis and Literary
Criticism, eds. John Lindow et al., the Viking Collection: Studies in northern Civilization,
vol. 3 (odense: odense university Press, 1986), 286.
Gripla XXV (2014): 87–128