Gripla - 20.12.2014, Page 90

GRIPLA90
both reflect but could also have had the effect of shaping individual and
group identities, which were possibly multiple, shifting over time and
competing.7 they reveal particular desires, concerns, aspirations, anxieties
and attitudes about the world, social behaviour, gender roles, rulership and
other issues. they encapsulate and advance their authors’ and sponsors’
mentalities and ideologies, and would have given their audiences plenty
to think about and discuss. In the following, my goal is to reach a fuller
understanding of what meaning the commissioners and audiences of one
manuscript, AM 152 fol., might have ascribed to the multivalent world
depicted in this collection of sagas committed to vellum within the élite
cultural mileu of early-sixteenth-century northwest Iceland.
Material aspects and historical context
AM 152 fol. is dated to the first quarter of the sixteenth century by Stefán
karlsson.8 two scribes copied the text, the first of whom identifies himself
in the upper margin of f. 46v as the brother of Björn Þorleifsson (ca. 1480–
1548), who lived for the most part in reykjahólar in Breiðafjörður.9 the
same hand has been found in a number of documents written around 1500
by Þorsteinn Þorleifsson, Björn’s illegitimate half-brother.10 Þorsteinn
Þorleifsson wrote all of Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar and the first few leaves
of Hálfdanar saga Brönufóstra, approximately one-fourth of the manuscript
text (1r–51v). the second hand is almost certainly that of Jón Þorgilsson,
ráðsmaðr (steward) in the Hólar bishopric and priest at Melstaður in the
first decades of the sixteenth century.11 for reasons both unknown and
7 for other studies with a similar approach, see e.g. Carl Phelpstead, ‘the Sexual Ideology
of Hrólfs saga kraka,’ Scandinavian Studies 75 (2003): 1–24; Henric Bagerius, Mandom
och mödom. Sexualitet, homosocialitet och aristokratisk identitet på det senmedeltida Island
(gothenburg: university of gothenburg, 2009).
8 Stefán Karlsson, ‘ritun reykjarfjarðarbókar. Excursus: Bókagerð bænda,’ Opuscula 4,
Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana, vol. 30 (1970): 138.
9 the marginal note reads: ‘Þessa saugu hefr skrifath bródir Bjarnar Þorleifssonar’.
10 stefán karlsson, ‘Ritun Reykjarfjarðarbókar,’ 138. jonna Louis-jensen has argued persua-
sively that Þorsteinn was illegitimate, see ‘Den yngre del af flateyjarbók,’ Afmælisrit Jóns
Helgasonar. 30. júní 1969 (reykjavík: Heimskringla, 1969), 243 fn 17.
11 guðvarður Már gunnlaugsson assisted me in comparing AM 152 fol.’s second hand
with that of several documents which Stefán Karlsson believed to have been written by
Jón Þorgilsson, whose name is the only one to appear in all of them. We reached the
same conclusion as stefán although there are slight differences in the script that could be