Gripla - 01.01.2000, Blaðsíða 211

KIRSTEN WOLF
A FRAGMENTARY EXCERPT ON SAINT
WALBURGA IN AM 764 4T0
l.
The miscellaneous manuscript AM 764 4to, written in Iceland, possibly
Skagafjörður, in the latter half of the fourteenth century,1 contains on fols.
30r-38v a section which Kálund (1889-1894 11:185) entitles “Legender og
blandede fortællinger, mest gudelige æventyr”. Fol. 34r-v in this section con-
tains miracles attributed to the intercessions of a saint whose name never ap-
pears in full but who is throughout referred to as W. Bekker-Nielsen (1963)
has identified the saint as Saint Walburga of Heidenheim (feast 25 February).
Saint Walburga was bom ca. 710. The sister of Saint Willibald, bishop of
Eichstatt, and Winnibald, abbot of Heidenheim, Saint Walburga was a notable
example of the Anglo-Saxon monks and nuns who helped Saint Boniface in
his missionary work in Germany. After education at Wimbome in Dorset-
shire, she went with Saint Lioba (d. 782) as a missionary to Tauberbischofs-
heim in Nordbaden, where Saint Lioba became the first abbess of the con-
vent. About 751, Saint Walburga entered the double monastery in Heiden-
heim, which had been founded by her brothers, and after Saint Winnibald’s
death in 761, she became abbess of the monastery. She died on 25 February
779.
In 776 or 777, the relics of Saint Winnibald were translated to Eichstátt; in
870, Saint Walburga’s relics were laid to rest beside them in the monastery
church that carried her name. From the rock around her tomb medicinal oil
flowed, to which miraculous cures were attributed. Accordingly, her more
1 Cf. Ólafur Halldórsson (1977:49): “... rithendur í 764 benda eindregið til, að það hafi verið
skrifað í Skagafirði, og mál- og skriftareinkenni koma ágætlega heim við að handritið hafi
verið skrifað um 1376-1386”. See also Stefán Karlsson (1977:116-117). For a discussion of
the hand(s) of AM 764 4to and the manuscript’s association with the scribes (Brynjólfur
Bjamarson [d. 1381] and his son Benedikt [d. between 1415 and 1421]) of Akrar in Blöndu-
hlíð, see Foote (1990:57), who gives a summary of Ólafur Halldórsson’s (1963) and Stefáns
Karlsson’s (1970) deliberations on the matter.