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such works might be delivered aloud are unclear, and more research needs
to be done on this collection before we can conclude that it was really
meant to be preached. the old norse annunciation homily and the two
homiletic fragments edited below survive, respectively, on fols. 118r–119v,
24r–24v, and 25r–27r. the loss of two leaves after fol. 24v makes it imp-
ossible to be certain whether the two fragments originally belonged to the
same homily or to two separate homilies, but the difference in the texts’
subject matter (discussed following the edition below) points to the latter
possibility.
Kålund dated aM 624 4to to the fifteenth century, but the identification
by Stefán Karlsson and Mattias tveitane of one of the main scribal hands
as that of Jón Þorvaldsson (d. 1514) allows a more precise dating to the
final decades of the fifteenth century or the early years of the sixteenth.12
among the texts in aM 624 4to copied by Jón are Duggals leiðsla, the
Visio Pauli,13 an astronomical treatise, a Joca monachorum dialogue,14 the
madur skapadur  i  og ger af jordu og sío og solu og skyium af vindí og af steinum af helgum
annda og líosí heims. Nu skulum ver greína j hug oss aull þau edlí atta. holld er af jordu.
enn blod af sío. enn augu af sol þau lysa likamanum. blastur er fer vr mannínum heitur og
kalldur er af vínndí og hræring holldz mannz. enn af steínum bein. af hínum helga annda þui
er anndí j mannínum” (16r/16–16v/5). the only other known old norse example of this
motif also occurs in aM 624 4to, in a Joca monachorum dialogue later in the manuscript;
see James Marchand, “the old Icelandic Joca Monachorum,” Mediaeval Scandinavia 9
(1976): 118–119. on the ‘adam octipartite’ tradition, see Grant Macaskill with Eamon
Greenwood, “adam octipartite/Septipartite,” in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More
Noncanonical Scriptures, vol. 1, ed. richard Bauckham, James r. Davila, and alexander
Panayotov (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2013), 3–21 (esp. 17, n. e, where the possible influence
of the tradition on the story of Ymir is mentioned).
12 Kålund, Katalog, 37; “En norrøn versjon,” ed. tveitane, 6; Islandske originaldiplomer ind-
til 1450: Tekst, ed. Stefán Karlsson, Editiones Arnamagnæanae a, vol. 7 (Copenhagen:
Munksgaard, 1963), xxix–xxiii. See also Miðaldaævintýri, ed. Einar G. Pétursson, xiv–xv;
Duggals leiðsla, ed. Cahill, xxii, xxix; Sveinbjörn rafnsson, “Skriftaboð Þorláks biskups,”
Gripla 5 (1982): 79; Stefán Karlsson, “the Localisation and Dating of Medieval Icelandic
Manuscripts,” Saga-Book of the Viking Society 25 (1998–2001): 148. on the rarity of being
able to identify the scribe of a medieval Icelandic manuscript by name, see Guðvarður Már
Gunnlaugsson, “Manuscripts and Palaeography,” in A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic
Literature and Culture, ed. rory Mcturk, Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture,
vol. 31 (oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 252–53.
13 a new edition of this text is currently being prepared by Dario Bullitta.
14 For the treatise and the dialogue, see Alfræði íslenzk: Islandsk encyklopædisk litteratur, ed.
Kristian Kålund, vol. 3, Samfund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk litteratur 45 (Copenhagen:
Møller, 1917–18), 27–44. on the dialogue see also Marchand, “the old Icelandic Joca
Monachorum.”
AN OLD NORSE HOMILY