Gripla - 20.12.2016, Síða 293

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although a more detailed investigation of these correspondences is
needed, it is tempting to advance the working hypothesis that the new
fragment from the binding of aM 22 4to is a copy of the same three letters
described in the Akershusregister (nr. 1018–1020). for this hypothesis to
stand, however, one needs to allow for inaccuracies in the register (which
is not without flaws in other places) with regard to the order of the letters.
It is also possible that the fragment represents two of the akershus-letters,
the third one having been written below on a missing bottom part of the
leaf or even on another leaf now lost.
Conclusions
old norse texts are rarely found in book bindings, which most often yield
scraps of Latin liturgical books, and the discovery of a set of royal letters
in this context is even rarer. the rediscovery of letters from the Hovedøya
archive is most unexpected. It is also worth pointing out that few diplo-
matic texts in old norse survive at all from this early date. the documents
in question, although they originally belonged to a Cistercian monastery
in norway, concerned the property rights of the monastery which were
transferred to the Danish Crown after the destruction of the monastery,
and thus not made obsolete. as far as can be known, these letters were still
valid legal charters at least into the seventeenth century. their reuse in the
binding of a Danish law manuscript thus calls for an explanation. one pos-
sible explanation for their becoming obsolete could be the archaic language
they use, which was probably not legible to Danish officials around 1500.
the owners of a manuscript like aM 22 4to would presumably be found
in such circles, although studies to support that supposition have as yet
not been undertaken. Why the norwegian letters under discussion ended
up in the binding of this codex, why they were copied in the first place,
and whether they are singular documents or form a part of a collection of
such copies are questions that cannot be answered at this point. a more
detailed investigation of the fragment, including an analysis of the writ-
ing and the language, is scheduled to appear in Opuscula 15 (pres. 2017).
Meanwhile, this preliminary publication makes the fragment available to
those who might be interested in the knowledge, historical or otherwise,
that it can yield.
A RECENTLY-DISCOVERED FRAGMENT