Gripla - 20.12.2017, Page 169

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STEFAN DRECHSLER1
ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT
PRODUCTION
IN WESTERN ICELAND
IN THE THIRTEENTH
AND EARLY FOURTEENTH CENTURIES
philologists have long attempted to group medieval Icelandic manu-
scripts according to their scribes and textual content, and many such
groups have been linked to major ecclesiastical houses of the fourteenth
century.2 Based on these established groups, book paintings in these
manuscripts have also attracted growing interest among art historians.3
However, little research has been dedicated to the book painting that pre-
dates the fourteenth century, despite recognised evidence for such arts.4
1 I would like to thank the Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum, reykjavík, Den
arnamagnæanske Samling, Copenhagen, and riksarkivet, oslo, for providing me with
images for this article. furthermore, I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers,
and Emily Lethbridge and Rósa Þorsteinsdóttir, for their invaluable comments on an earlier
version of this text.
2 for the philological and historical techniques of grouping medieval Icelandic manuscripts,
and a short overview of a number of such established groups, see Stefán Karlsson, “the
Localisation and Dating of Medieval Icelandic Manuscripts,” Saga-Book XXV (1999):
138–58.
3 Major art historical contributions have been provided by Selma Jónsdóttir, “Gömul kross-
festingamynd,” Skírnir 139 (1965): 134–47; Guðbjörg Kristjánsdóttir, “Handritalýsingar
í benediktínaklaustrinu á Þingeyrum,” Íslensk klausturmenning á miðöldum, ed. Haraldur
Bernharðsson (reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan, 2016), 227–311; and Lena Liepe, Studies in Ice-
landic Fourteenth Century Book Painting (reykholt: Snorrastofa, 2009), 126–42.
4 the paucity of art historical studies of thirteenth-century Icelandic manuscripts is possibly
due to the lack of historiated content in these manuscripts. full-page miniatures and histo-
riated initials only became common in Iceland in the early fourteenth century: apart from
aM 673 a I 4to and aM 673 a II 4to, two vernacular Physiologus fragments from c. 1200,
aM 679 4to, an ordinary with a miniature of Christ Enthroned from c. 1250, and AM 249
c fol., a calendar including an iconography of the Virgin and the Child dated to c. 1300,
there is no known historiated book painting that predates the fourteenth century. the same
holds true for zoomorphic and inhabited initials. for a short overview of medieval Icelandic
book painting, see Halldór Hermannsson, Icelandic Illuminated Manuscripts of the Middle
Ages (Copenhagen: E. Munksgaard, 1935), 7–28.
Gripla XXVIII (2017): 169–196