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various codices and fragments indicate such a use.43 Not one of these
clients, however, is known by name, and little information survives as to
where these manuscripts were used in later times. this also appears to be
the same case with the scribes and illuminators of the two groups, none of
whom is known by name. Jonna Louis-Jensen has suggested that most of
the illuminated manuscripts of the Barðastrandarsýsla group were illumi-
nated by the Icelandic artist Þórarinn penturr Eiríksson, who was active as
a painter (as his name suggests) and scribe in Iceland and norway during
the 1340s.44 However, none of the illuminations in the Barðastrandarsýsla
group can be ascribed to him with certainty.45 It also seems unlikely
that the particular style of illumination of the Barðastrandarsýsla group
was imported from norway, since a comparable style is unknown from
illuminated norwegian manuscripts and fragments from that time.46 The
scribal and artistic activity of the Kringla and Barðastrandarsýsla groups
thus remains first and foremost Icelandic.
In conclusion, the discussed artistic and personal contacts in the two
manuscript groups from the Kringla and Barðastrandarsýsla is likely ex-
plained through the practice of labour exchange in the rural society of me-
dieval Iceland. this labour was carried out by numerous people involved
43 Manuscripts ordered by secular clients in medieval Iceland contain a variety of medieval
Icelandic literary texts. Examples from the fourteenth century are the kings’ saga com-
pendium GKS 1005 fol. (flateyjarbók) and the Postula sögur manuscript SÁM 1 (Codex
Scardensis) mentioned above. for the clients of these manuscripts, see Elizabeth ashman
rowe, The Development of Flateyjarbók: Iceland and the Norwegian Dynastic Crisis of 1389
(odense: university Press of Southern Denmark), 1–14, and Desmond Slay, Introduction
to Codex Scardensis (Copenhagen: rosenkilde and Bagger), 11–13.
44 Jonna Louis-Jensen, “Vatnsfjörður,” 332–34, with further references therein.
45 Lena Liepe, Studies, 130.
46 It should be noted, however, that an interest in exporting manuscripts to norway existed
in Iceland at the turn of the fourteenth century, since both aM 45 fol. and nra 78 were
most likely transferred to Bergen soon after their completion. other contemporaneously
produced and exported manuscripts from Iceland, such as an illuminated fragment from the
Heimskringla manuscript nra 55 a (Jöfraskinna) from c. 1300–25, also feature palmette
embellishments, but the ornamentation in the fragment is too generic to see them as prod-
ucts of a similar workshop to those which produced aM 45 fol. and nra 78. In addition,
the textual redaction of Heimskringla in Jöfraskinna also does not correlate with either
that of the Kringla manuscripts or of aM 45 fol., as discussed by Bjarni aðalsteinsson,
Introduction to Heimskringla III, xviii–xviv. It can thus be assumed that the book painting
of exported manuscripts was to some extent related to the different redactions of the text
they feature, and was possibly executed at the same workshop.
ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT PRODUCTION