Gripla - 20.12.2017, Page 186

GRIPLA186
in the different stages of manuscript production. as for the workshops
where the Kringla and Barðarstrandasýsla manuscripts were produced,
many questions remain, for example with regard to their staff and com-
mon style of illumination. analysis of nra 78 suggests that it was pro-
duced in Barðastrandarsýsla and that at that time contact between these
two workshops existed. the same applies to the Sturlunga saga codex
Króksfjarðarbók mentioned above, which was also written by scribes from
the Helgafell and Barðastrandarsýsla groups. While the Kringla group
seems to have provided work for two illuminators who only contributed
to manuscripts belonging to the group, the main scribe appears to have
been in the service of a number of clients, who, in turn, were in contact
with further artists. this practice is only related to the work of major art-
ists, since minor initials in the manuscripts of the Kringla group seem to
have been illuminated by the main scribe himself (H Kri 1; a Kri 2) in the
last decades of the thirteenth century: they correspond quite closely either
with sections written by the same person, or with his scribal environment.
In c. 1271–1300, this scribal surrounding also included the artist a Kri 1
who was responsible for several main initials in manuscripts of the Kringla
group. a similar situation appears in the Barðastrandarsýsla group, where
almost all of the minor initials in the whole group were painted by one
illuminator (a Ber 2). as with the artist who contributed the elaborated
main initials in the Kringla group (a Kri 1), it was a single illuminator
who contributed main initials to a manuscript such as aM 45 fol. (Codex
frisianus) and the fragment nra 78 (a Ber 1). Such illuminators, however
appear only in the latest stages of manuscript production, and are thus less
prominent in the earlier stages of the writing of the codices we today con-
sider to be some of the most stunning productions of medieval Icelandic
book culture.