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as a whole, thus represents a reworking of Vindician’s Letter into that
context. Whether the treatise is merely a copy of such a reworking, or if
the Letter is put into its context in Af natturu mannzins ok bloði by Haukr
Erlendsson’s initiative and editing, still remains obscure. the text/s on
which the treatise is based presumably shared the fate of the vast majority
of the Latin learned and liturgical texts that existed in Iceland and norway
before the reformation: they are now lost without a trace, as Guðvarður
Már Gunnlaugsson has pointed out.98 for the north as a whole, it has been
estimated that ninety-nine percent of the Latin manuscript leaves that
existed at the start of the reformation are now lost.99
Whether the source text (or texts) was in circulation in Iceland is a
moot point. Indications point both to norway and Iceland as possible
places of writing. Haukr Erlendsson spent many years in norway,100 the
scribe was presumably norwegian, and the gathering that includes the
treatise might have been inserted. However, finnur Jónsson’s investiga-
tion of the orthographic and linguistic features of the treatise led him to
the conclusion that the scribe was copying an original in Icelandic.101
one can at least assume that the mere existence of the treatise in
Hauksbók testifies to the fact that, at the dawn of the fourteenth century,
the knowledge of the theory of the four humours was important to an
HUMORAL THEORY IN THE MEDIEVAL NORTH
by David C. Lindberg and ronald L. numbers, 8 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge university
Press, 2011), vol. II, 341–64. on the transformation of Europe in the long twelfth century,
see, e.g., Robert Ian Moore, The First European Revolution, c. 970–1215, ed. by Jacques
Le Goff (oxford: Blackwell, 2000); thomas f. X. noble and John Van Engen (eds.),
European Transformations: The Long Twelfth Century (notre Dame: university of notre
Dame Press, 2012).
98 Guðvarður Már Gunnlaugsson, “Latin fragments related to Iceland,” Nordic Latin Manu-
script Fragments: The Destruction and Reconstruction of Medieval Books, ed. by Åslaug
ommundsen and tuomas Heikkilä (new York: routledge, 2017), 175.
99 Åslaug ommundsen and tuomas Heikkilä, “Piecing together the Past: the accidental
Manuscript Collections of the north,” ibid., 4; see also Åslaug ommundsen, “traces of
Latin Education in the old norse World,” Intellectual Culture in Medieval Scandinavia, c.
1100–1350, ed. by Stefka G. Eriksen, Disputatio 28 (turnhout: Brepols, 2016), 243–62;
Gottskálk Jensson, “the Lost Latin Literature of Medieval Iceland: the fragments of the
Vita sancti Thorlaci and other Evidence,” Symbolae Osloenses 79 (2004): 150–70.
100 for an overview of Haukr’s background and career, see, e.g., Gunnar Harðarson,
Littérature et spiritualité en Scandinavie médiévale: La traduction norroise du De arrha animae
de Hugues de Saint-Victor. Étude historique et édition critique, Bibliotheca Victorina 5 (Paris:
Brepols, 1995), 169–74.
101 finnur Jónsson, “Indledning,” xxxv–xxxvi.