Gripla - 20.12.2018, Page 302

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again in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.38 this preference for dry
point ruling increases in later centuries. of the roughly one third to half
of the extant Icelandic parchment and paper manuscripts that I analysed,
one third of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century parchment and palimpsest
manuscripts are dry point ruled, and more than half of the sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century paper manuscripts have dry point ruling. It thus
seems that dry point ruling became the most frequently used method of
ruling post-medieval paper manuscripts in Iceland, thereby confirming that
dry point methods of manuscript preparation were well known.
advantages of using styli or other dry point implements include their
economy and practicality. Preparing ink and quills was a laborious task
requiring various raw materials, some of which were seasonal, and advance
planning.39 using styli and wax tablets was much simpler, even though it
may have been difficult and expensive to acquire them. But once owned,
they could be re-used without difficulty and without much wear and tear.
furthermore, they were more portable than quill and ink (usually kept in
a lectern) and thus on hand all the time.40
female Manuscript ownership
the second noteworthy aspect with regard to the inscription of MS
Boreal 91 has implications for male/female literacy in Iceland and for the
provenance of Icelandic legal manuscripts. By the early nineteenth century
between one quarter and one third of Icelandic men could write. the ratio
was higher among wealthy men but low among women: only one in ten
women was, in fact, able to write during the time Helga impressed her
note into MS Boreal 91.41 this makes Helga’s marginal notes rather un-
38 Már Jónsson, “fyrstu línur á blaðsíðum skinnhandrita,” Gripla 13 (2002): 226–227.
39 I thank Svanhildur María Gunnarsdóttir for explaining the production method in de-
tail. a short description of producing ink and quill can be found in, e.g., Soffía Guðný
Guðmundsdóttir and Laufey Guðnadóttir, “Book Production in the Middle ages,”
66 Manuscripts from the Arnamagnæan Collection, ed. by Matthew James Driscoll and
Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir (Copenhagen: Museum tusculanum, 2015), 215–218. More in-
formation, including references, can be found in Christine Jakobi-Mirwald, Buchmalerei:
Terminologie der Kunstgeschichte, 4th ed. (Berlin: reimer, 2015), 110–120.
40 Glaser and nievergelt, “Griffelglossen,” 205.
41 Loftur Guttormsson, “Læsi,” Munnmenntir og bókmenning, ed. by Frosti F. Jóhannsson.
Íslensk þjóðmenning 6 (reykjavík: Bókaútgáfan Þjóðsaga, 1989), 139–140. It is possible,
though, that someone else wrote the ownership statement for Helga.