Gripla - 2019, Blaðsíða 9
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of establishing a new life in a new land. These heirlooms included many
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century paper manuscripts, the most famous
being the eighteenth-century Melsted Edda (SÁM 66), with its hand-
drawn illustrations of scenes from Norse mythology.
For their owners, handwritten books represented material connections
to the past and the landscapes of home. A less tangible aspect of Icelandic
literary culture brought to North America was the practice of hand-copy-
ing texts into homemade books, a centuries-old scribal tradition that influ-
enced the dissemination of popular literature and immigrants’ continuing
engagement with their rich literary past.3 Not a few of the manuscripts
that arrived in North America in an Icelandic immigrant’s luggage were
personally curated collections of poetry, sagas, somewhat dubious medical
advice and assorted other writings.
To date, most research on Icelandic immigrant literacy in North
America has focused either on printed material, such as newspapers and
commercially produced books, or on personal correspondence and diaries.4
The attention given to the newly arrived immigrants’ publishing activities
and their life-writing is fully deserved. The Icelandic-language printing
presses flourished, Icelandic-Canadian and -American writers made their
lasting mark on Icelandic literature, and Winnipeg was an important liter-
ary and cultural hub where both new currents and the written legacy of the
past could find a space in print. Even among those immigrants who did not
consider themselves to be serious authors, their self-expression often took
written form. Many immigrants documented their experiences poignantly
in letters, memoirs, diaries, poems and other writings.
The field of post-medieval Icelandic manuscript studies has grown
rapidly over the last three decades, with a large body of research focusing
on the nineteenth century.5 For scholars of medieval Icelandic literature,
3 Einar G. Pétursson, “About Icelandic Books and Manuscripts in North America,” Lögberg-
Heimskringla (26 May 1995): 1, 3–4; Einar G. Pétursson, “Ah, very true: What don’t they
sleep on, our fine old ladies,” The Icelandic Canadian 51 (1993): 141–149.
4 Important recent studies include úlfar Bragason, Frelsi, menning, framför: Um bréf og
greinar Jóns Halldórssonar (Reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan, 2017); Daisy Neijmann, The Ice-
landic Voice in Canadian Letters (Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit, 1994); and Davíð ólafsson
and Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon, Burt og meir en bæjarleið.
5 Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon and Davíð ólafsson, Minor Knowledge and Microhistory:
Manuscript Culture in the Nineteenth Century, Routledge Studies in Cultural History
47 (New York: Routledge, 2017); Tereza Lansing, “Manuscript Culture in Nineteenth
ALBERT JóHANNESSON AND THE SCRIBES OF HECLA ISLAND