Gripla - 2019, Qupperneq 10

GRIPLA10
manuscript transmission in the late pre-modern era has likewise become an
important area of study.6 The position of Icelandic immigrant communi-
ties in Canada and the United States within this scribal dynamic remains
largely unknown, however. The Fragile Heritage Project (Icelandic: Í fót-
spor Árna Magnússonar í Vesturheimi) is an ongoing initiative that aims to
document Icelandic-language manuscripts and other handwritten Icelandic
material found across North America in private collections and public
archives.7 While its primary goals are to make this unique material more
accessible to researchers and contribute to its preservation, it is also the
first major study of manuscript culture in Icelandic immigrant communi-
ties in North America.
The question of why – and how – a homesteader such as Albert Jó-
hannes son, living on an isolated island in Lake Winnipeg, with no or very
little formal education and limited financial means, copied literature as a pas-
time is a complex one. There is increasing recognition, however, that scribes
did not work alone, obtaining material through private exchanges within
informal social networks or scribal communities.8 Their services were in lo-
Century Northern Iceland: The Case of Þorsteinn Þorsteinsson á Heiði,” Vernacular
Literacies: Past, Present and Future, ed. by Ann-Catrine Edlund, Lars-Erik Edlund and
Susanne Haugen (Umeå: Umeå University, 2014), 193–211; Silvia Veronika Hufnagel,
“The farmer, scribe and lay historian Gunnlaugur Jónsson from Skuggabjörg and his scribal
network,” Gripla 24 (2013): 235–268; Davíð ólafsson, “Scribal Communities in Iceland:
The Case of Sighvatur Grímsson,” Black Seeds, White Field: Nordic Literary Practices in the
Long Nineteenth Century, ed. by Anna Kuismin and Matthew J. Driscoll (Helsinki: Finnish
Literature Society, 2013), 40–49; Matthew J. Driscoll, The Unwashed Children of Eve: The
Production, Dissemination and Reception of Popular Literature in Post-Reformation Iceland
(Enfield Lock: Hisarlik Press, 1997).
6 See e.g., Sheryl McDonald Werronen, Popular Romance in Iceland: The Women, Worldviews,
and Manuscript Witnesses of Nítíða Saga (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016);
Philip Lavender, Whatever happened to Illuga saga Gríðarfóstra? Origin, transmission and
reception of a fornaldarsaga (Doctoral dissertation, University of Copenhagen, Faculty of
Humanities, 2014); and Silvia Veronika Hufnagel, “Sörla saga sterka in its final phase of
manuscript transmission,” The Legendary Sagas: Origins and Development, ed. by Annette
Lassen, agneta ney and Ármann Jakobsson (reykjavík: university of Iceland Press, 2012),
431–54.
7 The first phase of funding (2015–2018) is complete. During this phase, the author and three
other researchers at the University of Iceland (Ryan Eric Johnson, ólafur Arnar Sveinsson,
and Michael John MacPherson) carried out extensive fieldwork in Western Canada and the
United States. The author’s own research on the scribes of Hecla Island began in 2011.
8 Hufnagel, “The farmer, scribe and lay historian Gunnlaugur Jónsson,” 235–68; Davíð
ólafsson, “Scribal Communities in Iceland,” 40–49.