Gripla - 2021, Page 12

GRIPLA10
2. The Icelandic Manuscripts in the Stowe Collection
In 1895, twelve years after the British Museum had acquired the manu-
scripts in the Stowe collection, the Catalogue of the Stowe Manuscripts in
the British Museum was published. Included in it are short but accurate
descriptions of the Icelandic items, including the parchment bifolium.6
The manuscripts have also been noted in three earlier catalogues: Charles
O’Conor’s catalogue of the manuscripts in the Stowe library, published in
1818;7 a Sotheby’s auction catalogue, prepared for an auction in 1849, which
was never held;8 and in a report by the Royal Commission on Historical
Manuscripts, published in 1881.9 All accurately describe the contents of the
manuscripts, including the parchment bifolium in Stowe MS 980.
Despite being well-documented and included in the British Museum’s
official catalogue of the Stowe manuscripts, the Icelandic manuscripts
in the collection have remained unknown to scholars working on Old
Norse-Icelandic literature.10 In 1890, Jón Þorkelsson visited the British
6 Edward J.L. Scott, Catalogue of the Stowe Manuscripts, 1:4–5, 650–51. The items are now
also listed in the British Library’s digital catalogue, see e.g. Stowe MS 980 at http://
searcharchives.bl.uk/IAMS_VU2:IAMS040-001953830, accessed August 7, 2021.
7 Charles O’Conor, Bibliotheca MS. Stowensis: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the
Stowe Library, (Buckingham: J. Seeley, 1818), 1:387–88. Stowe MS 6 (Stjórn) is not included
in O’Conor’s catalogue as it appears to have been a later addition to the collection; a note
on the contents of the manuscript written on a flyleaf bears the date 1821 and the initials
“G.B.”. The manuscript appears to be a copy of AM 226 fol.
8 Catalogue of the Important Collection of Manuscripts, from Stowe: Which will be sold by auction,
by messrs. S. Leigh Sotheby & Co. ([London]: J. Davy & Sons, [1849]), 57, 119.
9 [R. R. Knowles], Eighth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts:
Appendix.—(Part III) (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1881), 19, 26. Reprinted
in Copy of Papers relating to the Purchase of the Stowe Collection by Her Majesty’s Government
(London: Henry Hansard and Son, 1883), 41, 51.
10 An important source for the study of romance manuscripts in the British Library is the
Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum. Its first
volume, which was edited by H. L. D. Ward and published in 1883, features, inter alia,
Partalopa saga in BL Add 4860 (p. 707) and Elís saga in BL Add 24,969 (pp. 869–70), but
as the Stowe collection was not a part of the museum’s holdings when the catalogue was
in preparation, the romances therein are naturally not included. Manuscripts from the
Stowe collection would be included in the two subsequent volumes (published in 1893 and
1910, respectively), but because the catalogue is structured thematically, and Old French
romances and their translations/adaptations were treated in the first volume, the Icelandic
Stowe manuscripts do not appear there either. A fourth volume, which would contain
“an Appendix containing MSS. acquired since the publication of the previous volumes or
inadvertently omitted from them” was proposed but never published. See G. F. Warner,