Gripla - 2021, Page 17

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ments,” as previous scholars have suggested,25 but rather a carefully com-
piled collection, which follows the so-called aetatis mundi model, where the
history of the world is divided up into six (or eight) ages, from its creation
until the age of resurrection after the Last Judgement.26 The first half of
Reynistaðarbók can therefore be described as
an attempt to put together an account of universal history in
Icelandic […] by forging together passages from many disparate
sources, all of which were foreign in origin but had been translated
into Icelandic before our scribes set to their task.27
In its present state, AM 764 4to consists of forty-three full leaves and five
smaller leaves inserted at various points. The leaves of the manuscript did
not come into Árni Magnússon’s manuscript collection all at once; rather,
he acquired the leaves from various people over a period of some years
and combined them to form a single codex.28 Árni acquired two further
leaves from the same codex but did not recognise their connection, and so
they are now kept under a separate shelfmark in Reykjavík: AM 162 m
fol.29 This brings the total number of leaves of varying sizes to fifty, but
still there are lacunae. The parchment bifolium in Stowe MS 980 fills one
of them.
In a rudimentary catalogue of his collection, commenced in 1707, Árni
Magnússon wrote an incomplete list of the contents of AM 764 4to.
The twelfth item on that list is “De Archiepiscopis Cantuariensibus non-
nulla med nockrum heilỏgum æfintirum” (About several archbishops of
25 See e.g. Christine E. Fell, “Anglo-Saxon Saints in Old Norse Sources and Vice Versa,”
Proceedings of the Eighth Viking Congress, Århus 24-31 August 1977, eds. Hans Bekker-
Nielsen, Peter Foote, and Olaf Olsen ([Odense]: Odense University Press, 1981), 99.
26 Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir, “The World and its Ages: The Organisation of an ‘Encyclopaedic’
Narrative in MS AM 764 4to,” Sagas, Saints and Settlements, eds. Gareth Williams and Paul
Bibire (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 3–4.
27 Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir, “The Resourceful Scribe: Some Aspects of the Development
of Reynistaðarbók (AM 764 4to),” Modes of Authorship in the Middle Ages, eds. Slavica
Ranković et al. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2012), 328. On the
concept of aetatis mundi and its application in Reynistaðarbók, see Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir,
“Universal History,” 63–238.
28 Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir, “Universal History,” 13–14.
29 Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir, “Universal History,” 11.
ANECDOTES OF SEVERAL ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY