Gripla - 2021, Side 157

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The Making of Belgsdalsbók
The provenance of Belgsdalsbók brings us at least close to Hólar. The
making of the manuscript provides a few other clues that may be taken to
point in the same direction.13
In studying the codicological makeup of AM 347 fol., we must dis-
tinguish between the original part of the codex, quires 1–11, and the last
two quires, which were added later, but almost certainly in the Middle
Ages, perhaps already before 1370. At least one hand (labelled “hand III”
by Stefán Karlsson and “H Hel 1” by Stefan Drechsler) that has worked,
c. 1370, on those last, added quires was a scribe in the scriptorium of the
monastery of Helgafell, so they were certainly written there.14 That does
not necessarily make the entire book a Helgafell production, since the early
quires were produced earlier. In fact, Stefan Drechsler points out that the
size of Belgsdalsbók is smaller than “the relatively large manuscripts from
the Helgafell group” and that its text does not “demonstrate any particular
closeness to core codices from Helgafell, such as Skarðsbók,” which were
produced there.15 The balance of evidence suggests that, except for the last
pages, Belgsdalsbók was written somewhere other than Helgafell.
The main hand of the original quires (Stefán’s “hand I” and Drechsler’s
“H Hel 8”) of Belgsdalsbók worked close to the middle of the four-
teenth century.16 The same scribe also served as the main hand in the
perhaps most famous manuscript of the Norwegian Landslov, the Codex
Hardenbergianus, GKS 1154 fol. It seems unclear whether the scribe
was Icelandic or Norwegian. Most scholars seem to agree that at least
Hardenbergianus was produced in Norway, probably in Bergen. The lan-
13 The making of Belgsdalsbók has been studied in detail in Stefan Drechsler, Illuminated
Manuscript Production in Medieval Iceland: Literary and Artistic Activities of the Monastery
at Helgafell in the Fourteenth Century. Manuscripta Publications in Manuscript Research
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), esp. pp. 131–42.
14 Stefán Karlsson, “Lovskriver i to lande: Codex Hardenbergensis og Codex Belgsdalensis,”
Festskrift til Alfred Jakobsen (Trondheim: Tapir, 1987); Drechsler, Illuminated Manuscript
Production, 51 and 121.
15 Drechsler, Illuminated Manuscript Production, 131, 132, and 142.
16 Despite including the abbreviation “Hel[gafell]” in his label for this hand, Drechsler
expressly states that he does not place this hand at Helgafell, see Drechsler, Illuminated
Manuscript Production, 142. Drechsler, 132, dates this scribe’s work on Belgsdalsbók to
1350–70.
HÓ LAR AND BELGSDALSBÓ K