Gripla - 2021, Qupperneq 167

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STEFAN DRECHSLER
LAW MANUSCRIPTS
FROM FIFTEENTH-CENTURY ICELAND*
rightfully noted as an overlooked period of medieval Icelandic law
manuscript production, the fifteenth century nevertheless holds a signifi-
cant number of codices and fragments containing Jónsbók and Kristinréttr
Árna Þorlákssonar – two important vernacular legal codes dealing with
secular and ecclesiastical matters in medieval Iceland. Perhaps due to the
large number of illuminated manuscripts produced during the “Golden
Age” of Icelandic book production in the fourteenth century,1 and the ar-
rival and devastating consequences for the clergy of the first wave of the
Black Death in 1402–04,2 the fifteenth century has been interpreted as a
period of scriptural and orthographic stillstand.3 Simultaneously, it was a
period of decline in the quality and quantity of book painting in Iceland.4
1 For the book design and number of Icelandic manuscripts produced in the Middle Ages, see
Már Jónsson, “Manuscript Design in Medieval Iceland,” From Nature to Script: Reykholt,
Environment, Centre, and Manuscript Making, eds. Helgi Þorláksson and Þóra Björg Sig urðar-
dóttir (Reykholt: Snorrastofa, 2012), 231–43. For an overview of book paintings in Icelandic
manuscripts, see Halldór Hermannsson, Introduction to Icelandic Illuminated Manuscripts of
the Middle Ages, ed. Halldór Hermannsson (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1935), 7–28.
2 According to Gunnar Karlsson and Helgi Skúli Kjartansson, “Plágurnar miklu á Íslandi,” Saga
32 (1994): 19, 86 per cent of the Icelandic clergy died in 1402–04. The second wave of the
Plague arrived in Iceland in 1494–95 but had less impact on its population than the first.
3 Stefán Karlsson, “The Development of Latin Script II: In Iceland,” The Nordic Languages:
An International Handbook of the History of the North Germanic Languages, 1, ed. Oskar
Bandle (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2002), 836.
4 Halldór Hermannsson, Introduction to Illuminated Manuscripts of the Jónsbók, ed. Hall-
dór Hermannsson (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1940), 14–15. See also Guðbjörg
Kristjánsdóttir, “Lýsingar í íslenskum handritum,” Kirkja og kirkjuskrúð: Miðaldakirkjan í
Noregi og á Íslandi, eds. Lilja Árnadóttir and Ketil Kiran (Oslo: Norsk Institutt for Kultur-
minnesforskning NIKU, and Reykjavík: Þjóðminjasafn Íslands, 1997), 97, and Guðbjörg
Kristjánsdóttir, “Lýsingar í íslenskum handritum á 15. öld,” Gripla 22 (2016): 157–59.
Gripla XXXII (2021): 165–198
* This article is based on a paper I gave on 22 November 2019 at the Icelandic Laws in
Context: Jónsbók and Kristinréttr Árna in the Árni Magnússon Collection Conference
in Reykjavík. I would like to thank Elizabeth Walgenbach for the kind invitation and all
attendees for fruitful discussions. Further gratitude is due to the two anonymous reviewers
for their comments on an earlier version of this article.