Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1968, Page 12
rural districts - the reformers contented themselves with removing the
Catholic hooks, putting them away in lockers, alcoves or lofts, etc.
At the time of the Reformation, Norway with its colonies had lost
its political independence, and become subject to the Danish govern-
ment; and taxes had to be sent to the Treasury in Copenhagen. The
taxes were of different kinds; and the same kind of tax could be levied or
håndled in different ways in different tax districts. What, however,
interests us here, are the instances when the tax collectors had to hånd
in - together with the taxes — lists of the payers and the sums paid.
These lists were written on paper; and in order to bind the paper
sheaves into pamphlets or books, a more solid material than paper was
needed to make the backings. And here the remaining vellum books came
in handy; they were fetched from their hiding places and taken asunder.
Occasionally whole leaves were used; generally smaller pieces had to do,
— and this especially as time went on and the supply threatened to be
exhausted; for this procedure went on for nearly a hundred years (from
shortly af ter the middle of the 16th century till towards the middle of
the 17th).
When, in the year 1814, Norway proper (not its colonies) was freed
from the Danish supremacy, the greater part of these Norwegian Tax
Lists was — among other documents belonging to our country — trans-
ferred to the Norwegian State Archives (Record Office) in Oslo; and
later on the rest have followed (except the documents concerning Bohus
Len in the Middle Ages, which still remain in Copenhagen. Bohus Len
was ceded to Sweden in 1658).
For a goodly spell nobody heeded the vellum fragments fastened to
the lists; and it was not till shortly before the middle of the century
that a corner of the veil which enveloped the potential survival of medi-
eval Norwegian manuscripts was first lifted.
P. A. Muncb, professor of History at the University of Oslo, found
that some of these vellum fragments contained parts of Old Norse Liter-
ature; and in 1847 he published a paper about his find. However, that
there also existed fragments of a liturgical kind, he did not say.
And thereafter more than half a century was to elapse before further
information about the fragments should reach the public.
The historian J. Fr. Macody Lund discovered that several of the skin-
bits, derived from liturgical books, were not seldom furnished with
music, and found among such ones a whole leaf containing most of the
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